Favourite Beach

After the rather exhausting bar exam, our little family took a nice vacation to Ocracoke Island. I have to say that it is probably one of the nicest beaches I have ever been. I am not exagerating.

I am not a beach person (I really prefer going dipping my athletic body in a nice lake with a BIG mountain in the back)so when I say that the place was nice I am not making that up.

Ocracoke is an island part of the Outer Banks archipelago. It's off the North Carolina Coast.

First, you can only get there by a rather small ferry (a 2h30 traversee) which has the very good advantage of limiting the actual number of people that can be there at the same time.



Second, the height of the building is strickly limited. As a result, you don't see those rather ugly 4-5 storeys beach houses/condo that you see on the rest of the Outer Banks.

Third, only the village is open for development, the rest of the Island is Cape Hatteras National Seashore, so there's only you, the ocean, the beaches and the dunes (except some stupid rednecks with their SUV on certain parts of the beach but what can you do, Paradise does not exist on this planet).



So in the end, you have a rather cool place. everybody uses bikes to go around, the shops are nice and the seafood extra-fresh so in other words, all our little family had a fantastic time.


See you there!

My bank is merging

I learnt today in the paper that my bank, the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, is going to merge with another durham institution: the Community Mutual Savings Bank.

Thankfully, they are going to keep the M&F name. I have to say, I mainly got an account there because of the Bank's name. The Mechanics and Farmers Bank: what a cool name.
I don't know why, I think that name is great in today's technology oriented society.

(I also have to admit that I also got an account there because one of their branches is really close to my house and is opened on Saturday.)

What I did not know and discovered reading the Article is that my bank is actually kind of special. It was an historic bank founded during the segregation, one hundred years ago and that It has played a major role in promoting the development of a black middle class. This bank was part of what was called "Black Wall Street".

By the way, the bank it is going to merge with was created almost at the same time and for the same purposes.

So, good luck with its expansion plans to the Mechanics and Farmers Bank.

Bar Exam

 

New york Bar Exam July 2007

Yeah, I had the opportunity to go to Saratauga Springs, NY to take the bar exam. The exam is tought and I only 3 weeks to prepare for it. So needless to say that I was pretty nervous about it. :(

The exam took place on Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 of last month. I had decided to fly there on Sunday to better know the town to prepare myself psychologically etc...and also to avoid the stress of having muy flight cancelled at the last minute and miss the exam.

The first day of the exam was dedicated to New York questions and the second one to the multistate portion. The New York section consisted of 50 multiple choice questions and 4 essays. The multistate one consisted of 200 multiple choices questions to be answered in 6 hours.
I found the New York part relatively easy compared to the multistate one.

I have no idea about the results of the exam but I hope that I passed. I know that I did ok in the essay portion but I really can't tell about the multiple choice section.

Other than that my testing center was in Saratauga Springs, NY a very charming city. Here are some pics of the city I took while I was there. The city is very horse oriented with a Polo championship and a horsetrack.