Another Blog For You to Ignore

Well, I've finally bit the dust. After spending the better part of the past few years hearing all the rage about blogs and trolling some others, I decided that instead of skipping out of work to go shopping or attempting to convince people to go to the boats (explanation to come), putting in some much-needed time before June 30th (last day of work) would serve me (and more importantly, my bank account) well. Probably the best way to start my first post will be to break it out into the most prevalent topics that are encompassing my life right now: Finishing off my 3rd year at a bulge-bracket investment bank / moving to NYC, poker, and partying / life. I promise, future posts won't be so organized (or so long).

Finishing Up as an Analyst / Moving to NYC
A quick update on the haps in my life might be a best place to start, and hopefully I'll digress into more interesting topics. As most of you know, I'll be finishing off my 3rd year analyst gig at an investment bank in Chicago come June 30th, at which point I'll be leaving the city I've come to call home for the past four years. After spending the first 22 formidable years of my life in California, I moved out to the Midwest with no friends, no family, and one contact – and I leave this city with more true friends (and thankfully less enemies) than one could ever hope for. I'll be shipping out to New York City to start working for a private equity firm in Midtown, where my hours will be more manageable (likely no more than 60 hrs a week, no weekends!). Of course, to those of you who know me best, this is likely not a good thing, as it will provide me much more free time to spend boozing, partying, and generally engaging in immature behavior.

As most of you have probably heard, work for me as of late has been good. I come in and BS with the other analysts who are also all leaving June 30th, an hour for lunch, spamming my email list looking for someone to help me kill time, and finally rip-cording to hit Michigan Avenue and blow money on shit I don't need (but will fully appreciate nonetheless). Now don't get me wrong, I haven't decided to blow off work. I still get all my shit done (I'm quite efficient haha) and give it 100%. But when you're a staffer and you have a deal you need to get an analyst on, who are you going to give it to? The guy leaving in 60 days (deals and all the relevant bullshit take longer than a few months) or the guy who will still be here in a year? Precisely. In other words, work is manageable. And although I catch flack from people for the decent work schedule I have, I must remind all that I paid my dues, so quite frankly, I don't give a damn.

So after my job wraps up on June 30th, the analysts will likely be blowing it out to celebrate the end of our analyst careers and outrageous year-end bonuses that drop. And if last year is any indication, I will eat a ridiculous steak dinner while consuming from an open-bar, proceed to a local lounge where another open-bar shall await us and drink for another two hours, then finish off the night in VIP style at a club, where we will have magnums of Veuve Clicquot and liters of Goose. We will floss our non-existent status and promote our blown-out-of-proportion thoughts of self-worth, all in hopes of impressing members of the opposite sex into thinking we're someone we're really not- it’s all a lot of fun, really.

After recovering from what is likely to be a 32-hour hangover, I will be on full-blown vacation until I start my new job in NYC on approximately August 15th. Yes, you read that right- 6 weeks of pure, unadulterated, uncensored summer vacation. With summer classes, summer internships, and trips to India to meet potential marriage prospects (no joke) in the past, this will be the first time in a good 9 years where I will have literally weeks to do absolutely nothing. I intend to obviously spend some time back in CA with the fams (probably a week- after that, the constant hounding by my dad as to when I'm finding a wife will make me homicidal), 2 weeks in Chicago to enjoy the summer and wrap up my life, a couple of weeks doing something interesting (discussed below), and then moving out to NYC around August 1st to settle into my new home for the next 2 years.

It’s been a bit bittersweet to think about leaving Chicago- most of you have had to suffer through my tirades about how I don't miss CA and moving out was the best thing I ever did. I do genuinely love this city and don't think another city in the US rivals what Chicago has to offer from an all-inclusive point-of-view (nightlife, culture, cost-of-living, hospitality, cleanliness, diversity, restaurants, etc.). However, as the past few months have passed, I've began to realize just how many of my friends here are married, engaged, in serious relationships, or just plain old and tired (or act like that even if they're younger than me, right TP? haha). In other words, many of them don't go out as much anymore or prefer to stay in with their significant other. Don't get me wrong, I'm genuinely happy for them and know that they have graduated to that next stage of their life where jager shots and hangovers are NOT signs of a good night. However, for someone who is still immature (with plenty of brain cells remaining), I almost feel like a move out to the Big Apple might be exactly what I need- a new scene, new people to meet, new city to explore, and more shots to experience. And being that a few of my really good friends with precisely the same mentality as me live out there, I'm starting to get more and more excited about my move out east. I still intend to visit Chicago often, but my move has started to excite more than depress me, and I'm happy about that.

Poker
The other big thing I've been spending a lot of my time on as of recent has been improving (and cashing in on) my No-Limit Texas Hold-'Em poker game. At first, it started slowly: met a group of like-minded degenerate gamblers, played in an occasional home game, and cursed myself when I lost $20 (or thought of myself as the next Phil Ivey when I won $80). Slowly, the importance we placed on the game increased, the group of 6-8 players grew to more than 20 sharks, and soon after, we started a poker league, complete with weekly tournaments and a season-structure where every week mattered and counted towards your final standing (rules, structures, and results can be found at http://www.420poker.org). We're currently in the middle of the group's 2nd season, and out of 22 players, I'm currently tied for 6th place (top 8 players make the final table). I digress for a minute and give props to the people I play with- definitely have improved my game and made me more arrogant than I should be when I bluff with a 7-2 offsuit. But back to the story: I began to read poker books I came across (just purchased Harrington's first book on Hold-'Em), and developed a need to test my skills outside of the people we played with- how else is one supposed to compare one's growth, right? I began a feverish obsession with playing online poker, often running home after work and playing for hours at night and throughout the weekend whenever work allowed. I wouldn't call it an obsession so much as I would a "healthy interest" in the game (who am I kidding, I know). After winning and losing over $1,500 in a matter of 5 days (in a very suspicious manner nevertheless), I decided to stop playing online and begin live play with other people.

Like I said, many others in our league were also forging ahead on the same path as me, and we slowly began to realize that the riverboat casinos in Gary, IN (about 30 minutes away) would provide the perfect outlet to test our newfound theories regarding our poker prowess. For those of you who understand the game, we were playing no limit $2/$5 blinds, $200 max buy-in at a table for 10 people. For those of you who don't, just understand that you were allowed to bring a maximum of $200 to start, but were allowed to play with as much as you won (i.e. if you had $1,000 in front of you, you're free to play it). Anyways, so in the past 6-8 weeks or so, a group of us have been going with regularity to sit down and gamble with sharks, fish (people who don't know what they're doing), and regular folk who play to kill time. And let me tell you, it's been one hell of a ride. I've lost count how many times I've gone, but I've pulled in a cash profit of over $2,500 and have yet to lose once. Granted, poker is also subject to the law of averages, and it's only a matter of time before I hit a bad streak, so I won't be too surprised when I do lose. But when an average of 75% of the group we roll with to the boats win an average of over $200 in profit, something tells me we may not be so bad at the game. It's a ridiculous rush to put over $1,000 in Benjamins in your wallet and roll out of the casino in only about 4 hours worth of time. We're planning to go again to the boats a couple times this week- I'll let you all know how many hundo's I scoop up haha.

This gets me to the interesting part of my vacation that I mentioned above. Call me crazy, call me a retard, but we're doing it- a group of us from the poker league have decided to head out to Vegas during the World Series of Poker and play poker full-time for 10 days. Yes, that's right- we intend to spend 10 days in Vegas at the height of the WSOP and play poker as if it's our full-time job. We may go out a night or two when the winning is good, but for all intents and purposes, this is not a vacation- this is a business trip. I will be the first to admit, I will never quit my job to make this a career (my parents would likely gouge out my eyes if I even considered it anyways), but when I spent a weekend in Vegas a few weeks ago and generated a $1,000 profit (I could have conceivably taken the tables for over $3,000 in profit had I not pissed away a lot of it playing drunk, tired and stupid), something tells me that I at least owe it to my curiousity to see how I would fare if I played the game seriously for a prolonged period of time. We haven't decided if any of us will actually enter any of WSOP tournament events, but we fully intend to play cash games for 12-14 hours a day (if not more). I'll keep you all updated as our plans progress.

Partying / Life
Other than all the shit mentioned up top, I've been trying to enjoy the last few months I have left here in the Windy City. Like I said, although the number people in our group has decreased, I still make it a point to go out and enjoy life as often as possible. In future postings, I'll try to dictate my partying nights out with as much detail as I can (obviously details that may get me in trouble will only be verbally relayed). I must offer some details however of my recent whirlwind US tour that's still in progress. None of this was very planned , but it has all worked out well thus far (to the utter disgust of my fellow cubemates who toil away until 3am). Around the middle of March, I was still interviewing for my new job and was shacking up with my good buddy Parth (a fellow booze-hound and who shall me my guiding light in NYC) . As we discussed my potential move, he discussed his intentions to party in Miami the weekend of March 24-26 (details behind such a vacation will be kept secret to protect the whipped).

Without much arm-twisting, I was convinced to book a ticket to party with him in South Beach during the height of the Winter Music Conference AND the tail-end of Spring Break with another degenerate known as Alan (yes, he is Indian, and yes, that is his real name), and our friend Ami. I will have to write about this trip at another time, but suffice to say, Indian dudes in Miami on a peak weekend are essentially dead to any bouncer. In any case, after spending a ridiculously relaxing (and expensive) weekend in Miami, I toiled through a mundane week of work before the wheels were truly ready to come off. From March 31 until April 9th, I was to be out of the office and on vacation (yes, there is a running theme to the last few months of my life, I know). Beginning with the first weekend of March 31-April 2, I spent it celebrating my buddy Jay's transition from bachelorhood to "one-gina" hood in Austin, TX. For those of you who have never been there, let me tell you, its insanity. I don't know how any of those people got any studying done, because come Friday and Saturday night, the infamous 6th Street in Austin turns into a mini-Mardi Gras, complete with blocked streets and drunken tomfoolery in the streets.. to reiterate, on a WEEKLY basis. Without going into too many details, I dropped the ball with quite possibly the hottest white girl ever(who approached me nonetheless), puked ON the bar, and assaulted two female friends of ours (sorry again haha). Needless to say, a blow-out weekend and I WILL be back. The middle part of the week (4/3-4/6) was spent visiting the fams in the Bay Area, which consisted of lectures regarding marriage, the need to stop wasting money on frivilous expenditures, and other topics they deemed necessary (which I chose to tune out). After surviving the onslaught, I headed out to Vegas to celebrate my buddy Sachin's bachelor party (poker details above came from this trip). Imagine if you can: almost 30 dudes (with a handful of token non-indos) drinking, gambling, and partaking in other generally unspeakable behavior for 4 days and 3 nights. I have never had that much fun (and gotten such little sleep) in a while. In a nutshell, the trip consisted of beating Sachin senseless (who eventually suffered a ribcage muscle tear in the process), overtaking Body English with a 3-to-1 girl-to-guy ratio in the VIP area for us, and of course, poker. Details, of course, will be limited to protect the guilty.

So of course, one would think I would be all traveled (and partied) out, but alas, this is not the case. After spending this past weekend relaxing in Chicago (if you call three nights of boozing a slower pace), this upcoming weekend (4/21-4/23) will see me in the nation's capital visiting friends (and partying). The following weekend (4/28-4/30) will find me in Detroit for my friend Poopie's (i.e. Rupa's) graduation party (and partying), and the weekend after that (5/5-5/7) will be spent in Boston for Jay's wedding (and ridiculous amounts of partying). Future trips planned include a trip to NYC to find an apartment, more Vegas, more CA, and god only knows more of what else.

Conclusion
Clearly, today has been an extremely slow day at work (hence the reason I decide to start this blog). Hopefully, this diary gives all a little more insight into my helter-skelter life (actually, its not that cool, but I just wanted to use helter-skelter in a sentence), and at the very worst, provides you another website to waste time on while you toil away at your job wherever that may be. Please feel free to leave comments, throughts, insults, anything, just so I know people are reading- otherwise, this is a waste of my time that I can likely spend shopping or gambling instead.

Holla!