Some people have been asking me if it ever gets lonely here in New York. I made the move on purpose because I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I’m too comfortable. I want to be just uncomfortable enough to keep learning and growing. That may be one of the reasons why I went on that South America trip.
I do have roommates, but we interact in a very limited sense of the word, via our random run-ins at the kitchen, aka our living room. I do have 3 cousins here in NYC, and they’re all very busy with their lives. Every opportunity I do have to hang out with them is always an enjoyable one.
At first, I was just busy trying to get settled in. Then it became the whole health deal… tending to my medical needs with a combination of chiropractic/physical therapy care for 4-5 days of the week. And every 2 months, I’d fly out to California to tend to my TMJ. Then came the softball season, and our IBM team is 3 and 1 in the city of Armonk league.
Still, there were moments where it did get lonely. But lately, I’ve been more than busy with my fair share of things, mostly things I’ve been doing on my own. So here are some things that have happened, are happening, and will happen soon.
Work
I worked 80+ hours a week for the last 5 weeks. Certainly not anything unusual to investment bankers. It’s a simple statement of the way things have been for a bit.
Guitar
I know a dozen or so complicated songs off the top of my head that I can play (not talking about songs you look at the chord letterings on top of a song and play along), but I can only go so far by just memorizing the progressions of solos and finger designations. I want to learn more about music theory and why things work the way they do. This will probably be a work in progress for the rest of my life.
Reading
I bought quite a few books in the past few months, and haven’t finished even one of them. I have trouble finishing the last 20% of any book. I just lose interest. The ones I read for some reason or another try to justify the former 80% in every conceivable way possible, and it becomes a huge summary. I’m not really looking for that. Right now, I’m working on The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin, and I really want to finish reading the last 40% of Greenspan’s book, Age of Turbulence.
Moving
I’m planning on moving out with a couple coworkers from IBM. It will more than likely happen in July or August. Still not 100% sure it will all work out, but if it does, I think it’ll be a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to moving to a better location/situation.
Website
I’m still working on getting my website about driving down to South America up. It’s actually up right now, but I haven’t worked on it enough. Its front page is linked to nothing! I have a lot more to learn about XHTML and CSS. Thankfully, I won’t have to work too much with XML and forms.
CFA
Quite a few of my co-workers are planning on earning their CFA certifications. I’m not as committed, but I’m still pondering the consequences.
GMAT/MBA
I am shooting for a 750/800 GMAT. ‘Wow,’ you might think, ‘I’m really impressed!’ Well, don’t be impressed yet… If I took it today, I doubt I’d be getting anything above 700. I haven’t done much studying, and there is only one category in the reading section that I excel at. I’m hoping to time it so that I have almost full 3 years of work at IBM once MBA classes actually start (Sept 2010). But that means I need to get all my things in order to apply by October 2009, which means I need the proper GMAT score by no later than June 2009. That leaves me with just about a year to prepare for everything.
Health
I’m seriously considering working from Korea for a month and a half during the summer to seek intensive physical therapy care for my neck. I’ve already been to a physical therapist here for the maximum allotted number of visits (40), and I’m coming up on my 40 for my chiropractor soon as well (80 total to both). It’s not improving… Actually, I’m high on Vicodin for my tooth extraction right now, so that’s helping out a bit.
Random
The last few weeks have been busy for work during the weekdays, and for random things that just happened out of the blue. I had a family friend wedding a couple weeks ago, wisdom teeth extraction this past weekend, 2 of my closest Korean friends visiting this weekend (I think they’re the only close Korean friends I have), and a trip out to California for my TMJ checkup the weekend after that.
Volunteer
I want to find a good place to volunteer at, a place where I could have more of a permanent responsibility at, a place where I can grow and actually inflict change not only on a weekend in and weekend out basis, but on a more permanent basis. I’ve applied to a couple places and I’m doing something online right now, but I want to be much more hands on soon. I’ve shied away from doing so because of my neck issue, but I don’t think it’ll be any better either way.