Cambridge to Cambridge

Embarrassing stories. Photos. If that's your cup of Earl Grey.

[dshenanigans]

Lessons from the NBA Finals

Watching post-game conferences makes me understand why Pop is so (in)famously taciturn at the podium. These questions usually break down into three types: rumor-based, borderline rude, and stupid. Rumor-based questions revolve around some unsubstantiated story around the league, and involve asking the person who is most affected and least likely to respond. Case in point – Lebron James, who was asked Lebron about Carmelo joining the Heat, even when it’s crystal clear that this is not something Lebron would declare in a post-game conference, let alone think about after a historic ass-whoopping. Border-line rude questions involve a reporter completely ignoring the acceptable response to a situation to inject a bit of unnecessary emotional tension. We saw Kawhi Leonard field a question about whether he will feel extra pressure to live up to expectations after having won the MVP. How about giving the man some space, to soak in the pure joy of the moment? And stupid questions? I guess I was going classify a new category, but now realize both rumor-based and borderline rude questions fall under the stupid question umbrella. I wish players would follow Pop’s example and exercise their right to remain silent at inappropriate questions.

Sports are at their best when they become greater than their athletic entertainment value. I got a lot out of this Finals viewership experience through the catharsis of the Spurs, but I also realized they’re a great parable for living life with excellence. Timmy teaches us about fundamentals and longevity. Manu and Patty teaches us about acting with fire and brio. Boris teaches us about unselfishness. Pop teaches us about tough love and faith (in the system). The Spurs as a whole teach us about humility, persistence, and recovery from loss. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives. Let’s use our Game 6s to push us onward, reminding us that nothing can ever be taken for granted.

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CFA: Can't Find Anyone (Interesting)

Instead of saying something blase or pithy, I went off on a rant about yuppies in finance who define life as an optimization problem, often with money being the objective function. I painted these individuals with a broad brush, lambasting their lack of hobbies and exploration of areas outside work. No wonder I felt a bit tried by the city, I sniffed. Peers in my industry just didn't feel like "real" people with "real" interests.

Among those caught up in the wide net of my statements was one of my roommates, whom I chided for spending all of his time studying for the CFA. "Don't you remember our conversations about the halcyon college years?" I pleaded. "You waxed poetic about all the cool Af-Am literature you read. What happened to that guy?"

My roommate turned the question on its heels. CFA isn't as sexy or exciting as literature, he admits. Part of what gets him going is the thrill of advancing one's knowledge. What's wrong with spending one's time on passing clearly delineated signposts of progress?

I've been thinking about this in the past few days (or maybe the past 30 minutes), and I guess my opinion touches on a personal assumption -- that we all have an obligation to lead examined lives. It's akin to exercise -- it doesn't require you to spend all of your time doing it (unless you're a professional Ethicist), but you should do so regularly even if it's not pleasant. And work-life in New York is not conducive to exercise OR self-reflection. And so, I do stand by my statements (even if they were a bit tactlessly expressed). Without an examined life, we're unhealthy,and not ourselves, but a bunch of rational cows being prodded along with by the invisible hand. (I certainly hope we're better than that).

There is nothing inherently wrong about studying for the CFA or talking about investment theses in your spare time, just as there's nothing inherently right about going to jazz concerts in the Village or visiting Moma. These are all fine things to do as a human being,and it's not anyone's job to judge what the activities are. I do think we need to be concerned about the balance between the activities that lead to more thought vs the ones that don't. When your job or your vocational training leaves much less time for the activities that personally drive your self-reflection / exploration, you should think long and hard about whether the tradeoff is worth it.

Sadly, no yuppies in NYC really talk about this issue -- either they are either too cowed to discuss the consequences with their peers, or worse, they aren't even aware of its existence.

[dshenanigans]

On MJ

Either in the fall or winter of 1995, I pulled a Metta World Peace, deciding at 5 1/2 (almost 6!, as I reminded others) to change my name:

Michael.

My one-year immersion in American sports culture had given me the modern superheroes that other kids only wished they could see in real life. Chang, the raven-locked, defender of the base-line. Johnson, the golden-shoed, stalwart of the 200m dash. But the most important man, of course, was the man who pushed the boundaries of obsessive-compulsive competitiveness, rebelled against gravity, and defied the social norms of keeping one's tongue in one's mouth at all times:

Jordan.

I wanted to be like Mike (but really, who didn't). In retrospect, there was probably a secondary level to (or perhaps a reading issue influencing) my decision. Rather than wanting people *to be me (Mike)*, I suspect what I really wanted was people to *like Mike*.

I've thought a little about why I admire Jordan. I appreciate the statistics about rings and scoring averages, but care much more about the intangibles, because as far as I know, they can't be systematically replicated.

I know Jordan demonstrated throughout his career that he could make the people around him better basketball players, and that's a characteristic I obviously aspire toward IRL.

But more importantly, Michael was the guy with whom you would trust the basketball in any situation. Double-teamed. Triple-teamed. No matter. He would find a clever way.

The more I think about it, the more I realize *that's* the Michael I want to be and have always wanted to be. Clutch, and not only in the punchy pun, punchy punch-line sense (I'll admit -- those are nice things). Clutch as in providing a few moments of respite in this crazy world you and I share, when sometimes you're down by 2 in the fourth quarter, clock ticking down, and you need a triple-entendre.

Sure, "life" goes on. But you know what? You pull out of the situation with a smile on your face, and maybe a bit of tongue impishly poking out.

23.

Jordan's jersey number coincides with the number of times I attempt to tell a joke every minute, and now you know why I try so hard.

[dshenanigans]

DC

I arrived on Friday afternoon at the Garden Inn, conveniently located four blocks from the White House. Lunch was the Kickin' Chicken samich at Joint Juice Cafe, which is evidently a local favorite. The chicken was quite kickin. I didn't get a chance to explore until the evening. Looking for a dinner place, I decided to make the 30-minute trek to that hallowed DC establishment known as Ben's Chili Bowl. Donning a large winter coat, I shivered my way to U St. and finally came upon the bright yellow signs advertising the fare. The sausages on the grill beckoned me with their coruscating skins. I placed my order. As I nom'd on my half-smoke and chili fries with sensuous R&B playing on the stereo, my arteries, and perhaps the world, slowed down for a bit.

I planned an ambitious Saturday for my coworkers. Late Friday evening, I fired out an email listing the hypothetical itinerary. The National Archives. The Library of Congress. The National Air and Space Museum. The MLK Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial. The Reflecting Pool and National Mall. The White House. The National Portrait Gallery. A Washington Wizards game. A meeting with another partner in DC and whatever shenanigans would ensue. The partner responded to my email: "Isn't that a bit aggressive?" The answer was yes, but the tour would be led by a man who had earned his stripes through seeing the wonders of most of Europe on a shoestring. A man who had crawled through the streets of Paris in the wee hours of the night with only the ability to say "I would like a sausage sandwich". A man who slept through the stench of Amsterdam on 4/20. A man who had nearly been carnally violated in Poland. They did not know with whom they were dealing. Through a string of increasingly awkward emails, we decided to meet in front of the National Archives. Or rather, a more American establishment to start off our day: Starbucks, the nation's purveyor of extremely well-branded, overpriced Sumatran coffee and decadent baked goods. And thus we left with great morale and enough caffeine and sugar to last the morning. DC stirred the democratic embers in my soul and frequently surprised me throughout the day. As we made our way through the new Cuban Missile Crisis section of the National Archives, I was struck by the scrawl of JFK in his presidential notes and his unique obsession with writing and then circling the word 'epiphany' over and over again. The gold-leafed surfaces of he Library of Congress were complemented with our tour guide's quirky anecdotes about our other national treasures -- yes, the number of historic teddy bears stored at an undisclosed location and safeguarded by the spirit of Teddy himself. We attended one IMAX showing and one flight simulator at the Air and Space Museum, both of which unintentionally took us back to the 80s due to their antiquated themes, verbiage, and movie resolution. The MLK Memorial was graced by a tour group of white guys who somehow managed to rope a random black dude into taking a picture with them while they pointed at him. My team corralled me into a picture using the Washington Monument as a stand-in for my middle finger, an image that remains burnished in my memory and that will indubitably be distributed on some form of social media at the most inappropriate of times. My coworkers left to get drinks. I continued on to the Portrait Gallery, where I felt a special moment in the gallery of Presidential portraits. Not to be all narcissistic and all, but it felt good to see all these heads of state watching me as I passed by. Especially Bill. The Washington Wizards game reflected the poor state of basketball in our nation's capital (its top two players are currently injured), but as the underdog Wiz made its way back from a 17-point first quarter deficit only to squander its opportunity at the last moment, I learned a lot about resiliency and vocality -- of Boston Celtics fans -- and the old mantra of "It ain't over til your two star players are injured upon which you're pretty much screwed." We ended the night going to two bars in Adams Morgan -- Madams Organ, where the young and beautiful college crowd comes to frolic and Bossa, the town's hottest and only salsa bar (who would've guessed?). We met the partner at the former and entered the latter due to a connection at the World Bank, whose youthful hires were showing us how slightly overpaid public servants party it up. Upstairs was a seedy lounge area with pictures of nudes everywhere, taking me back to live drawing sessions across the pond, and a dance floor that trembled with African drumbeats. It smelled a bit like fart, but no one cared. I awoke the next morning -- limbs sore, ears ringing, and yep, body a bit pungent. I suddenly recall learning how to say "I have three testicles" in Greek, which seemed like a great idea at the time. But no matter: What happens in DC stays in DC (unless it's legislation or extra marital affairs). It was off to Georgetown and meeting up with some college buddies. The weather was picturesque as I made my way across the Francis Scott Key Bridge and into Virginia for the afternoon. On my way back to Cincinnati, we were waylaid by 1) the President landing in CVG and forcing us to go to a local airport in Kentucky and 2) the motorcade on its way back. I was hungry, but still had a smile on my face. It was as if a bit of that ol' Washington gridlock had come back with me to Ohio, to remind me of the wonderful experiences I had over the weekend. I hope to return to DC soon.

[dshenanigans]

A Trinity Tall Tale

I recently investigated a tall tale often told by Trinity students (and other Cambridge students who hear these things through the proverbial grapevine) as yet another sign of their College's legendary wealth. 

Did you know Trinity owns 50% of Tesco? Yeah, we're well-endowed. (giggle)

This is patently false.* TSCO is an international supermarket chain that spans 14 countries, provides retail-banking and insurance services, and offers cheap sandwich meal-deals for hungry travellers. It has a market cap of around 24 billion pounds, and few universities, let alone one single college, have the endowment size (or even the risk tolerance) to put 12 billion pounds (at least a significant percentage of its fund) into one cyclical, undiversified investment.

Rather, Trinity College added a 50% equity stake in a collection of 11 Tesco stores to its real-estate portfolio back in January 2012 . The investment was financed by a 450-million pound credit-linked CMBS issued by a joint-partnership between Tesco and Trinity (whom the financial media coyly refer to as a "non-traditional third-party real-estate investor", but hey, that's like saying, "the kid who set the curve on the calc final may or may not be the kid named Yuting Chen who usually gets 100 on all his exams. idk.").

This is not the same as owning 50% of all of Tesco's operations.**

As I understand it, this means that occupational leases (guaranteed by TSCO) will be passed through to the CMBS bondholders. Cambridge, as a co-owner of the land and properties, hopes to see the real-estate values rise. TSCO monetizes its own extensive real-estate portfolio. Bondholders get their 5.66% coupon.

But Trinity students should not despair at the news that their College does not actually own 50% of a global conglomerate. According to my fact-checking, Trinity does in fact own the O2 Arena (although the income comes not from more exciting revenue streams like Beyonce ticket sales but from boring streams like rent) and also boasts a 25,000-bottle wine cellar worth millions.

Any rich Trinity student who wants to subsidize my May Ball ticket, call me, maybe?

*You're right, Trinity students do not giggle.

**Better yet, maybe you can answer what Trinity would even do with a controlling stake in a supermarket chain? I mean, besides giving students something else to brag about.

P.S. One reader points out that "In 2008-09, it [Harvard] lost more wealth than Cambridge now possesses."

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Victorian Sponge Cake -- Queen of Tarts, Dublin.

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Mission Accomplished

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It's hailing in the middle of May.

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I wanted to make a dessert-themed Written?Kitten! page for my friend, who is finishing up an essay as she pursues a double major in political science and food porn. (If you don't know what Written?Kitten! is, the best way to understand is to go to writtenkitten.net ). My page (click the title of this post) praises the original creators through the highest form of flattery -- imitation. I replace the search terms "cute" and "kitten" with the words "sweet" and "dessert" -- and voila, a webified culinary sensation is born! I just hope that pictures of old men do not randomly appear, as they did in an earlier iteration of the website with the search terms "japanese" and "food". Please don't ask why...

[dshenanigans]

Today, I discovered Cristine Patisserie (http://www.cristinepatisserie.co.uk/), a hole-in-the-wallish establishment located just a block away from Pembroke College. The brownies are divine. They're not overly dense -- just chewy, gooey, and extremely chocolately. Comes with a thin-layer of melted chocolate on top.

Finger-licking, roll-your-eyes-back, taste-bud-orgasming good. (Or maybe I'm just a little starved for baked goods)

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Lentil and Sausage Soup

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Chocolate

Here's a taste of the chocolates I've enjoyed thus far on my trip:

Belgium

Cote D'Or - dark chocolate truffle bar: not as good as the Lindt (below)

Cote D'Or - milk chocolate: very creamy and smooth

Delhaize - fondant praline: "pure chocolate" with hazelnut filling -- very good, considering it's a supermarket bar. Bits of crystallized sugar or perhaps less than perfect smashing of the hazelnuts makes the bar oddly "sandy" at times.

Dumon - white chocolate, milk chocolate bar: "artisanal"; milk chocolate superb, white chocolate not anything to brag about

Jacques - praline: thinner, less tasty version of the Delhaize bar

Czech Republic

Albert - White with hazelnut: lots of nuts (though not very fresh); leaves weird powdery residue on fingers when touched

Denmark

Daim - my nominee for best unknown candy bar. Hefty milk chocolate with crunchy toffee pieces; highly exceeded expectations

England

Sainsbury's - dark, milk, white: solid, very inexpensive supermarket bars. a little hard to break, but pretty good otherwise.

Cadbury - dairy milk caramel: per suggestions of other chocolate reviewers, try freezing it for a few hours before consuming for less messiness. it's very milky, and combined with the caramel makes for a potent duo

Cadbury - Wispa Duo: airy chocolate inside, less dense than a Three Musketeers; not very satisfying.

Cadbury - Double Decker: Milk Chocolate with nougat and crisped-cereal layers. The crisped cereal portion tastes like a thick Nestle Crunch. I really wanted to like this bar, but the nougat tastes really strange/artificial, and the bar is a bit too thick.

Green and Blacks - dark with ginger, butterscotch: These bars are "organic", "sustainably sourced", and very delicious. The bars come wrapped in golden foil and break easily (perhaps because the bars I bought were embedded with goodies). The 60% dark chocolate is actually quite sweet, and the candied ginger pieces give it a sharp kick. The butterscotch bar is actually milk chocolate with toffee pieces. It's good, but I prefer Daim.

Germany

Fassbender & Rausch - dark chocolate sampler: consume 90% to 40% or else you will be grimacing at the very end. very good chocolate, heard great reviews about their chocolate coffee creations

Ritter - Marzipan, Olympia, Nougat - the chocolate that encases each of these is not standard milk (which I assumed), but a dark chocolate that's a bit sour. Not to my taste, but very interesting flavors.

Lidl/Mister Choc - Yogurt: this deserves to be the posterboy of cheap, unappetizing supermarket crap.

Italy

Stainers(?) - Goat's milk chocolate: self-explanatory taste. Tastes like regular milk chocolate going down, but has a very subtle and pleasant goat-milk aftertaste.

Venchi - reviewed later.

Switzerland

Frey - extra milk: very creamy, very good.

Lindt - milk chocolate hazelnut: a little disappointing. Lots of hazelnut, but this kind of bar is just a little plain for me.

Lindt - dark chocolate truffle bar: one of the best bars I've tasted in my life. Not too sweet, not too bitter, breaks off easily, very very smooth ganache center.

Lindt - truffle: noccionoir: again, some people are big fans of hazelnut. I'm not a huge fan.

Lindt - I Giandujotti: classico, nocciola, fondente: classy wrapping. I think the Italian marketing might indicate that the Swiss have some kind of inferiority complex...I liked the classico. They're very creamy remixes, with hazelnut or whatever filling interspersed.

Lindt - Fioretto: marzipan, nougat hazelnut praline: the nougat hazelnut praline was off the hook. I saw a guy walking out of the super store with entire bags of this stuff.

Milka - caramel, extra creamy: thin bar, pretty good, but not particularly memorable. They are very soft and breakable, which I like, but have a sourness reminiscent of Ritter.

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Mother and daughter, they sit across from me on the train. 

The daughter wears ripped jeans, dark eyeliner, tightly-pursed lips and a defiant stare. Untangling the knots in her headphone’s cord, she settles down near the window seat seeking the welcome refuge of her earbuds; she clicks in the headphone jack, pops in the earpieces, and adjusts the volume rocker up, up, and away.

The train rolls by pasture upon pasture. The mother nudges her daughter’s knee with her hand and points out the window. The girl’s leg sits unresponsive, much she does. She fixes her glare out of the window, but the eyes are glazed and blank. Perhaps they are drawn to some point on the horizon, to a place without parents who treat her like a child, who meddle with her private space, who do cruel things like pointing out things in public. 

The outstretched hand turns limp and huddles with the other on the mother’s lap. She clutches them to herself, her grayish-green eyes darting sideways, a shy glance at the daughter before staring ahead at the open seat next to me.

At the next stop, they get off the train. 

I see them in front of me on my way to the transfer. The mother lifts their luggage down a steep flight of stairs, body lopsided with exertion, wheels meeting stairs in irregular rhythm.

The mother huffs while her daughter stands by. Five. Ten. Fifteen seconds pass. Suddenly, the girl yanks swiftly, almost angrily, on the suitcase strap. She half-turns to speak, but instead, turns away at the last moment, fuming down the stairs, but holding onto the strap nonetheless.

Mother and daughter, they continue on.

[dshenanigans]

Stoic Subscriber

Checking my e-mail when this gem hit the inbox:

JustDontGiveAShit1 has subscribed to you on YouTube!

Want to return the favor and subscribe to JustDontGiveAShit1? Just visit JustDontGiveAShit1's channel and click on the "Subscribe" button at the top.

I'm super proud that someone who doesn't give a sh*t actually took the time to subscribe to my Youtube channel. Not just anyone who doesn't give a sh*t -- perhaps the first person to not give a sh*t on Youtube, indicated by that 1 he/she/it added to the end. Then again, maybe he wanted to emphasize that he didn't give a sh*t by ending the username with an exclamation mark, but then forgot to press shift and realized that no, he didn't really give a sh*t.

Sh*t.

[dshenanigans]

Stunning Switzerland

Most. Beautiful. Place. EVER.

Now mind you, Switzerland is a pretty expensive place. I have conceived of a food-based purchasing price parity metric for European locales . It's called the doner kebab index, and it's usually fixed at around $5, no matter where you are in Europe (among the more affluent countries I've visited, anyways). In Switzerland, the cheapest doner kebab is probably around 8-9 CHF ($9-10), which gives you an idea of how expensive other things are.

Chocolate in Switzerland. I visited the Lindt factory, which currently conducts no tours, but has a chocolate supermarket. It's a bit of a rip-off: most of the standard Lindt bars and truffles are pricier than their equivalents in abroad or even in Swiss supermarkets. Best to get some of the limited edition/hard to obtain stuff - I tried the champagne, marzipan, and hazelnut cream truffles, as well as some of their higher-end looking stuff (some kind of Gianduja pyramidy chocolate). Didn't like the champagne or the marzipan, but the hazelnut truffle was great (also the pyramidy thing). I wasn't a big fan of the standard milk chocolate w/hazelnut bar (even though they are rather generous with the hazelnuts) because it just tasted...flat, but fell in love with the extra dark truffle bar (and I'm not even a huge fan of dark chocolate), which has a breaks so easily and has that nice luscious dark chocolate ganache inside. 

In other chocolate news, I tried the Frey bar (which is produced by the local supermarket Migros) -- the "Extra-Milch" version is good milk chocolate at its finest -- easily breakable into small pieces (so you can ration the goodness out appropriately), with a fudgy texture once it melts in your mouth.

A friend recommended me to visit Sprungli, which is another famous chocolatier (formerly related to Lindt and Sprungli). One of its famous delicacies is the Luxemburgerli (isn't it such a delightful and geographically-confusing name?), little Swiss macarons that cry out for attention, attention and nom! voracious consumption. The Luxemburgerli are about 1 CHF each, but well worth the investment. I got flavors in caramel, pistachio, and Baileys -- the middle of each tasting as described, cushioned by those soft pillows that at once crumble and dissolve in an ineffable, macarony way.

A half-day in Zurich and Luzern felt only a bit rushed, but was an unforgettable way to kill a day between Germany and Italy and stock up on some good Swiss chocolate. As my stockpile dwindles, I miss it more and more.

I took the train from Luzern to Milan and was blown away by the scenery. The train passes by little village huts quaintly perched on emerald grass...then five minutes later, whisks me away into the Alps, melted ice jumping acrobatically over rocks and into rivulets, its snow-capped peaks reflecting placidly in the water. On the train, I kept imagining getting disgustingly rich and buying myself a mountain hideout in the Alps, because that would be awesome.

I'm gonna stop saying any more because 1) You need to go experience for yourself and 2) any evocative sentence I compose seems like a second-grade exercise in literary techniques.

Try to pick a window seat on the right side of the train! Based on my purely scientific method of looking both left and right every minute or so, there seem to be more opportunities to see the Alps that way.

[dshenanigans]

Brilliant Berlin

I stayed in a fairly nice hostel (plusBerlin) in East Berlin. Nothing to complain about except for the spotty internet access (I ended up using the separate Wi-Fi in the bar of the hostel) and the fact that high school students looked like they were hosting orgies in several of the rooms. Not that I ever went into the rooms and observed, but I did, on several occasions, walk past this scene: a girl pokes her head out of a room of giggling female companions and into a hall where a handful of young men were waiting for "entrance". I don't know, maybe they had to finish a problem set. I try not to think too much about these European things.

Though a bit further from the center of the city (Alexanderplatz and surrounding area), our hostel was conveniently located near S-bahn and U-bahn stops as well as the longest standing strip of the original Berlin wall, now a beautiful mural of street art.

It turns out I share one thing with East Berlin -- both of us are surprisingly not very photogenic at times. If you were to judge the state of the nation by the extremely industrial, dull-looking, Bauhausy facades in the area, you would conclude that Germany is in midst of a major war, and the military is rationing bright colors. 

Berlin really has a little something for everyone -- mystical museums (a student ID gets you cut-rate admission into the five legendary ones on Museum Island, including the Pergamon; the Topography of Terror is also worth a look if you're a big history buff), great food at an affordable price (definitely try the currywurst* once -- if you're more into hipster food, hit up W der Imbiss, which serves some delicious vegetarian naan pizza), hallowed historical grounds (Hitler's bunker! SS offices! the Humboldt University where Einstein researched!), and a vaunted night-life (was too exhausted/scared by Eurotrippy BDSM? to do this). Take your time to walk around, and you'll be bound to hit all four. 

I highly recommend booking an advance ticket to the Reichstag dome -- not only is it fun to walk up the spiralling ramp and snap panoramic pictures, but the audio-guide included with your visit provides a nice overview of Berlin's major attractions. This way, you can get a better sense of the city's geography, and the places you might want to visit.

I'd also recommend checking out whether your hostel/hotel advertises a walking tour. I went on a fabulous three-hour one that added a bit of anecdotal spice to flavor some of the numerous historical sights.

I had German chocolate in two places: Fassbender & Rausch, which has some amazing chocolate sculptures (and a nice dark chocolate sample pack for 1 Euro), as well as the local Ritter Sport, where you can fashion your own Schokolade creation! Ritter Sport is a win in my book -- the chocolate is actually cheaper at the store than elsewhere (see Lindt and Sprungli, Switzerland) and the colorfully-packaged squares come in tons of unique flavors (I got Olympia, which is dark chocolate with nuts, honey, and honeycomb [actually dextrose?]).

*Currywurst is a large sausage served with curry-infused ketchup/tomato sauce and a bread roll/french fries. Sometimes the curry is just sprinkled on the ketchup -- other times, I believe it's actually stewed with the tomato sauce. By the way, German sausage is objectively better quality than anything you've tasted in the United States.

[dshenanigans]

A Man of International Mouse-tery

I finish lunch with a friend at 1:40, get to the Econ building at 1:50, and prepare to turn in a problem set due at 2:00. I have a good ten minutes to print, staple, and deposit the document into the supervisor's pidge.

Stepping into the computer lab, I am shocked that every single computer is occupied. That is, every single computer except one. 

There was a catch.

"You know that computer has no mouse, right?", says the guy next to me (reading Bloomberg), right as I settle into my office chair.

I do a double take, but give him a firm nod and a confident "Yeah", even though I'm actually unsure I can do this. 

Logging in is a cinch, but half-way through pulling up the document, I accidentally open up a new window. Now my non-existent cursor is in an existential limbo, not knowing exactly which window to focus on.

In a small moment of panic, I suddenly remember the glorious Alt+Tab window toggler, switch to the pdf document, Ctrl+P+Enter that nonsense, and pull my way out of this digital dilemma.

Like a boss.