October 1997

Well, as I promised the next installment. For the first time in my life, a few weeks ago I played

GOLF

Yes, golf, the game of the dead and the soon-to-be, as it appears to be in Sarasota, Florida (my hometown), which, as I tell people, was founded exclusively for the purpose of playing golf. (Yes, it doesn't count the fish-drying industry, but....) Now, it wasn't the first time I had played, in the sense that it wasn't the first time I had ever touched a club: on two separate occasions my friends had actually convinced me to go to a driving range and learn how to, er, drive, or really just hit golf balls a long way, which sometimes I did, when they actually went somewhere. In point of fact, I was horribly inconsistent. Inconsistent, as in fellow golf players should wear helmets, or indeed, armored codpieces. Yes, all the agility and grace I lend to eating and dancing I channeled into my golf playing, with similar results, namely, an embarrassed silence. Actually, though, I am a extraordinary player, in the sense that I do not get emotionally involved with the game. So what if I swing and miss? No problem, I am in a Berkeley-Buddhist handicap/no-handicap form of caring/not-caring about golf/not-golf. Others (others! sniff.) may be preoccupied with scores, or even scoring -- that is because they were an evil slug or cassowary in a previous life, whereas I, I, I can look above it all and see that golf, like any game, is something higher than knocking a little tiny ball with malformed sticks around an enormous pesticide-fed lawn laced with ditches and sand playpits.

And it was that sense of detachment which incited my friends to invite me to golf. They knew that with me, a shroud of leisure such as only can be woven by the most hopelessly incompetent competitor would descend on the game, and all would be well. Plus the fact that they only had two people. So I went, playing nine holes. We even got GOLF CARTS. This is apparently a hidden joy of golfing. I drove mine, citing a need to practice for the real thing some day, i.e., learning to drive in the real-world, as opposed to golf-world sense (Note: in golf-world, people will pay $600 for one club. The head will be made of titanium and be sized/shaped like a deflated football. Not my world). Under normal circumstances, every breath you inhale is tithed at a golf course, but luckily this was a public one, and we went late in the day, so we were discount-golf-car-riding maniacs. I felt like a power-drunk Shriner as I executed tight surgical maneuvers such as:

going from one hole to another;
staying on the path while going in reverse;
picking up my ball off the ground while the car is in motion, with the other hand on the steering wheel, much as the Mongol Hordes plucked the heads of their enemies off the ground during an exhausting game of Enemy Head Polo;
driving on the green (oops, that is a big no-no. They spend a lot of time repairing that thing -- the green is the perfectly manicured section that you do final putting on -- it is not meant for you to rip across it a la les Ducs du Hazard);
gunning the engine while my team member Doug was trying to scramble on board and prevent me from dislocating his shoulder; and
driving on a moderately slanted surface without tipping the cart over and crushing myself to death.

We played best ball, which more than made up for our collective incompetence (I was a quite a charitable contributor to this collection). In this version of the fame, you all shoot, and everybody shoots the next ball from where the "best ball" (the one that got closest to the hole) arrived. Naturally this means that there is not a great deal of variability in scoring, but it does make the game go a lot faster. Due to my patented Random Driving Action, I actually got in a few good shots here and there, although my two friends were much more consistent. Indeed, they almost always hit the ball when they wanted. I was not always so lucky, several times doing Looney-Toons-like spins.

So have I become (in golf parlance) a hacker or (in regular people's parlance) Satan in green pants? No, I don't think so. Remember, one night of karaoke does not a Japanese salaryman make, and likewise one round of golf does not mean that one will be shopping for cleated white bucks the next day. I mean, it was OK, but really, let's be blunt -- it is a dumb game. But my colleague Dan is a convert. He started playing AFTER I did, and now he can't stop, and wants to buy golf clubs and the little glove and all the other junk. (Editor's Note: He actually did buy all the crap soon after.) It makes realize, I may be an MBA, but I was not born to it. But in case I forget there is always

RECRUITING

to remind me, job recruiting, that is. That's right, all my classes are now pathetic jokes. You will be lucky if I even bother to enumerate what they are, though I will tell you one is about international tax shelters -- sweet, huh? And you thought they didn't teach anything useful here. I think this collective vacancy is intended to help us to focus on recruiting. I picked up a package from the career center: average starting salary for last year's class was $76,000/year. Is this possible for me? Maybe -- I am interested in consulting, I have realized (because finance sucks, can I say that? I think I can. These letters aren't going up on my webpage, and if they do, I will edit out any previous harsh words), and that pays well, and may get me overseas, like to the UK or Spain or some such nonsense. Actually, I wouldn't mind a job if it has some international work (Sylvia/Alec: play find the hint in this sentence) and were based here in the US (in some place, oh, like the Bay Area).

How does it all work? Lots of resumes, blah blah blah, and then the recruiters ask their summer interns, are these folks any good? Keep in mind we have no idea how most companies selected their summer interns, other than maybe a dart board, so people select their friends, thus
increasing the inherent distortion. I have partially benefited from one such instance, but I need more to get the Cool Job. Ah, well, we'll see. Interviews start in one month! I want to have a job by December. Is this possible? (Editor's Note: later on, Fate said No, but it did send me to Spain later.) Hmmm, well, this time we'll see how marketable I really am.

By the way, I am still at International House, for the non-MBA social life, two minute walk to school, etc. I have a bay view now. It means I get sun during the afternoon (which can turn your room into the equivalent of a mammoth light-bulb-operated playstove if you don't keep your window open), as well as view of the sunset over San Francisco Bay, which kicks butt.

Enough, enough! Write me. Then I will actually write something personalized.

Daniel

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