Welcome...

Hi,
How are you? Hope you're swell. I too am fairly well. Let's see… what has happened since we last spoke? Hmm... Oh! I got my MBA. That.

Gosh-darn it, you probably never saw that one coming did you? For many it was a major plot twist; kind of like the final episode of Dawsons's Creek when Pacey's brother FINALLY came out of the closet and married Jack. Upon writing that out - I realize that that wasn't really a plot twist, nor did that many people probably watch that episode.

Anyway... let’s motor on from that accomplishment (Jack’s coming out).

Upon convocation from the University of Toronto you are immediately corralled onto Kings College Circle where there is a tent set up so you can purchase a frame for the degree you were literally just given. Cash grab! I believe the Yiddish word for this would be: prost. Frame prices range from $70.00 to over $200. My mother, Sim Sim Sima, in a momentary lapse of lucidity, decided to break from her usual frugality and insisted on purchasing a frame right then and there, even if the official U of T branded frames would be more expensive then a “DIY” solution. What’s another $200 on top of $70k? Plus the pretty U of T ones come with a gold embossed U of T logo!!!! An hour later, and $200 poorer, I realized as I was hanging the frame up in my room I realize that U of T used plastic instead of glass. Le sigh.

In a world where we assign price tags to almost anything (I can actually pay someone to come clean my garbage bins for me), are we assigning value to the piece of paper itself or to what the paper represents? The answer is not as easy as you may think. As many will tell you an MBA is a long-term investment. No one's shorting junk bonds in MBA's looking for a quick arbitrage opportunity. But the bigger question is: does the MBA project have positive project NPV?

Here's the honest truth - I wrote that paragraph simply to use MBA jargon I picked up while in school. Sometimes I just want to make my mother proud.

Most importantly welcome to what may become my third lifestyle blog, Negative Ninety Thousand Dollars (NNTD). The first, Confessions of a Faux Hiller, documented my life post McGill, when I, as a young twenty-something found myself unemployed, friendless and mildly addicted to Starbucks. Confessions was a tongue in cheek documentary about being gay, living in Toronto’s upscale Forest Hill neighborhood with my parents, and most importantly trying to find a place for myself in the city that I had grown up in, but suddenly felt at odds with. After that I went Rogue (at Rotman) in an attempt to stay true to my interloper roots while completing my MBA at the Rotman School of Management.

In many ways I like to think that this new blogaroo will be a blend of Confessions and my current situation. In an odd twist of fate I find myself once again living back in the safe and leafy confines of my childhood neighbourhood. Now 5 years later, instead of lamenting its hetero-normativity and trying to reject what the Faux Hill stood for, I’ve begun to embrace uptown in all its aspirational glory. While young, twenty-something me rejected the FH as I attempted to find who I was post-undergrad, late twenty-something me hits repeat on Katy Perry's California Gurls and choreographs dance moves while my friends play on Grindr in the living room.

And with that - I say welcome. This should be a barrel of monkeys.

Hopefully this will be the most reflective thing I write for y’all. While blogs are undoubtedly shaped by their author they should not BE about their author.

Catch da taste!