I logged out of my second International Markets Finance exam

 with a strong feeling that it is as bad as it gets: the final tasks was to summarize Dodd-Frank reform: one sentence for each title...

Nevertheless, the Bank Analysis project proved me completely wrong.
I looked at the task list and understood that this project alone should weigh full course worth credits. There was so much to do, that even with the instructions and UBPR already distributed to us I could hardly imagine where to begin to get the best use of my time (which I barely had).

By the time I fished out all the numbers and was done with the calculations for DuPont analysis I got pretty optimistic about finishing this project by the end of summer semester :) NIM and Burden analysis got me completely lost in UBPR: could neither understand where the numbers in the example came from, nor - how the calculations in the example were done and results were obtained if the formulas in the instructions were used.

By the time I got  to peer analysis I realized I would only finish this project when I retire.
The analysis itself was, as always, the least painful part. The bank sucked badly compared to its peers throughout my whole analysis sections - luckily for me, since the actual entity was shut down in 2008...
With project and tasks like this, I sometimes feel it's not even possible to get the bottom of it ; but eventually,  with just a bit great deal of persistence, flax seeds oil, coffee and Visine - I manage to break through. Some time after that the story repeats itself =)

The bottom line and the note to self: to go over this post if I ever decide to go to grad school.

Somethimes I feel that if I take one more step forward - I will die

... and then I will fall down on the ground and fall asleep =)

"Tap to the left... or to the right...." (c)

I made myself an unexpected gift this year and... somehow, from out of nowhere, I was able to download Liquidator.

I've no idea why for the past many-many years I only remembered about this computer game right before this New Year. Of course, I was already getting a different impression of the game now; some things did not seem to be that exciting anymore, some seemed just absurd...

... But nevertheless I got carried away by a wave of memories of how, these many-many years ago I played this game with my school best friend, on her computer, in her room. Back then this was one of the few Russian action computer games, something rather original... We had one keyboard so we had to  share our responsibilities in such a way that my friend was navigating while I was jumping, shooting and opening the doors. After a while we would switch =)

... We would burst into evil giggling; we mocked at the voice and the catch phrases of the operator in the game; shoot napalm into walking skeletons, ghosts and wizards; and once, when we opened a door and were suddenly attacked by some weird butcher with an axe  - we both screamed outloud =)