A friend of mine prepares to leave to start a new life overseas. I wrote the following letter to share the reflections I have about my own voyage on this New Year’s eve since I left my country:

I write this from Rio over the New Year amidst the madness of the 3 million people who have descended on the beaches for bacchanality. If Heaven and Hell meets at some point, it has to be at Rio with its idyllic beaches, miserable favelas and indifferent tourists. This madness makes me reminsce about the paradox of my first year at Penn: how one can be among so many people at once and yet feel so alone.

This paradox is the life of a wanderer/ a global citizen/ an international hobo. Leaving Singapore, I thought I would conquer the world. Instead, I am humbled as I seek my place in it. Once I left, every place and every bed becomes a hotel rather than a home, a transit point in an endless journey towards an unknown destination. I now yearn to discover a new home disentangled from the geographic roots that define the word “home.” I would never have guessed how far down the rabbit hole goes when I stepped onto the plane that fateful morning at 3am but I do not regret my decision to wander for it has made me a better person (or at least far less of a bore).

I envy you! Like Alice in Wonderland, you stand at the edge of a rabbit-hole for which the end is not in sight, but the adventure beckons. Blessed as you are with wit and charm, beauty and intellgience, I picture you riding through this exciting journey as a rocker with a kickass attitude. Like Alice, you will return a Queen – with the maturity and grace and the haughtiness and jadedness of one who has taken the path less travelled. Oh how I envy you as you prepare to take these steps to an unknown future so full of hope, potential and possibilities!

The question remains of what lies at the end and I glimpsed that in in my friends. The first year in Penn, I met you and the CIS gang. With those precious friendships and precious memories I understood that perhaps the “home” I seek is not rooted in place but in people – the people I love and cherish. Hopefully I am a little wiser for this discovery and I hope that my thoughts will accompany you in the whirlwind of days as you speed to your destiny. I wish you Bon Voyage, happy new year and hope and pray that our paths will cross again and frequently.

When I arrived at Buenos Aires, I counted the number of advertisements for Samsung. Their advertisements held prominent positions, in the most visible areas, in the most crowded avenues. What was surprising was that the number of advertisements outstripped those of its developed country competitors. I recalled where else I had seen this situation and it was in Vietnam.

This reminded me of a friend I met at a conference in South Korea. Some years down the road, I heard that he had been assigned to set up Hyundai´s operations in the Czech Republic. I also recalled my visit to Cuba, where most of the new cars on the street belonged to Hyundai.

I wonder if South Korean companies have discovered a niche in frontier markets. Are they forced to come here to avoid saturated developed markets? Are they successful in these markets? How is this affecting their overall growth and strategy (especially in relation to their home market)? Have they developed resources unique to overcoming the challenges in these markets?

La Boca is situated at the outskirts of Buenos Aires in the heartlands of the urban poor. Their soccer team, the Boca Juniors, just won the championship and I can hear the cheers from the street spilling into the confines of my hostel.

This dockyard area is supposedly one of the rougher areas of the city, and tourists are advised against crawling out of the safety of the touristy streets. However, I could not resist the allure of photographing abandoned warehouses - an obsession I discovered in Philadelphia. I found myself walking around the wharf without incident, but I am increasingly paranoid each time a stranger walks up to me to tell me to watch my bag and camera. I counted 11 so far.

The tourist streets are home to colourful buildings, artisans and Tango performers strutting their stuff to dining tourists. At the end of one performance, both performers mimicked a kiss without touching lips. This made me think about how heritage is packaged and sold in a way that produces a weak simulacrum for the tourist. Tango is an expression of passion between lovers. In a performance, lovers become performers, and the electricity that comes from passion is dissipated.

I arrived in Buenos Aires after watching replays of Matrix and A.I. on my airplane from Miami. Miami came as a culture shock: it seemed as if all the service staff spoke Spanish and all the customers spoke Spanish. I felt sheepish speaking English, and I considered pulling out my Spanish phrasebook when I got to the counter.

After I checked into my hostel, I walked into the nearest supermercado (supermarket) to buy water. I noticed that it was run by Chinese and I heard the familiar wafts of Mandarin as the staff chatted among themselves. I thought this was pure coincidence until after I passed another supermercado run by Chinese and another and another…It turns out that the Chinese have a near monopoly on the laundry and supermarket industry here (except for large chains).

They immigrated here in the early 1900s because of permissive Argentinean immigration laws and have remained largely un-integrated into the general society. I suspect the Argentineans who see me on the street believe I run a supermercado too. Perhaps I can ask a girl here if I can wisk her away to our supermercado paradiso?

I am about to embark on a 41 day trek through South America. The map above captures my proposed itinerary. I have to admit that at this point, I only have the vaguest of idea about my travel route. I only know that I will arrive and depart from Buenos Aires, and have to prepare to hike the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu on January 12. All other plans will revolve around these two fixed points. My next few blog entries will hopefully be less dry as I regale with tales from my adventures.

It feels surreal leaving college. Rushing to finish papers for conference presentation, packing up and saying goodbye to friends have left me so busy that I have yet to realize that this really is the end to a wonderful life at Penn.

(Las Vegas, USA) Welcome to the Good Life…

I stand at the edge of a precipice. In another three days, I will finish the last final I will ever take as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. In another three days, I will climb aboard a plane and head to South America for a long-deserved holiday. In another three days, I will complete 2.5 years of study at the Wharton School culminating with a title captured in three words (Bachelor of Science), Greek letters (Summa Cum Laude), and a list of other scholarly titles. But this is not the end of learning, thinking and questioning…or to my academic career. With luck, I will be doing a Masters next year and possibly a PhD after that.

A friend asked me what I learned in the last 2.5 years at college. The most important lesson I take away from university is developing a fuller appreciation of who I am and what I want. I learned that I am an individual, with my own unique passions that should not be subsumed by how others believe I should live my life. I also used university to explore. I remember telling my middle school teacher that the last thing I would do in life is to teach. I ended up breaking my vow in university.

I remember talking to my Negotiations class professor on the last day of class. He quit the legal profession to teach full-time after realizing that teaching makes him happy. His class explores negotiation but more importantly, it explores his life. He believes that succeeding at negotiations is about understanding what a good outcome is. In life, he his good outcome after many years is practicing as a lawyer. And his words sums up 2.5 years at Penn for me: it is about understanding what a good outcome means to me.

The sight of the Grand Canyon was worth the 14 hour bus ride there from Las Vegas.

The next time I am back here, I plan to hike through the Grand Canyon.

(Las Vegas, USA)

Las Vegas’ streets are lined with pamphlets peddling the oldest trade. Prostitution is well and alive in Las Vegas and out of curiosity I took one of the brochures back to the hostel to study it. A casual glance reveals that the most common sales pitch was “I am a college girl trying to pay my college fees.” I wonder why this sales pitch is effective. Perhaps it appeals at two levels: it signals that the prostitute is young and it delineates a power relationship where the prostitute is (supposedly) under the thumb of her paying customer.

I also noted that some prostitutes advertise themselves as represented by an “agency” while others were free agents. There should be economic advantages to both approaches. Having middlemen could lead to increased sales or better protection. However, if the industry is legalized, prostitutes are given proper legal and police protection, and a fully-functioning market develops (i.e. advertising…etc.) it should reduce the need for middlemen or agency representation. Perhaps an agency in Las Vegas is meant as a risk reduction method. The agency takes on the costs of marketing the prostitute, reducing the upfront investment from the prostitute.

(Las Vegas, USA) Gambling in Fremont is far less glamorous, far more seedier.

Over thanksgiving, I visited Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Las Vegas is fascinating because it is an artifact of human hubris: the belief that if you build it, they will come. And people do come. As the receptionist at the hostel I stayed at said, “Las Vegas is open everyday. Even on Christmas!” It is a city built on consumption agglomeration economies: an entertainment experience that can only be found here because of the masses of people who come here to consume. I wonder if this would make Las Vegas more sensitive to the current economic downturn.

My hostel is located at Fremont Street, where the original Las Vegas was founded. I had a sense of foreboding as I took the public bus when some passengers volunteered that the street I stayed at was the worst street in Vegas. I remember seeing an arrest made on the street every night I went back to my hostel. When I checked in on my first night, I asked the receptionist about safety. He asked me where I was from and I said “Philadelphia.” He laughed and said, “Don’t worry. At least it’s [the street] is not Philly.”

(New York City, US) Outside the Guggeinheim

Out of the blue, I received an invitation to attend a Fall Institute Program by DE Shaw & Co. in New York City. Not knowing anything about the firm, I went online only to find a sparsely-worded website. I needed a ticket to New York to pick up some visas for my upcoming trip to South America, so I gladly accepted the offer believing I would come out a little more educated about a new organization. I was glad I went for it as it turned out to be a fascinating firm.

The firm describes itself as a quasi-think tank. The firm culture appears to bear the strong imprint of its founders who stem from academia. Dress code is relaxed and more importantly, the selection criteria is heavily oriented towards people with strong academic or art interests, not necessarily related to the quantitative strategies that firm employs in its trading activities. The employees I met had a wide range of external interests, including studying the history of Chinese immigrants in Mexico, painting, writing mystery novels or drama scripts outside of work. Incidentally, the founder has retired from hedge fund work to build a non-profit research arm dedicated to primary computational biochemistry research. The firm facilitates these external interests.

The question I find interesting is whether this provides a competitive advantage to hiring or if it simply reflects the idiosyncrasies of the firm’s founders. A firm representative argued that whereas investment banks depend in part on their franchise—the ability to tap their extensive distribution channels to push products—the hedge fund industry is more open to competition from anywhere as anyone can (relative to starting an investment bank) easily start a hedge fund that produces results quickly and attract investors. Thus, the firm argues that attracting the most intelligent people is the key to long-term success. The firm dedicates a significant portion of resources to hiring. About a tenth of their core staff are dedicated to full-time recruiting. Like consulting firms, they also expand their recruiting to cover students in “non-traditional” disciplines to broaden their candidate pool.

If this is their true competitive advantage, the question I want to resolve is whether facilitating external interests provides a competitive advantage given that the firm already rewards its employees extremely well financially. This would be true if the following conditions hold:

1. There is a very small pool of talent that the firm MUST recruit from
2. People have external interests that they want to pursue
3. There are enough competitors for these candidates

Pt. 1 is crucial because if there is a large enough candidate pool, a firm can simply find enough individuals who would be willing to sacrifice external interests for the job. That is we can think of external interests as a drain on company resources (e.g. less time or attention for company work) and a large pool simply competes away the “rents” distributed to employees.
The other possibility is that being creative outside of work somehow allows employees to be more creative at work. I am unsure if this applies to the hedge fund industry.