My personal public transport gripe

For work, I have been researching transport, and in particular the motorways. The other student who works with me is researching public transport. Accordingly, many discussions have been had over the relative merits of different public transport systems. The views espoused are generally positive.

However, last week, when I took the bus home, something happened. It was something which both brought back memories and left me rattled.

What I am about to say next will sound like a digression but it actually isn't:

School field trips were great. You used to be able to skip classes without having to get a parent to ring up and say that you were sick, and go to some place that was sort-of related to what you were studying, (usually) with a group of friends. However, there was one aspect of field trips which was always somewhat problematic. This was the bus travel, but not for the reason you think. Most people would probably think that I don't like bus travel because of the perception that I'm a neo-liberal who doesn't believe in public goods. This is not completely true, though public goods do make an economic mess when you're trying to draw them on a graph.

The real issue was the whole two-person-to-a-seat rule on buses. For most of my high school life, I didn't have a best friend at school. Accordingly, this meant that I didn't automatically have the 'right' to sit next to anyone. And after you're about 12, it's a bit weird to ask someone who is your friend but not your best friend "can I sit with you?" without sounding a tad creepy. That's just my opinion. As it happened though, I was fortunate enough to have a group of friends, and I can only once remember having to sit next to a random. Happy times.

So, I guess you could say that my approach to getting a seat on the bus (and a partner) was a bit like the aircraft gas mask approach: help yourself before you help others. Survival of the fittest, to put it less originally.

But, as it happened, finding a partner was never the biggest issue. There were two potential problems that could arise prior to the completion of a successful bus ride. The first is when you're walking down the aisle to get to your seat, and you see someone that you know, who is alone and is looking for a partner. The best way to get around this was to avoid eye contact, which was actually easier said than done, because usually the desperate person would be trying everything to lock in some unsuspecting classmate. Sometimes, in desperation, they would call out your name, and you'd have to say, as quietly as possible "uhh sorry X, I've already promised to sit with Y...." ...meanwhile all the people sitting around are a) witnessing the person's public rejection; and, b) probably thinking that I'm a horrible person. The second situation that could arise was when the teachers realised too late that they had not ordered enough buses, and so would shout out "THREE TO A SEAT!". Anarchy invariably ensued, and if you didn't move quickly enough, you would either have some random assigned to your seat, and be burdened with having to include them in your conversation for the entire journey, or, even worse, some teacher would pull you out and assign you to another seat, and so you would be the burden on some other people's conversation.

And now to get back to what I was talking about. I got onto the 746 at Britomart. I was one of the first people on, so I had my choice of seats. I took the seat behind the second lot of doors at the back of the bus. Before departing, the bus waited for more people to arrive, and by the time we departed, the bus was full. It was so full that everyone had to stand. All the seats were taken. All except one, and that one happened to be the seat next to me. I began to wonder why no one getting on was sitting next to me. Subconsciously, I was probably even staring longingly at each passenger who walked past, trying to make eye contact. But alas, the seat next to me stayed empty for the entire trip.

Don't get me wrong.. there were certainly people on that bus next to whom I would rather not have sat, for example, the lady who looked like she had just done Christmas shopping for a family of twenty, judging by the number of bags she had. Despite this, I was plagued by self doubt. Why did someone choose to sit next to the bag lady and not me? Did I seem unfriendly? Did I look like a criminal?

Or maybe everyone else had organised their partners before they got on the bus.

The Law of One Price, and why Supre is relevant

As you can tell by the title of this post, it's going to be a random walk through topics as I think them up. It's ok. We'll both live with it.

Every weekend, for the last little while, my parents have driven up to Omaha. This is because the beach house is currently being painted, and they want to inspect the progress weekly. Since my exams finished, I too have been dragged up with them each weekend, to look at the beach house. It's very boring; an awkward car ride during which my mother and I have to stay quiet because my father will have some American on the phone (it's still Friday there), and then we get out of the car, and I am forced to make some comment on how great the house looks, even though I can hardly tell the difference between the colour of the house where it has been painted and where it has not.

Last weekend, I decided not to go. I had a birthday party to go to, and I needed to buy the present. When my mother came into my room to wake me up to go, and I told her that I wasn't, she was quite shocked. This amused me, as it was as if she thought I enjoyed it each week. But this is a digression. Anyway, instead of going to Omaha, I decided to take a trip to Newmarket. In particular, I was looking for what I call 'commodity fashion items'. These are generic items like black cardigans, white tank tops, denim cutoff shorts (apparently these are out of fashion now, alas), white plimsols and so on. Just the basic items that everyone has in their wardrobe, and which are sold by pretty much every shop.

In economics, there is an important concept, which has recently (according to some) been debunked. This idea is the Law of One Price. This states that in efficient markets, all identical goods must have only one price. Supposedly, an example of where this did not apply was when Royal Dutch/Shell shares did not price according to the way they had agreed to divide their future profits (60-40).

I think a more obvious example that the Law of One Price does not apply is the Broadway shopping strip. Take, for example, the garden variety acid wash denim skirt:

Price at Glassons: $29.99

Price at Cotton On: $30

Price at Supre: $55

Does anything there stand out to you? In fact, the Supre skirt probably wasn't even real denim. So next time you hear someone complain that "Supre has such high prices for its crap quality" (an oft-heard complaint), tell them that it's more than that. In pricing its products above other similar products, Supre dares to violate the very foundations of the market pricing system that we live by.

Your friends will think you're really smart. Or insane. But when you think about it, the two aren't mutually exclusive. Draw the Venn diagram.

Tutto va bene

I renamed my tumblr. I had been through a few names for it, before settling for salve! Emma nomine., also the title of this blog. I first used it in the 'About Me' section of my myspace page. I guess I just like the way that in Latin you can say "Emma, by name". It seemed like something that an action film hero might say, not dissimilar to "Bond, James Bond".

But as it happened, I figured that I had outgrown the title. It was also probably a bit superfluous, given that my name was listed elsewhere, so, as ends up happening to most superfluous things, it was cut. The new name is tutto va bene. I first came across this phrase in year 11, when I was doing a family history album for a Level 2 History internal (standards 2.1 and 2.2.. I still remember). Anyway, during my 'research', I came across this book about the history of Italian immigration to Wellington. The title was Tutto va bene, which means "everything's going well".

I think it describes my personality and general character development through life quite well. I'm mean-reverting. Where I am and how I feel about life tends to change from time to time, but it always reverts back to one viewpoint and outlook. Particularly since I started Law School properly (2009), I feel like I've been spending too much time panicking/stressing/making work for myself, and not a lot in self-examination (more on this later), and so I entered a bit of a depression/recession etc, but now I'm just reverting back to the mean again. It's quite comforting. Life is good. Tutto va bene.

Also in high school, though not for L2 History, we studied Socrates. I really disliked (Plato's portrait of) Socrates. I just imagined these poor ancient Greeks, strolling through the agora, going about their daily business, when all of a sudden a nutty man in ragged clothing would start questioning them about something. Had I been in Euthyphro's position, I would have been extremely annoyed. All I wanted to do was make a statement on, in Euthyphro's case, piety, and this arrogant fool starts questioning me, seemingly for the sake of it more than anything else. The reason for all of this, supposedly, was that the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates' badgering meant that Euthyphro had an opportunity to 'examine' his position, so to speak, and rethink it and then improve on it. My year 12 self found this rather dramatic. In fact, I still do. Surely an unexamined life, inferior as it may be, is not 'not worth living'? Excuse the double negative. It also seemed quite self-indulgent. While the Sophists, criticised heavily by Plato for litigious deception, were out seeking excellence in all they did, Socrates and co were examining their lives. I dunno. Something about the former approach seemed a bit nobler to me.

But I think Socrates had a point. While I still wouldn't go as far as saying that the unexamined life is not worth living, I would say that there is huge importance in examining one's life. It's especially important because for the last three years I had been (not so?) happily studying lots of things and now I need to decide what I want to do with my life so that I can plan accordingly. Law honours? Economics honours? Finance honours? Ahhhhhh. I guess I'm actually quite lucky that I have this dilemma, rather than being forced into once path.

That's a bit of a digression though. I guess the point is that sometimes you have to take time and reflect on who you are and what's important. I hadn't self-examined for a while, but now that I have, I've reverted to my 'mean' position. Hopefully, continued self-examination will keep me there. But not too much; I wouldn't want to end up like Socrates. Nutty old fool.

PS: On the subject of mean-reversion. Yes, it does disgust me mildly that I'm describing my personality with a financial term, used to describe market expectations. Never mind.

The first week of December

Hello December,

You have been such a mixed month so far. Here is a brief (this is what I'm hoping for but it probably won't be) list of what has happened:

- I started work at the Business School properly on December 1. So far, I enjoy the job and I like the professors that I've met, but a few of the Ph.D. students are a bit passive aggressive in the lifts. Hahaha. I have an office, which is really cool, and a staff email address and you can look me up in the Business School Staff Directory on the website, which should inflate my ego for a little while.

- I have continued going to the Law Centre on Thursday nights. This is also really interesting, and it feels good to get involved with something in the community. It also makes me want to be a lawyer.

- The result of the above two bullet points was that I was extremely tired on Friday night, and became a bit hysterical. That night it took me forever to get to sleep because I kept thinking about how I was messing everything up etc. I woke up at 7am the next morning and tried to get up and eat my breakfast but I kind of collapsed getting out of my bed, so I guess I was lying on the floor for a little while. An hour or so later I got myself back into bed and went back to sleep, and felt much better for it. I also had an 11-hour sleep the next night, and quite a long one the night after that, too.

- The result of the above point is that I am now feeling much better about life. I have also put on 2kg, which is great.. now only 3kg left to get back to what I should be. Win. I'm starting to notice the difference because I don't feel like falling over all the time.

- I had an epiphany that my previous epiphany was not as bad as I thought it was. Good things always happen to me when I stop trying to force them to happen. Originally, I found this annoying, but I am now happy about it, because, rather than implying that my efforts are in vain, it suggests that I should just relax about things, which is something that I need to do anyway. I am also beginning to accept some realities in a more positive light. Good Emma.

- I have a new interest: going through magazines like the Herald Homes and interior design stores. Even though I won't be able to afford a house for many years, I like planning what it will be like. For some reason, I seem to like Greek Revival architecture. The columns can be a bit much though.

- My SIM card died on Sunday night, when I was at my friend's birthday party. Apparently my parents called me quite a few times because they thought I had been in a car accident that I wasn't back home. I have not had much success with getting a new one yet, but I will attempt again tomorrow. Unfortunately, adding to the problem is that my phone has also decided to die... so my sister is lending me hers for now, but I think that she'll probably want it back soon, so.. who knows what will happen there.

- Law students are a pain. I had to finish enrolling myself in a timetable for next year this morning because all the eager law students had been enrolling and filling up all the good classes, and I didn't want to be left taking something random like 'Contemporary Maori Issues'. I think I will need a time turner next year as there is so much stuff I am signing up/have signed up for. Semester 1: Agency Law, Land Law, Equity, Company Law, Tax Law, International Finance. Semester 2: Agency Law (cont'd), Land Law (cont'd), Equity (cont'd), Law of Evidence, Corporate Finance Law, Legal Research 2. At the moment, International Finance clashes with Tax on one day... so I'll probably need special permission to do that. Also, I don't know how to enrol in Honours, which is a worry, because I really want to do Agency. Furthermore, yes, you did read that correctly. I am taking Tax. Yes, I did swear that I'd never do it. But.. Tax v Treaty of Waitangi... Tax wins.

- On Sunday morning I went to the supermarket in 277, where they were handing out free samples of iced coffee. I have been converted. How could my life have been missing something so fantastic for such a long time?

That was actually not too bad an attempt at brevity.

The cost of certainty

I have been a bit behind on my blogging lately. I had been meaning to post this a few days ago, but I never got the time... holidays are so tiring. They are meant to be a break! Never mind. Here we go:

Last week, I was having one of those fateful (although not on this particular occasion) post midnight MSN conversations, I (half) tried to explain this concept, and it turned out really badly. Then, on Friday, someone said something to me that brought it up again in my mind. I suppose, given the number of times that I practised the proof of the concept for one of my exams, it's really no surprise that it keeps coming up in my head.

As it happens, certainty of cash flows is a big deal in finance, and in particular in the area of risk management. There are obvious reasons for this, like that it helps with financial planning etc, and also less obvious reasons, like that reducing the variance of cash flows means that you can reduce expected tax (think Modigliani-Miller and such). To create greater cash flow certainty, financial managers, and indeed anyone else who feels like it, use a hedging strategy. Hedging strategies commonly involve the purchase (and, generally, sale) of financial derivatives (e.g. futures, forwards, options) so as to give the hedger a price that they are happy with over the volume of whatever the underlying asset they're interested in is.

For example, imagine that I have a business which sells mozzarella cheese (when I was about 14, I had a friend who didn't know how to say my last name, so he called me 'Emma Mozzarella'). The current price of mozzarella cheese is $50/kg , but I am worried that the price will fall to $30/kg in two months' time, when I have to sell it. The current price of a two month mozzarella cheese futures contract is $40/kg (lower than the current price, reflecting the expectation that the price will fall). Therefore, to hedge against the predicted price fall to $30, I sell a two month futures contract at $40. This gives an immediate cash inflow of $40.

One of two things can happen from here.

The first situation that could occur is that my expectations are correct, and the price of mozzarella does fall to $30/kg. Therefore, when I close out my futures position by buying a futures contract in two months' time, at $30kg (the market price = futures price at maturity), I make $10 profit (as I initially sold at $40 and bought at $30). Therefore the price that I receive at maturity for my mozzarella is $30+$10=$40, and, happily, I have protected myself from the extent of the price fall, by hedging at $40 so that I don't have to receive $30 in the market at maturity. What a thrill.

However, sometimes what people expect will happen does not always turn out to be the case. Let's say that I had been living in my own little world, forming my own unobjective and narrow-minded views about the price of mozzarella cheese. Let's say that, having hedged by selling two month mozzarella futures at $40/kg, the price of mozzarella actually increases to $60/kg. Therefore, I sell at $40 (as detailed above), and buy at $60/kg (I buy because I have to close out the futures market position by doing the equal and opposite of my original selling position, and it is at $60/kg as at maturity, spot price = futures price). I make a $20 loss (having sold at $40 and bought at $60).

So I guess the point of my mundane mozzarella example is to say that certainty is not always a fantastic thing. Certainty has a cost. In the second example, even though there is certainty, and I am better off than I thought that I was going to be, I can never be as well off as I could have been, had I not hedged. Because I chose the certainty of $40/kg, it means that when the market turned up, I couldn't take advantage of the $60/kg price.

Life is a bit like this too. We see certainty as a good thing and are always trying to achieve it, if we're unlucky, then this 'certainty' isn't necessarily the great thing that it's cracked up to be.

That said, if/when I do end up in the second position, I shouldn't be too unhappy. After all, I chose the $40.

The worst font in the world

Lucida Handwriting. Seriously, it is disgusting.

Contract notes in the background, btw. Spot the typos.

The last day of November

It's not actually 30 November yet, but given that it's 11.48pm as I write this, I figure that it will be by the time of posting... so, you know, forward thinking and all that.

My life post 15 November (end of exams) in bullet points:

- I went to Melbourne for four days. Melbourne is amazing. I love the shopping (Chapel Street! and the department stores and the designers) and the parks (the Fitzroy Gardens and the Treasury Gardens sont tres pittoresques; had I been in Melbourne longer, I would like to have strolled through them) and the food (Lygon Street: the only place outside Italy where I've been able to find fobby Italian shops) and the MCG (Jolimont Street is so nice, and the topiary elephants were impressive... so much prettier than Eden Park). I wish that I lived in Melbourne.

- Realising the importance of things that used to be important but that I had left behind. This includes all the areas of study that someone like my mother would ask "what are you going to do with that?" about. Languages and literature and history and philosophy are all so important. I've started reading my old books (see below) and re-learning Italian and Latin, and it's weird to think of how empty and boring my life had been without things like this. I remember when I first started university, I thought that Commerce students were really boring, because they couldn't talk about literature or philosophy, and didn't know what I meant when I said "grazie mille". Over the years I feel like I've started to become one, and it is boring and somewhat depressing. Even though so many people (including me, for a while) write off the arts subjects as being useless, I think they are essential.. not necessarily as a degree, but for life inspiration and fulfillment and higher order thinking, you can't go past them.

- 21st birthday parties. I've been to two this week. For the party on Friday, I had to get out my six inch heels for the first time since May, and I tripped over three times walking from the car to the venue (about ten metres). My ankles are feeble. It was nice to see everyone again, and also to be a bit more the centre of attention than usual, because I hadn't seen people since the end of exams and had missed parties/gatherings/miscellaneous social events when I was in Melbourne. I had a ridiculous amount of Coca Cola to drink, because it's pretty much the only non alcoholic beverage that bars seem to serve (I hope my teeth don't rot). Because really, there is nothing uglier than a drunken woman.

- Reading. This started when I found some of my old Robert Harris books, and started to read them again, starting off with Pompeii and then with Imperium and Lustrum. I like the latter two in particular, because they focus on Cicero, while most Roman historical fiction tends to focus on Julius Caesar. The books are also good because they portray JC from the more typical Italian point of view (that he was a tyrant). I also realised that I know someone who is a bit of a real life Cicero.

- Reading II: Lori Gottlieb. A few years ago, I saw an article about her in the newspaper, just before her best known book, Marry Him: the case for settling for Mr Good Enough. The book caused a huge fuss within feminist circles, outraged by the thought of giving instructions to women to settle for anything but the best. That's not actually the point of the book. The point is that a lot of women enter relationships (and I guess I'm probably guilty of it too), for various reasons including things they see in movies and magazines and maybe even fairytales (?), with ridiculously high expectations that can never be met, and for a relationship to be successful, both parties need to have realistic expectations. Although everyone has heard the message before, the bluntness with which it is conveyed is what makes the book hilarious. For example, this, from the author:

Many women in their twenties or early thirties are either breaking up with really good guys, or refusing to even go on a first date with a really good guy, because there’s not instant “chemistry” or because the guy is kind (but not a mind-reader), successful (but not wealthy enough), cute (but balding), and funny (but not Jon Stewart), and they think there’s someone better out there. So they pass up the ‘8’ in order to hold out for the ‘10’ – and then suddenly they’re 38 or 40 and now they can only get a ‘5.’ The ‘8’ would have been the catch. Most of us would be very happy married to the ‘8.’ But we don’t realize this at the time. This whole business of “having it all” is a problem because guess what, most of us aren’t ‘10s’ either. Some guy is going to have to put up with our flaws and give up certain things he may want in a partner, too. Maybe he wanted someone taller, or someone with a better sense of humor or someone less sensitive. We tend to forget about that because our female friends are always telling us how fabulous we are, and soon we think we’re so fabulous that we always find a reason that this guy or that guy isn’t good enough for us.

I find this hilarious. True too, I guess, but mainly hilarious. My mother hates it. Hahaha.

- And seriously, why does everyone insist upon declaring their undying love to me on MSN after midnight? It becomes somewhat overwhelming. Always a relief when it's only platonic.

PS: this is more a reminder to myself than to anyone else, but I need to go through and punctuate this properly and put hyphens in and so on. But I wanted to get this done before sleeping. Bonne nuit to my five followers! hahahaha.

ave atque vale?

"My Lords, since the populist image of the geriatric judge, out of touch with the real world, is now reflected in the statutory presumption of judicial incompetence at the age of 75, this is the last time I shall speak judicially in your Lordships' House. I am happy that the occasion is one when I can agree with your Lordships still in the prime of judicial life who demonstrate so convincingly that common sense and the common law here go hand in hand."

This was per Lord Bridge of Harwich in Ruxley Electronics & Construction Ltd v Forsyth [1995] 3 All ER 268 (HL).

So I read this and started reading about what the statutes say about judicial incompetence and also life peerages. As it turns out, if I ever got to the House of Lords (which will never happen as it's now called the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (ew)), I would be a Baroness of ...Mission Bay.

orly?

"This appeal... raises a question of some importance to the very large number of people who are in the habit of using deck chairs to sit by the seaside at holiday resorts."

The above is a quote from the judgment of Slesser LJ in Chapelton v Barry Urban District Council. In this case, Mr Chapelton hires a deck chair for himself and for a Miss Andrews (who was this Miss Andrews? A girlfriend? A lover? His mother?). They both set up their chairs on a flat part of the beach, and then Chapelton goes to sit down on his and he falls through the canvas, jarring his back. As it happened, Chapelton received a receipt, the back of which said "The Council will not be liable for any accident or damage arisng from hire of chair". Fortunately for Chapelton, the receipt was not reasonably recognisable as a contractual document (because it was a receipt) and so Chapelton required a greater effort from the Council to ensure that he received notice of the terms, and thus they were never incorporated into the contract between the parties. Chapelton wins.

What a feel good story. They should make a feature-length film out of it, or something.

Law 211 says it's Parliament's function, but common sense says maybe a demolition team?

"As I said in Whiting v Diver Plumbing & Heating Ltd [1992] 1 NZLR 560 it may not be a bad thing if a cart and horse were driven through the Contracts Enforcement Act, but I do not consider that to be a proper judicial function."

This was per Tipping J in TA Dellaca v PDL Industries Ltd. Dellaca is the leading NZ case (as far as I'm aware) on the equitable doctrine of part performance. In Dellaca, Tipping J has to contend with two conceptions of what part performance is: acts done in reliance of the alleged contract, or acts done in 'performance' of it. In helping define an act of part performance, helpfully, he comes up with this:

"...it seems to me that there is an underlying theme throughout all the speeches that the act to qualify as one taken in part performance must be an act which, as Viscount Dilhorne put it, can reasonably described as an act of part performance in ordinary parlance."

Tipping J does actually go on to set out useful criteria for acts of part performance. I thought I should add that because the quote above could give quite a misleading view of the judgment. It did, however, provide light relief for me while reading what is quite a lengthly judgment.

As history would have it, the Contracts Enforcement Act has since been repealed and the relevant Statute of Frauds provisions are now included in the Property Law Act 2007.

The Number Devil

"I agree that this appeal should be allowed although the legal route which has led me to this conclusion is not at all points identical with that traversed by the Master of the Rolls. After all, that is the beauty of the common law; it is a maze and not a motorway."

Diplock LJ said that in Morris v C W Martin & Sons. I found the quote in one of my Contract casebooks. It has been put in just before the sample opinion answers at the back and I think it is supposed to offer comfort to distressed law students who will inevitably read the sample answer and panic because they did not address the issues in exactly the same order or the same way. I was reading it because I had a Contract test last night, which didn't go as well as I had hoped. I will try harder, as Boxer always said.

As an aside, I should point out that the Master of the Rolls at the time of Morris was Lord Denning, or Denning LJ as he was then. Lord Denning's legal reasoning is well known for its creativity, and so it's interesting that Lord Diplock chooses to demonstrate the maze-like nature of the common law by contrasting his approach with Denning's, when the point could perhaps have been better made if it had been by contrast with another less, well, bold, member of the judiciary.

That all said, I have massive respect for Lord Denning. Probably like a lot of other Law students, he is my favourite judge. His judgments are so readable due to the way he characterises the facts of each case, most notably in Miller v Jackson ("In the summertime, village cricket is the delight of everyone... [the judge] has issued an injunction to stop them [from playing cricket]. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket.") He also had a profound concern, not uncommon for judges, for the state that the law was in, even as a barrister, describing the leading case on the signature rule, L'Estrange v F Graucob, as a "bleak winter for the law of contract". Aside from all this, as it turns out, he was a mathematician too, and studied maths at Oxford. So I'm studying (almost) the same subjects as Lord Denning. Fantastic!

Now, as I often tend to, I'm going to change tangents completely. It's the young generation, they say. It's the computers. They're doing so many things on there at a time that they can't focus on one thing. Perhaps. But this is my post and it'll be a random walk if that's what I want.

So, fashion. After my test last night I've done a lot of internet browsing of the new Fall collections (and also the end of season sales for Summer). I'm coming to realise that my wardrobe is full of black (though most people could have told me that a long time ago..) and I'm now in the mood for colour. This is probably because while I've been looking at brightly coloured clothes because it's summer in America, it's still winter here and so everything is dark. I am quite keen for the geometric print skirts and dresses that have been popular in the US to come to NZ for summer, although I think NZ is often more inspired by the UK than the US in terms of its trends.

This leads me nicely to the my next (discrete) topic of discussion. Reasons why I wish I were living in New York City:

1. I keep getting emails from various clothes stores in the US (because when I was last there I signed up to be on virtually everyone's mailing list) and they are offering me various discounts and notifying me of various sales (75% off!) but I shall not be able to take advantage of these, being in the Southern Hemisphere.

2. Elle.com is advertising for interns. Aside from a career in investment banking/litigation, I've always wanted to be the editor of a fashion magazine, like another Anna Wintour. Sadly, I think the closest I'll ever get is the editor/review board role I've had for an NZ law journal.

It's now 12.44am and I've realised that it has taken me over an hour to write this entry. Time for sleep. Perchance to dream.

The man on the Clapham omnibus

"The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law you must not injure your neighbour; and the lawyer's question: Who is my neighbour? receives a restricted reply. You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law, is my neighbour? The answer seems to be - persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions that are called in question . . ."

In Contract Law, we've been studying exemption provisions, and commonly one of the parties to the contract will want to exempt liability for negligence. The repeated mention of negligence made me think back to my Law of Torts classes last year, half of which were about negligence. The above statement of principle is from Lord Atkin's judgment in Donoghue v Stevenson, an extremely important case for Tort Law as well as for the common law in general, because it assimilates all the separate precedents relating to separate areas of negligence into one neighbour principle. I also love this judgment because it addresses an idea to which many practising the law sometimes show a willful blindness: the divide between what is moral and what is legal. Of course, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive, but they are far from the same thing. Here, Lord Atkin recognises this, but seems to make an attempt to combine them by couching a fundamental legal concept in the language of morality.

In other news, the second university semester is now in full swing. I handed in three assignments this week. I have two more to hand in next week, and a Contract Law test. It's only week four and I feel exhausted. At the end of this year I'll be 3/5 years of university done! It's exciting to be so close to entering the world of employment, but at the same time it still feels like I've only left school recently. That aside, here is a summary of my life at the moment:

Going up:

• Contract Law lectures: my professor is so entertaining and engaging that what is considered by most to be the Law degree's hardest subject is my favourite. I just hope that I do well in the exam for it.
• AULSS Executive student elections: so much better than the AUSA elections because all the candidates are my friends. It's also refreshing to see a student election where the candidates don't list "is drunk all the time" as a credential.
• Brownies: I've been sick for the last ten days, and on a couple of occasions my sister has brought home brownies for me from various Queen Street bakeries and cafes.

Going down:

• 2pm-4pm lectures: I love the subject, but at 3.30pm when I've been in lectures since 8am, I do start to feel a little dozy.
• Swine Flu: I've had it for ten days now and it's really hard to shake off. Being a small and relatively isolated community, the entire Auckland Law School seems to have got it at some point over the last three weeks.
• Kathmandu jackets: there is currently this stereotypical NZ university student image of a Kathmandu puffer jacket, a baggy t-shirt, black leggings and Keds shoes. It looks so unkempt; why must we live up to the stereotype?

Now that I've got to the end of this blog entry, I'm feeling satisfied that I have achieved something on my 'evening of rest'. Confession: I only thought to write about the tort of negligence because I felt that I had been negligent with my blog updating.

Love is complicated, but math is beautiful.

I found this on The Unofficial Stanford Blog, and I thought that I would post it because Maths final grades came out this evening and I did well :)

Don't look back in anger

resquiascas in pace, Mr Fleming.

A Ridiculous Beginning

"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning." Albert Camus A few weeks ago, I decided to start this blog. I guess I was inspired by a lot of the other blogs that I read on the internet, and wanted to create something similar. Easier said than done. Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking increasingly that my mind must be some kind of thoughtless vacuum that I couldn't think even of anything mundane to say. Here I am, typing away but saying nothing. I'm Emma. I find it hard to describe myself. I study economics, finance and law; but I also love literature, foreign languages, and science. I'm pietas and furor. I think of myself as a free market economist, but I'm increasingly becoming a Keynesian. I'm pedantic, and really formal. The flow on effect of this is that I have to write an introduction to this blog before writing 'content' entries, because I won't feel like I can write anything here until I have started it properly. Formalities are important. You can't tell your life story to someone you've never met before saying hello. I'm going to use this blog to document my life, and also things that I like and that interest me. This includes economics, food, fashion, science, table setting, yield curves, accidence and syntax... I'll probably put photos on here. My friend Courtney has recently lamented on Facebook that "everyone thinks they're a photographer". I have no such delusions. I am well aware that the extent of my photographic ability will probably only ever go so far as being able to take awkward family holiday photos and then use the USB cable to transfer them to my computer. But whatever; I'm uploading them. So there's my ridiculous beginning.