can't sleep

Hi guys, I can't sleep. and its 5.56am.

Thought i would just do a bit of blogging, and let you guys know whats driving me these days. I really enjoy finance. No, not the money side, i mean wages do matter, but money is but temporal. you can't carry money into your grave. so thats not what i long for. I know you would know about this, but i dropped Geography in JC. it was my best subject and my favourite. I dropped it so i could hang on to my physics, which i felt was a safer choice.. I could go into engineering. wrong move. i liked physics, but it didnt bring me to engineering. During the army, i developed a love for presentations during my S2 training. I felt that talking to people is a skill, convincing people is a skill. But i was still lost. I didnt know what to do with my life, or what would happen after uni, all i knew was that i would go to smu.

In smu, FA (yes fa...) was the first finance topic i ever took. and guess what? i really enjoyed it.. Chua's finance also prodded me deeper into the world of finance. Not just finance, but corporate finance. I watched these shows, Family Man, Boiler Room, Wall Street and Barbarians at the Gates. Family Man was a show that showed nicholas cage as a senior investment banker in a boutique firm. All he cared about was work work and work. He would work on christmas and boxing day and everything. until one day, he woke up, and he found out he wasnt on his regular posh bed and room. he was a father with a family..

Boiler Room was about a young intelligent man who was conned into a firm trading scam stocks called JT Marlin. They would call up potential "whales", sold them huge amounts of stocks and the stocks would crash. Such things still happen in the markets nowadays btw.

Barbarians at the Gates is my all time favourite. It was about the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. (They sell oreo cookies and a lot of other things). It was 1987 and Nabisco was facing a crisis. henry kravis from private equity firm KKR (kkr is the most prestigious PE firm in the world. super elitist) recommended the idea of an LBO to the CEO, Ross Johnson. henry kravis owned buyouts at that time. he was the one who created LBOs. However, Ross Johnson took his idea and banded a few friends (people from shearson lehman and amex) together and tried to buyout the company, without henry kravis. kravis launched into an allout offensive to bid for the firm and soon, a bidding war arose. I will leave the end out as we will be watching the show soon. (we = poh ian greg youyi flea) anyone else wanna watch let me know! sch library course reserve viewing room.

Anyway, to cut a long story short. My aim is to enter an investment banking firm as an anaylst. learn as much as i can, the rudimentaries of deal-making and valuation. talking to clients and how to pitch a convincing deal. after i've done learning, i want to move to a PE firm. possibly a firm like texas pacific or bain or even kkr. Im dreaming, i know. but i deserve to dream. Everyone deserves to have his own dream. Because only when you dream, then u know what you truly want.

alright, thats about all the details i can bore you with about my life. this is me. take it or leave it. thanks shaun and ian for dropping by my place tonight, it was a really good chat. felt like jc/eunos coffeeshop/lorong sarina/burnfoot terrace/jalan ishak/telok kurau once more. good night folks.