toiletiquette

so yesterday i used the lse bathroom in the basement which is very cold (literally and figuratively) and very quiet. an echoey kind of quiet which makes for very awkward moments because every slight movement you make like pulling the toilet roll and tearing a piece off, to the zipping of your fly... all can be heard by the person in the next cubicle. or maybe i was just being nosey and could make out all of my neighbours' sounds??

whatever the case, i think courtesy noise-makers should be installed in all toilets. i think it was in japan i first encountered these very intelligent devices (or it might have been korea--don't want to give credit to the wrong country these days). you pressed a button and a slew of flushing and other indiscernible-but obviously toilet noises would fill the cubicle, drowning out whatever embarrassing sounds one had to make answering nature's call. how many times have i been privy to the horrid plop-plops, butt belches, more plop-plops and finally the middle-to-old aged lady's (i'm just assuming-could very well be a young supermodel!) heave of relief. always quite embarrassing, even for the listener, and the worst is when both of you exit the cubicle at the same time and your eyes meet through the reflection of the mirror while you wash your hands. those agonizing five seconds seem to last FOREVER because in your mind, a little voice is singing/chanting: the one who went plop plop, the one who went plop plop... then you force a smile/disguise a jeer, and walk out.

so yes, i am an advocate of courtesy noise-makers. you think i could strike it rich making a bunch of those?

and case interview was about tea plantation. everything was going well, profits up, but not meeting 10% ROI set by CEO. why? recommendations? well, ok look at cost. i asked about labour, technology etc etc, no problems. damn. fixed cost was on my notes, but why did i not asked explicitly, "what kind of fixed costs?" instead, i asked about scale and capacity, which wasn't altogether wrong, but i guess not really nailing it to get the exact information out of the interviewer. in the end he said ok, i have some info for you. and gave me the numbers. ahh, finally. but f*** how to calculate ROI. no idea because i never paid attention in econ or accounting enough. "ok, given these numbers i would need to calculate the return on investment, which is..." thank god he picked up on my hesitation and gave me the formula and so i did a quick calculation. gave my recommendations but didn't really think of any very fantastic ideas. boo.

second interview was very quantitative. asked to calculate area of a weird shaped figure which was not hard. but next question was find the summation of all integers from 1 to n in terms of n. double F***. as if this was not the basics of what we learned in math in jc. "series summation" the topic was called, but pay attention i never did. now he wanted me to derive the freaking formula in 5 minutes in front of him. oh man, this i could not do. summation was the option i always left out because my mind can't think in chains. he was nice enough to guide me through the whole thing and make me feel like i solved it all myself, but he was just being nice. later guesstimated the number of apartments in manhattan which was not too bad.

it's been 24 hrs and i haven't got a call back which probably means i didn't get it. but heck, it was a shot and a good experience anyway. i guess the masters kid who is doing APPLIED MATHEMATICS beat me to it. (she did undergrad in econ at yale, then masters in the above at lse. god, what a nerd. okok, i am just jealous.)