Weeks 7 & 8 -- Record Book

After getting punked by 3 corrupt Manila cops and coughing up $100 in intimidation bribes, finding myself in a photo shoot wearing pathetically skimpy D&G bathing briefs, writing a 100 page legal agreement for our fund in three days, raving with three E-induced Iranian chicks until eight A.M. on a Tuesday, and witnessing the purchase of almost a KILO of marijuana for $20, I must say that this stretch has been one for the record books.

How to Die in Manila
The French and I were seduced by an offer to shoot M-16s at a Manila Police open firing range about an hour from my condo. This turned out to be a very bad idea. We reserved 6 people for Sunday morning at the price of P10,000 ($200); unfortunately, we went to a rave on Saturday until 7AM. Even to shoot M-16s, no one was waking up dehydrated, groggy, and E-hungover after 4 hours of sleep. We thought this would be fine until -3- cops with huge guns showed up at my condo. They were there to pick us up to go shooting, they said. Were we coming? We were already half an hour late. Why weren't we ready? Why were three people missing? The range was very busy, they said, and they were on very tight schedules, and they didn't like feeling rushed. And, most importantly, where was their money?

When one's bodyguard starts getting nervous, one starts shitting his pants. The cops wanted P5,000 to go away and leave us in peace. Unfortunately, the Frogs were outraged and refused to pay -- that the spittle continued flying from their mouths even in the face of three AK-47s speaks volumes about French pride. The Frogs thought my bodyguard, who had suggested the outing, was in on the deal and was getting a cut, and they weren't going to let him off easily. They were arguing very loudly and angrily, and everyone had guns except us; Bob looked upset and anxious, and I got the feeling he wasn't going to jump in the way if the cops tried to pile us into the happy wagon. I seriously spent about 30 minutes convincing the French that we had better pay or else, while these three guys with AKs stood, stone faced, at my door, refusing to bend. The Frogs wouldn't give in either. They were completely livid. They didn't even have their wallets. They didn't see why they should pay, and they couldn't speak English well enough to handle negotiating. Everyone was going to die.

Finally I buckled and threw down 2K, at which point the French, still foaming at their collective mouths, stormed outside to the ATM and took out the other 3. The cops smiled and faded into the shadows.

La Tigra
The modeling shoot, which I will decline to post the juicier photos of (on the advice of the unfortunates among you who have seen them), was really about the most ridiculous thing I have done here. Filipinos are so madly obsessed with Western culture and Westerners that any non-hunchbacked white guy or girl is immediately labeled a 'potential model' and hounded by agencies high and low. Agents offer you cocaine, cash, free drinks, sushi, hot dates; they court you under the guise of 'friends', 'admirers', and 'fellow businessmen'; and they are at once flattering, sickening, and annoying. Most of my friends here have, at one point or another, fallen into the modeling trap, and I'm not trying to claim that Hanselhood is anywhere in my future; indeed, my experience before the camera has convinced me that I certainly could not and would not do this for a living. This is a horrible, horrible job, one where you are made to focus on every flaw in your appearance, where assholes are PAID to remind you of them, and where the money is so good you can't escape. This made me understand why girls are generally so miserable, and why Zoolander is such a great film. It is unsurprising that anorexia is so prevalent when the American fairer sex has to do this every day of their lives in front of every person they meet; I would be anorexic after a month of this ("Dayvid, modeling is all about discipline. You have to make some sacrifices if you want to look your best. You have to watch what you eat and go to the gym regularly. You need to work on your abs. Suck your stomach in please."). I only spent about 3 hours at this place, and I left feeling dirtier than a jizzmop at San Francisco Centerfolds. On the upside, I made $300 and created unlimited ammunition for gay jokes at my expense. Have at it.




Thankfully the girl came with the contract.

Papermill
100 pages of paper is very, very thick. It weighs almost five pounds, and it makes it difficult for people to add more material to your inbox tray. This was about the only upside of the Flagship Capital Corporation Limited Partnership Agreement, the most hellish document ever to have crossed my sleep schedule. Worse than the IHUM final paper; worse than E40 labs; worse than the CS106X final. In private equity/venture capital, the money is put into the fund by Limited Partners (investors) and invested by the General Partner (us) for shared profit. For any partnership, the LP Agreement basically consists of 100 pages of legal jargon designed to confuse the investors into thinking they are getting the good end of the deal. In between the huge paragraphs of dogshit are tiny, important clauses detailing everything from how much cash we take as our fee to what happens if our partners die or quit. For the last three(!) days of the week, it was my task to transform the LP Agreement of our last fund to the terms of our new offering. Unfortunately, our old agreement was a PAPER COPY and did not exist in electronic format. This meant I had to use a flatbed scanner and OCR, feeding in one page at a time, to transfer the paper LPA into a completely error-ridden Word document. OCR is such a young technology that it errs on perhaps one out of every ten words and destroys all traces of formatting, meaning the user has to go back into the document and fix everything by hand. This takes a LONG, LONG time, and it is a horribly tedious process. After the scanning, I had to add some clauses and change terms around to reflect the new fund. This is what corporate paralegals do, and it isn't much better than shoveling shit through a screen door -- doing this for 20 hours showed me why people think finance is better than law. All in all I pulled two 17-hour days and shoved the LPA out the door at 8PM on Friday night. Huzzah.