Bounjour from fair Paris! I am typing on the craziest keyboard I’ve seen yet. The fullstop is a shift-key, the q is where a is and… migods, it’s hard to type. Apologies for the lack of updates; there hasn’t exactly been a wealth of bloggable stories to put up, and there’s only so many times I can say “went out with friends again in the heart of London,” etc etc. ...
(title to be sung to the tune of “Rolling Rolling Rolling”) The IT training has started in earnest, and it’s… just like being back at uni. Apart from of course the whole business clothes and rareified atmosphere of genuine concentration that many of the other people have. I obviously have much too much time on my hands, which is why I’m here, after all. We’re covering the basics of Unix, and I’m genuinely bored out of my mind. How do these people claim to be graduates of IT programs with zero exposure to operating systems beyond Windows? How do these people hope to work?! ...
Week 2 of London has (nearly) ended with a test on the last week’s worth of study on financial markets… Well, that was easy. 20 minutes to do a 2 hour exam? That’s outdone even the easiest at uni! I love multi choice exams. Financial markets is surprisingly easier than I initially assumed. While I’d be far from confident in saying I know everything, I know enough to know what kind of job the guys on the front end of the bank do, and what pays my salary. (I’ve also got a minor appreciation for the fact that it could easily be almost eliminated by computers, which could be a scary thought for some :P) If you want to get into finance, and you can take the long hours… do it! As long as you don’t have to deal with the tedious accounting details anyway. ...
This is supposed to be “the big one”… but stuffed if I know why. 15, 18, 20, they felt big. This one…? Well, I’m in London. I’m on an expenses-paid trip. It’s 5 o’clock. I have some great friends who want to take me out. It’s about as big as it will ever get, I’d suspect, and there’s more promised when I return. It’s supposed to be big, but it doesn’t seem to be. ...
After a day of moving through the slow jelly air of jet lag, and oppressed by the flat, grey, dreary, windy, drizzly skies of London (there’s a reason why Melbourne’s weather is compared to London’s; it’s quite clear to me now)… I woke this morning semi-refreshed and ready to go… sort of. It wasn’t looking too promising today either, so I got myself a local number (+44 7804 952218) So I did the big tourist thing today, and checked out London… and it’s one big ol’ city. ...