Tête-à-Tête

I came to London in late November when my India firm couldn’t give me a full time offer. It was a bit sad since I just loved working with the people there. They treated me amazingly well since the first day I was there, and I was really loving work there. But, unfortunately, the downturn came and affected everyone in the industry.

The first week here was incredibly crazy. I had to search for a home and get 100 things done. On top of that, HSBC didn’t care about informing me when they blocked my UK debit card because my hostel returned my letters as I had stopped living there. So, the cash machine retained my card, and here I was 10k miles away from home, severely jetlagged and without plastic money!

I started work on Monday, 24th November. It’s been nice here, though the work hours have been really bad. I am consistently working 15+ hours/day. However, I have learnt a lot about various industries and specific geographies, so am not complaining! Getting to work with some incredibly experienced people has been a good learning experience for me. I hope I can work harder and produce even more quality work!

All that I have been eating over this period is pizza and ready-to-eat Indian food. My taste buds are so dead! I wished I got the time to cook, but I have neither the patience nor the time to do it. I mean I can’t be expected to cook after reaching home at 2 am!

My social life has ended though. The 3 best things and friends in my life at the moment are Bloomberg, Excel and Powerpoint.

Hoping to get back to Mumbai ASAP!

PS - Can you get me a M&A job in India? :-p

Well, let’s just say that I had disappeared for a while after my exams. In the end, I couldn’t go through with the London hedge fund internship, and am currently working as an intern in real estate investment banking in India.

In other news, I’m looking for work after December when I complete this internship. Things don’t look too bright right now, but let’s see what happens.

In these difficult times (refer: financial crisis and jobs), it’s important to maintain your self confidence. It can take a beating yes, but it’s important to keep hoping that things will be better in some time. Hope is all there is now.

Finally, it’s happened. I’ve got lucky! I mean I got into a hedge fund. For the non-finance guys amongst us, hedge funds are places which basically promise x% return to rich guys; invest their money in trading strategies which include equities, bonds and other random cool-sounding securities; get (x-5)% return on the investment; blame George Bush, the market, the economy .. basically everything and everyone, except themselves, for it. But, the money is good and it’s damn hard to get into these elitist places, so who cares?

In other news, Jayasuriya has gone mad. He is just unstoppable! For Mumbai’s sake, let’s hope he continues his power hitting for a few matches more. Talking about the crowd, it’s funny to see the Mumbai Crowd (especially the 10000 people at the West End) supporting Jayasuriya. There was a time in the late 90’s when Jayasuirya was one of the most hated figures in Mumbai. We loved his batting, but he always seemed to click only against India. But, now that he’s playing for Mumbai in the IPL, we all love him.

The people in the West End pavilion had to diss someone, and it happened to be Shoaib Akhtar, Pakistan’s Harbhajan Singh, only a bit more eccentric. The West End was going ‘Oye Oye Oye.. Shoaib is a b*st*rd’, in line with Flintoff F*** Off, Smith S*cks and many many other things that they say. It’s the only crowd in India that swears in English. It’s funny in the sense that ten thousand people say it in a chorus, and it’s clearly audible on television! You can sense that even the commentators notice that, but obviously they can’t say anything about that. Here’s a lesson to opposition teams: Don’t mess with Sachin in Mumbai! Or be prepared to be abused perpetually! Ask Flintoff.. it’s been 3 years now, and yet everytime he comes to Mumbai, the West End gives him its verbal treatment.

And, hey, my exams are coming up in less than 10 days now. They’ll continue uptil 16th June. Let’s hope I can clear them and get the degree that I paid 15 lakhs for.

Well, I’m sorry for not updating the blog all this time. I won’t say I didn’t have time - I had loads of it. I won’t say I got over the whole blogging thing - I still read random blogs EVERY day. I just got tired of writing about my wonderful life. I also got tired of writing about movies, cricket and software.

Before I came to London, I had big plans for this year. I thought I’d go around places, and I’d have real fun roaming on the streets (Yes, I’m one of those types) of this city. But, in my first two weeks here, I realized that this city wasn’t for me. Look, I appreciate all the old buildings, the culture and the heritage; but when every building, every house, every person looks just the same, you can’t help but start not liking it at all. Atleast I don’t. The arty-farty history-loving types love this kind of slow, dull life; but I’m from a City where there are traffic jams on roads at 2 AM. I don’t exactly like empty streets at 8 PM on a weekend.

Anyways, I thought LSE would compensate for what this city couldn’t. But, guess what? The buildings in LSE’s campus look like they are some big, dingy warehouses. Again the same old, heritage buildings. Some one donate some glass to these people. The teaching in this overtly-hyped university is no special, either. We have drunk profs, pregnant profs, fainting profs; but sadly we do not have professors who can teach properly. Well, a couple of them are really good, but when you pay 17000 pounds for your course, you do expect good professors. Anyways, LSE even managed to screw up the exam scheduling. Apparently, something went wrong with their gizmos on the day when they were to announce the exam timetable, and it was delayed by a good four days. All I want to know is what were they doing for the rest of the year? I mean I know it’s tought to come out with a timetable for 7000 students, but they had two terms i.e. 20 weeks for that.

Thankfully, the people in my hostel have been nice. There are super-intelligent, know-it-all, geeky people; and there are people like me who waste two hours drinking tea at 1 AM. There are playboys with multiple girlfriends, and there are people with oil wells but no girlfriends. There are extra-curricular freaks, and there are people like me whose only extra-curricular activies are sleeping and watching stupid TV shows. There are the I-am-a-socialist type politicial minded freaks, and there are the first-word-I-said-was-DCF type banking despos. In short, we have everyone. Forget Times Square. Come to Passfield, but don’t eat the dinner here.

Well, as you would have guessed by now, I haven’t exactly loved my time at this most appropriately named school (Think about it - ‘London’ School of Economics), but it was too late before I realized that I can’t live anywhere except the country of my birth. It was too late to bell the CAT, and it was late too do anything else. Guess what? It’s late now too. It’s 3 AM, so I should better sleep, or I’ll be late again. For Breakfast. So long. Ya’ll dream of your girls, and I’ll dream of my Popo cops.

Hey Guys.. I’ve just upgraded the blog to WP 2.5, just a day after upgrading it to WP 2.3. I’ve also changed the theme. Hopefully in the next few days, I’ll post something, too!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m alive. I know I haven’t updated this thing for about an year now, but the going hasn’t been easy here. I’ll come up with some nice reviews pretty soon. I promise.

Stop rejoicing, people! Because of the lack of activity on my blog, you might have thought ki Anda shaheed ho gaya. But, no, that’s not the case. I’m fit and fine! I’m just too engrossed with my LSE preparations.

Well starting off with my visa thing… Good news guys! I got my UK student visa, which is valid till 31st October, 2008; so I can stay in London till then.

As for the loan, I’ve just realized that SBI people are the biggest #@$@#$@ in the world. I mean they sit in swanky offices wasting public sector money, and still they don’t want to work! They’re inefficient, impotent, and in some cases, BOTH! Anyways, I’ll get the loan sanctioned till next Thursday, so that isn’t too much of a concern.

Let’s move on to the internship thing. Just when people resign from work to relax before going to university, I’ll be starting work! I’ll be doing a month-long internship at a BIG financial institution (hopefully a corpfin role!) starting Monday i.e. tomorrow. So, do wish me luck!

The preparations for London are going fine. I’ve bought a suit and a blazer and lots of casual clothes. I’ve also bought casual as well as formal shoes. And I’ve bought lots of useless stuff. I’ll be wearing WARM CLOTHING(!!!) for the first time in my life, so let’s see how that goes (You don’t expect me to wear warm clothes in 30 degree Celsius Mumbai heat, do you?). Well, my parents wouldn’t quite like the credit card bill at the end of it. But, I figured I’d be in London by then, so I’ll be spared the rod, unless they decide that London isn’t too far.

And, I’ve started researching into Investment banks, making my CV and cover letters, talking to people about stuff, checking out career events etc. I’m just turning into a typical LSE IB despo! So, at the time when people going to other universities talk about going to the UK, visiting historic places etc., I talk about going to IB offices, visiting the City as they call it, meeting bankers and fellow i-banking despos etc. That’s the LSE effect, and I’m not even there, yet!

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I haven’t been posting for a while now. It’s partly because I’ve become lazy and partly because I’m staying a bit busy these days.

Anyways, I just wanted to tell you ppl that I’ve got 75% in my B.Com final exams. So, I’ve cleared the condition set by the LSE(60% in B.Com) on my MSc Accounting and Finance offer.

That means that I’m definitely going to London in September to study in one of the best universities in the world.

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