River Oaks

Well, I decided to check out my next home here in Houston, maybe pick up Ken Lay's old digs now that he's headed to jail. We went on a driving tour last weekend and the community is unbelievable. Since I forgot my camera, here are few pics from the web real estate listings. Most of the houses aren't like those you see in Beverley Hills with only a gate visible. Only the very big ones had big fences around. The community was fairly small but it had a dedicated cop on patrol that passed us two or three times and if we would have hung around any longer he would have probably kicked us out.

Visit From Carmen & Robert

I was visited today by my cousin Carmen and her husband Robert from Austin, Texas. It was nice to see them while they were down in Houstin to attend a Champ racing event.

Trans Ocean Legend

Here is a picture of the rig we are using to drill our two wells offshore east coast Russia. The Trans Ocean Legend will be in port near Yuzhno when I visit so I might see it in person although I will not be able to board.

1 Month to Go!

Well, here is the reason I have not updated my blog for a while. I've been studying for the CFA Level 3 Exam which is on June 4th. The books on my desk represent the "Coles Notes" - type summerization of the mountain of actual study material.

I have been spending many hours sitting in front of this desk trying to ignore all the people enjoying themselves directly outside my window in the hot tub / swimming pool. The exam is a day long event where no material except a simple calculator and pens/pencils are allowed. That means a lot of memorization as well as understanding. The financial derivatives stuff is especially challenging. Who knew that when you do a simple mortgage on your house you are actually borrowing money and buying a call option that becomes more valuable as interest rates decline. Valuing that call option requires a monte carlo simulation of the path interest rates will take over the life of the mortgage to come up with the probability that you will refinance at a lower rate. And then we get into interest rate and currency swaps, swaptions, puts, calls, forwards, futures, etc. etc. that all make my head hurt. Thank goodness level 3 is the final one. I can't take another year of this stuff.

Well, besides studying and my day job, I have also been organizing a trip to Russia's Sakhalin Island for June 10-16. The trip should be very challenging from a mobility perspective for me but I'm up for it. I will be visiting the city of Yuzhno, shown in the map to the right. BP's operations are at the north tip of the island and the wells we are drilling are off shore in the sea of Okhotsk.

After the week long trip I will probably try and do some touring in Seoul or Tokyo if time permits. We shall see. I'm pretty stoked about the trip and the fact that the VP of Exploration for my Business Unit has offered to accompany Patricia and I on the trip. This will really help open doors and make my visit so much more interesting since he has been visiting the island since the 1990's and has many contacts.