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A brief review of what I learned this week:
1) Simple bruschetta recipe
The simplest bruschetta you can make only requires sliced baguette baked at 350-400 degrees for ten minutes, then topped with olive oil, a little salt, a spoonful of diced tomato, and a small piece of basil. Diced tomato should be bought in a store, since the taste and cost is comparable but the effort is considerably less. It is a delicious and healthy snack (just don’t go crazy with the oil or the portions). My other favorite topping is sliced avocado with diced onions and black pepper, although the avocado and strong beautiful taste means this is significantly less healthy.
2) The most difficult shots have the most room for error
A small detail I noticed while playing pool is that the farther the ball has to travel to get into a pocket, the drastically less likely it is that the shot will go in. As a metaphor for life, the more things that can go wrong with something, the more likely it is that something will. Also, watch for those unintended consequences. Being a good pool player means being conservative, only trying high probability shots.
3) I have a book called Nonviolent Communication. I didn’t read it.
I forgot to write out goals for the week, so there’s no review for that. Oops.
A hodgepodge of interview tips from sources in statistics, finance, and Jeff Kimball:
-Don’t be late
-Don’t be early. Get there early, go to a cafe and drink some lemonade, then show up dead on time.
-Eat a good meal beforehand.
-Don’t argue with the interviewer about why they’ve asked you something. They asked because they want to know if you can do it.
-Appear enthusiastic
-Wear a suit
-Be eager to please. They want someone who will do what they want, someone obliging > someone who is difficult
-Don’t be too relaxed, show some ambition
-Don’t tell them that C++ and Excel are stupid because your favorite niche product is better
-Demonstrate interest in the company, the industry, and the field
-Prepare 2 minutes to every line on your resume. Don’t say anything negative.
-Don’t claim experience you don’t have or education you don’t understand. More interviewers are testing your knowledge these days. Nothing is more embarrassing than a supposed genius who doesn’t know the integral of log x.
-Be polite
-Ask for feedback and don’t argue about the results. If they misunderstood you, then figure out why.
-Don’t say you want to work for the money. Most of the time it’s true (especially if you work in banking or finance), but it’s considered bad form to say it out loud.
-Say you’d rather work closely with other people than alone
-Take a break from interviewing and take more time to prep if more than a couple interviews go badly.
-Ask about the group you’ll be working with. You want to know about turnover, where people go when they leave, how old the group is, what they do together, if it’s expanding or contracting, and if you can meet them. What is a typical day like?
The general consensus is that yours is a difficult field to get into, but most hiring managers usually say they interview lots of candidates and most are discarded as awful. It is almost never the case that a hiring manager is choosing between two good candidates, it’s more common to be relieved to finally find someone who’s good enough. The moral is that most candidates fail to reach the requisite level rather than other candidates are fighting you to the death on paper and only one can survive.
This will be a very TKD-oriented week:
1) Pass the Master’s exam
I will find out this week if I got it. Send your good vibrations this way!
2) Do not get knocked out, injured, or embarrassed in competition
Embarrassing myself would be losing 6-(-1) or 7-0. That basically says you didn’t even deserve to be in the same ring as the other person. Losing 8-1 and saying I was outmatched or outclassed, I can live with that. Most importantly would be staying uninjured. If I can play tennis next week with Aki and start running in earnest, that would be tremendous.
3) Win in poomse
On the other hand, this is eminently possible. It won’t necessarily be easy because the divisions will probably be smushed to make the competition more fierce, but I want to win badly.
4) Cram for the CFA
This requires a hard daily effort. No matter how hard this week gets, the real waves are in two weeks with the CFA exam and then finals. If I can get past that, the storm will pass, at least for a couple weeks. I will most likely reward myself with a trip to Chicago over the summer.
It’s been a little while, but here come the lessons learned!
1) It’s all about the basics
No matter what you’re doing, it’s all about the fundamentals. Hard work, discipline, building that good foundation. It’s all typical stuff, but it’s nice to remind myself every now and then.
2) I am aging in reverse, like Benjamin Button.
I’ve had to take passport photos for the last year, sort of like school pictures. The next time I go home, I’d like to get a nice sequence of my profile shots from every year and put them in one place. I’ll try scanning my pictures tomorrow, but it’s weird that I look younger in 2009 than I did in 2004. Part of it is the fact that I’ve slimmed down after joining the TKD competition team and a huge part of it is my haircut. On second thought, maybe I won’t scan my photos. I am hilariously ashamed of the photos on my high school ID cards. My God, no wonder I was going at myself four, five times a day.
3) I have an enormous capacity for binging.
Just as a whim, I decided to buy a box of ice cream sandwiches to give myself some reward snacks as I met my weight loss goals. That lasted a grand total of eighteen minutes before I ate 8 ice cream sandwiches in one go and put on another 3 lbs. I quietly wept and threw a tantrum in a pile of ice cream sandwich wrappers.
And goals for the week:
-cook every day this week, no meals out
-work down to waking up at 6 AM
Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.
-Otto von Bismarck
This also happens to be a new pet peeve of mine. I’ve noticed people beginning to speak ill of their past relationships. Here’s a tip to make your life better: don’t do that.
My new policy when people mention that an ex was a “crazy bitch” is not to judge the crazy ex, but to wonder what is flawed with the person who said it that they would date someone so crazy. Unless there is a rationale for it, like “she had tons of problems, but F-ing my brains out wasn’t one of them”, I’ll just assume the person is at least that crazy. They could also choose weak, desperate, or gullible.
As my mom said, talking badly about your own history is like setting your own house on fire. People don’t feel sorry for you that your house is on fire, they just think you’re an idiot.
Here’s your life tip for the day on being sincere. One of the biggest life lessons you could ever learn is that not everybody has to like you or think highly of you. In fact, sometimes it’s good for the right person to think you’re an idiot. Don’t burn calories trying to get everyone to love you, especially not people you don’t like very much or whose approval you don’t really need.
Now, don’t take this as a license to be an ass to people. But the key is to realize that you don’t need everyone to love you, you only need the right people to like you enough to help you out. Don’t chase anybody who doesn’t like you any more than you have to.
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