Black Monday

Me paran siempre en la calle
Muchas hay gente que comenta
"Oye Hector! Tu estas hecho
Siempre con hembras y en fiestas"
Si nadie pregunta si sufro o si lloro
Si, tengo una pena que hiere muy hondo...
They stop me, always in the street
Many people comment
"Hey Hector! You have it made
Always with women and parties"
But no one asks if I suffer or if I cry
If I have a pain that hurts deep inside...
-El Cantante, Hector Lavoe


I've had a strange week. The weekend leading up to it was equally strange. Shook me to the core. And then the markets crashed. IESE gave an emergency session on the updates of the markets. I was frozen throughout. When the economy falls, especially when the US markets decouple, I get this feeling of impending doom inside. One professor put it best when he said that the US has an extraordinary amount of debt, and that we receive a capital inflow of more than $3 billion per day "So that Americans can buy themselves the newest Hummer 2H" or whatever it is called. And he was right. I always knew that. I hope this is what it would take for Americans to wake up.

Yesterday was strange. I gave my speech in Management Communications trying to influence an audience of investors to invest in a particular mutual fund (which by the way is revolutionary in its theory), and I have never seen everyone so bored. Literally I am used to all eyes on me, but I got comments like "That was sooo BORING!" and "WAY TOO TECHNICAL!!" Well, true, it's mutual funds, but how is systematic and firm risk not exciting??? One of my favorite guys here is Sebastian. He is like a wealth of financial knowledge. No matter what I am doing, when we start talking about the markets, it's like I cannot stop listening to the guy. It is just so interesting.

Anyways, Monday was strange as well. I felt as if I were in an alternate universe. I was trying to hold 2 juxtaposed thoughts in my head simultaneously: what I wanted and what I did not want, what I believed and what I did not believe, what happened and what did not happen.

In other news, I received an interview from Nomura, to which I applied for an internship in London for Debt Capital Markets. I have a very good feeling about this bank. And I think Debt Capital Markets might be a good fit for me, but as always, there is a journey in front of me. DCM is a little Corporate Finance and a little Sales & Trading. It would be really fun. I can't think of anything right now I'd rather do. Except maybe EQUITY Capital Markets... ;-)

And in still other news, I haven't been able to concentrate fully on the cases because my head has been enundated with salsa. I'm constantly focused on doing a great show for Spring Fling and MBA Olympics. I've never choreographed a salsa song before (though I have choreographed my own programs for figure skating), and I have never performed salsa before, AND I have never done a GROUP performance! But I know I can work with the other 1st years to make a great show. I'm constantly choreographing in my head... finding the bottleneck in terms of performers so that I can match everyone to his/her skill level, motivating people to push the limits. I've got a lot of show tricks I would like to teach. It's amazing, Salsa. It's in my blood. I would like nothing more than to spend a day choreographing.

I guess my idea of a perfect life would be working during the day at a bank, get off around 6, and at night practice salsa to perform. Being in front of an audience and being able to express your creativity is so invigorating.

But alas, I must stop this daydreaming and do cases. Executive shirts. Pfffft!