I Hate Starbucks?

It's been a while since I last wandered through these woods. A combination of extreme laziness, m*ther fu*kin' modern algebra and total addiction to "Knights of the Old Republic".

This weekend I finished my fellowship program with Yale, Wharton, Colombia and NYU with a presentation of the four month consultancy project I was doing for Starbucks. The results of the Social Innovation Competition (as it was called) demonstrated that there is no place for second best. I was second best. While the winner gets to fly to Seatle and meet the board of directors, I was seen off the premises with a gift hamper and a pat on the bottom...

Last weekend I went to present a paper on inherent computational errors in math modelling softwares at the Hudson River Math Conference. It was a truly incredible experience...albeit some of the undergraduate talks really sucked. For instance, there was Pierre Bordeux (honest) from Williams who gave a talk on how Neo is a Goedel identity. Alright. Fine. But he was talking like one of those people who have a little earpiece and are constantly being told what to say... it was horrible. And then there was a certain Major Whatsit, from the US army who modelled a, I quote, "a better killing system"! It was a hillarious talk, although the mathematical modelling aspect of it was pretty impressive. The keynote speaker gave a really impressive talk on Ramanujan and Partiton Theory, but that doesn't make me like modern algebra any better...

I'm still jobless for the summer. I had two job offers, one as an economic research analyst for an Environmental Agency in DC and another as a consultant at MassMutual Denver, Colorado. In the first case, my mentor decided to take a sabbatical this summer after offering me the job and in the second case, the recruiter suddenly realised that there's a no international students policy after offering me the job... bastards! So as of now, I'm jobless... pretty sad considering this is going to be another wasted summer.

So I find there are a total of six Hamilton students going down to LSE next year. Another six to UCL and a few more to Queen Mary and some other shady schools of London. There's going to be a Hamilton village out there.

Tonight was the opening night of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" at Hamilton, directed by Luke Forester and myself. It was fantabulous. Period. Nothing to do with the direction, it's just that the play is brilliant. I recommend you all read it. Stoppard is the same guy who gave us "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"", "Shakespeare in Love" and "Brazil".

In other news, an old school friend, Pranav Prakash was made major bakra...that kid had it coming.

Shoutout: a very Happy Birthday to Theo and Happy Anniversary to Ashwan and Miyuki. My Starbucks Case Study Team... it was great working with you guys.

"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." ~ Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase