What We Can Learn From Hannibal

I feel like it's about time I did a bigger post! Plus I'm bored tonight, and I don't feel like studying.

I read the Hannibal books a long time ago (in the distant times when I had the time to read normal books), and one of the things that struck me about the man was the mansion in his mind. The details of this mansion are but degenerating memories in my mind, but some parts are supported by links with other things I have since learned. Hannibal used his mansion as two things if I recall correctly -- as both a storage place of memories and knowledge, but also as a place that he could retreat to at any time, a place all of his own and removed completely from the reality that his body remained surrounded by. In year 5 our teacher taught us some relaxation techniques and my classmates and I went with it because really it just gave us an hour to sleep in class. But one thing did stick with me. She told us to create a place in our minds that was the most relaxing place to us that is possible, and keep it in the back of our thoughts and always return to it and imagine ourselves to be walking through it when we needed to remove ourselves from life for a moment. She told us that, and when she gave us a chance to try it my mind immediately went to task and in my mind's eye blossomed the most beautiful scene. And in all these years that place has remained completely unchanged. I won't give details of my place because that isn't the point -- despite irrationally not wanting someone else in my space, it should be up to you to know what you would find the most relaxing, and have a place of your own.

But my place is not as real as Hannibal's mansion is to him. He experiences his mansion as though his feet were actually on its carpets, his lungs breathing its air, his eyes seeing its displays (for that was the nature of his storage of ideas - putting them on display). Not only does my place function as nothing more than a place to relax and separate myself from the world, I experience it as though I am forcing it upon my mind. I think that is why Hannibal's construct struck me so strongly, because it represents something that I desire very much. This 'method of loci' technique may also help me to learn the immense and unending lists of things that I need to learn for medicine (possibly the start of Hannibal's use, too!). Method of loci is used by almost all memory champions, and if it can work for them then I would be willing to try.

Also, apologies for my last blog post. I wasn't having a good night!

The other night I was sitting with some high school students who are at the college as part of a program showing them what university is like, and to inspire them to attend I guess. I would have liked to have sat with my medicine friends but their entire table was filled with people from the college not wanting to sit with high schoolers, so I just sat with the younglings. At first I didn't say much, as is probably normal with me, but then I broached conversation with them by asking normal things like what were they doing at the college. These boys were probably the kind of kids that I wouldn't have been friends with in high school -- a bit too loud, very competitive, etc. However a couple of them became interested when I said that I was in medicine, that we got into a proper conversation. Much of it consisted of them asking me about my course, and about my future, but we eventually turned to talking about their futures. One of them said that he wanted to be an astronaut but the others laughed at him, and the others didn't say that they knew what they wanted to do (I presume some of them simply didn't want to be laughed at too). But I started to talk to them about what I had to do to get to where I am, and the amount of work that I had to put in. And by now about half or more of the table of boys were listening to me, and the tone of the conversation had turned greatly -- it was much less them and I talking, it was now more me talking to each of them individually, and as such they were much more open in their responses. I talked to them about the regrets that I have had in the past, and the things that I would have done differently if I could go back to their age. At this point the entire table was listening to me. I told the boy who had said that he wanted to be an astronaut that if he but started now doing a small amount of study per night, and kept it up, by the time he was in year 12 (a few years away for them) he would have the whole world at his feet, and he would only be a few small steps away from living his dream. No one was laughing at him now, none of them were talking at all! It's as if I had removed some long standing obstacle, and the gears of their brains were turning at full speed, imagining the possibilities. We talked for a bit longer, before their teachers brought them away, but quite a number of them thanked me for talking to them and one even said thanks for the inspiring words. I really enjoyed that conversation, and I sincerely do hope that some of them were inspired to put in the small effort now, so that their future is disproportionately easier.

We went ice skating last night with some of my friends, and it was absolutely brilliant to get away from the tedium of study. A number of the people who went are my friends already, from college or just from medicine, but a few I didn't know but proved to be very nice people indeed. One of my better friends from college and I both decided to try out proper hockey skates, and wow did they make no small amount of difference! By the end of the night I was properly running on the ice in that manner that hockey players do to get up speed, and taking corners in that way that looks so smooth. I did a small amount of damage to my feet though, with several blisters appearing because I hadn't worn socks that were thick enough to pad them. To be fair I don't actually have thick enough socks because I left them in Perth, but I should have bought some or something.

Anyway, in medicine we're in neuroscience block and even though people all year have told us that it's the worst block I'm actually loving it! Well, I've never liked learning the cranial nerve nuclei and I have to learn them now, but aside from that it's all fantastic. Even the physical exams and the patient interviews have effortlessly imprinted themselves on my mind. 

Yesterday too I bought a new phone -- the galaxy s4 -- but today the company that I bought it from said that I needed to provide proof of who I am by sending them, including other things, a utility bill with my name on it. Well, I live at college...we don't get utility bills. So I've had to email them back and ask them to cancel the order. It's sort of easy for me to go directly to their store, so I'll maybe do that tomorrow. The news has come out tonight though that Verizon is set to reveal their new line of motorola droids on july 23rd which isn't too far away, so on the off chance that the motorola X is revealed at the same time, and on the off chance that it's a more attractive option than the galaxy s4, favour may pay the one who waits a few more days with refunded cash in hand... In other but related news I finally got around to getting my forms to the college and now they can pay me for the tutoring I did last semester. I think it's actually going to come to quite a handsome amount, which should hopefully pay for me a tablet computer! I'm thinking of getting the galaxy note 8.0.

Well this post did end up being one of a reasonable size, but I have run out of things to blog about which is a sure sign that probably you have already passed the point of being boring! Haha. So here I shall sign off.

Till next time!
Circle

Contracts For Difference

Hola!

A long time ago I used to not be into medicine at all, and was in fact well and truly obsessed with contracts for difference (CFDs). Why were you so obsessed with them, I hear you ask? Well, it's pretty simple. Basically, trading a CFD is the same as trading a share, except for the same change in price in the underlying security you make either a much greater loss or a much higher profit. For example, the other day I was trading USD/AUD with a leverage of about 99.75%. Normal share trading you can think of, for the purposes of comparison, as a CFD with a leverage of 0%. What you get is what you can pay for. With the CFD I was trading the other day, I was only having to come up with 0.25% of the total value of the goods I was trading. Now when something increases in price by $2, if you buy at the bottom price and sell at the top price you only get $2 for every share you were able to buy. If I was to buy that without using CFDs, I might only be able to buy a few hundred of those shares because my money isn't being leveraged. However, if I was to buy with a CFD I could leverage my money and have the buying power of say $10000, without actually having anywhere near that amount. Now I can buy many more than a few hundred of those shares, and so even though the price difference is still just $2 I am now making a much grander profit. 

The downside to this of course is that if it had gone down $2, I could have just put my family into bankruptcy (quite literally -- leverage can be extremely powerful in CFDs, such as my 99.75% example above). At the moment I use extremely tight stop losses (automatic levels that you set where, if the share trades at that value, it automatically sells them for you, to 'stop' your 'loss' hence the name) and I only trade in small amounts. However, it's still easy to see how powerful these things are: I think I traded 2 units of gold, which I needed to put I think $6 on the line for (that's instead of having to put out about $3000 to have 2 ounces of gold...). The share price went the way I thought it would, and I took a profit pretty quickly, and the profit ended up being $10. That's $10 above my $6, so by the end I had $16 on top of my reserve cash. Now, you're probably thinking 'so what, that's $10, who cares!' but think about this: that ends up being a 167% profit. Now, change my $6 into $6000, and all of a sudden out of that small price movement I've made a clear $10000. $6000 usually would only have bought me about 4 ounces of gold if I had no leverage, so my profit would have only been about $20 ($5 per ounce, because before I owned 2 ounces and made $10). You can clearly see that a $20 profit after putting $6000 on the line is not quite as good as a $10000 profit for putting the same amount of money on the line.

So, if there's so much profit to be made out there by the calm and logical investor, why didn't I go into it! Well, I read a very wise share trader once say that to be a day trader you can't do it on the side -- it has to replace a job. It takes a lot of time to watch the markets, and be in a position of knowledge about the share price, rather than guessing where you think it's going to go. At the time when I was thinking about going into CFDs in a big way, I just couldn't see myself sitting at a computer all day as being much fun. And if it really did happen in a big way for me, if I retired in a couple of years with a billion dollars in my pocket (my dreams were big, ok) then what? There's only so much you can sit on a beach sipping cocktails! At that time as well I was getting veeeery interested in medicine, so I decided that I would give medicine a go and see where it takes me. Of course my attitude to medicine is now very different -- even if I could be guaranteed of billions in CFDs I wouldn't stop pursuing medicine -- and I'm very glad that I decided to not go into CFDs.

As mentioned though, I have been doing the odd trade here and there recently, and as long as I don't put much money into it it could be just a nice distraction. I intend to set up a trade in the morning, and not touching it again until the evening, seeing what happened with it and learning about what went wrong for about 5 minutes. If it could be a nice little earner on the side as I go through these next years then that would be pretty nice!

Regards,

Circle

A Taste for Clothes

When I moved to college, I was told that we'd have several black tie events. Coming to college I'd only owned one business shirt, let alone a suit, and let alone a tuxedo, so be told that in 2 short weeks I'd need to be able to deck myself out in finery was quite a shock to the system. So, having just recently worked out how to use EFTPOS (I was afraid I'd swipe the card the wrong way and look like an idiot...or something), I went to the city in search of a tux.

I found a menswear shop that had a large banner saying some big discount sale happening plastered over the front of the store, so I hopped right in. The first thing that I said to the salesman was that I needed a tuxedo, and so he proceeded, like any salesman would given the opportunity, to sell me something that was anything but a tuxedo. At the time I was thrilled to bits with it -- my first suit! -- but after consulting my most informed friend on these matters I was told that it was in fact a business suit. A good business suit, but a business suit nonetheless. Back to the drawing board.

Like any good scientist, I researched the topic. I quickly entered a world of shawl vs peaked vs notched, winged vs turn down, and satin faced vs self faced. I found that the tuxedo looks deceptively similar to the business suit -- but in fact there are several critical factors that separate the two, even down to whether the trousers have hems or not. I searched for and wide on the subject: on current styles, on styles that I liked, on styles that are definitely out of fashion. I researched etiquettes, standards and optionals. I profess now to be a slight expert on the black tie event in general, and especially on the correct components of a man's tuxedo. I thoroughly enjoyed learning all that I could on the matter, because it's a part of life that I haven't ever been a part of before. Woe betide any salesman that tried to sell me a self-faced jacket lapel now.

Armed with this fresh knowledge, and a topped up bank account, I skipped the cheap discount suit shops and went to David Jones (ok, so it's no Armani store -- it's the best thing my budget can do though). I didn't even bother looking at the suits before finding a salesperson. I asked for a tuxedo and credit to them they did show me an actual tuxedo, but the lapels were highly peaked and while I know that that may be in fashion now, and perhaps more formal, I think a more timeless look is the shawl. Over the next few hours I went from David Jones to Myer and back and forth (luckily in melbourne they are just across the street from each other), and gradually constructed my suit. There was a very limited selection of pleated wing-collared shirts, but they did have one in my exact size. The shoes were particularly hard to get -- I knew exactly what I wanted, but neither of the stores seemed to have something similar. In the end Myer had an almost exact match in their storeroom, but they were damn expensive. I do love them though.

I've worn my tux twice already and the third occasion is just next week. Wearing it, and knowing that you've spared no expense to put together such a correct set of pieces that you could wear it to a dinner with the Queen, makes me feel like a million dollars. For someone who is still really not out of his tshirt and shorts phase buying such a formal piece was a true eye-opener. One of my friends (that same classy friend that informed me about my suit) recently showed me this particular site, the website of Brooks Brothers. I've use to never be able to understand how women could spend so much on clothing, but I'm ashamed to say that I do now. If I could buy everything that Brooks Brothers sells for men, I would in a heartbeat. I would blow every paycheck I get on their clothing. I realise the value of good clothing now. So much in female fashion may be about buying a label, but I don't believe the same can be said about the clothing that Brooks Brothers sells, and perhaps most mens clothing in general. They're not cheap, but the quality of the clothes reflects that. To wear nice clothes is a luxury that I haven't pursued before. I wouldn't say that I'm intoxicated by it, because I still wear my tshirt, shorts and thongs to uni every day. But when you go to Myer and feel the difference between a $20 polo shirt and a $50 polo shirt for instance, I will almost always now go for the latter.

Why am I writing about this? I'm not sure, I guess I find it an interesting story. It's probably a bit of a personal journey for me, going from slightly ignorant, to a point of self-awareness and probably materialism. Is it materialist though? I would care if someone burnt my tux to a crisp, but I think that that's more because I don't have a job at the moment so all my money doesn't come back. If I had a good paying job, and someone to look after other than myself, I think that my priorities would be vastly different. Hmm, perhaps this isn't the end of this personal journey.

Stay classy,

Circle