After class that I started conducting my finance research and self improvement projects. I  realized when I recording that weeks Wall Street University, that I still have not caught up enough knowledge about the current market climate to do a show about a non FOREX topic, so I decided to wait until next Wednesday to release WSU #11. I have also done a lot of studying for my classes and some personal research about the European Union which I will go into further detail in a political post.

I also began my experiment with twitter. As a skeptic of twitter, I wanted to test to see if I tweet every time I write a new post, will it result in any significant increase in traffic. So far it has not, but I have only released two posts since then. I will give a about six weeks and see if anything happens. However, based on what I have seen, I am very critical of twitter. There are only two things you can do. Post a tweet (same thing as a facebook status) or follow someone else’s chain of tweets. I understand it may be useful for a public figure, but what’s the difference between a facebook status update and a twitter account. Pretty much nothing. People thirty-five and over always rave about the revolutionary impact about twitter and how it’s the next hot/original thing to hit the internet since Youtube. Give me a break. Maybe the only reasons people because it is the only social network that is so simple, that old people can figure out how to use it. Other than that, I cannot think of a reason for Twitter’s hype. More on this will come when I see the net affect of traffic to the website.

After my twitter venture, I stopped by a lounge call Spazzio Fitzcarraldo to try to be more sociable. There was no line and a bunch of nice couches, but I was the youngest person there by at least eight-to ten years as it seemed to be a thirty-somethings hangout. I also noticed when I walk around here is that there are lot more young women going out with significantly older guys (10+ years and graying) than in America (even compared to Newport Beach which is gold digger city).  I left the lounge and got a gelato and then chilled.

I decided to make Friday a day off from the weeks of work which were tiring me out. I slept in really late and kind of lounged around all afternoon. In the evening I decided to go to the northeastern side of Milan to find what Tripadvisors rated as the best pizza of Milan: Pizza OK. I took the metro to Montenapolenone and walked through the street of overpriced clothing stores. Then I found a park with some museums inside. It was nice park that a had a forest like feeling and cliff sides/trees that blocked the view and noise from surrounding traffic. The park was also supposed to be a zoo, but all the cages were empty. After walking to the other edge of the park, I saw a colonial style mansion. I walked inside it and it was another one of these cheesy modern art museums. I left and walked up the street until I reached the turnoff that lead to the pizza place.

I arrived at 7:00, but they would not serve food until 7:30 so I had to wait outside. I ordered a pizza topped with bacon and it was the best pizza I have had so far in Milan and it tasted great. I found it strange that the bacon was cured like some cold-cut ham and not fried like in the states, but that is just cultural differences for you. I then took the metro back to my dorm and chilled for a while

I then went to an informal floor party a few doors down that night and got to know some more of my neighbors. However, a brief acquaintance who was there had spread a rumor around that I was some kind of geek or tool and it angered me very much (I don’t like people more judgmental than I am). I then got berated further for not drinking beer, but they seemed chill about it later. Its seems like most of the people in my building are full time students from the Eastern bloc. Most of the people there were Bulgarians or Lithuanian. I also think that Chi and I are the only Americans in the building (Chi was gone somewhere that night). I talked to them mostly about differences between the European and American school systems and some other topics. I have to give credit to foreigners from outside the Anglosphere for being able to have strong English skills. Most Italians do not speak English, but almost all of the non-Italian students speak it fluently including everyone I met on Friday night. Foreign languages are not a strength of mine, so I’m glad  the rest of the world is catching on to English. We then went down to the ground floor to play foosball and ping pong until around midnight when I went back to my room to get some sleep for an early appointment on Saturday to the police station.

On Saturday and Sunday I did more of the Weeks of Work. I finally have my permit of stay forms (it only took several debacles at the post office and three hours waiting at the police station). I then concluded my financial research and now I am caught up enough on the markets to return high quality WSU podcasts and return to my summer/fall trading competition (which got tanked by a July at the land of no internet a.k.a. Fresno, CA).  I also went to Bocconi’s Investment Banking Saturday program where I listened to pitches from Credit Suisse, UBS, and Goldman Sachs and talked to their officials about following up applications. All I left to do is to finish following up on applications and some more studying for my classes and the weeks of work will be over by Wednesday. The next question is, now what’s next?