Zombie

What a glorious weekend. The trip to Oviedo was great - I was re-tracing the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona, just with no Javier Bardem! It was the beginning of November but the weather was glorious and the town is just too cute. The town is big on cider which is slightly less pleasant in the mornings as there's always a faint whiff of dried fermenting apples in the air. I toddled over to the town auditorium to watch the final grand prix with all the die hard Fernando Alonso fans, seeing as it is his home town. Turns out, he is less popular than I thought, or the fans are not really die hard at all, as the place was sparsely filled. The positive side was that I was interviewed by a national radio station who were very excited that someone from Button-land had travelled there to support the national hero. Er... hello? Have you seen the man's jaw line? Mmmm.

Anyway, I completely forgot that I had set my alarm clock at home for 3am to catch a silly-hour flight on Friday and this morning when the alarm went off, I got up, washed and did my hair before I realised it was only 3:30am!! Needless to say, I have been a complete zombie all day. There was this big conference today, it was me and 20 or so finance people sat around a circular table. The room was warm and the chat was dull. My eyes were getting heavy - I was trying everything in my power to keep the tiredness away. I could sense that my writing was falling down the page but even though I could see it on the page, I couldn't wake myself up. Am really worried about how I looked - for all I know, I may even have been snoring!

Some excitement in the UK today as there may be some retribution on the horizon for those banks that have had free access to national funds. Chance would be a fine thing - I 'll believe it when I see it.

Facial conundrum

The head honcho - as in the man who is in charge of investments and sits like the fairy at the top of the tree - has requested to be my friend on facebook. For those of you who have skim read that first sentance, I'm going to wait here for you to read it again to fully comprehend the gravitas of the forked road that lies before me.

What should I do? If I accept, then I will constantly live in fear that someone will write something or put up weird pictures that he will associate with my behaviour. Plus why should I accept it? He's not the boss of me (outside of work...) but I can't help thinking it's some sort of test. But what's the right answer? I'm so sure I wouldn't be like this if we weren't in a job security-less recession! Also, I'm not sure I want to see personal photos of him. I mean, it's bad enough to see him in his best pressed suit but do I really want to see him chilling in his jeans or worse, beach holiday snaps?

Predictably, I'm just hoping it will go away if I ignore it long enough. Although that strategy doesn't seem to work too well with him in the office...

Duck duck goose..!

Went to the cinema to see Disney Pixar's Up in 3D. It's their latest animated movie and it was completely lovely. A grump of an old man setting off to live his unfulfilled dreams in memory of his childhood sweetheart - with a chubby little oriental kid to test his patience but who ultimately brings out the best in the old man. It's sort of like Gran Torino - but less violent and with helium balloons. Apart from crying my eyes out (it is very moving), the biggest surprise was how much 3D has evolved since I was 8, following Blue Peter to cut out glasses from cereal boxes and using green and red Quality Street sweet wrappers. I looked like an idiot and the TV screen was largely the same. Now, the plastic goggles still make me look like an idiot but the 3D element really works. Definitely go check it out.

It has been 10 years since I went to University - the first week of October 1999 was when I turned up at Oxford as a fresher to learn the ways of adulthood. To celebrate this joyous occasion, I organised a reunion (kudos to facebook as it made everyone very easy to find) and 50 of us gathered in a gentlemen's club in London on Friday. These types of official reunions are not as 'de rigeur' as they are in the US, and it was really nice to see everyone and for them to make an effort. The variety of different paths we had the choice to follow is really inspiring. Along with several hardened academics who continue to labour on their post docs for intellectual acclaim, there was a mix of lawyers, media moguls and art gallery socialites. Strangely, no one seems to have gone into banking but me - they obviously had better career advisors than I did! Anyway, it was warming to see everyone and to hear of their successes. It still makes me wonder though, whether we follow a predetermined destiny or whether we have the will to write our own futures.

Talking of ugly ducks turning into swans, you have to read about the Belgian Miss Homeless contest. As a social experiment, they ran this contest and the winner receives housing for a year... Aside of being a headline grabber, is it really any worse or better than an actual Miss World contest? The prize may seem more meaningful (in that it satisfies our desires to be do-gooders) but are we not taking exploitation to new levels?

Then the big goose of the week - my work has banned all web based emails and facebook! I spend 12 hours a day in the office and usually more than 5 days a week! It is apparently to protect information security - I still feel like I'm being violated...

Interlagos is underway - my Fernando is out on the first lap following repercussions of another crash. All my eggs are in the red bull basket now. Come on Vettel!!

Knowledge is power

Turns out the posh boys I work with actually are part of the English aristocracy. All this time, I thought they were just overpaid idiots with their false airs and graces and public school humour but turns out, the jokes on me! They have titles and signet rings and when their fathers die, they will inherit land and maybe even peasants... Isn't this hilarious, who even knew this stuff still existed? Anyway, ever the opportunist, I have profited from the situation as one of them is dating a girl at Jimmy Choo and she is getting me 70% off some new shoes!

The half marathon was today - there were 15,000 people running through the royal parks. Predictably, I under-trained so it was less exciting for me, but it was vaguely amusing to be running with so many people. It was nice weather at least and the views were lovely. Even London is pretty in the Autumn - lovely golden reds and browns on all the trees.

This run means I have spent a good chunk of this weekend with my colleagues. I'm already worried I spend too much time with them and this just confirms it! My work day starts at 7:30am and then don't leave until at least 7pm - and then usually only to have a drink in the bar with co-workers before coming home. That's a disturbing amount of time, but it keeps getting compounded because they naturally become my friends and we organise to do things like marathons at the weekend. Talk about having all your eggs in one basket. I need to get out more - any non-solitary hobby suggestions would be gratefully received!

Oktoberfest

Imagine the utter horror – you’re young and carefree and your boss tells you he’s sending you to Munich for a work conference in the middle of Oktoberfest... So it’s not my usual Mediterranean haunt but it’s definitely something worth visiting Germany for. We had an area booked in the Windl tent – it’s big enough to sit 8.5k people inside and a further 5k people outside. As you can see from the picture, it was fairly packed. The atmosphere is great – you order your huge steins of beer or radlers (beer with a lemonade top for those less hardcore beer guzzlers like me) and these women dressed in dirndl carry them 8-10 at a time to your table. This is no small feat – I struggled with even one, having to use both hands everytime I wanted a sip. The food was great – not a single wurst in sight – and there’s a live band in the middle who play a medley of Bavarian classics, old school pop and every other song is a Bavarian drinking song. Pretty early on, everyone as far as the eye could see was on the table, singing, toasting, dancing and generally being merry. It was really good fun and I even managed to turn up to my 9am meeting the following day in a vaguely coherent state!

The town itself is beautiful too – a real chocolate box setting. Cute little houses in pastel colours with climbing ivy and wooden window frames. One of the first things to strike you is how tidy the streets are, which just adds to the pleasantness of the city. In the same town, there is the ultra modern BMW World which showcases the latest in luxury cars in an amazing torque-defying glass structure that looks like a twisted cone and then you see the Siemens building which looks more like an Austrian stately home – I half expected the Von Trapp kids to come running down the stairs singing about their favourite things! It was election weekend, so every street corner had photos of Angela Merkel and her peers which was possibly the only scary thing I saw the whole week...

This week we are moving office. Only across the courtyard so that now we face the church. It’s very odd how many churches there are in the City of London. I work less than 5 minutes walk from St Paul’s cathedral but my office shares a courtyard with another church and from our top floor, there are plenty more church spires dotted all over the place. There’s even a masonic temple hidden in the inner bowls of one of the older hotels. Anyhow, I’ve got 4 years of paper to sort through this week. Fun fun fun!

Blessed be

My parents have been together for a handsome 29 years - during that time they have remained faithful to each other and unquestioningly loyal to me and my younger brother. I have always had somewhere safe to call home and even now, if I were to ring them and say I was sick they would drive straight over in the middle of the night with hot chicken soup. I feel very blessed and hope that they have been successful at subconsciously implanting a picture of domestic bliss in my head which I shall be able to recreate for my own. It's natural for me to think of my future as I get ever closer to 30, but it saddens me to see my parents age. My mother is talking about knee pains and my daddy is getting forgetful. I just kind of assumed they would be around forever to look after me but the balance is definitely shifting and I can feel them becoming more reliant on me. It makes me happy to give something back but still, it saddens me...

On Friday night, I was out with some work colleagues (all male) when a guy came over, told me he had noticed me and was going to give me a chance to impress him. Takes some balls to do that - the line in itself is pretty special but infront of all those banker guys.. He's given me a time and place to meet him this Friday - says he'll wait for me for 15 minutes otherwise it's game over. I like arrogance but I think this guy watches too many movies or something. But my only Friday night plans so far are Otin/Hit40's Happy Hour #3... It will be a busy weekend for me though, am taking James Bond to the big Chelsea game on Sunday.

Tomorrow I am travelling into the English countryside to present to the pension board of a regional corporate. They are hosting a sort of 'beauty parade' for people to pitch for their £50m fund. Let's hope my baton twirling is up to scratch!

C'est la vie

Working for a publicly listed company has both good and bad points. A definite bad point is that we are not just focused on the bottom-line but also on the way we spin it for the sake of shareholders. As we have a August year end, we have received a memo from our CEO to manage our pay expectations. After talking about the redundancies that have been made and the savings that have been delivered, he goes on to say:

The direct effect of the sudden and substantial fall in markets has been to reduce the company’s income during the last financial year and these will inevitably have to be reflected in bonus payments and salary reviews in respect of last financial year to the end of September 2009. We are aware that our staff around the group have worked extremely hard over the last 12 months and may be disappointed that their bonus will fall year on year.

Not what you want to hear, especially as they already used this little trick last year and I ended up with a sackload of depressed shares. Not so clever when you were hoping for cash but hopefully when I am 50, they will be worth millions.. Anyway, like a good business school graduate, having slapped us down and warned us of how insecure our jobs are, he goes on to say:

I am therefore extremely confident that next year should show a strong recovery in both overall income and, more importantly, margin, which we would anticipate would be reflected in next year’s salary and bonus review.

I shall be keeping my eyes peeled to see what remuneration he gets when our annual report come out!

Strike!

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a point in every day when you decide you will no longer do any more work.

Usually, I can hold it off til after lunch at least but it's been getting earlier and earlier until it pretty much culminated on Friday by striking at 9am! I'd only been at work long enough to buy myself a coffee and flick through some overnight emails. Anyway, I felt so guilty that I stayed until 9pm - I actually got pretty productive after 6. The weirdest thing is, there is this man who works in fixed income who I only know by name and he was there even when I left. Thinking about it on my wonderfully lonely tube ride home, he is always there when I leave and always there before I arrive in the morning. Does he go home at all? Does he not get on with his wife? Do they have nothing to talk about now that the kids have flown the nest? Is he still living with his mother? Honestly, I was having a random Tuesday thoughts rant in my head and it kept me entertained all the way home.

So, hopefully this slackness was a Summer thing and I shall be good to go tomorrow. Although I keep looking at the clock willing the moment not to come. The guilt is simply unbearable.

Humid

It's hot, like horrible Far-Eastern-just-before-massive-monsoon hot.

Sticky, wet, overcast hot.

No-tan hot.

I've been working 14 hour days and I come home and it's roasting. Top floor flats with closed windows are not what one should have to come home to. Plus I can't sleep with the windows open because of a phobia I have harboured since watching To Catch A Thief - who knows what/who will climb in through your top floor window!

Anyway, all I have to eat is low fat chocolate mousse - I really don't know why I bought this. It's clearly indulgent so I may as well have gone all out. This low fat version is really hideous and completely doesn't satisfy on any level. Who drank all the emergency wine? If only my mum could see me now...

Zen...

...the only thing keeping me going is the photo of Alonso and me which I have taken to carrying around in my handbag! Every stranger I meet gets the full story. I'm sure I will get bored of it one day... haha

Work is super busy. After graduation, as I stepped into the warm embrace of the financial Centre of Europe, I deliberately steered away from investment banking where my friends commonly stay at work until 2am and then boast that they get to take a company-paid cab home. Instead I chose to be a fund manager - something equally important sounding at all important high school reunions yet with friendlier hours. But somewhere, I think I've been conned!

We're doing a big acquisition - taking over a company that is far bigger in size than we are. Don't even get me started on the politics involved of integrating 2 separate teams - one of which is significantly higher profile and better paid. You know what they say: Change is good. But not in my back yard!!

Lots of news over the past week but it's all just passing me by without giving me a chance to make sarcastic quips. Michael Jackson, Bernard Madoff, Air France... But the one I've chosen to highlight is the story of James Amburn, a fund manager much like myself. He was tortured and held hostage by a gang of pensioners for 4 days for losing their pension money.

"The men, dubbed the "Geritol Gang" by police after an arthritis drug, face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of subjecting German-American James Amburn to the alleged four-day ordeal.
Two of his kidnappers are said to have hit him with a Zimmer frame outside his home in Speyer, western Germany, before he was bound up with duct tape, bundled into the boot of a car and driven 300 miles to the home of two of the abductors on the shores of Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria."

His excuse? "Due to market conditions, unfortunately [the money is] gone"

Damn it, that's my line!!

Fort Frick

Once upon a time there was a young man called Henry Clay Frick who vehemently opposed all organised labour unions. Dubbed the worst CEO in American history, Frick was so unimpressed by the steel unions that he went face to face with the rioting masses back in the 1890s leading to several employee deaths and an assasination attempt. I don't know if this led to him lending his surname to grade 2 insults but he's generally regarded as an unpleasant being.

Well, I wish he were here now to sort out the sorry state of London Underground. For 2 days now we have had no underground metro system. Doesn't sound very scary I know, but it took me 2.5 hours to get to work this morning because I ended up walking the whole way! I don't mind a spot of exercise but not at 6:30am and certainly not if there is a whole day of work awaiting me. The journey back has been no less enjoyable.

What is making the underground workers so miserable I hear all you labour-friendly people ask? Well, in the middle of a global recession which has left most stones thoroughly turned, the underground union is demanding a 5% pay increase and a guarantee for no redundancies. I never make out like I am anything but a heartless capitalist but this is too much even for me. I would rather walk 5 hours a day than see them get job security ahead of the rest of the economy. The underground union have replaced Gordon Brown on my dartboard. Long live Henry Frick!

Completely unrelated but check out the amount of moolah being moved around in Spain - a so called bust economy. Now that's a dream team!

The Fear

... is here

400 hours and 40 minutes til exam day - calculated using my overqualified Texas BA II plus which can apparently do much more useful things such as tell me the time value of a dividend today relative to a capital gain tomorrow. The joys...






As an aside, during my week off, it has come to my attention that the greatest slacker film of all time is selling a little bit of real estate. Sub prime spares no one - click on the photo if you have a spare $2.4m and want to be Ferris Bueller

More Vino?

On Friday, a few colleagues and I were invited down to the International Wine fair (held in the same location that my exams will be in a few weeks!) for 'business' and we carefully selected a 4pm slot so as to have some time afterwards to enjoy the rest of the fair. There were wine producers galore from all over the world, and we were more than happy to sample their wares.

As a big supporter of European trade, I hit the old world stalls with a vengeance and found a small Spanish producer of Ribera del Duero - Rioja's lesser known sibling - which I absolutely love. Even better, the guy on the stall was gorgeous - deeply tanned with dark hair and these amazing long eyelashes that were tinted blonde at the tips (no doubt from all those hours spent under the sun tending the vineyards...). In his broken English with a beautiful thick Spanish accent, he was telling me the history of the 'terroir' in Valladolid but he could have been saying anything to be honest because all I was thinking was... how short is too short? Granted my sense of perspective may not have been 100% at the time, but I'm pretty sure eye-contact involved no head tilting.

He's offered to take me out next week but I'm not sure I want to date a guy who affects my choice of shoes. On the plus side, and this is a big plus, I will probably never be short of wine!

It's as easy as A - B - C

I have finely honed revision skills that involve leaving everything til the last minute whilst accumulating a growing level of stress (inversely proportional to the number of days left) and then working through the night on d-day whilst my pencil races against the dawn - it takes a week after the exam period to rebuild my sanity!

It all started in high school when exams used to stretch over 3 weeks. It was a time I used to look forward to because for those 3 weeks of the year, we were allowed to come to school in our own clothes. It was supposed to help us feel comfortable, but going to an all girls school, this was an open invitation for us to wake up an hour earlier to match our belts to our pencil case, straighten our hair and showcase our newest jeans. One time I was so exhausted and sleep-deprived, something had to give. There's still an urban legend at the school now of a crazy, one-eyed, hunch backed girl who suffered a mental breakdown and came to school in uniform on own-clothes-day. *shudder*...

It all switched at university as the only time I was told what to wear was during exam time. I kid you not, I had to wear a black skirt, white shirt and a black ribbon round my neck whilst the boys had a wear a full black suit and a white bow tie. Can you imagine anything more stressful on the morning of your exam than trying to tie a bow-tie? We also had to carry our graduation hat to every exam - even though we're not allowed to put them on until graduation day. This proved quite useful as it turned into my pencil case - as an engineer I had rulers, calculators, protractors, compasses and as a hypochondriac I had 10 super sharp pencils, just in case... If we weren't dressed properly, we were turned away from exam schools! Those sleepless nights ironing shirts to be granted exam entry - best days of my life...

Now I'm sitting for a professional qualification that is supposed to make me a better financial analyst and give me three more letters after my name. As a US corporation, they charge us $1000 for the pleasure of sitting a 6 hour exam on a Saturday (my company is paying, for those of you thinking I really am a crazy, one-eyed hunch-back) and you have to pass 3 levels to get the qualification. So whether I pass or fail, I will still be taking another exam next June! The same crazy long exam is sat across the world on the same weekend and in London alone, there are 40,000 people who turn up at this huge warehouse where all you can see are rows of desks stretching back to infinity. As zero hour approaches, the shutters start to roll down and desparate candidates roll under the gap (very Indiana Jones) and I begin to frantically re-sharpen all my pencils. Only a month to go - wish me luck!

Let it be me

This week involved interviewing interns. Those who have made it through the rigorous screening process, which every year sees my colleagues hanging about after work one day with a few bottles of wine as we sift through the many CVs. My team is young, with the majority of us being under 30, so it’s not that long since we ourselves were the interviewee. Life is tough – there are slim margins between applicants on the academic side as they all seem to be excelling at top notch universities – so more often than not, it comes down to that special chance that one word somewhere on the CV makes a connection with the interviewer – be it a shared interest or the same home town. At the end of the day, they are all plenty smart but you want them to fit in with the existing team but also to bring something new.

At university, I was much like any other student, with that subtle arrogance from the belief that I was en route to something big. The place was full of high achievers who spent their free time perfecting their tennis serve, protesting for human rights or running for university president – all things I believed I could achieve too if I chose to. Then comes graduation, which for many is the final curtain on their childhood, and we are released to once again, become the smallest fish in a very large pond. My self belief is eroded away with every unsuccessful job application and I’m left with regrets. I had a unique four year window of opportunity where I was free to chase after any dream but was too lazy to take advantage of it.

And now it gives me great pleasure to meet these hopeful interns, who are trying to plan their summer vacation to include experiences that will help them on their road forward. Their new suits, straight postures and eager eyes takes me back to a happy time – although with every passing year, the edges become a little more frayed with thoughts of what could have been.