A really bad haircut

Hah. New life indeed. I just paid £100 to a previously impecunious young undergraduate to mow the lawn and prune the bushes. Result? He uprooted the bushes, and left the lawn looking like GI Barbie with tufts of grass trying hard to cover the bald bits.

In any case, well, at least he did a thorough job. And I have been helping with economic stimulus, so it can't be all that bad. This morning, I received my lavender and toddled off to pot them. I hadn't dug more than 4 inches deep when the roots of the old bushes sprang up to surprise me. Never mind, I thought, I can do this. Surely it's just a few roots. Nope. It was an entire root system our young friend left for me. So I called him and gently explained that he'd left the roots. Showing. As it were. He advised me to put down some weedkiller and volunteered to come back next week to upturn the roots. No apologies. No confession of a job half done.

So what do I learn from this? There are a lot of idiots out there. I have been an idiot to give him the benefit of the doubt. So now, £100 down, I have learned a very important lesson. By all means, philantrophy is a good thing. Sometimes we just have to leave it to the likes of Bill Gates, who actually has cash to burn. I'm off to the garden centre now to get some tools to sort out the mess left behind. Just like the good old days when some idiot hairdresser left me with a really bad haircut. This time, it's not hairbands and pins. It's pots and compost, which are far more expensive.

The Party is over. Let Life now begin!

The Party is over. Now comes the clearing up part. While all those people have gone out to celebrate I am carefully wrapping up and putting away my notes. I know that if I pass and go on to the next level, I will need my notes to refer to, and if not, I take them out again anyway. I have turned out to be a really stubborn candidate i.e. I will take these exams until I pass. Grr. Also, these months of studying have yielded more than just knowledge of the CBOK. I have come to finally, understand and recognise my particular strengths. Today, the day after the CFA exams, life begins a new cycle. There is much, much more to acheive!

For anyone who wants to take on the program(US spelling), know this: the exam takes over your life. So it is not just you taking the exam, your parents, your spouse(s), your children and everyone who is close to you, vicariously suffer and celebrate for you. The exams are not really tough, but I liken it to a ballet. You need to practice practice practice. Then on the day of performance, you have to be brave enough to wing it.