On the Hill

Halloween at Cornell is always interesting to say the least. Starting Thursday, fraternities and other organizations threw Halloween themed parties and the costumes all came out. Continuing literally until Wednesday morning (with the exception of maybe Sunday night) Cornell students celebrated All Hallows’ Eve. I have never been a huge proponent of Halloween; I typically throw on the same costume every year (an Against All Oddz velour jumpsuit). There is no reason for my lack of enchantment in the Cornell Halloween scene, since I loved Halloween as a kid; I guess I just have never gotten to into it.

Thursday night was the night of Psi U’s annual party, Psi Boo as I mentioned before. I received news from some of the guys that it was a big success so I am glad to hear that. Friday I pretty much laid low and didn’t do a whole lot – I was a bit tired out from the week and wanted to catch up on some rest. Saturday was the really big night for Halloween parties – the night almost everyone was dressed up. I threw on a Manny Ramirez jersey (of the Boston Red Sox) and a Red Sox World Series Champs hat. I actually got quite a few, “he’s just Manny being Manny” comments which were a nice surprise. I hung out with the guys I live with for quite a bit and then met up with Ange, who had been out and about with the girls she lives with.

So, some of the more interesting costumes I saw – a group of guys dressed up as Duke Lacrosse Players (they actually I think started a few fights due to the controversial nature of the costumes), someone dressed as Steve Irwin (again, kind of in bad taste), a basketball team and a coach, a bag of trash, roller-rink style roller skaters (with short shorts and pink shirts), Borat, and the list goes on and on. As you can see, there are quite a few “interesting” costumes that Cornellians do come up with.

This week has been pretty slow so far. The big news is that a) Jake went to the bathroom in his litter box finally b) I got cable in my room and c) Nick ordered NBA Season Ticket so we are going to watch every Celtics game all season long. I don’t have any work tonight so I might hang out with some guys a little later on as soon as I get out of these darn office hours…

It is true, on Thursday afternoon, while I was at class, my girlfriend Ange went to the mall and picked up a kitten to live at my house. I skipped my last two classes of the day to make it home and get him comfortable. We decided on the name Jake for him and he is a mix between white and khaki colors with somewhat long hair. He is only a couple months old so he is still quite small. When I got back from class he has warmed up to Ange but was still scared of me. I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with him and trying to get him litterbox trained. My room is a bit cold (since my roommates object to paying an exorbitant heat bill) so Jake usually jumps onto my bed and tucks himself in under the covers.

Since I was still getting used to Jake and I had to be up at 6 am for ROTC PT, I didn’t make it out to my Halloween party at Psi U. I am not happy about missing it, but I guess sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. This was the last PT session so that will allow me to enjoy myself a bit more on Thursday nights for the remainder of the semester.

“Jake-man”

Each dining hall at Cornell seems to have a “that guy.” Whether it is that guy, Smiley Dave, who swipes your ID card at Oakenshields (who also happens to smile a little too much, and eerily knows your name the second time you eat lunch there) or that guy at Appel who vehemently enforces the policies of only taking one piece of fruit from the dining hall (or not tucking a box of cereal under your shirt and trying to walk out…). I discovered a new “that guy” today, in my very backyard – Trillium dining hall. Trillium is a dining hall located on the Ag Quad (my stomping grounds) and it is an a la carte facility, so that means it is not all you care to eat. The guy who rang me up today has rang me up before, but I have never heard him break into a full fledged freestyle rap before. That is precisely what he did today, and I think because they were closing and there wasn’t any students left around (he didn’t see me either since I was behind him) his rap was fully fledged with profanities. It was a hilarious thing to listen to and I got a great laugh out of it.

“That Guy” From Oakenshields

Other than that, the week has been kind of slow. I have been feeling some bad senioritis lately. I didn’t manage to do any work either Sunday or Monday night, so now I am a little behind in a couple assignments that I need to get done this week. I guess I will just pay for it tonight and deal with a couple of hours in the library after my finance meeting. Oh well.

Whew… so that was a crazy week…
I suppose I didn’t have too much on my plate, but for some reason it felt like I was just insanely busy all week. Things started on Monday night with me staying up almost all night studying for my Management Strategy midterm. The test was on Tuesday and was one of the hardest tests I have taken at Cornell. It was only 75 minutes long and was clearly designed to give us just the right amount of time to complete – pending you worked like a speed demon and didn’t get caught up on any topics. The exam was much harder than the one given last year (which we got to use to study off of) and included a bunch of stuff about: decision trees, game theory, Cournot competition, and Bertrand competition. I really have no idea how I will end up doing but hopefully things turn out well. On Tuesday I also got back my Applied Finance midterm – a B+! I was not happy about this at all, but I knew to expect it. I messed up the interest rate swap problem and it ended up knocking 20 points of my score. Get this, the low score in the class was a 22… a 22… Tuesday night was the second finance exam so I had to proctor it with the other TAs. We actually take the exam ahead of time to make sure it is fair, so between taking the exam, proctoring it, (it is a nearly three hour long exam! And, there are four of them through the semester!) and then logging the completed exams it takes seven hours. I didn’t end up getting hope until a little after midnight.

Wednesday I was quite busy with: a PFT (Physical Fitness Test) at 6 AM (3 mile run, max pull-ups, max sit-ups), work at CIVR (campus tour guiding), then Finance section (2 hours long), ROTC (drill lab and Semper Fi club), a CIVR meeting, and then tons of work that night. I did a problem set for Applied Finance that night and made my revisions on my immigration policy paper for AEM 200. It was a late night and I was already pretty exhausted from my day.

By the time Thursday rolled around I was pretty burnt out from the week yet I still had to deal with my crazy Tuesday and Thursday schedule of classes from 10 AM to 4 PM. After I got out of class I had a meeting with my finance professor to go over the grading for the finance exam and then I got together with another TA and we graded our section of the exam. Two and a half hours later I was ready to call it quits on school for a bit and I went back to Cook St. to meet up with the guys. We went out for a bit to Dinos and then I headed over to Psi U for our bi-weekly Thursday Night Party.

So that was my crazy week, sorry it has been so long without a post, but luckily with all my exams behind me I will have a lot more free time in the next few weeks.

Whew, so I made it out of the weekend in one piece. Homecoming is always a great time and this year was no different. On Thursday night was our Mafia Wedding – an event at Psi U for the newly initiated brothers (sophomores) which consists of them dressing as gangsters and rolling around Ithaca in a limo for a few hours before they come back at walk down the aisle with a sorority for a mock wedding. It is quite fun and all the other brothers take part in it and show their support by attending the wedding

Friday was another crazy day – all the alums of the house were back in town and we spent quite a few hours at College Town Bagels on the patio (even though it was quite cold) and we played some darts over at the Royal Palm Tavern (“The Palms”). I was pretty tired from hanging out all day so I went over to Ange’s and we watched a movie.

Saturday is the actual day when the homecoming game takes place. Basically, we wake up really early and go up to the football stadium where everyone tailgates. Cornell sets up an official tailgate where fraternities can rent out spots, bring grills and barbeque. It was a really good time, I got to see a lot of recent alums of the house that I haven’t seen in quite some time. I actually didn’t even end up going into the game believe it or not, but I heard that they pummeled Colgate. I stopped back at Cook St. to see that my roommates had started throwing various objects off the roof into the street, so I figured I would get out of there before they got themselves in trouble (luckily, they didn’t!). I went up again to the Palms and it was so packed, you could barely even move around at 3 in the afternoon! I hung out there for awhile, me up with Ange for a little bit and then took a quick nap. We had a formal that evening so I got all dressed up, picked up Ange and headed back to Psi U. The formal was nice, and again it was great hanging out with all the alums.

It is sad that it was my last homecoming as an undergrad it certainly is one of my favorite days of the year. I guess there will always be next year as an alum myself!

Hey, I just wanted to do a quick post that goes a little back in time. Before I left for fall break I actually had two pretty fun evenings. The first one, on Thursday, was spent with my girlfriend, Ange. We usually try to go out to dinner or do something fun before breaks so we planned on going to a restaurant in the commons (downtown Ithaca shopping area), Simeon’s. I had never been there before and Ange hadn’t been there since her first weekend at Cornell with her Mom. Simeon’s was really great – it’s a beautiful old Ithaca building and the cuisine is Italian. I had a great plate of scallops and shrimps over alfredo penne. Ange had some sort of sandwich with fresh mozzarella and some sort of capicolla or prosciutto. All in all, it was a great meal. We would of loved to stay for desert but we had to scoot over to the Cinemapolis to see “Little Miss Sunshine.” The Cinemapolis is a tiny movie theatre on the commons that is really quaint and gets movies a little later than most theatres (yet still charges nine bucks…). We really had been looking forward to seeing the movie and it totally lived up to the hype. It was one of the funniest movies I have ever seen and overall one of the best movies I have seen in quite some time.
The next night, Friday, I went out with the guys from Cook St. We hung out for quite awhile at the house and then went to the Pyramid Mall to see a movie that we had been waiting over a year to see – The Departed. I have never anticipated a movie this much and again it really lived up to my expectations. I thought the story was amazing, the acting was great, and best of all it took place in Boston. After the movie we went out to some of the bars in downtown Ithaca and then came back home pretty early. It was a fun night and a good way to spend my last night at Cornell before fall break.

At Cornell we have a great four day weekend which is known as fall break. Typically, most students return home for a few days or stay around Cornell to catch up on work. Since it is my senior year I thought it would be fun to do something a bit more fun. I contemplated heading over to Ellicottville, NY for their annual Octoberfest but instead decided to join seven other guys from Psi U in heading up to my roommate from sophomore year, Kech’s, home in Collingwood, Ontario for Canadian Thanksgiving.

We left on Saturday and I got into a car with Trent, Kech, and Robby (who we call be his Chinese name, “sho-bo-dah” which literally means, “uncle, integrity, wisdom.”). The ride up was a bit over six hours long, but we finally made it to Collingwood and stopped at Kech’s dad’s house to have dinner. He showed us around his farm, his three donkeys, and his 24 year old house who Robby exclaimed was, “the oldest horse he had ever met.” After eating dinner we checked into our condo and unpacked our things. We had Kech’s friends over for a little homecoming party and then all headed out to a local bar, Skool. We had a pretty good time there and after returning back to the condo apparently some of the other guys made a bit too much noise and there were a few complaints filed against us. Oh well.

The next day we woke up and headed up to Blue Mountain which was a ski resort village right by our condo. We ate a delicious lunch and tried to piece together the events surrounding the noise complaints. We decided that it was most likely due to the large number of guests Kech had invited over and that for the next few nights we should lay low. We took a gondola up to the top of the mountain and watched a bunch of mountain bikers ride right down the mountain face.

That evening we all hung out at our new condo (which we moved into as a result of the previous evening) and watched a little TV and played a few games. We had dinner reservations at a restaurant/bar called Kaytoo that evening so we had quite a bit of time to kill. Dinner was amazing – they had these chicken wings that they called Schwiiings! which were heavily basted in Schwiiing sauce, consisting of a combination of barbeque and hot sauce. We went back to Skool and joked around about putting the “cool” in Skool. It was a bit cold that evening so we gathered around an outdoor fire and met a few of the locals. They were thoroughly entertained with our antics and in fact our waitress from Kaytoo joined us after she got off work.

The next morning Alex and Brian went back to Cornell to do some schoolwork and the rest of us lounged around the condo. We finally showered and ventured back into Blue Mountain to get a quick lunch. A quick lunch turned into a huge ordeal since the restaurant we chose had the slowest service of all time. Trent claims the name of the restaurant was Buncin Burners’ but I think it was actually called Anthony & Bodachelli’s or something like that. Either way, even the ketchup took fifteen minutes to receive. After lunch, we went over to Kech’s mom’s house for Canadian Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in Canada is pretty much identical to that in the United States so there was plenty of turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, etc. to go around.

That evening we hung around the condo a bit more and took a nap. We woke up at about 10:30 p.m. and went for a quick dip in the complex’s hot tub. Energized from the hot tub, we called a shuttled and again headed back to Blue Mountain. Skool was closed since the town was pretty empty on Monday nights this time of year so we headed over to Kaytoo which was apparently the place to be on Monday nights (apparently it was the only place you could be). We had a good time there and then headed back to the condo. Katie, our waitress from Kaytoo that night and the night before joined us and we rented the movie Acceptance on pay per view.

We woke up the next morning and hopped in the car and prepared for the reluctant drive back to Cornell. It was an incredibly fun weekend with all the guys and I will definitely remember it for the rest of my life.

So not too much has been going on with me lately. The big news is that fall break is right around the corner… Next week we have off Monday and Tuesday so most students go home or at least away from Cornell for a few days. Many people typically leave on Friday so it is a solid 5 days of break. I am pretty sure I am heading up to Collingwood, Ontario with 8 other guys from Psi U to rent a little cottage and hang out for Canadian Thanksgiving. I will definitely post about it when I get back.

I just took I guess my first prelim today in Derivatives (it was actually a midterm) and it was worth 35 percent of my grade! I studied for the past few nights and I thought I had a really good grasp on the material. However, I was not at all prepared for what went down during the actual test. The first question, which was worth a quarter of the entire test, I was totally stumped on. I ended up spending nearly half an hour on the first problem and really having a time crunch at the end. Well, I guess there is nothing I can do now, at least it is over!

Good ole derivatives…

I am at office hours right now (a typical blog spot as you may have noticed) and per usual no one has ventured in to seek finance assistance. I finished editing a paper for my contemporary controversies in the global economy class about immigration policy and reform. I think it actually came out quite good, but we shall see if the graders feel the same way (my track record hasn’t been great so far).

That’s all for now, I’ll try to get something out later in the week before I take off for the North Country.

This just in! My finance professor (who I now TA for) was featured in BusinessWeek, check it out – http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2006/bs20060920_007338.htm?chan=bschools_undergrad+–+favorite+professors_favorite+professors

On Friday night I went to an amazing speech by M1 of the rap group Dead Prez. I didn’t expect for there to be a lot of interest in the event yet the 200 odd person auditorium was packed. There were people in the aisles, sitting on each other’s laps, etc. I convinced 3 guys I lived with to come along with me and also 5 guys from Psi U. M1 spoke about the prison industrial complex and its effects on the hip-hop community. Some of the more interesting things he did were: freestyling, describing dropping out of Florida State to join “the movement”, and imparting upon the audience his view of college as being unnecessary. It was quite an interesting event and I think everyone that joined me had a pretty good time.

(M1 of Dead Prez)

After the speech Psi U had a bar tab at Dinos’ Bar and Grill with Kappa (a sorority). It was pretty fun – I got to see a bunch of the guys from Psi U that I haven’t seen in awhile since I have been a little too lazy to go over to the house and hang out as much as I would like. I caught up with some old friends and met some new people as well.

Saturday was probably one of the better days I have had at Cornell, ever. It started on a somber note since I woke up early and went to somewhat of a memorial for Major Richard Gannon, a Marine Corps officer and Cornell graduate who was killed a few years ago in Iraq. Many of the officers who served with him along with his wife and fraternity brothers were there to each say a few words about him. After that, I went home and met up with Jason and Cody who I had invited to golf with me in the 3^rd Annual Richard Gannon Memorial Golf Tournament. It was a really great time, we all had golf carts and there was plenty of refreshments located every couple of holes so we never got dehydrated. I hadn’t hit a golf ball in nearly four years but I actually did surprisingly well – we played scramble golf and actually used a few of the balls I hit. Unfortunately, the event was cut short due to some of the other contestants getting a little too rowdy on the golf course and causing problems for the management. So, it wasn’t clear how we fared compared to the other teams but we were golfing at about par.

I was pretty tired after the tournament so I just went to sleep for the night. Today I woke up quite early and headed to the library to get a bunch of work done that had been piling up. I spent nearly six hours there and got almost all of it done. It worked out well since I was able to make it home in time to see the Patriots dismantle the Bengals, who some have picked as Superbowl favorites. I guess it just goes to show you, never bet against the Patriots when their backs are to the wall…

Would you bet against this guy???

Not much to report here – the week started off on a sour note due to the Patriots losing a very win-able game. However, I got to see a few other good NFL games and I even watched the majority of the Monday night game. I was seriously considering putting some money on the Monday night game since the 4 point spread looked way too good to be true. Luckily I didn’t since the Saints ended up blowing out the Falcons.

I am currently working on component 2 of our marketing presentation which really focuses in on a certain objective that we aim to accomplish. I did some brainstorming on my own and with some of the guys I live with after meeting with my group and came up with a pretty cool idea. Here it is:
“The objective we have settled on stems from the opportunity we perceive to promote a “showcase” game. It includes components of our viral marketing opportunities as well. Essentially, we believe that through a concentrated effort on one game we can more efficiently generate excitement in the sport instead of tackling a campaign to increase attendance at every game right away which would be unrealistic, ineffective, and spread our limited resources too thin. We would select the home game against Princeton (one of Cornell’s biggest rivals) on Saturday March 31st, at 1 p.m. To promote attendance at the game we would start through advertising on the Facebook, starting a group to generate awareness of a contest that we would run. The contest would allow each student to submit a guess as to which player on the team would score the most goals during our “showcase” game. The contest would be set up through a simple website that would allow students to view pictures and humorous profiles of each member of the team thus furthering generating excitement and awareness. The website would allow each student to submit their name and one guess. At the conclusion of the game one student who guessed correctly would randomly be selected to win a prize which would require all participants to attend the entire game. The prize would be a free spring break trip provided by STS travel. STS travel was founded by two entrepreneurial Cornellians and has a history of participating in promotional offers and give-a-ways . They clearly would be willing to donate a trip to this event since their agency would be advertised on our contest website, at the “showcase” game, and the winner would clearly have an incentive to persuade his/her friends to purchase spring break trips as well. “