Weekend Away

So I'll be away for the long weekend. I think it'll feel good to really get away from the city for a while. Sometimes we get too used to our routine lives. I think that taking the time to immerse oneself in nature brings inner peace and calm. No one's life is predictable or on a set path, it's important to remind ourselves that our journey should be its own reward. Things don't always go our way, but being able to keep your head high and smile in whatever situation will make the whole difference.

The Zen buddhists and other eastern philosophies make a good point: In truth, happiness should not be seen as a goal attained outside of oneself. Happiness should always be found within ourselves, in the beauty of the moment. Attachment to things outside of oneself will bring you the most unhappiness. In short, the biggest pleasure in life should be achieved simply through the process of living.

Letting go of the ego and all these superfluous things we feel entitled to can be the hardest, yet simplest thing to do. Instead of letting the disappointment of our failures linger, we could have the ability to be free from outcome. This is not to say one should not have great goals, to quote Bruce Lee: "Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail."

Anyway, I hope all of us take the time to enjoy the moment this weekend!

-Athan Zafirov

Gogo Go

Short entry on a busy day. So one of my good friends wants to become a gogo dancer, bless his heart. He's planning to train intensily to get his body back in shape for it. I'm thinking of going along for the ride to motivate myself since my personal trainer has been a bit too busy lately. Today's our first session.

I wonder if he's going to do laser hair removal. Maybe I'll get him these glasses.

Instant Enlightenment for $0.99

I'm subject to taking a few more classes before getting my own piece of paper that says I've taken 90 university credits. Given my schedule, I'm not interested in spending any more effort on it than I absolutely have to, so I have made some pretty boring (almost cowardly) class choices. The current one being "Marketing Yourself", an online class about finding out who you are, what career you want, how to find it and how to present yourself in order to get it. Yes that's right, life's biggest questions answered in academia's equivalent to instant noodles for supper. Consistent with that, their answer to personal self-discovery is taking online personality tests. Yummy. Wonder if we get bonus points by playing Farmville?

Anyway there was one in particular that I remember taking a few times before. I was a bit impressed by the fact that I got the same result as I did previously (ENFP). It's called the Myers-Briggs personality type test, which has 16 personality types based on four criteria: Extravert vs. Introvert, Perceiving vs. Judging, Feeling vs. Thinking, Sensation vs. Intuition. The description of ENFP hits eerily close to home for me.

In fact it's basically more or less spot on, at least in terms of how I perceive myself to be. I'll invite you to tell me what you think if you read it. If you want to get your very own four character set label so you can print it on a t-shirt or put it on your resume to really stand out in an application pile, here's a few versions of the test:
Here
Here
and Here

With detailed descriptions listed here

Warning: Achieving knowledge of self in such a short and easy way might leave you unsatisfied, yearning for more....just like instant noodles. Which reminds me that it's almost 4pm and I haven't had lunch...

Silence is Golden

They said an investment has hit its peak when it makes the cover of a well known publication. There have been many opportunities in the last twelve months to call a top on the bullion as it continued to reach new highs. But any bearish talk on the divine metal since the financial crisis would have only served to add weight to the old saying (now copyrighted by Cineplex): "Silence is golden".

You'd think a cold hard metal with little to any industrial uses is not fit to be a modern investment vehicle. How much of a pessimist must one be in order to put faith in something as unpractical? Yet this is precisely where academic financial theory falls flat on its face. I doubt econometrics will help you either. In fact, it's downright scary to believe that buying this souless metal and letting it gather dust under your bed for 30 years would have made a better return than putting faith in the largest economy in the world.





Thankfully that's only taking into account price, with dividends included stocks would likely end up ahead.

Even more puzzling is how gold went from its usual counter-cyclical nature to a "risk-on" investment in the last few months as it moved up with the stock market. Apparently wether things are going good or bad, there's never a bad time to own it. I wonder what other arguments will come up to justify gold's highs when the U.S. joins the rest of the world in normalizing monetary policy.

Mr Mackintosh on the case: FT: Short View on commodities

I've just woken up from a "nap" that lasted between 8pm and midnight. This funky sleep schedule is a dear reminder of my pre-career lifestyle, waking up and going to sleep at any random hour in the day. Other than that I started reading Atlus Shrugged earlier today.

Smile you later

Sometimes life can get very busy and it's very easy to forget the value of a smile. I'm not exagerating when I say it can make the whole difference. Smiling instantly makes you and everyone around you feel better. You savor the good moments while shouldering the setbacks more easily. As Churchill said: "Attitude is a small thing that makes a big difference."

Meanwhile, more on Chinese "growth"

.

Nosunday

I'm slightly emotional about this now. How cool.

So what happened today? Well the chief of the Chief of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), got arrested for attempted rape in New York as he boarded a plane to Paris. Having seen a few interviews with him, it's a real shame that such a deeply intellectual and charismatic guy like him basically ruined his career, and especially his chances of taking presidency in France, where he until recently led the pre-election polls. Other women came out to talk about his sexually aggressive vice, "Who hasn't been cornered by Strauss-Kahn?" said one. I'm a bit perplexed by it, but it seems to be a perfect example of a very high achieving logical thinker who has lack of control over his inner-animal and his urges, letting them go wild in an inappropriate amount, time and place. Lacking life balance is excusable as long as it doesn't grow to proportions that cause you to misjudge a situation and act out in such an unforgivable way. Extreme life unbalances can be so self-destructive. It may also be a case of an extremely large ego that won't take no for an answer, again fueled by neglected wants and needs.

My taste for adventure is pretty great. I certainly wouldn't take a political role right now if I was offered it. Does adventure necessarily entail illegal, hurtful or politically incorrect behaviour? Thankfully not. For me the greatest feelings of adventure come from really living in the moment, with no regard for past or future. The risk of misbehaving in those moments is there, but I always draw the line at the criminal, the grossly unethical, the hurtful and basically all the negative things. But to approach anything resembling balance given my 60-hour a week investment strategy career, the need for adventure in my life as a 23 year old is unquestioned.

Anyway today was a very rainy lazy Sunday. I'm not even sure where the time went, but I did cook. A low-carb meal, semi-consistent with the paleo diet idea I was recently entertaining, consisting of boiled vegetables and feta and smoked salmon salad. Not bad, but it didn't hit the spot. Had to fill up on yet more pizza...

I woke up next to Kim my new girlfriend today. Although a strong thirst for adventure might seem to clash with having a relationship, I feel Kim relates to this part of me. No stranger to adventure, Kim has seen a lot of the world in her many travels. She's in touch with her emotions and responsible about them, sensitive but independent, open-minded but well grounded.

I'm moving towards greater career-oriented balance these days. The half-year review was a bit of a wake-up call and I realized that my lifestyle up until recently wasn't ideally calibrated for the international finance career I've been working towards these past few years. The constant outings earlier in the year were fun and lively, with many experiences, but came at a cost. Constantly living in the moment clashed a lot with my longer term goals, and I no longer took as much pleasure from my job. This became evident to my team and after being confronted about it, I realized that this job really was something I wanted very deeply. Losing it would be a big career blow, and would be very hard to recover from. Not worth risking for a few more relatively empty one night stands. Picking up women was a great way for me to learn about myself and the world. A friend of mine wondered how I could be so motivated by offering sex to women. I thought about it and I realized that it was much more the journeys that really fulfilled me, not the sex. Empty sex never feels very good anyway. Sex was simply a motivational tool to push me to go on these journeys, but now I feel that I've developed a real taste simply for connecting with others.

Anyway I'll end it there for now. Here's to a little bit of shut eye before work.

Song I'm listening to
Ridiculous/fun video with lots of small tits
Cool pics of crazy logistics

Yet Another Step, Yet Another Stop

Welcome to Athan Zafirov's blogger. I'll try to update it as often as I find worthwhile things to write about. Things that touch me or make me think...no matter what they are. Why start this blog now? Well, a few things. I love to write for one. Expressing my thoughts is a way to keep touch with my individuality. Being open about my thinking also allows me to be the important people in my life to know what's up. It could also be a way for friends to get to know me better at their own leisure. Life is busy and it's hard to keep in touch, and especially hard to share greater thoughts in the moments we feel the biggest urge to. Through this blog, you'll be able to read about me when I felt like talking about myself the most at exactly the moment you felt like hearing about me the most. Now isn't that fucking efficient? It's a way for me to be open about my life agenda and a way to keep track and iron out my thinking and improve its consistency. I guess it's what you could call another step up my self-growth staircase (and a way to release the mental flow, especially on sleepless nights such as these).

I've also been recently writing quite a bit on one of the forums I frequent. I put quite a bit of effort in some of those posts so someone recommended I should start a blog.

Finally, the recent passing of a cousin made me appreciate how beautifully fragile life is. This blog would be a way to keep track of my own journey through it, so that myself and some of you curious people can look back at my life should we feel like it. I guess you could say that our thoughts are the purest definition of who we are, and to be able to keep track of them with so much detail is a real gift. -Athan Zafirov