Listen log 2nd

My American girl
09, 21, 07

Summary
This is documentary that is about a family in New York from Dominican Republic.
It showed typical immigration’s family life and one of common American family lives which is composed of father, mother, three daughters. They live a three-story house with a lot of their relatives.
Sandra and her husband have a two job to live in New York and to bring up their children and to come true their dream and to help poor people in their country.
However, they don’t have time to take care their children, because every day they go to work at 5:30 and arrive at home about 9:00. So they have one problem of their third daughter which is contrast with the other good older daughters. She doesn’t like to study so her test score is too low; therefore, Sandra is very concerned about her daughter’s future. She does effort to guide her daughter to right way, such as scolding, giving a penalty, consulting daughter’s teacher.
And they have a dream that go back to their country. In there, they will build dream house and they want to help poor people. That is, for them, their country is a sort of heaven and New York means just method to make their dream come true.

After a long time, I saw a good documentary. It was so good because I didn’t expect that movie. Anyway it reminded me of my life and my dream and it made me reflect current life. Nowadays I often grumble about studying English; Studying English is too boring and I am doubt advance in my English as time passed. So sometimes I don’t want to do anything except sleeping. But compared with Sandra’s life, my life is too easy and I have a lot of time to do everything. I just whined.
Anyway this documentary encouraged me to move on achieving my dream and to focusing on English. For her, New York means a method to realize her dream. From now, for me, Austin means a opportunities and a fundamental to came true my dream. Let’s go 21. !!!

Listening log 1st

09, 25, 07

Lengthy UAW Strike Could Cost GM Billions

From reports by NPR's Frank Langfitt and The Associated Press

Gm’s strike is the first nationwide strike against the U.S. auto industry since 1976. Negotiation between the United Auto Workers and Gm was finally broke down. The UAW requires guarantees about jobs and new models in the U.S. on the other hand, Gm want to reduce expanse of health care and if the UAW don’t want to reduce expanse GM can’t help outsourcing to abroad or cutting jobs off.
Anyway this negotiation is very important to the other American car companies as well as GM, because the other companies are suppose to follow this contract. However, current time is very important for GM, because they have to overcome two big problems which are decrease of their reputation, the first car company, and challenging of foreign car company. But this strike hurt their strategy of new model which is aimed to the company’s turnaround.
The UAW requires guarantees about jobs and new models in the U.S. on the other hand, Gm want to reduce expanse of health care and if the UAW don’t want to reduce expanse GM can’t help outsourcing to abroad or cutting jobs off.


This week, I want to listen to different things for listening log. While I usually do something on my room I just turn on the NPR. However, this time I tried to listen carefully to write listening log. This week I listen to health & diet, art & culture, politics & society etc. But the majority of listening was Business section. Among Business, the most interesting news was about the GM’s strike. So I chose the GM’s strike for listening log.

In Korean I read a lot about American big three car companies. I was interested in car companies’ circumstances because I hoped Korean companies’ advance in the U.S. Anyway I have some ideas why American car companies suffer hard time. To sum up, they didn’t do hard to reinvest their new model and technology and they spend a lot of money for retirees’ health care and workers’ welfare. To retrieve their reputation Gm is really required bold decisions and agreement of works. GM and the UAW have to finish this strike as quickly as they can to prevent huge cost. And American car companies and the UAW have to realize their position in the car industry. Absolutely they don’t have time and money to waste anymore. I can say confidently to car companies and all workers that you have to wake up in last success and look around your competitors and move on the future!!! I want to see Big 3’s re-thrive. You are still strong enough. Come on hahaha

Listening log 2 - 09,20

Business FinanceProfessor: Woochan Kim09. 20 (2:00~3:15)

Today constantly I learned valuation of stocks. There are a lot of models to measure stock’s risk and valuation, but Last week and today we learned Dividend Discount Model and Dividend Growth Rate.

Basically in stock, cash flow consists of capital gain and dividend. That is, we can anticipate earnings at capital which happens in present and dividend which happens in the future. So if we want to get a high earning rate, we really care about present value of stocks and we measure expectation of dividend’s quantity appropriately as completely as we can.

By the way, some companies don’t want to give dividend to stock holders, the reason why most big IT companies like the MS usually reinvest their retained earnings. They think reinvestment is better way to compensate to stock holders by increasing their stock’s price at the market. On the other hand, usually tobacco companies don’t need to reinvest too much because they don’t have new area to develop any more except just making taste better and finding the other place where people don’t movement about tobacco’s harm to our body. So they give the dividend through retained earnings to stock holders And there are two rates which are ROE(return on equity) and PER(price earnings ratio). We can anticipate easily stock’s value in the future with them.

This week has only one class because there was a quiz on Tuesday. I didn’t want to take a test because I don’t understand exactly during class and I don’t need to spend extra time to understand each day’s lecture completely because, my current priority is English conversation. So while I take a lecture I usually try to focus on catching main idea and notice which words use in Business and recall my study in Korea.

Anyway I really looked forward to this lecture because recently I am interested in investing stocks. Even though it was really hard to understand models and formulas, it was good to make me remind important foundation of investing stocks again.

Listening log 1 - 09, 20

09, 20, 07 7~9pm
Notebook

I asked my friend to do listening log “which movie was touching to you?” So she recommended the Notebook to me.

Anyway the story is about two persons real love, Allie Hamilation and Noah Calhoun, who meet one day at a carnival. Although the two are falling in love, Allie's parents forbid the relationship and move Allie away. After her moving, even though Noah send to a mail every day for one year to her, she doesn’t get anything from Noah because, her mother always take them. So Allie moves on and meets Lon and becomes engaged. Despite her commitment for Lon, Allie decides to visit Noah 'to see how he's doing'. It is soon that they have feeling for each other and soon engage in passionate love. Allie has to choose between Lon who she had already scheduled to marry, and Noah who she really wants. Finally Allie chose Noah and Noah and Allie passed away in a same ward at once.

This kind of romantic movie makes me feel moved, quiet, calm and be pure. I was really touched. And I hope someday I want to love passionately lovely girl hahahah. And I missed my girl friend in Korea hahaha. And now I think what if I try to find real love in Austin hahahaha. Any way this movie was really good and makes me ask myself what exactly real love is to me?

Seccond Listening log 9/14

Honey
09.13.07 (8:00~10:30)

Movie plot.
Honey Daniels (Jessica Alba) is a 22-year-old, sexy, tough-minded, part-black, part-Latina hip-hop dancer in New York's East Harlem who dreams of making it big as a music video choreographer. She teaches hip-hop dancing at a local youth center and encourages the local kids to attend to keep them off the streets and out of trouble. When luck shines on Honey in the form of a famous music video director, named Michael, who casts her in one music video, she's encouraged to make the transition from dancer to choreographer. But Honey's sudden success comes with a price when Michael refuses to take "no" for an answer to his sexual advances and then tries to sabotage her career by blackballing her out of the business. Honey no longer has the money to buy a studio for the kids she teaches dance for so she and her students form a dance benefit. Finally they got a big success. She seems to come true a part of her real dream.

Reaction
I thought this movie has pulse-pounding music and awesome dance. Also it has impression and lesson. But we can’t expect something unique story and fantastic visual in this movie.
Anyway at first just it made me excited and fun. As movie going on I felt something passions and I thought about real dream seriously. I think nowadays, most young people’ dream relate to money and fame. Just they seem to pursue visible and fancy things. Sometimes so do I.
But what I really impressed from this movie is “what makes you happy?” which is one of lyrics. The thing which makes us happy is definitely considered as our dream if people want to live happy life. I thought ‘what make I happy?’. It links my dream which is to be a big guy. Just I mean big guy is person who can sincerely help and considerate people who are familiar with me and are poor people. To achieve these kinds of things I have to constantly do my best whenever, whatever with a strong passion. Absolutely now, the first thing that I have to do hard is English… What a pity!!! … SuXX!!!... kkkkkkkk

First Listening log 9.14

Business Finance
Professor: Woochan Kim
09.11.07 (2:00~3:30) / 09. 13 (3:00~4:45)
In this week what I learned in the class are valuation of bonds and valuation of stocks.
What I write about is Valuation of bonds which that basically we can divide in 3parts that are rate, present price and yield.
Easy to say the rate is fix at the bonds when they were issued and yield is very flexible in according to market and present price is also changeable as rate’s variation. As times passed holder don’t really care about rate as it is unchangeable. But the thing we consider are present value of bonds, because if rate goes up the value goes down and if rate goes down the value goes up.
Simply we have choices. First, we just hold until maturity and then we can get coupon rate regularly and capital on maturity. It is just easy way to make money but if compared to interest of bank we can’t bet whether investment bond is better or not. Second, we focus on the yield’s change which cause present value of bonds, so we can choose to sell bonds to realize the present earnings when the yield down. This way is basically depends on holder’s inclination and economic situation.
This is very basic part of bonds and we can divide bond into a lot of sorts according to bond’s feature. Also along lots of bonds there are a lot of model and formula but it is too hard to mention. Actually it was difficult to understand totally about bonds even though when I studied bonds in Korea it was very hard. Especially this week the majority of lecture topics were some model and formulas, so frankly I was sleepy and hard to concentrate. Anyway it made me review my study also encouraged in doing my best at finance and English.

Listening log

Business Finance
Professor: Woochan Kim
09.06 3:30~4:45


# Summary

As I understand today’s main topic is how to reduce our risk of investment. How can we reduce risk and make money? Definitely the way is maximizing return and minimizing lots of exposed risk which has market risk, diversifiable risk, contribution of individual assets to market risk and beta. As professor said basically we can reduce risk to make a portfolio. If we hold portfolio especially with30 different stocks, we can reduce most diversified risk so we don’t need to care about diversified risk.
As I think market risk is the most important influence among whole risk to portfolio, because when we hold a good portfolio, diversified risk doesn’t matter and beta, contribution of individual asset to market risk are very close connected with market risks which are war, big terror, inflation and recession. So if we want to reduce risk about our asset, we will make a good diverse portfolio and we will have to deal with market risk.

# Reaction

Today is my first day to listen to a lecture at the UT. Actually I didn’t know how I could listen to lectures and where the appropriate lecture for me is? But I could find a proper lecture by introduction from my classmate, Jun.
As my expectation it was hard to understand even my major is business, because of English. So I couldn’t understand detail theory and formula exactly. So I just tried to catch a main idea and I want to know what kinds of English words were used in financial part.
By the way it was good challenging to me and it was good time to practice listening to English and it is going to help my study of major, business.