Merry christmas and happy new year

I'm writing on the bus off new york towards the north right now. Will get back to your emails and messages when i'm back in philly. In the mean time, merry christmas and happy new year!

Self Review

And so..my exams ended last wednesday...... and here's how i think i'm gonna fare aka my self report card this semester:

Business and Public Policy

Effort: F-
(heck, i didn't even touch the textbook. And i only studied 2 days before the finals..sigh)

Understanding: D
(At least i understood what the prof in class...only problem is that i probably forget everything say....2 minutes after class?)

Self Perception: F-

(I still remembered on the last day of class. Tobachman probably sensed my boredom in lecture that day....

Tobachman: yada yada yada yada *something on contractual obligation* yada yada...say..i promise xiang li a Ferrari for christmas..(which i think my eyes lit up for 3 seconds)...but come new year... there's no ferrari..nill..none in sight (sigh... i prob smiled at him).... so can he sue me?...yada yada yada....)


GRADE EXPECTED: F+
(Aih...should put in more effort for legal studies next semester....)


Engineering and Lab:

Effort: C-
(I knew i should have done all the questions in the book...and should have figured out what was wrong with that dysfunctional (yes-dysfunctional) red traffic light)

Understanding: B+
(Until today, i still don't get the norton and thevenin equivalence)

Self Perception: B
(Daniel lee is probably the most engaging professor i've taken a class with.... totally recommend his classes...)


GRADE EXPECTED: C+
(Must do exercises in the book Must do exercises in the book Must do exercises in the book Must do exercises in teh book........)


Corporate Finance

Effort: F-
(I didn't even finish those questions in the book. Andddd.. I didn't even realize there was a 2003 practice paper until a friend told me....)

Understanding: B-
(Why is it that sunk cost are not included in the EAC? I know that Prof. Mackinlay said that it can't be recovered...but pay money is still pay money what!!..)


Self Perception: F

(An email to the TA:

Dear (censored),

I'm just wondering if the tax should be taken into account when calculating the EAC.

For example,

my maintainence cost is USd 100 and my tax is 10%. Thus is my net maintainence cost USD 90 ?

thanks!

regards
Xiang Li

Reply:


Yes the case states:

To do the calculation, prepare a spreadsheet table showing all costs after taxes over each investment’s economic life. Make assumptions as necessary. Be sure to include the effects of inflation. ------------------------.

Regards,

(censored)

(so yes it should be taken considered while calculating the EAC...duh..what was i thinking?!!)


GRADE EXPECTED: C-


Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra and ODEs

Effort: F++
(Google shall be my textbook.... nothing beats google...or matlab...)

Understanding: F--
(It's not that we don't understand but I don't think the majority in class could do Temkin's exam...with the average score at 40% for his midterms...)

Self Perception: F--
(Temkin: the next few minutes, i'll provide some motivation for MATH xxx...... so here's the motivation..... ... if we translate ODEs into vectors and solving using homogenous equations on non-homogeous matrices...you'll get..yada yada yada...

o c'mon temkin...you can't expect us to be all olympiad gold medalist like you)

GRADE EXPECTED: F-



Physics and Lab

Effort: C-
(What... as usual..must do all the problems in the book...)

Understanding: B
(it's not really that hard...just that I wasn't really on-the-go for the first few lessons...)

Self Perception: B+
(the only class where my grades has an upward trend while the class average drops as the semester progresses)

EXPECTED GRADE: B

GPA EXPECTED: 1.5

And obviously this won't get me anywhere....thus i shall create a new academic honors list for myself... lXl's List (as oppose to the Dean's List)...sigh...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Absurd but true

Some exam/finals digressions.......

from today's THE STAR

How to become very rich in Malaysia

Connections and the ability to flip assets can get you going places

If you have ever wondered how to get rich in Malaysia – fabulously rich and very quickly at that – here’s a model that you might want to look at very closely. Not easy to do but if you do have a couple of projects in the bag, it will set you up for several lifetimes.

First you need connections – strong ones, the higher the better and if it goes right up to the top all the better. You need this because you need to convince the powers that be that your projects are good.

But you might ask if your projects are so good, why do you need connections? Why don’t you just go out and execute? Good questions, those. Here’s the answer - you need the state to give you something to do the deal that will help the nation.

Still can’t figure it out? See, it’s like this. You want to help the country, right? The country needs say a port. But you can’t build a port just like that. You need land to build a port. You tell the state or federal government you need land – cheap land, preferably free to build the port.

Or to take another example, you want to help the country by building a power plant. But look, you need land too and not only that you need the power to be sold. So you want an agreement – an iron-clad one to sell the power to Tenaga Nasional and to pass through all costs.

You see, that’s your reward as an entrepreneur – you get someone else to build the power plant, they guarantee the performance of the plant and someone else guarantees to buy your power and pay for all your costs. Nice deal? You bet. Billionaires have been made that way.

Or you may want to start an air hub. If you are persuasive enough, you can even convince the government to compulsorily acquire the land and sell it to you cheap. Once you have cheap land, lucrative contracts and concession agreements, the sky’s the limit.

Let’s take it a step further. If you want to realise the value of all of these things that you have and still keep control of them, it’s nice to have a listed company into which you can inject them. Inject one asset for shares and you gain control of the company.

And then inject others over the years for cash, taking the money out of the company. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?

Do it right and get a flow of assets to inject in (you can do anything with discounted cash flow valuations – just change the discount rate, and presto, the value changes!), and you get a tidy flow of profits and cash into your personal accounts over the years. I mean a really tidy flow.

Just how much can you make this way, you ask? Why don’t you take a guess first? Did you say RM500mil? Guess again. RM1bil? How about five times that and you may be getting into the right order of magnitude.

One Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Albukhary actually made some RM4.5bil that way - actually more because he still controls the listed company. (
MMC’s latest RM1.7bil deal irks investors7) We are not saying he is the only one, which makes your chances of joining the ranks better – if you are connected to high places that is.

But then again, if things change – and that’s still a big ‘if’ – you might not find it so easy anymore.

P. Gunasegaram is managing editor of The Star. He thinks it is high time we changed the way we did business

yes, it's high time for change but change to what? U gotto be kidding me...

Over the weekend...

Aha, this weekend has been great! Man U won with 10 men, Chelsea lost and Liverpool drew...Hopefully we'll have more weekends like this especially throughout December.....