training for 2005 capital markets analysts at Lehman Brothers started on Monday and it’s already Friday. three of the last five days have been here, in jersey city, where Lehman’s IT and payroll departments reside. they have a large classrooms where we hope to learn all we can about financial services before beginning our specific job functions. it’s been interesting so far – some days have been very educational and other days have been less interesting.

the commute to jersey city has been pleasant, especially because most people commute in to the city rather than out of it. after picking up my coffee from dunkin donuts, i make my way over to Port Authority where i take the E down to the World Trade Center. i take a quick glance at Ground Zero which is visible through the partitions, and take the escalator down to the PATH where i take a Newark or Hoboken bound train to Exchange Place in Jersey City. it’s nice to walk along the Hudson River for a few minutes before entering the Lehman building. it’s not a large building, but it’s fairly new, as with most things in this area of Jersey City.

i’ve processed a few thoughts throughout the week which might be of some interest:

* as much as i told myself that i would be open to making all sorts of friends at Lehman – and i’m sure i’ll have additional opportunities once the real work begins – it’s been much easier to make friends with people of my own race and/or ethnicity. like in high school and college, i find myself hanging with a crowd of asians dotted by the one or two white guys who are comfortable being in such a group as well. it’s been almost as easy to make friends with african americans than with whites. it’s a strange feeling; as much as i’ve heard whites talk about how all asians hang out together, i feel the exact same way about white people. why is it that they always have to hang out with each other? but i guess that’s an irrelevant question to ask if the majority is composed of whites.

* along similar lines, i learned that Lehman Brothers is very proud of its diversity program, which, statistically speaking, does seem to have made strides in changing the workplace demographic. i noticed that there is a group called Lehman Brothers Asian Network, which is one of the various groups that holds events and networking opportunities for minorities. i’m sure LBAN does great things and i’ll probably become an active member, but i always balk when hearing anything “Asian” in place of “Asian American” or something more specific. such group names seem to take on a white-centric view of Asians and bunches together people who might not necessarily have much in common. but talking with some other analysts, we told ourselves that diversity programs, as idealistic and forward-thinking as they may seem, are corporate practices to deter lawsuits (i can’t think of the specific legal term for this), and are most oftentimes starting points rather than an end-all solution.

* the food in the cafeteria of jersey city is subpar. i miss the good food of NFL’s Huddle Cafe. i know that Lehman is serviced by the same Restaurant Associates, but i wonder if they have the same quality control that Buzzeo put on the staff at NFL. then again, when you’re serving thousands of people rather than hundreds, quality is bound to go down in some capacity.

* i’m looking forward to the weekend; with free time more precious now, i think i can start being productive in my free time. i keep thinking about specific movie shots i can shoot – in b&w – and hopefully i’ll have the patience and drive to make it happen. one shot, if you can imagine, is a tired Andy Ni (my primary actor) coming home from working, sitting in traffic and just waiting while John Mayer’s homelife plays in the background. maybe we can have a noir throw-back and make him an insurance salesman. ha.

alright, class – Intermediate Excel 2002 – will be beginning shortly. another day, it seems. and yet, the paycheck makes it all bearable.

the weather has been suprisingly mild the past few days, at a time when New York is supposed to be unbearable with humidity and heat. i remember the torturous walks back from work last summer when i could feel my back covered with sweat by the time i made it four avenues over from park ave. to broadway. i feel that such misery will return next week when i begin training at lehman brothers.

it’s late (early), which is nothing new whenever i find motivation to write in this blog. i live on the 36th floor of my building and yet, i can still hear the garbage trucks beeping and chugging along outside. they are loud and prevent me from enjoying the light breeze. i remember in elementary school, i learned somewhere that garbagemen make a decent amount of money with good benefits. i realize now that to wake up this early every morning and handle the foul-smelling loads each time is not such an easy job and should defnitely be compensated well.

it’s sad to hear that people died in london due to another terrorist attack, but i didn’t have much of a reaction when i saw it on television and read about it on nytimes.com. i guess after 9/11, it’s hard to care for news that isn’t right in our backyard or directly related to someone i may know personally. my only relevant moment today was watching my roommate rich come home early from training because the salespeople at Bank of America had to field calls from london and cancel their speaking sessions with the new analyst class. from reading headlines about Britain’s “pragmatic response” to the attack (as if it had been well-rehearsed) as well as global money managers’ assurances that such events are unlikely to have a direct impact on the financial markets, i feel as if these attacks are becoming a part of life in the 21st century. just best not to be around whenever the next one happens.

i performed an oral surgery on myself of sorts. two days ago, i came out of the bathroom coughing, irritated in the throat region. i told melanie that it felt as if a piece of hair had been stuck somewhere in my throat. i had been unable to cough anything up and saw nothing when i looked in the mirror, but it felt so much like a strand of hair was bristling against the back of my throat. melanie suggested that it was probably just a scratch and that it would go away soon. i tried not to think about it and ignored the strange feeling for the next two days. it didn’t cause pain at all, but every now and then, i felt as if something was definitely stuck. today, feeling especially irritated in the throat, i opened my mouth wide and looked at the back of my mouth once again. this time, i spotted a thin black line at the back on one of the tonsils. i tried in vain to take it out with my fingers. i wished for metal tweezers, but ended up trying the hooked part of my glasses and my toothbrush. i actually started bleeding on one of my tonsils. i eventually gave up on the idea of picking the piece out and instead, i pressed my index finger against the back of my mouth in order to slide out the piece of hair. after many unsuccesful tries, i finally caught a break and slid the hair out of my throat. it was about an inch long and it was lodged right in a crevice on the right tonsil. whew.

i would write more, but it is really late and i am really tired. i am still thinking about wednesday night when wook, me and melanie went to tartine, a cute little BYO french bistro in west village. we purchased a pinot grigio and a 2000 bordeaux at a liquor/wine store before we got there and i must say, i was very pleased with the bordeaux. this wine expert i know told me that bordeaux and other southern french wines had a great year in 2000, so my eyes lit up when i saw a 2000 bordeaux for sale. the drink was very smooth and left a subtle aftertaste. it went very well with my cold poached salmon entree. good food, good wines, good people. pleasant thoughts to take to bed with me. adieu.

having observed my buddy wally diligently update his blog at least three times a day, i feel like it’s about time i start changing my attitude about blogging and increase the updates on this site. it’s a pitiful site to see that i only wrote one entry for the entire month of june, although my average of four entries per month is fairly low as well. as i wrote once somewhere on this blog about a year ago, i’m not looking to attract a wide audience or to make this a traffic-generating site (although attention is always good for a writer), but i’m rather more interested in being able to look back on this site in the future and see what was going through my head at certain points of my life. so, if that is still the intended purpose – although i would love to entertain my readers (the few that i still have) – i will need to post more frequent entries.

i returned tonight after three wonderful days in Atlantic City with melanie, wally, and annabel. we stayed at ocean club condominium where melanie’s parents own a nice unit on the fourteenth floor. it was a very relaxing time as we did summery things like board games (girls beat boys badly in Taboo), tennis (i destroyed melanie, but she promises to beat me some day), and the occasional gambling in the Tropicana. i witnessed melanie’s poker face and saw her win a hand as she came out with 30% gain on her investment. wally acted prematurely as he went all in with a king and an ace and lost to a girl who had a pair of aces. he joined me and annabel at the roulette table where i had transformed by $90 investment into a formidable stack of chips. my strategy was to put down at least $30 – $15 on black and $15 on numbers (some of them red) – on each turn (the minimum was only $15). the strategy paid off and i was able to extract $125 to more than cover the initial investment and still have around $200 to play. i let wally try his luck in choosing some roulette numbers and left him and annabel with my stack of dough. when i saw him about 15 minutes later, he gave me $35 and told me he had lost the rest. as we were about to leave the casino, i held in my hand $160 worth of chips. as we approached a roulette table on our way to cash out our earnings, i told everyone that i would put all my chips on a color in hopes of doubling up. melanie told me that it was poor decision-making and wally told me to do the opposite of whatever he thought the winning color would be, which was black. annabel, who had made some good calls when we played before wally’s cooling effect, said black was the way to go. i decided on black and put the entire stack of chips down. i was unafraid after having been empowered by the fortune i had received from my cookie at P.F. Chang’s for dinner: “those who take risks are truly free.” when the number on the electronic board flashed 2 (a black number), a nice warm feeling overcame me. “that’s right, told you i should have put it down,” i told melanie. she replied, “you could’ve just as easily regretted it if you didn’t win.” of course, winners don’t speculate what a loss would’ve felt like. i cashed out and went back to the condo, beaming.

i’m back in my manhattan apartment – 420 West 42nd Street – and it’s still an incredible feeling to be living in such a nice place right out of graduation. the view through our floor-to-ceiling windows is absolutely beautiful, especially at night right before the empire state building lights go off. rent is due tomorrow – a pro-rated half-month fee of $720.05 for my portion – and although future payments will definitely pinch the pocket, i absolutely love our living conditions. a few days ago, our 42″ panasonic lcd hdtv came from P.C. Richard and it now sits pretty atop a black, wooden crate&barrel tv stand. you can walk into our living room and sit on our brown leather couch (from ikea) and enjoy yourself as you watch a dvd or one of the hdtv channels provided by RCN. too bad i don’t really watch television, but it’s a cool thing to brag to people about, and it’ll come in handy for large sporting events. i must give seiwook much credit for helping to shape our apartment, especially my room and rich’s room, which he both personally planned and executed in setting up and furnishing. my baby blue walls (didn’t realize it’d be that bright) do strike a contrast with rich’s more mature grayish beige walls, but visitors to our apartment have complimented both rooms for their respective decor. next order of business is getting a wall up in the living room so that warren will finally have his own private space. the lifestyle of our apartment does seem like a mix of MIT fraternity and new york pretentiousness (that would be the Columbia element); for example, you can find rich drinking Pepsi from a crate&barrel wine glass or wook (normally always in khaki, courduroy, or jeans) trying to fit (albeit unsuccessfully) by wearing tennis shorts or his orange windbreaker pants. rich can’t seem to get over the fact that i would actually rent a dvd called My Architect and voluntarily sit through two hours of a documentary. once work gets into fullmode, it’ll be interesting to see how the apartment functions on a daily basis.

when wally stayed over our apartment last weekend, he and i decided to create a fansite for Louis Menand – an author so frequently mentioned on my blog that perhaps this site could have served as a fansite of its own. we decided to call it The Essential Menand and included his biography, links to his New Yorker articles, and any other related online materials. we’ve been trying to get the word out about this site because we both feel that menand is an excellent writer whose style and sharpness is unique and inspirational. wally and i both have testimonials about why we like his work – sort of cheesy and kiss-ass, but what else are real fans supposed to do? i encourage people to just try reading a few of his New Yorker article for starters. melanie, on our car ride back from AC, asked if a Chang-Rae Lee site was a possibility, and since I’ve read all three of his books as well as a New Yorker short about sea urchins that he wrote a few years ago, i realized that a site for my favorite Korean American author should definitely be considered. but then again, once you look beyond the things you already know about a certain author, you soon realize that he/she has a ton of other work that you never knew about before and oftentimes, these works are hard to obtain. if any of you adore Chang-Rae Lee’s work and would like to join me in making a site that consolidates his online materials (as well as giving background info and links to book reviews and profiles), please let me know! has my personal scholarship been reduced to making fansites for the people whose works i appreciate?

not to keep plugging links for myself in this entry, but i did make some changes to www.peterkang.com (yes, it’s more than just a vanity domain!). i’ve added a section under my personal work called “screenplays, short stories, and more” – the selection is pretty thin at the moment, but i promise it’ll continue to grow as the summer goes on. it’s always nice to see that i haven’t completely wasted my time in the past and that these written pieces, no matter how crappy or unrefined, leave me feeling pleased that i once experienced moments of intense focus and real writing. i’m also in the process of editing my theses and some school papers to post for anyone to read – hopefully some lazy college kid looking online to see how another lazy dude wrote his paper during his years of higher education.

it’s almost five a.m. and i should’ve been asleep long before. when i wake up later today, i’ll hopefully be able to finish some of my online modules for lehman’s pre-training program and take care of necessary errands. it’s been a good summer break, although a bit too fast for my taste (how many times will i note this phenomenon of time moving fast?), and i promise – if not to any particular reader, then at least to myself – that frequent updates will be forthcoming. goodnite, good morning.