Don Giovanni: 195 minuti dell'opera

This afternoon I saw Don Giovanni, a pretty funny opera that uses Mozart's music to tell the story of a womanizing lecher and his semi-faithful servant. It was required for my music class. I was originally a bit wary of the 3.25-hour running time, particularly because I have other things to do today, but as it turns out it was plenty entertaining and worth the time. The professor for this course is also the dean of the music school, so when I submit my impressions per the assignment, I will offer praises, and they will be sincere.

Fortunately, I finished my Investment Management problem set this morning with my friend Sarah. I don't regularly work in coffee shops, but I have to admit that I think I'm a lot more efficient when I do, even when I have the distraction of someone's company. Not having a finance background, I may not seem like a likely candidate to enjoy this class, but backgrounds can be deceiving. We'll see how long that lasts. Right now we're learning about the Black-Litterman model of active portfolio management. Never thought I'd see the day. We have a midterm exam one week from tomorrow.

Tonight I'll be finishing a short paper about the book Blink, which we were supposed to read excerpts from for my Behavioral Perspectives on Management class, although I read the whole thing over winter break because I found it interesting. The book (by Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote The Tipping Point) looks at the amazing power of intuition and how people can, in some situations, be surprisingly adept at reaching accurate conclusions based on very little information. And since a lot of the processing is subconscious, they may not be able to figure out how they know what they know.

In weather news, the high temperature tomorrow is 48, which is stunningly warm and should cause massive (and possibly problematic) melting of the snow. Boots it is.