Current raves: getting breakfast every morning on the side of the street for like $0.70 (steamed buns and soy milk). I've been going for a few days in a row now, hoping the lady will recognize me as a regular, but she's very un-emotional. :p
It's Wednesday, in the middle of a 7-day work week. I've worked 7 days in a row several times, but never because of a national holiday coming up. Dragonboat Festival! That means Monday-Wednesday off. Ohh, I can't wait. Also, the FIFA World Cup starts this weekend. Actually.....in two days!
The energy here is palpable. You can't turn on a single radio station or tv channel without seeing ads. All commercial campaigns have integrated futbol into their pitch. All bars have had banners advertising their drink specials for weeks now. I see more and more jerseys around. Too bad China itself didn't make it into the WC; then the energy would have been INSANE.
North Korea did make it though...I'm excited to see how they do. I'll go out on a limb and say...not well, haha. But I always root for the underdog if one of my teams isn't playing. Also, I think the better the NK team does, the more beneficial that is for NK on the international scene. Perhaps futbol could be what draws their crazy government back towards sanity? ... perhaps. Then Matt Damon could make a related sequel to Invictus and call it... Pyongyang-us.
Work is still awesome. There are so many learning opportunities at the firm. This morning, a former in-house counsel gave us a seminar on how to manage deals with in-house lawyers and their deal teams.
Our video-conference seminar with our Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong offices.
It's SO COOL to see things from the legal perspective after having been on the business side. Much of the vocabulary is the same, but lawyers worry about the business AND the legal side. The best lawyers seem to be heavily engaged in the business aspect of the deal as well as the legal structure. These lawyers also seem to have the most fun at their jobs and thus excel at them. That's what I hope to do with my JD & MBA. Rather than solely be advisory counsel to the deal, I want my clients to see me as a business partner as well. By bringing business acumen to the table, this will inspire confidence in my clients because they don't feel like they have to explain the deal to me and then hold my hand through the process. Bringing the skill-set I will have amassed after working on Wall Street and the completion of this dual JD/MBA degree, I'll be able to jump right in to the process and work both sides of the table.
I spoke with one of China's most highly ranked lawyers this morning. She has over 25 years of working experience in China, and she is the top entertainment lawyer in China according to Chambers Asia 2010 (Chambers is an international legal ranking service.) Just hearing her describe the deals and projects she has worked on...I was practically salivating at being able to be a part of that. Obviously, I will have to pay my dues and start at the bottom as an associate and work my way up, but there's something about the legal sphere that appeals to my personality and my skill-set much more than the finance side. It really comes down to my fondness for words rather than numbers. I'm comfortable with numbers and there's no way to avoid them; I often find myself doing cost-benefit analysis on many things, but words, words, words---the foundation of our society really.
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