Random Thought

What's the point in cutting cost and increasing profit when in the long run you'll not be able to sustain the business... or the economy because employee are the economy

Life

Some times things happen in life that you would never have expected. Who would have expected that I'll be a trainer in Glasgow after joining Barclays Singapore 2 years ago and not to mention New Jersey.

You cannot credit what had happened over the past 2 years to chance or coincidence, you have to credit it to God. What else can it be? I joined the Barclays Singapore and started in the NY recs team before moving to the London recs team and 1.5 years later, I moved to NJ because of my experience and now, I'm in Glasgow because of it all. 2 years in the making, no one can credit it to chance.

Moving on, unexpected things have happened back in NJ. The director has been laid off and god knows what's going to happen next.

On a lighter side, I visited Edinburgh today and it's the second european city that I've visited twice, Paris being the first city with that honor. It is nice to be able to show my colleagues ard and I hope they loved it as much as I did.

Time to chill and relax... only God knows what life has in stored for you.

Glasgow

I'm in Glasgow! I'll be in this city for the 10 weeks. On first glance, it's a small city with some of the charm of London and less crowded. I like that because I hate crowds. Of course, with an apartment and corporate card provided by the company, who doesn't like it.


The apartment looks nicely furnished but some of the fixtures are not practical! In the toilet, the bathtub doesn't have a shower curtain and showerhead. It only has a tap! WTF right! One of the lights in the en-suite bathroom is out which makes it look very dim and the 2nd bedroom is empty. There's no bed and how am I going to invite my friends over!

I spent the first day in the city recovering from my jet-lagged and managed to make it to Marks & Spencers which is just down the street to get my groceries. My first meal in Glasgow is a Marks & Spencer Beef Roulades meal. It is good! Tasty and delicious. I'm going to have as many M&S meal as possible!

I woke up late the next day and I didn't make it for the Glasgow Show... damn it. So I went for a walk ard the city and 30mins later, I decided to eat in the cafe just right next to my apartment. It doesn't serve the best food, the English Breakfast wasn't fantastic but it's a nice place to hang out for 30mins to 1 hour to read the newspaper over a cup of coffee. It's not Borders with the Starbucks - it's not commercialised at all, just a nice and quieter place to eat down and read the papers. I kinda like it.

Ended the afternoon with 2 pints of beer in the pub across the street watching Arsenal vs Celtic. Nothing much though the waitress is kinda cute... I'll definitely go back there again!

Time to unwind, heat up the M&S Seafood Caserole meal and iron my clothes for tomorrow.

29th July 2010

Thank you to the colleagues who made the effort to have lunch and dinner with me the day before I left for Glasgow. After the Glasgow assignment is over, we all know that things are going to be different. Most of our job functions will move to Glasgow and who knows what's going to happen after that... but let's enjoy the moment while we're in it and living it.

It's during drinks and dinner where I learnt more about Wall Street. If America is the symbol of capitalism, NYC the symbol of US's financial capitalism and Wall Street demostrates the successfulness of it all. The 80s to 90s seem is the golden years of it all. If you were working in the right bank, you can expect a damn good salaries and bonuses. You can get a $10k pay increase by changing jobs from bank to bank. Traders opened bottles of champagne every friday at 2pm to celebrate their success. And if you were working for Goldman when it was listed, employees who were with the company for more than 5 years got a min of 200k bonus. The WTC was heartbeat of Wallstreet. Every successful firm had an office in WTC to show that you're one of the top players on Wall Street. I even asked where was it located... I wished I was working in Wall Street in the 80s and 90s. It seems like one hell of an exciting place to work and live in.

Which brings us to the sad event of Sep 11, 2001. To hear the events that unfold first hand from people who have been through it is just unreal. They saw the building collapsed, the cloud of dust that hung over NYC for days, they lost friends and people they knew on that day, they saw cars parked at the train stations for days knowing that the cars will be unclaimed because the owners have perished on that very day... so unreal.

As the Americans like to say, it is what it is. Life moves on.