Summer Wind

I heard a commercial this afternoon saying, "Summer is almost over." I can't believe that Labor Day is only a mere week away. I forgot how short the season is back on the East Coast. In Hong Kong, "summer" can last from March through November. Singapore, only ninety miles from the equator, is in a sort of perpetual summer, with hardly a day far off eighty-eight degrees and full humidity. Honestly, I can't even say I've been particularly hot on any given day since I've been home.

But it's been a fun summer. Since I got back from Chincoteague, I've again been filling my free time with mini-adventures in New York City and suburban Jersey. One of my favorite Manhattan summer traditions is the weekly al fresco movie in Bryant Park. I made it to three this year, seeing A Foreign Affair, The Women, and, last week's grand finale, E.T. Surrounded by the neighboring towers, with lights in the trees and the New York Public Library standing proud in the background, the park is a perfect setting for the event.

I also enjoyed chilling out in the park after work with friends, waiting for the movie to start. We brought in pizza and other food and watched as the sky darkened and the crowds filed in. Before the movie proper, they always showed a vintage Looney Tunes short, featuring the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd.

And this year, Magnum Ice Cream was one of the series' sponsors and operated a pop-up booth in the park selling delicious ice cream bars, dipped before your eyes in either dark or milk chocolate, and topped with your choice of deluxe toppings, like sea salt, toasted coconut, crushed caramel, blue sesame seeds, honey roasted almonds and pretzels. Although E.T. finished off the series as far as the films are concerned, I know I'll be back in the park before summer is over, if only to indulge in one last Magnum bar at the temporary gem.

The Lawn at Bryant Park before A Foreign Affair, with the Library in the background

Of course, there's plenty more than free outdoor movies to keep me busy in New York. One night, a colleague guest bartended at McFadden's on 3rd Avenue and invited the company. There was the Happy Hour of the Three Pauls a couple of weeks ago, where a group of mostly Nova '09 alumni (including three with the same first name) met up for a few drinks on a Wednesday night after work. There was the Indian dinner with my friend Riva, who I hadn't seen since she left Hong Kong over a year ago.  And a memorable night out on picturesque Stone Street, around the corner from my office. Yes, it's been great catching up with so many old friends over the course of the summer.

The Happy Hour of the Three Pauls 

  

One of the other brokers on my desk, named Grace, was actually born and bred in Hong Kong, and one Thursday about two weeks ago, she took me and three other coworkers to dinner at Shanghai Café in Chinatown. We had my favorite xiao long bao, the soupy pork-filled dumplings that were one of my favorite foods in Asia, and that I sincerely missed in my American life. Although the Chinatown version were a notch below the ones I first fell in love with at Crystal Jade, it's nice knowing that while I'm home, I don't have to go far to find them. And wandering around Chinatown before and after the meal, I realized that my pangs of Asian homesickness can be easily remedied. Why did I wait so long to go there?

Not all the adventures are in the city though. One Wednesday night I took my train a few stops past home, alighting at Red Bank instead of Matawan, to catch a screening of the original Raiders of the Lost Ark in the restored Count Basie Theater with my dad. A free showing of one of the most popular movies of all time in memory-filled Red Bank (near where I went to high school) was a great mid-week celebration. A pair of other Wednesdays, I stopped in Journal Square in Jersey City on the way home, where a Farmer's Market dishes out fresh baked goods and produce with the art deco Loew's Jersey movie palace in the background.

 

But some of the nicest, most relaxing nights, were ones when I didn't embark on any adventure at all: the nights I made a beeline for the PATH train and headed back home as early as I possibly could. TCM, the movie channel, began showing vintage Johnny Carson interviews on Monday nights, usually a bundle of five, introduced by Conan O'Brien and featuring some of America's most legendary personages: Ronald Reagan, Mary Tyler Moore, Neil Simon, Shelly Winters, Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, Jonathan Winters and George Burns. I was only vaguely familiar with Carson before that first night I watched the interviews, but I became a devoted fan almost immediately. Although it was only for about a month, I hope positive feedbacks leads to this becoming a Monday night mainstay. I also forgot how much I enjoy watching shows like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. I'm glad to have them back in my life again.

Weekends, too, are mostly spent in Jersey. I had this sort of idea that I'd be out late in the city Friday and Saturday nights and just wind up crashing on friends' couches. Honestly, though, I enjoy gallivanting around New York during the week and find myself spending my weekends with my family. On most Fridays, I take the ferry from Pier 11 to Hoboken—a welcome respite from the standard first leg of my commute home on the crowded PATH train—and catch the New Jersey Transit train from the beautiful Hoboken Terminal that gets me to Matawan pretty early.

A shot of Lower Manhattan I took from the Hoboken ferry one Friday afternoon

Earlier today, for example, I drove down to Monmouth Executive Airport in Wall, New Jersey, where the Collings Foundation was showcasing three WWII-era aircraft as part of their Wings of Freedom national tour. The airworthy planes make their rounds across the country, where they are then opened for the public to explore. Learning about the history of the planes and maneuvering through their narrow passages was a very cool way to spend my Sunday.

                                                                                            

Making it especially cool was the high number of veterans touring the planes with their children and grandchildren. One such man behind me in line was telling about how he had been on the last combat mission of the war, on August 15th, 1945, just before the Japanese surrendered. What an opportunity to learn firsthand about such a significant era of our nation's history.

Of course, living in Jersey and working in Manhattan means that I'm spending a lot of time on a train. Commuting, in the beginning, was my least favorite part of the day. But over the nearly three months I've been home, I've not only grown to tolerate the commute, I've actually started to relish it. Over three-and-a-half years in Hong Kong and Singapore, I only found the time to read a mere handful of books. Since I've been home, I've actually read more than all the time I was overseas. That hour-and-fifteen-minute window in each direction has given me ample time to hit the books again. 

But the thing I like the most about working out of our New York office is the very social environment. People think of business as being very individual, sitting alone in a cubicle with no contact with other human beings. Our office is completely the opposite. Basically, there are two desks in the room where I work. (A desk is a term for a group of people who sit near one another and trade similar securities. Contrary to its singular grammatical form, a desk—in the financial sense of the word—is actually made up of several physical desks pushed together, or, sometimes, a few feet apart from each other.) Each broker on a desk has at least one telephone and several computer screens each with different purposes.

The first desk in my office is the high grade corporate bond desk, trading mostly domestic bonds issued by companies, where I trained back in 2009 before moving to Hong Kong. The second is the emerging markets desk, specializing in debt from up-and-coming economic powers mainly in Latin America, further subdivided between EM corporates (debt issued by foreign companies) and EM sovereigns (debt issued by foreign governments). While I'm home, I sitting with the emerging markets sovereign brokers.

It is a very noisy environment. People are constantly on the phones trying to put together trades. Of course, there are lulls in the trading action, especially during these slower summer months. But when this happens, people wind up talking with their neighbors or even across desks. There are televisions on all day playing CNBC, with complete coverage of the markets, major developments and what is going on in the world. This is often a good catalyst for conversation and keeps us all up to date with current events. Discussion topics cover everything, from politics to entertainment to food. It is not rare for there to be ten different conversations going on at once; it is just as common for there to be one communal conversation between all fifteen or so people.

Just as quickly as the lull started, it can turn into action. Imagine my customer calls me to say he is looking to buy one million Brazilian government bonds at a specific price. This is where coordination comes into play. I would then shout out to the desk what bonds I am looking for, and, along with my colleagues, start making phone calls and using Bloomberg to try to find another customer who is able to sell these bonds. You see, the desk works together on the trade, and having eight brokers on the hunt, so to speak, means the desk is eight times more likely to find a seller, and, hopefully, arrive at a price at which to trade.

These past months, I've been getting invaluable experience working on an uber-active desk. The shouting back and forth of prices, the dissemination of information, the camaraderie amongst the fifteen or so brokers in the one room: all something I never really got in Hong Kong and Singapore. I know when I am back building up the desk, I have a great example to follow, and I look forward to it.

So, as I said, although I can't believe the summer is almost over, I've definitely found a nice balance between keeping busy and staying relaxed. It's been a positive experience so far, and I'm looking forward to more memorable experiences while I'm stateside.