I Am Calgarian

Back from Portugal

2006-08-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

What a beautiful country!

This is just for you, Daniel

2006-04-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

Because Daniel has been giving me a hard time about not writing anything in my blog in ages, here is a little something just for him. Where are we going for dinner tonight because we forgot to take something out of the freezer? I have no ideas as usual, so it is up to you to decide!
You realise that this is a test to see how frequently you actually look at this compared to what you say you do.
Beijoca

Why I Don´t Cook

2006-02-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

Tonight Daniel and I decided to cook dinner instead of eating out as usual. It was nothing major - just some meat and carrot rice. But in my effort to help in the kitchen, I managed to cut my finger while chopping the onion in half. Sweet. And so ended my help in the kitchen tonight. I think I´ll stick to supervising and dish duty.

Amending my previous comments

2006-02-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'll admit that I don't hate all trees:
1. Trees with presents under them;
2. Trees that grow money.
Failing that, I do still hate trees.

Wish me luck because tomorrow is my first midterm of the quarter and I believe that it will prove to be much harder than previously expected given the TA review session held today. Ugh.

I hate trees!!!!

2006-01-28T18:26:00.000-08:00

Macroeconomics used to be my favourite class (it's all relative), until the most recent homework assignment in which we had to analyse the following problem:
Consider a tree whose growth is described by the function h. If Kt is the size of the tree in period t, then Kt+1 =h(K), t=0,1,..... Assume that the price of wood, p, and the interest rate, r, are both constant over time; let p=1 and B=1/(1+r). Assume that it is costless to cut down the tree.
a. If the tree can't be replanted, present value maximisation leads to the functional equation v(K)=max{K,Bv[h(K)]}. Under what assumptions about h is there a sumple rule describing when the tree out to be cut down and sold?
b. Suppose that when the tree is cut down, another can be planted in its place. When this tree is cut down another can be planted, and so on. Assume that the cost of replanting, c>=0, is constant over time. Under what assumptions about h and c is there a simple rule describing when the trees should be harvested?

Well, close to 6 hours later, with the combined efforts of 3 brains, we came up with the solutions.
a. when the tree grows slower than r
b. when the cost is less than K

What a crap question! And now my attention goes back to microeconomics and game theory...

Random Thoughts

2006-01-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

1. I am getting sick and tired of stoopid (spelt like that on purpose) comments/ questions by people in my classes. I never have liked hearing people talk for the sake of being heard and doubt I ever will.
2. Getting motivated to study is proving to be harder than I was expecting.
3. Not so keen on Canada's new Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Even though i'll admit that I voted for him (in retrospect, I should have just spoilt my ballot, or written myself in as a candidate). Even though his views have moderated in recent years, he's still a little too free-market, right-winger for me (anti-abortion to boot).
4. I'm missing my friends in NYC quite a bit at the moment.
5. Trying to think about what I should have for dinner. As usual, no insights whatsoever!
6. Don't think my UCLA email account is working so well as only about 50% of my intended emails reach their recipients.
7. I have a growing to-do list but dwindling time before midterms next week.
Better get back to the studying I suppose...

Things are about to get busier

2006-01-22T21:26:00.000-08:00

Well, classes are well underway now and the workload has seriously ramped up this past week. We were given 2 homework assignments that are due on Wednesday and Friday (Macro and Econometrics). To put it mildly, they are ridiculously difficult. But I´m sure that willpower will get me through.
Other than that, not a tonne to say. Daniel and I went to see the film Brokeback Mountain on Saturday evening and despite all the hype, I was not that impressed by the story or the acting. The best part for me was the fact that it was filmed outside Calgary in Kananaskis Country so it reminded me of home and I could swear that I had been to some of those places. And it was fun to see the movie that my mum had worked on (all those jeans worn in the movie were courtesy of her!).
Well, time to go and eat a homecooked meal for a change and then put in a couple more hours of studying of Macro before heading to bed. Let another fun/stressful week begin!

Back from a weekend in San Diego

2006-01-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

Well, classes got under way last week for the new quarter. The schedule is certainly better than it was last quarter because there are no classes at 8am. YAY!!!! I'm all motivated and ready to go (for the most part), but I have to admit that my confidence has been rocked somewhat by the news that people are dropping out of the program. Thus far there are 2 people gone from the economics program and there are more that are considering to depart in the very near future. And it is harder when you are close to those people. But I must stay motivated and focused because there is a tonne of work to be done in the coming weeks.

So to celebrate the start of the quarter, prep ourselves for the hard work ahead, and to take advantage of a long weekend, Daniel and I went to San Diego. We totally lucked out with the good weather. San Diego is really such a great city and has way more feel and character than LA does, so I think that it will be necessary to visit more often. We didn't do a tonne of stuff, but that's ok because it was all about a relaxing time - visiting La Jolla, going to the US-Mexico border (but not crossing because we didn't have our appropriate travel documents), shopping in the outlets, checking out the Gaslamp quarter. And last but certainly not least, getting lost and making an adventure out of many miles of road covered.

But tomorrow is Tuesday and that means back to class and getting down to work. Let the fun begin!

Getting back to my roots (literally)

2006-01-09T14:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back in LA now and classes officially got underway today. But on a happy note, we are slowly easing into things because today's macroeconomics lecture was short as the prof had not had time to prepare the material (but instead we get a lecture on friday. SWEET!).
But after having blond hair for the last 12 months I have gone ahead and returned to my original hair colour - red. Over the holidays I was looking at my roots, seeing that the stress of classes during the previous quarter had made my hair really really dark. The contrast with the blond highlights made me look like white trash (which was not the look I was originally going for). So now I am back to my original colour for the time being, but I will consider going darker in the not so distant future. Got to mix it up every once and a while you realise!

Welcome to 2006

2006-01-06T20:29:00.000-08:00

New Years tends to be rather anti-climactic for me. To me, it is just another day and when midnight hits, it is just like “yay (no capital Yay), next”. Also, I look at some of my recent New Years: last year I was very very sick, the year before I was with a boy I really liked but that ended mere days later, and the years go on like that. So this year it was most important to celebrate with my best friend Veevek, especially because this was likely to be the last New Years we will be in the same city for quite some time.

But as usual, we really didn’t know what we should do. We could have gone to a bar (but I kind of feel too old to do that). We could have just hung out at someone’s house (but that would have reminded me of being so sick last year, so no). But then Veevek’s uncle came to the rescue and got us tickets to “Bollywood in Vegas”. It wasn’t sold to us as this – more like “a multicultural extravaganza”, but barring any other ideas this worked well. Being my usual organized self, I completely forgot to bring anything formal to wear back to Calgary (basically I brought home sneakers and jeans) so I had to go shopping. Darn! Finding something appropriate, though, proved to be a little more difficult than I was expecting. But Steph joined me on my shopping expedition and helped me chose something perfect (but of course, not on sale).

New Years proved to be more fun than I was expecting as I tagged along with the immediate and extended Thankey family. While Veevek did his best to make sure that we would be at least a little tipsy at the party, I behaved myself and stuck to vodka and orange juice for the majority of the evening except for 2 glasses of champagne (or really sparkling wine). But with last call relatively early and skulling a glass of champagne, by the end of the night I was feeling the effects of the alcohol, whose effects were compounded by the hours of dancing to Indian music.

And now that 2005 comes to an end and 2006 is underway, here are my resolutions for the upcoming year:
1. Keep in better contact with my friends.
2. Learn to manage my stress better.
3. Run a ½ marathon.
4. Volunteer.
5. Rock the microeconomics comp exam.
6. Update my blog more often!

Christmas 2005 with the Richmond’s

2006-01-05T13:59:00.000-08:00

Living in LA the past few months with its great weather has made it hard for me to get into the holiday spirit even though Christmas was approaching. It’s hard to think of it being the Christmas season when it is 25 degrees celsius and seeing people with trees on the roof of their cars. Growing up in a sub-artic climate for the majority of my life has made me associate Christmas with at least two feet of snow and –20 degree weather.

Actually, the Richmond’s don’t really even like Christmas. I find it to be quite a depressing time of year. I’m not exactly sure why this is so, but it typically is not a joyful time for us and as a result we generally make Christmas as low key as possible. This year was like previous years in the sense that it was low key, but it was also better than any in recent memory for me just because it was so much fun catching up with friends and spending so much time laughing.

Christmas Eve my mum and I went to our usual Christmas Eve church service. I like to hear the sermon and sing a few Christmas carols. Afterwards, the entire family walked down the road to the Mitchell’s annual Christmas Eve party where I was able to catch up with a few friends from high school, drink some holiday punch, and sing some more Christmas carols, particularly the 12 Days of Christmas with all the actions. At the party I caught up with my friend John Cadman who is heading off to Taiwan on January 6th to teach English for 1 year. I know that he is going to have an amazing experience there. I also got to catch up with Barbara Mitchell who got married this past August to her long-time boyfriend. And she had additional news that she is 5 months pregnant with her second child, and it’s another boy! It’s crazy to think that my friends are starting to get married and have kids while I still feel so unsettled with my life.

Christmas morning I woke up at a reasonable hour, around 9:30am and I called Daniel in Portugal to wish him Merry Christmas even though because they are 7 hours ahead of Calgary time, the day was almost over for him. Afterwards we opened stockings in my parents’ room. To me, the stocking presents are always the best because they are typically small trinkets. As usual I got my soap opera magazines so that I can catch up on everything that I don’t have time to watch anymore. Then after leisurely getting the day underway we opened the presents under the tree. Santa was very good to me this year and I got a gift certificate to MEC, money for schoolbooks, some clothes, and new puma sneakers. The funniest gift was the identical red sweater from Club Monaco that my sister and I both got for each other.

In the afternoon my mum started making all the food for our usual Christmas dinner feast. My job was to NOT eat the stuffing before dinner and setting the dining room table. The former was difficult, while I have become quite proficient at the latter. Apart from the 4 Richmond’s Jen, her boyfriend Bobby, and Veevek joined us for dinner, which was complemented by lots of red wine. I really don’t know what came over me, but I kept having laugh attacks at the dining room table so it was a riotous affair. It didn’t make matters any better that I received a bunch of text messages during dinner from Daniel that I felt compelled to answer.

After dinner we just hung out and after Jen and Bobby departed Veevek and I just hung out chatting and enjoying yet another bottle of red wine. Around 1:30am Steph joined us as we hacked at the turkey to make some sandwiches for ourselves and raided the fridge. To complement the food we went searching through the liquor cabinet for something to drink. But the selection was pretty poor and the choices were tequila, Baileys, or bellini. So we cracked open the bottle of bellini and drank it out of mugs. Gag! That is one Italian product that should just stay in that country, we don’t need it. But clearly there was much merriment with everything and we finally called it a night around 2:30am. It turned out to be a really good Christmas because it was with my family and close friends, and that is exactly what Christmas is supposed to be all about.

Christine survives the quarter, barely!!!!

2006-01-04T22:30:00.000-08:00

It really is shameful how long it has been since I last updated my blog. But now that the dust has settled, it’s time to let people know what I’ve been up to in the last few months. But basically to sum it all up, I’ve been studying, studying, and studying some more. But because my life is not without drama, I’ll still try and fill you in on what has been going on….

October
During the month of October I was still trying to get the hang of classes. There was many a lecture that I left feeling that my brain was going to explode due to an overload of information. Some fun was to be had during the month, though, especially the weekend of October 22nd when Josh and I went to the KZLA country music concert and a Calgary Flames vs. LA Kings hockey game. The KZLA concert was a true redneck experience – and who knew that there were quite so many rednecks in Southern California?! Josh and I partook in some of the festivities: drinking Budweiser while sitting in the back of the truck, eating fair food, and trying on various cowboy hats. The music was great and the highlight for me was certainly seeing Brooks & Dunn end the night.

The next night (Sunday) was something that I had been looking forward to for ages – seeing a hockey game. And not just any hockey game for that matter, in fact I went to see the Calgary Flames vs. the LA Kings. I splurged and bought 2nd row seats directly behind the LA bench, so that made it even more fun. But being an economics student, I had to maximize the use of my time and before the game started and during the intermissions I was hard at work on my microeconomics homework assignment! I was a nervous wreck through the entire game because Calgary blew its leads and took stupid penalties. But in the end, with mere seconds left in the 3rd period, Calgary defeated LA. It was just fabulous. I was actually impressed with the LA fans because it was a sellout and the fans were quite into the game. I have promised to take Daniel and Bernardo (my two Portuguese friends at UCLA) to a game in 2006 to introduce them to the fun that hockey is.

November and midterms
November brought with it midterms. I was pretty lucky because I only had 1 per week so I could pretty much focus solely on each course for 1 week and learn the material. The first exam was macroeconomics and this was the course that I felt best about the material because it was at least somewhat similar to the stuff that I had been doing at Deutsche Bank for the past four years. But it was still by no means easy at all especially because there was so much information to synthesize for the exam. I came out of the exam incredibly frustrated because I knew that I had forgotten to take the log of the equation, which resulted in making my life way more difficult in trying to solve the model. But I aced the other question so when the dust settled I was ecstatic to get a high B on the exam. I know that a B is really nothing to write home about, but for me after not taking any meaningful, non-multiple choice exams in over 4 years, this was a huge challenge for me.

The second exam was microeconomics and I find the content much more difficult to wrap my mind around. The exam certainly was not stellar for me, but I did mediocre and I was ok with it. I know now that you generally do better when you are trying to work through a proof when you don’t decide to change what you are trying to prove halfway through. DUH Christine!

The final midterm was econometrics and it was a complete and utter disaster for me. I really did think that I knew some of the material before going into the exam, but I turned over the paper and absolutely panicked. Whatever information I had stored in my pea brain I completely forgot, making the exam a complete disaster for me. I was really quite mad at myself for getting into a situation like that in the exam. I was not prepared and it really showed through.

Once the midterms were done I was very happy because while I did not have a stellar performance in them, I had survived them, which for me was more than half the battle. And before I knew it, it was American Thanksgiving and we were having a 4-day vacation to stuff our faces with food and start preparing for final exams, which were just around the corner.

On Thanksgiving morning I woke up very early – around 6am – and drove over to pick up my partners in crime, “the boys” (Josh, Bernardo, and Daniel) as I had convinced them to come with me to the hood, aka Long Beach, to participate in the Turkey Trot run. It was nothing serious, but I figured that before I was going to stuff my face with food in the afternoon, I might as well run a bit. Daniel and I ran the 5km in 27:09, while Bernardo and Josh ran the 10km race. The weather was absolutely beautiful and the course was right along the water so really, what more could you want? The boys were brave and took a dip in the Ocean (not me because it was way way too cold and it looked very dirty).

On the way home we stopped of at Ralph’s grocery store so that they could buy a turkey dinner for themselves and much to my surprise, in LA basically everything is open on Thanksgiving Day, which is a complete difference from NYC where everything is pretty much closed. Later that afternoon I went over to Josh’s and joined him and his parents for a Thanksgiving feast. I did my part by attempting to make my mum’s awesome stuffing. But alas, mine was a very poor substitute for hers (smothering it in gravy worked well though). And after eating so much that I was in pain, I joined up with my school friends again to watch a movie and just relax. Overall, it was a pretty great Thanksgiving weekend.

December and finals
December meant no more fun, no free time, and buckling down to spend basically every waking moment with a book in hand as finals were right around the corner. See, that is one of the main problems with the quarter school system – classes end on a Friday and exams start the following Monday – there just isn’t any time off and it feels like a sprint to the end of term. Basically I was a total stress case and wasn’t sure if I was going to survive the exam schedule. I was so stressed that I couldn’t really eat anything because my stomach was in knots as well as dealing with constant pain from the ulcer that was rapidly developing, so I took to carrying around a big bottle of extra strength Rolaids, which took away a bit of the pain I was in. I also found it really difficult hearing everyone else talking about the exams and how stressed they were. I especially found it difficult listening to people complain about how they didn’t know anything despite the fact that they already had Masters or PhDs in this material. Give me a freakin’ break because if they had been in my shoes where they had not studied any of this stuff in over 4 years then they might have really had something to stress about. My panic attacks were certainly getting worse in the days leading up to the exams, but Daniel was kind enough to give me many a pep talk to calm me down and get me through it all.

And now exams are all over!!!! I survived somehow. I had been super stressed about the fact that my grades might be so poor that I would lose my TA funding for school, but I managed to pull it off and get a GPA above a 3.0 so luckily I will be keeping my funding for another quarter. And despite the tough slog I know that I have ahead of me in the upcoming quarters I am still looking forward to it (I’ve blocked out the pain I think) because I feel more prepared in terms of knowing what to now expect in class and know what is expected of me and I really think that it can only get better.

What I’m looking forward to in the upcoming quarter:
1. Watching the Olympics – I have to find a bar in Westwood that is going to be showing the hockey matches.
2. Skiing – haven’t skied in about 10 years so this certainly be interesting.Spring Break – where to go? Buenos Aires, Santiago, Rio De Janeiro, or Southern California?

Christine Survives Week 1 (barely!)

2005-10-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I am proud to report that I have survived week 1 (of 10) in my first quarter at UCLA, but barely. The workload has ramped up from nothing to everything in less than 5 days and my head is certainly spinning.

I am currently taking Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Econometrics - all super fun classes and all. Macroeconomics is all linear algebra and no economics at this stage and the challenge for me will be to get the hang of programming in Matlab (being that computer programming is my strength and all). But the prof at least is very thorough in explaining things, so that I actually understand the things that are happening in class. Microeconomics is again a lot of math, but we can see where things are going there as well. We have 5 homework sets throughout the quarter that will be worth 40% of our final grade so it is important to do well on them all. The first one is due this Tuesday and while I have only completed 3 of the 4 questions thus far, I have spent at least 6 hours working on them! Now it is time to tackle question 4 (which has 5 parts to it!).

And last but certainly not least is econometrics. Oh lord, save me now! This class is going to be incredibly insane. The prof seems like a decent guy, but the speed at which we are going to be going through the material is ridiculous. He opened up the lecture by saying that he assumed we were confident in all linear algebra and multivariate calculus and that this class was going to be all about proofs. It wasn't about econometrics per se and this was the warm up course for econometrics next quarter. He used the terms "blitzkrieg" and "shock and awe" more than a few times and was very comfortable saying "if you aren't comfortable in X, oh well, too bad. Not my fault." Oh this is going to be super sweet. So please say a little prayer for me. We didn't have econometrics this past Thursday because he was out of town but we needed to arrange a time for all of us to make up the class. Trying to find a good time for the entire class was not so great. He wanted to start each class for the rest of the quarter at 7:45am but the look of dismay on people's faces said it all. Then he suggested a Saturday makeup class, but luckily there is a good Jew that needs to be in synagogue every Saturday so that was tossed out. But now, for 2 Fridays I'll be having another 8am-9am class to make up the time, which is then followed by recitations from 9-5pm. SWEET! Add on to this the fact that the TA for econometrics seems to want to tackle all class topics within the 2 allotted hours and therefore needs to plough through the material at warp speed does not help me learn and/or retain any information.

But despite this crazy and insane school workload, I have been able to find a few minutes of down time thus far. Last Saturday a large group of us from Anderson and the economics PhD program went to the UCLA-Washington football game. The game was out at the Rosebowl in Pasadena which took over 1 hour to reach, but we still had plenty of time to partake in the tailgating rituals before the game started. Being my usual scatterbrained self, I managed to forget my student ID and basically had to beg my way into the stadium, which I did successfully! UCLA played a horrendous game, but still managed to eke out a win, which was good. I have to say that the UCLA cheers are quite pathetic and can't compare to those of the Ivy League schools, which have terrible football teams, but at least they have good songs.

On Sunday I had another adventure with Josh when he decided to teach me how to shoot a gun. Being Canadian and all, I am quite opposed to guns and very anti-war. But being the nice girl I am, I was up for a new experience no matter how terrible of a shot I might have been. Josh was very very patient with me and took the time to teach me how to aim and hold my hands, etc. This was more of a challenge considering that I’m left handed and the guns were really designed for those that are right handed. We started with a small rifle and a pistol (22s), which didn’t have much recoil at all. Surprisingly I did ok at hitting the target. But then Josh decided it would be fun to see me try and shoot a 45 and also some bigger rifles, including an old soviet mass-produced gun from WW2. Yeah, these I was certainly less successful with and thought I was going to lose a shoulder in the process or something.

So all in all, my shooting experience was fun and I would certainly be up for it again as long as I can stick with the baby guns. But 2 things are certain: 1. I still won’t ever buy a gun; and 2. Shooting is a game and not a sport!

Back in Calgary for Jenny and Tony's Wedding!

2005-09-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

It was an absolutely beautiful day on September 24th for Jenny and Tony's wedding in Canmore, Alberta (102km from Calgary and in the Rocky mountatins). As usual, the Richmond's were late, even though Steph and I made great time (driving at 140+km/h) to get there only a few minutes late.

As I said in my little speech, Jenny is an aunt to Steph and I (even though her relation to us is my mum's sister's husband is Jenny's brother) so therefore Tony is now our uncle! Sweet deal for us, not too sure for his sake, though. In all my years of knowing Jenny, I have never seen her so happy. Long may it last! (And may I find the same happiness one day!)

It was also great to get back to Calgary, even though I have only been gone for about 1 month. The weather was great - blue sky, sunshine, cool and crisp (dropping below freezing at night!), and the leaves on the trees were all golden. It's the way fall weather in Calgary should be. Reality is always different though.

But now I am back in Beverly Hills and doing the whole graduate student orientation thing before classes officially start on Thursday. I think I'm ready for the term and I'm just going to do my best and get up to speed on all this fun math stuff (a concave function of a concave function is concave. And I can prove it too!). Let the fun begin!

Back from NMUN fall staff

2005-09-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

Wow! Well after the fun I had this past weekend in NYC with all my NMUN friends, I am now back in Beverly Hills and up to my eyeballs in mathematical economics and fighting a cold. It was so great to see everyone and it is a shame that we have to wait until April 2006 until we all meet up again. But hopefully we can convince some people to come and visit the southern California crew before then!