Most amazing dream

Basically I was Superman and had all his powers and zipped around everywhere. I ended up moving to Australia, met a woman who also had my powers, and so I decided to test them by flying as far out from the atmosphere as I could.

This is where the dream was incredible - I fly all the way up to the edge and can see a faint line separate space and Earth. As I cross the line I can still breathe but recognize the air is thinner and something tightening my lungs. Space, however, is this gorgeous chaos of swirling rocks and asteroids flying at me incredible velocities, along with space debris like cracked satellites and old spacesuits lounging around. I fly down, feel the heat of atmospheric reentry flash around the edges of my body, and return to Earth.

This is what you get after beer, 3 hrs of sleep, and flying cross country. Any ideas on what this means, besides the need for more rest?

Assets into Services Business Model Gains Steam

The theme of sharing / renting and turning assets into services continues to gain steam. Zipcar, Spagg, netflix, begborroworsteal...and now runway clothes. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/haute-couture-available-through-netflix-model/

Additionally with the rise of FB connect and other social media, sharing / renting will continue to make sense. Perhaps there is an "Amazon" of localized sharing, whether by degree or geography, waiting to be built. On the peer front, allow sharing within your network, or open it up but let it be regulated by peer reviews.

This makes sense - most of the stuff we buy we tend to use maybe 5-10% of the time. What are other items which make sense in this model?

• Expensive, heavy kitchen equipment
• Some consumer electronics
• Apt space (this is already done by another startup I believe; forget name)
• Furniture (e.g. dining tables, chairs)
• Heavy sports equipment
• Power tools

Any others I'm missing?

Expensive clothes

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The cycle

Random thought this morning mixing ideas from nonzero.org and creative destruction. Basically, if you look at corporate history (as learned in my wonderful core curriculum in b-school) job and job descriptions have become more specialized and somewhat restrictive. White collar jobs are the new wage worker. This trend is likely to continue as efficiencies are wrung out of the system through focusing people on particular roles. Though these roles are more rigorous and challenging, they are still, by necessity, designed to be focused on a certain task or objective.

But, like all things, there are exceptions to this trend, which ironically also drive the trend, and that is entrepreneurship. At a new firm, there is little to no specialization, and therefore little to no role specialization - everyone does everything it takes to get the product off the ground. And the analogy here is to a craftsman or member of a guild. But along with the wide berth of responsibility comes the opportunity for creativity and expression (just like a craftsman). The irony, as mentioned before, comes when the firm grows and requires specialization, organization, and hierarchy, to continue its growth and achieve efficiency gains necessary to stay competitive.

Of course, then a member of THAT firm might leave to start his/her own company, and the cycle begins anew.

What I miss

Play time.

I'm reading this book on Innovation and it stresses the necessity to have toys, things to play with, to let your creativity stretch. And it makes me realize how as we get older, even recreation seems like work. Like planning a party. Or a dinner. Or even basketball. That same joy once experienced feels diluted.

We're all here wanting to be the next great executive but will we love what we do (or who we are) if we get there?

It makes me realize why I like playing Mafia Wars - it simulates that feeling of building something (which ironically is an organization of destruction, but that's just a minor detail). I miss that feeling. We have minds and hands, and perhaps my former is tired and the latter is bored.

I may go buy a lego set. Or some sort of tool kit. Living in slides, pdfs, powerpoint, and excel is as two-dimensional as it sounds.

Conventional is boring. The mean is boring. I want to be an outlier.

Some thoughts

My issue with religion has always been the behavior it spawns. If you think about the universe (meaning EVERYTHING), you can divide it into two major categories between the subjective and the objective, or more simply, the idea and reality; genotype and phenotype; information and action. Everything resides in this duality. Too often in our history the idea (religion) often leads to a awful behavior (Crusades, Jihad, Inquisition, etc.).

But maybe this is not true. Maybe religion, whether Christianity or whatever you want to call it, leads to benign or even positive behavior. Most theists will obviously not start religious wars or engage in violent crime.

So really, it's the premise of belief I disagree with, but we could argue premises all day and get nowhere. Our action, our behavior - these things matter because our thoughts and motives can only be inferred, never completely deduced. The only concern I would have is how deep one's faith might be. Because unthinking faith, no matter how strong the cause, is a dangerous state, as people, no matter how noble or well-intentioned, will abuse that power. And then history repeats itself.

Books to borrow?

Anyone have the following books, are in NYC, and wouldn't mind letting me borrow one / several for a few weeks? I can lend Nonzero (Robert Wright), Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl), and Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives? I have more books but they're in Philly.

Classic

Security Analysis by Ben Graham and David Todd

Theory of Investment Value by John Burr Williams

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre (Strand)

Manias, Panics, and Crashes by Charles Kindelbeger

Value investing from graham to buffett and beyond by Bruce Greenwald (B&N $15)

Modern

The Little Book that Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt (Strand, $15)

The Little Book of Value Investing by Chris Browne (Strand, $15)

Contrarian Investment Strategies by David Dreman

Speculative Contagion by Frank Martin

Psychological

Robot's Rebillion by Keith Stanovich

Strangers to Ourselves by Tim Wilson

How we know what isn't so by Tom Gilovich

Hidden gems

Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig (Strand, $8)

The inefficent Stock Market by Robert Haugen

The margin of safety by Seth Klarman

Your money and your brain by Jason Zweig

Better: A surgeon's notes on performance by Atul Gawande (Strand, $6)

Mindset by Carol Dweck

More Finance

Fooling some of the people, all of the time by David Einhorn (Strand, $15)

The Fundamental Index by Rob Arnott

The Investor's Dilemma by Louis Lowenstein

Financial Shenanigans by Howard Schilit (Strand, $18)

Creative Cash Flow Reporting by Charles Mulford and Eugence Comiskey

More Investing

Howard Marks' Memo to Oaktree clients

Distressed Investing by Marty Whitman and Fernando Diz

Think Twice by Michael Mauboussin (Oct availability)

More than you know by Michael Mauboussin (Strand, $14)

Best Townme pages so far

Golfing:

http://www.townme.com/philadelphia-pa/Golfing-in-philadelphia

Parks, bike paths:

http://www.townme.com/philadelphia-pa/The-great-philadelphia-outdoors

Dentists without an appointment:

http://www.townme.com/philadelphia-pa/Dentists-to-call-without-an-appointment

Budget living:

http://www.townme.com/philadelphia-pa/Budget-living

Girls' Night out:

http://www.townme.com/philadelphia-pa/Girls-night-out

25 Random Things

This was kind of fun to write.  Probably because I'm really ego-centric.  Have fun!

1.  I used to play saxophone from 5th grade till high school (gave up in college).  So I used to be a huge jazz fan.  The first jazz piece I ever listened to was Cannonball Adderly's Dancing in the Dark.  The first four notes, where his fingers trill down the scale, just got me hooked.  I think I still remember all my fingerings and chords.  

2.  I manage my caffeine intake quite carefully - one cup of green tea in the morning around 8-9am, one cup of coffee consumed over 60 to 90 min starting around 1-2pm.  I also have a "caffeine" day off once a week to prevent addiction.  I am unsurprisingly useless and cranky on this day.

3.  Since I was ten years old, I've run for eight elections, and won seven of them, though two of those wins were uncontested.  My first election was in 5th grade.  My speech included borrowing a slogan from a beer commercial ("Why ask why?  Drink Bud Dry" -> "Why ask Y?  Vote for Yujin") and promising in my speech to have Coke come out of the water fountains while reducing homework loads.  To my chagrin, the silly tone worked perfectly.  The election I lost (for my HS presidency), I lost by one vote.  

4.  I love basketball - see previous posts on this subject.

5.  I am a confirmed Catholic who attends mass sporadically but is right between agnostic and apathetic.  Meaning and divinity are topics I constantly think about - see previous posts.

6.  I regularly have very vivid, almost frightening dreams.  I've sometimes thought they meant something paranormal but have come to realize they're just random brainwaves mashing together.

7.  I'm very momentum driven - when I start something, like basketball, running, or even work, I don't want to stop.  But if I stop, it's hard for me to get motivated again.  So my life tends to be streaks of success or failure.  It used to be annoying but now it's like riding a roller coaster ride and I try to enjoy the upswings and stay sober during the falls.  

8.  I've been hit on by a dude three times in my life; I've been hit on by a chick twice.  These are not great stats.  

9.  I can literally sleep on anything that moves - plane, train, bus, coach, etc.  One time in college I nearly missed my flight because I fell asleep on the bus to the airport.  This is probably a disorder but really, it's kind of fun.

10.  While I'm an extrovert, there are some things I don't like to do with people.  One is work out (I like going at my own pace, and listen to the crazy ideas my unconscious comes up with). 

11.  Most people think my name sounds like "Eugene" - that's okay.  Also, foreign speakers sometimes pronounce my name as "Yu-heen" with an "h" (Latins).  That's also ok.  When people write my name as "Yugin" or "Jujin" I get annoyed though.  One bad thing about my name - in Korean it's androgenous, like like Pat or Stacy, but generally I think more women have the name than dudes.  Yeah, that's awesome.  

12.  I don't look Korean at all.  Most people mistake me as Japanese or Chinese.  That's okay, because for all extensive purposes I'm American.

13.  My dad has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and my mom was the first female Korean computer programmer.  Surprisingly, I am not a nerd (okay, I can hear your muffled laughter).  My dad always had the latest computers (I remember when we bought a 486 DX2 and we were so excited at how fast 50 MHZ was) and I grew up learning how to use DOS, Word, and Powerpoint in the grade school.   Another fun fact:  My father grew up in Pusan, a warmer, temperate climate, left for school to a colder region (Seoul) at 18, worked in a big city for a few years, then went to Cali for graduate studies around.  I grew up in Irvine, a warmer temperate climate, left for school to a colder region (Ithaca) at 18, worked in two big cities for a few years, and then went to Philly for graduate studies.  We also look almost exactly the same.

14.  My folks never really pushed me - you probably don't believe that but most of the time they wanted me to slow down and take it easy, especially in high school.  I think I got a few B's one time and my mom was actually smiling about it, in relief.  I have pretty awesome parents.

15.  I chose Cornell because my sister gave me this great article to read my senior year of high school about the founder of the Palmpilot, who was a '79 EE Cornell grad.  As crazy as it sounds, that article changed my life, because I had been thinking about doing politics / gov't as my major.

16.  I don't believe in heaven or hell - but I do think we go "somewhere" just not some absolute moralized playground with milk / honey or fire / boiling water.  Einstein mentioned once that energy can be neither destroyed nor created, only transferred, so he posited that we have to go somewhere.  At the same time, I think by the time I'm around 60 or 70, technology will enable us to transfer our consciousness to machines, making us effectively immortal.  I'm not crazy - it's called the singularity.  

17.  If you ever want a piece of gum, I likely have some to spare.  I chew gum constantly because I have acid reflux, and the gumchewing stimulates saliva production.  It works - I used to pop Tums all the time, now I just chew gum.  Additionally, my breath has a constant minty freshness.  Gavin's mother can attest to this. ;-)

18.  Where does Enderdoon come from?  I get this a lot so I'll tell the answer.  Both are from Orson Scott Card novels.  Ender is from Ender's Game and the character Ender Wiggin, the precocious boy who ends up annihiliating an alien race.  Doon comes from another Orson Scott Card novel called The Worthing Saga and the character Abner Doon, who ends up destroying the world (I actually forgot what the plot was about).  As you can tell, I was a typical high school student.  

19.  I used to teach SAT Math for my parent's business while in college.  This was both a terrifying yet great way to learn how to present and think on one's feet.

20.  As much as I believe in myself and ability, I attribute more than 60% of my good fortune to luck, in terms of time period being born, meeting the right people, and being directed in a favorable path.  I think acknowledging this little characteristic of the world has mellowed me out, as I used to think I could control everything.  This belief in luck also means I do not believe in miracles.

21.  I call my older sister about 2-3x a week, and IM her almost daily.  I believe that if I were in a horrible accident which left me disfigured and plum useless, she would take care of me for the rest of my life - an in reverse situations I would do the same.  While I do not believe in religion or miracles, if I had a guardian angel it would be her.

22.  Despite my apparent penchant of pursuing higher education (BS, MEng, MBA) I actually dislike learning in the classroom which is overly structured.  I still hate taking tests to the point where my stomach still sinks at the thought of entering an exam room.  So anything regarding independent study or projects work best for me.  

23.  I love speeches and speechwriting.  After Obama gave his inaugural, I read the text and watched the video at least four times.  Each.  Nothing is more satisfying than a crisp, nuanced sentence, a clever reference, or a powerful repetition.  A great speech can pierce through the lead shield of cyncism and doubt, and beyond the power of a real example, retains the ability to truly inspire.  

24.  This isn't that random about me but I use metaphors and similes A LOT.  I never like explaining something for what it is - rather, I need to compare it to a situation or model in a completely different context.  This explains the N in the ENFJ of my MBTI (goto typelogic.com if you haven't yet to take a free test).  

25.  As stupid as it may sound, I believe everything works out in the end and that the next day always becomes better.  Life, God, fate, or whatever you want to call it has been extremely good to me.  If it all ends tomorrow, I think I would be satisfied, but at the same time, tomorrow the story seems to get better.  I have few regrets (but I do have them) and I would rather ahead than behind.  

By the way, these notes get imported to my FB profile but there's more at my actual blog:  http://enderdoon.blogspot.com  Also don't feel like you have to post 25 random things about you - I don't know why I did this but for some reason it felt like the right thing to do.  

Things I learned this weekend

I like this list format. I'm lazy, I know, but lists are easier to write than paragraphs.

1. Just because one goes to a vodka bar named Pravda need not imply one must take shots repeatedly. Temptations can be resisted.

2. Running in Battery Park in February sucks for the first five minutes, then is strangely euphoric. Must be the lack of oxygen going to my brain.

3. Some people (i.e. Jason) actually live in hotels. This is both interesting yet unsurprising.

4. The future of content business models is not the content but the context - personalization, merchandise, and shared experiences. Caveat: this is much harder to do than describe.

5. Ktown lunches need not require appetizers - I forget all the little side dishes.

6. Ice skating is both harder and easier than it looks. I also have tremendous butt muscles (or fat, depending on how you think about it) after wiping out twice on the ice but surviving injury free. No pain, no foul.

7. Topaz Thai restaurant is super spicy, even for me. I was literally sweating during the meal. But why eat good food if isn't a little painful?

8. Flamenco music is almost like fight music - after listening to it, you're to engage in a combat. Likely with a bull, but still, combat.

9. Patton Oswald is f-cking hilarious. This dude mixes science fiction, ancient religious philosophy, orgy / fart jokes, depression, and married life into a ridiculous routine. And yes, I censored myself. I'm worried about my readers who are (or look) under the age of 18 (this means you Karen and practically every Asian female friend I have on FB).

10. I'm no longer being carded at clubs. This is both an expected yet disappointing development.

11. Wine on a Saturday afternoon is a good thing.

12. Eating at the International Food Festival until you can't breathe is both awesome and not awesome...at the same time.

13.  Life is either random, meaningful, or some combination of the two.

Palm Foleo: Ahead of the curve?

I just got a netbook and remembered how everyone (bloggers, reviewers, etc) shat on Palm for their scaled down computer product - but with the rise in market share of netbooks, I can't help but wonder if they were just ahead of the market (and also lacking a few features like an Linux OS and lower price).  

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/30/palm-foleo-gallery/

vs

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/samsung-nc10.aspx

Timing is everything, right?

Things I would be doing...

if I wasn't in B-school.  Or, as an alternative title, "Opportunity Cost."

Realistic

1.  Hopefully still have my job at Warner Music.  Likely part of the YouTube takedowns.  Calculating e-commerce conversion rates and looking up comscore numbers.

2.  Mastering "Careless Whisper" and "You've lost that loving feeling" for Karaoke.  And yes, I'm straight.  Really.

3.  Riding my bike on weekends through Central Park and the edge of NYC with Karen and friends

4.  Eating way too many tortilla chips, salsa, and guac with Ray, Josh, and my homies in NYC

5.  Seeing some awesome live bands at MSG and Webster Hall

6.  Playing b-ball downtown at Stuy.

7.  Watching more movies and reading more novels

8.  Skiing and relaxing in a hot tub with Mikey, Serena, Laura in Vermont

9.  Going to artsy / fartsy events at the Met and otherwise with Lisa

10.  Applying to business school...again :-P

Fanciful

1.  Writing a mystery short story in the New Yorker which becomes wildly successful under the pseudonym "Kobayashi"

2.  Marring and then divorcing a model / singer in a whirlwind romance

3.  Eating so much sushi in one night that I develop amazing powers and fight crime under the superhero name "AsianSensation"

4.  Learning to rebound

5.  Trying to hold my breath so I can actually complete a triathlon (the running / biking aren't too bad, but the swimming...that just kills me)

There's probably more but my time is up.

Random things I have learned over recruiting

1.  Sleep a lot before DIP week, because you won't during it (mostly due to nervousness, but that's just me)

2.  Smile, make a joke.  If it doesn't work out, you still have four months to find a summer gig.

3.  Unified communications is a way of integrating online filesharing, IMing, voice, voicemail, and anything related to work in one interface.  But seriously, this seems like a way to keep your ass glued to your chair.

4.  Why is internet based computing called "cloud" computing?  I guess it has something to do with wireless connections and unresolved childhood issues regarding pillows?  I dunno.

5.  Don't worry about not working out during DIP - the focus and energy you exert during interviews will keep your weight down (I lost a few pounds somehow)

6.  DIP, OCRS, ERP, CRM, SCM, SaaS, EBITDA, EPS, PE, EBIT, comps, pitchbook, DCF, WACC, beta, riskfree rate, r sub D, r sub E, accretion, dilution, debt shield, tax shield, DTA, DTL, TARP, RTC II, RTC I, M&A, DCM, ECM, TMT, FIG, CSFM, MS, GS, EVR, LAZ, ML, BofA, JPM, IS, BS, CFS, CFO, CFI, CFF...I've learned a lot of acronyms

7.  Take naps (don't worry you'll want to)

8.  When you're 15 min early, find a happy space in your mind.  For me it's imagining jumpshots - I know that's a little "different" but I love the feel of soon-to-be-made jumpshot as the basketball leaves your finger tips, and the ball sails through the air in a perfect, inevitable arc which will result in an executed shot.  Maybe it's a simple jumper, or a post up dribble with a slick turn of the feet resulting in a hard-to-defend turnaround, or running off a screen and turning your feet at the last second and getting your elbow lined up just so...something about making a jumpshot just makes me smile.  Find your happy space and remember you can never leave it.  

9.  Prep enough, but don't overprep.  There's something to be said for keeping fresh and open to unpredictability.

10.  Keep a pen in your suit jacket - I dunno why but that calms me down and lets me react faster for case / thinking type interviews.

11.  I've become generally more flippant and aggressive throughout the process.

12.  I wonder if a job this demanding and time-consuming can change you.

13.  It really is a due diligence session, and you are your OWN sell-side advisor.