Brief: My 10 days Retour Americana started with New York City, weekend trip on hell bus to Cornell, Sky diving at Ovid Airport Tandem skydiving school,  penn station NJ transit to Newark airport, to St Louis, MO – rootbear float, hot chocolate, Wii — woke up to noon, refreshed and ready to head out for lunch, Wholefoods + Work on Paper review! More updates!

I am at cambridge writing this, my final dissertation is turned in a few days ago, and looking back I wish I had spent more time studying than starting up a company and hedge fund portfolio analytics? maybe it is all destined.  It is time to reflect and then quickly, move on.  No summar plans.  I need freedom again. A person to remember, Marilyn:  I want to thank you for launching my jouney to Paris about 2 years ago, this blog is here because of you.  Without your encouragement I won’t ever have left  New York, I would not have that courage — but you said to me, 3 times, you have confidence in me, that I will make it in whatever I do.  Today, I am graduating from Cambridge, I have started a company, I am a counsultant for a family office — its all because that day, you gave me the courage to do what I needed to do for myself.  I was in Paris, Marilyn, for 13 days, I wandered without an aim.  This blog told that story, my thoughts and doings.  Today, I only want you to share it with me.  I want to thank you for all you have been for me, a dear friend who listen to me, who gave me warm and comfort at a time when no body understood.  Thank you, this is dedicated to you.

So its been 5 months and 7 days since my last post—so much more experience and endeavor in that time: I made a troubling investment in a private school in Guangzhou, beginning feb 20 worked for a professor to advise a family office on a portfolio of hedge funds, got into cambridge bt march 27th, vacationed at NYC with lots of shopping for 3 weeks, came back to London to pack, going to HK on the 19th, and to shanghai to do hiring before class starts in september!  Shall write more when I can! 

Today, I am waking up to my 26th birthday. Due to the absent marketing and promotion effort, probably no body noticed. I woke up 4:25 AM this morning—-the second dose of sleeping pill I ingested an hour ago failed to put me to a peaceful unconsciousness immediately—-and now at 3:25pm my head is numbed.  Its a been a difficult few weeks.  For the past few days, especially, when I had difficult falling asleep.  As sleep deprivation accumulates day by day—-I start to wonder this is the feeling of fatigue or genuine depression.   Nonetheless, I am surely more well rested now than the previous days—-and I have tons of books waiting for me to read.   Later today, I wish to get a massage and have dinner with my mother and some family member.  Let this be a simple and delightful day……..

So bad news with Soho apartment, unfortunately, the broker came back with a counter offer of 420, which was far from their first offer of 350 pounds!  This sudden turn of event knocked us back to the mode of calling up brokers—but since both Aleks and I will be leaving London on Monday—we don’t have much options left!  So today, I got out of bed a tad earlier than expected, at 11am—-I thought I as going to get that terrible hangover from the drinking the night before.   In fact, when we got back from drinking at Fuel Bar last night, I decided to write Imperial professors emails to arrange meeting the next day! So today, I was suppose to speak with a professor at Imperial, but—-it was Friday and he was too busy to talk!  Nonetheless, I guess its a good thing, such that I’ll get to meet with him when I return from HK, as well as have a more concrete research proposal.   I have so much to do this winter, that include getting my proposal done, catch up on microecon and do lots of math. The high lights of the day had to be Derek’s invitation to his class’ Christmas party at Eastman Dentistry Hospital.  I had a hard time finding it, but iPhone def. helped.   I met up again with Derek’s friends from our first dinner at an indian restaurant.  Tomorrow, Derek and I will catch a play before I head back to HK.  We will also do Christmas shopping at 2p, meeting at Oxford Circus.  Christmas is my favorite time of the year—the perfect few days leading to Christmas would be to watch the entire series of harry potter in one set, eat a lot at late night, and just sleep in till the noon starting the 20th.  But this winter, the game plan is going to be different……. Oh, tomorrow  I also have an appointment at 9:30am for an appointment at South Kensington, and then 2:00.  Alek and I must make a decision and get hold of an apartment!  Its going to be 1) the soho apartment that will probably be 375 pounds, 2) the 380 at Maldivile, 3) south kensington! Alek wanted to see how noise the soho apartment would be at night….well, i hope its going to work out, its a great location for a relatively reasonable price.  Although small, its hospitable! I just want to find a place and get settled!

Imperial’s hedge fund conference brought together papers in topics like sovereignty debt risk factors, order flow as predictor of macroeconomic fundamentals; I got up at 8 to get to south Kensington, where Imperial is.  My favorite paper that linked order flow to marcoeconomic variables expectations and FX movement.  Professor Andrea also presented his disagreement in belief as risk factor paper, which was great.  Professor Kosowski critiqued a paper that analyzed a hedge fund option holdings to infer on the predictive power of their holding!  Afterward the conference, Alek introduced me to Professor Andrea, and I was offered an opportunity to speak to him about hedge fund research.  We then had to fill our stomach and headed to this organic food restaurant that had this Italian rustic interior and very delicious platters.  We ordered smoke salmon, guacamole, pawns, and cheese platter.  They were so good!   But we had another dinner that night—-to celebrate Richard getting an interview at Merrill NYC and to give Christmas presents to Dia.  We went to Covent Garden’s Dial Bar (because my HSBC credit card gets a 25% off!)  Afterwards, we went to the Fuel bar, where I had 5.5 shots of milk vodaka (4 pound each!).  I made a bet with Richard that I won’t get drunk, and I won! I felt a bit awful that night, so the drinks was more than necessary—it really helped lighten me up.  I was also glad to receive an email from my friend in NYC, Ben, who accompanied me to Europe  and started off my ad hoc trip—-it felt really good knowing whats happening in NYC.  Get that apartment! Its beautiful! I am going to write a long email to you soon….

Alek and I found our flat!! After looking at 2 more flats near Marble Arch (both disappointing), we decided to look at a listing in Soho, where all the bars are located. Since Alek is doing his PhD, he needs a quite place, but when we got to Soho by 5pm, we were pleasantly surprised by the rather mild noise level! The best thing about the apartment is its location, which is within 5 minute walking distance from 3 tube lines as well as located in the middle of entertainment and restaurants. Also, in terms of absolute price, the apartment is the lowest of all apartments we considered so far—-350 pounds per week. I was naturally thrilled and for the rest of the day, up lifted by the fact that we don’t have to look any more. Richard than met up with us to purchase a gift for me—- a microeconomics textbook for most first year grad programs. We went to several bookstores near Soho and end up taking a trip to Picaddilly to get it. Afterwards, we joined the Japanese society’s movie night—death note, a popular semi-scific drama was shown. I ate 2.5 donuts. Then we joined Dia, his greek friend, and Charles, to dinner at a Korean restaurant. IT was all good! Tomorrow morning I have to get up at 7:00 to get to the hedge fund conference at Imperial! Must go now!

Today I was sleep deprived after having stayed up till 4 am the previous night (to do laundry, write emails and making myself an egg-soup concotion in the kitchen, while Jason, a flatmate sharing the kitchen, studied his readings) and woked up 9am by a call from eager brokers.  Feeling like a zombie, I decided to take control, again, with caffine. Beginning 2pm, I picked up a large starbucks black tea, and met up with Alek at Paul, a bread and sandwich cafe, for brunch.  Afterwards. we saw 2 rental apartments.  One was leased out by a friendly jewish owner with a huge candle holder in his living room (an architected who talked to Aleks about people from Norway were the first to discover the land of Americas) and the other was a spacious apartment in a mansion with very big old windows!  Both located very close to the Bakerloo tube line, the only concerns we had was the price—as well as the noise level in one of the flats,which also had a nice garden and nicer bathrooms.  However, Alek prefereed the 380 pound apartment we saw yesterday.  After house hunting, we decided to make tonight for boxing date dinner at this mexican restaurant we walked by at Picaddilly circus (we thought it was funny to celebrate our Christmas dinner with filling mexican food, which all three of us missed very much in the U.S.).  My gift for Alek, Richard (and myself) was a leather wallet I purchased at LV our Christmas gifts shopping at Harrod’s, a large department store owned by the Eygptian billionaire father of late Princess diana’s boyfriend).  I ordered a grilled meat fest and was filled up with 2.5 rounds of fanta refilles.   After dinner, the three of us headed out of the restaurant.  We witnessed two brutal assults committed by 3 bar doormans.  The first assulted happened in front of Pizza hut next to our restaurant—-a guy dressed in all black punched another on to the floor.  Then near the sidewalk and entrance to the square, a homeless hippie (with red cross painted on his face) was thrown down to the ground and got kick at the face.  Aleks, Richard and I witness the enitre atrocities and decided to call the police.  I called 999 and got connected, but by the time I describe the situation, police already arrived.  We volunteered to help and provide our eye witness information.  I wish at the time I had taken pictures of the fighting with my iPhone.  We left after giving our information to the police officers.  I got home, played pool with dia and mike, richard—lose both games.  Got up to write my proposal,which will be dued on a self imposed deadline tomorrow.  13th will be the hedge fund conference at imperial and I have to be prepared to speak with prospective supervisor Robert at the event!  Got to sleep now!

Greetings! Its been more than 1 month since I dropped a note on this journal. Although not necessarily productive, my living in London has at least been pleasantly busy. It took some courage to log on again, and type my long overdue update. So before I fill out the rest of the thirty so days that is missing (and I will), lets start with today. Waking up 10am only motivated by one goal, to get my newly purchased iphone working, I headed early morning to the O2 store, which distributes the Iphone. I was grumpy and border line rude when explaining to the sales clerk about my inability to get phone activation using iTunes, which failed to install properly in my operating system. It all resolved itself around noon, when 24 hours window after my first activation expired. I was thrilled the iphone started working, and the rest of the day went much better. I immediately used the phone to schedule appointments to view rental. Alek and I wish to hunt a place down before the 17th, when I’ll leave UK for HK—-so that I’ll have a place to stay when I return on the 1st of January! We visited two rental apartments, the first was further way down the Bakerloo tube stop but with sizable layout as well as located only few steps from the tube entrance, the second was at Marylebroune, which was a good location, but the layout was bad, bathroom was quite disgusting and occupied by 2 young artificially blond girls from Slovakia and Hungary with dubious smiles and questionable career backgrounds (we found a pile of playboy magazines at the couch). Alek and I had ‘brunchner’ (breakfast + lunch+ dinner) at Pizza express after . Then we joined Richard I watched the new movie Michael Clayton, a great thriller that left me a rather unpleasant impression about the realities of law firm operations. Rather than getting a few drinks like we used to, Richard and I got home early to do laundry and emails. I am waiting for the dryers and trying very hard to write this research proposal for my imperial app and overall, I feel most pressured about developing ‘good questions’ about those topics—that are not already in the existing academic discourse—and are relevant as well as interesting. Its suppose to be 4-5 pages long and will be critical to my admission success. I have no substantive knowledge about the beyesian/boostrapping technique, which is a big part of Robert’s innovation in the field of hedge fund performance analysis. Must get it done in 2 days!

After a night out to the bars at Soho and Notting hill gates with our friend Alek, the Neoclassicalist nazi Ph.d candidate from Imperial (who disdains behavioral finance as fluff), the group had dinner out at a rather nice French restaurant. Today we woke up at 2:00pm. According to plan, Richard and I headed to the secluded study room at LSE old to catch up on our work. I am working on my essays and I will be staying in London until I get all my essays done for UK schools.