#21. Pre-Cruise (Friday, December 21, 2012)

#21. Pre-Cruise (Friday, December 21, 2012)

What was your best day…of not having a single worry in the world?

The first term of my Master’s at Duke was now officially wrapped up. Two days before, I finished up and submitted my final project of the PhD Asset Pricing class – then went to watch the first Hobbit movie1 at The Streets at Southpoint (huge mall in Durham). Then the next day, Jack Salvador (#81, #57), Tannis (#62), Vitali, and I worked until midnight grading all the microeconomics and macroeconomics undergraduate exams.2

My family had planned a seven-day Carnival Cruise in the Caribbean for the holidays – my first cruise ever. They would fly down from Ottawa to Miami with a few of the other families, and I would take a 20-hour Amtrak ride down there.

So after spending Thursday night watching 21 (much better movie), I pull my suitcase to the downtown Durham train station and take a short ride to Greensboro. Then it’s a non-stop trip to Miami.

I pass the time reading this book Heard on the Street that Dominic – one of the upper-year Master’s students who would be joining the Royal Bank of Scotland upon graduation – had recommended us for investment banking interviews, which I had (naively) wanted to get into in the Winter term. It was basically just a collection of challenging but fun logic games, like they did at Five Rings Capital (#71); and that was good for most of the trip.

I take a few short naps. December 21st, 2012 comes and the world doesn’t end. And I grab an overpriced cinnamon roll from the breakfast car, then continue solving the puzzles in that book for the rest of the trip.

I arrive at Miami, then take a cab to the hotel that all the families had booked. They aren’t there yet, so, starving from having eaten a single cinnamon roll for the past twenty-four hours, I get this soup and bread from the lobby restaurant. Then I check in and head upstairs. I flip through the channels for the next two hours; and those two hours are probably the most serene I’ve felt for a long time. I just completed a successful term at Duke, my future looks as bright as it has ever been, and now I’m just in Miami chilling all by myself. 

Eventually, my family and all their friends arrive and come to the room. And I spend the night catching up with my brother about everything, while a completely new positive feeling – the sheer anticipation for the trip that’s coming up – comes over me.

And on this particular night, and the seven days in the Caribbean that follow, my relationship with my parents is perfect. For the first (and last) time in forever, there is absolutely nothing in my life that is a source of consternation for them.

And thus began the happiest vacation of my life.

  1. Cannot be spoken of in the same sentence as Lord of the Rings (#108). I never watched the other two, after hearing how bad they were.
  2. The exams for one well-known Duke professor, Connel Fullenkamp, had a raw class average somewhere around 20%, so a lot of curving had to be done there.