Moving to Singapore!
Finally internet! I've been here already for a week and living out of a suitcase haven't had good access to internet! I'm sitting outside some condo building and just finished skyping with Janae and Verene. I miss them too much! Hopefully I can keep coming back or finding another good spot to blog and surf. Below is what I wrote on the plane over...
I've left home for good - at least for the foreseable future. I'm sitting in business class on the way to San Francisco to visit Dad and Michelle prior to moving to Singapore. Preparing for the move has kept my emotions occupied that it has not really hit me all the people I'm leaving behind.
I already miss Verene dearly and it has only been a couple hours. It's not the time apart but rather the fact that I'm not going to see her for another six weeks or so. The same goes for Janae. This will be the longest I have been apart from both of them. Verene in the short 10 months she's been a part of our lives has me wrapped around her finger. I find it hard to believe my feelings for her run as deep as they do. It's the look she gives me when I walk away. Her eyes make me feel like I'm deserting her and her world will fall apart because I'm leaving her side, they tear up as she starts with her crying, and both arms extend toward me for me to pick her up. I just melt.
Everything leading up to me leaving for Singapore happened so very quickly...
It was the beginning of May when Pam, a recruiter, called me with an opportunity in Singapore to do Fixed Income strategy for Asia. She had much more confidence in me than I have in myself as I know nothing about the markets there. I'm sleeping when those markets are open. I know US fixed income and even then all I know are mortgages as I've only worked at Freddie Mac since graduating from school. She pitched the idea to Barclays Capital with full disclosure: I don't know the job now but have the knowledge, experience and skills to be able to do a good job in due time. I was able to convince them of the same story after phone interviews and video conferences.
The most intense of them occured on a Monday night when I left the office in the afternoon to catch a flight to New York. I started at 7pm with two interviews with Latin American economists based in New York. After their interviews, the conference with Singapore started. Around midnight, the interviews stopped, I got dinner at Serafina's, and caught a 6 am flight back to DC. Besides leaving early that day, nobody at Freddie would have known. I had such a great time speaking with and meeting everyone I met. The interviews all went well from my immediate boss, the head of research for Asia, to his boss, the head of global emerging market research. It was less than month from the first interview to being offered the job.
My new job is essentially deriving fixed income investment strategies for Asian currencies. Bonds, swaps, futures and options for China, S. Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The region covered here includes all of South East Asia from Vietnam all the way to India. One of the traders I interviewed with is playing with Pakistani bonds! The job will require knowledge of each of the countries respective economies and central bank policies - all of which I know nothing about at the present.
In relfecting on how smoothly and quickly the process occurred, I can't help but think of how blessed I am. For me to pick up a job of this caliber at a time when the US economy, especially mortgages in fixed income, are falling apart and Asia is picking up. Within a week after I left, Freddie tanked again to as low as $3 a share! Yes, me leaving the company detrimental to the stock! Just kidding. It probably would have held in longer if I left earlier - it must have been the bad work I did after I knew I was going to leave and didn't care!
To my knowledge, nobody has left Freddie Mac to do anything internationally related beacuse it's such an unnatrual transition. People have left for other fixed income jobs in the US and even equities but nothing overseas. Although I don't fully know the reason why I'm heading to Singapore yet, it really became clear to me when Aaron Mahler, our home teacher, was over one day and upon leaving prayed for us to know the purpose of our moving there. It was nothing profound but it really hit me.