Hi strangers! Not much time to write recently. I am too busy enjoying myself to switch on the computer these days. I had another great weekend in London, such weekends that I don't think you can get in Fountainebleu or wherever others choose to go :-).
On Friday, all the Summer Associates from my bank spent the day volunteering at a primary school in South London, and it was a great way to spend the day outside in the sun catching up with my new friends. The other Summer Associates are a very sweet bunch and I have found some very special friends this summer. At night, I went to a Thai restaurant with Genie and two other Indian friends and we talked so much in the end it was 10pm when we finished (we got there at 7) - so I went straight home and off to bed (with a bit Harry Potter reading squeezed in between), since I had spent most of the day shovelling sand.
On Saturday, I went to the gym and then a bit shopping. Then I chilled for most of the day. But the evening was the best, I went with a Basque and a Mexican, two Brazilian friends and another German/Spanish couple to the Japanese restaurant called Abeno near Tottenham Court Road, it was delicious. I had never had Japanese food before (beside sushi). The I went with my Basque and Mexican friend to a salsa club in SOHO called Floridita, it is pretty cool. The music is nice to dance but not too loud, so one could actually talk to people. I met some very nice new people - mostly bankers of course since this is London, but very friendly. We stayed there till 3:30am, which I haven't done in a while, but time really passed very quickly.
This morning I still got up at 10 because the weather was so beautiful, and I went roller blading in Hyde Park. Blading is such a great way to appreciate the beauty of London. Just racing by the lakes and the trees and the meadows is amazing. Afterwards I cooked myself a nice vegetable thai curry and read some more Harry Potter, but again fell asleep and had a well-deserved siesta. Now I'm off to Notting Hill to have dinner with my sister and some of her friends in a very nice pub called THE COW, they have very good fish there and the atmosphere is great.
The week ahead is quite important in the summer programme, our final evaluations will be submitted tomorrow and on Thursday I have to hold a presentation to three Managing Directors, based on which I will get an offer the following week or not. I don't mind holding presentations in front of anyone though, that's where my McKinsey experience comes in handy, I don't really get nervous and enjoy talking :-). Hopefully good news will come out of this week, though I won't know till afterwards.
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Enjoying Tate Modern and Natural History Museum in London
Though the sun has finally appeared this afternoon, the weather this weekend has been dreadful, raining heavily non-stop. I seized the opportunity to visit some of London's great and free museums and could not have had a better weekend. Today I went to the exhibition Global Cities in the Tate Modern Gallery. The cities featured were the biggest of them all, Tokyo, and furthermore London, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Mexico City, Mumbai, Sao Paolo (see photo by Andreas Gursky on the left), Istanbul, Cairo, and Johannesburg. The exhibition mixed pictures, videos, maps, satellite images, interviews and architectural models to illustrate themes, such as density, diversity, or speed. I'm a big fan of photography, but also enjoyed some of the videos a lot. If you go to the website of the exhibition, all the videos and photos of the exhibition are actually up there to be accessed by anyone, it is definitely worth it.
This is another collection of photos I liked. It shows the gates of gated communities and rich people's homes in Johannesburg who live behind fences hiding from the poor. These gated communities are only at their infant stage in London, and I don't think they exist anywhere in such a form in Western Europe, but given the crumbling of the social security systems in Continental Europe, I would not be surprised if we have gates like these in Berlin or Hamburg in 20 years time.Yesterday, I went to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, another free museum. It is amazing that all these world class museums in London are for free, but I'm sure they make a lot of money from their museum shops and cafes and restaurants (certainly from me anyway - I couldn't resist buying this Ally Capellino bag designed for the Tate Modern shop!). I loved the section on Primates, which contains many pictures and videos of monkeys around the world. Some of them are so cute. I hope I can go to East Africa one day to see them live.
The rest of the weekend I either slept, went for dinner with friends at Busaba Eathai in Mayfair, which is delicious, cheap and has a nice atmosphere. Now I just need to meet a friend in the pub and then I can call the weekend history :-).
The internship is still fine, I'm learning how to buy infrastructure assets and companies with 80% leverage and how to find potential deals, which is quite useful. Next week I even have to travel to Germany for two days to meet with the management of a potential target. Lifestyle continues to be very good, and I don't expect it to change over the next weeks. Overall, a very nice summer so far, I just hope the weather gets better so I can go to the coast next weekend.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The first year ends as it should - with the Italian Festa d'Estate
If there is one common theme that makes London and London Business School special, it is the diversity and the opportunity to explore new things every weekend. One particularly popular activity for LBS students is to organize all kinds of national parties - readers of this blog will have heard about Diwali, Mexican Independence Day, the Salsa Party, Tatoo... Lots of great parties that have made this year a very special one.Yesterday, we had our final exams - Cost Accounting and Finance 2 - and after that, it was time for a final party of the first year. And since it was the final one, it had to be a particularly festive one. What better way than to celebrate an Italian Festa d'Estate in Soho, in a club called Cafe de Paris.
I was happy to bump into some friends that I hadn't seen for a while and probably won't see for an even longer while - this is me with a Russian friend whose Italian husband just finished the Executive MBA - they are moving to Abu Dhabi next month. And me? I'm just a German girl who has been dreaming of living in London since she was 13, and now I'm here and am about to start my first job tomorrow morning.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Just another weekend in London
Recently, I have often posted on specific topics (career, applications etc.), that I feel admits or applicants may not actually get a good feel for what life is like here. I do not intend to use this blog as a diary, as this would become quite repetitive, but it might be helpful to give an update on what life is like here in London once in a while. What have I been up to this weekend?
SATURDAY
Saturday started off with our Cost Accounting midterm exam. They like to schedule our exams for Saturdays, apparently because there are not enough lecture theatres available during the week to accommodate all of us at once. The exam was hard and there was a lot of time pressure. I was happy though, because I find when exams are easy the results are much more unfair, because then professors subtract points for every little deviation from the ideal solution. On the other hand, in hard exams the normal distribution kicks in automatically and the professors do not need to force it onto the results. So I think it went well. Usually, I would head over to the Windsor, our closest pub, straight after the exam, but this time I had different plans.
MBAT is next week, and I realized that I need to buy new sports shoes! Some time last week, I started thinking about how old my Adidas running shoes actually were, and it hit me that I had bought them some time in 2001! It was shocking. Then I took a closer look at the shoes and was embarrassed I have been wearing them all the time, they were dirty and falling apart. Anyway, so I went with two classmates to a huge sports department store in the South of London, and bought new running shoes as well as football shoes, since I'm playing women's football at MBAT. I also helped my friend pick roller blades so we can go roller blading in Hyde Park together as soon as the weather gets better again. Then the other two checked out climbing equipment, since they are planning to climb Mont Blanc in June. We spent 2 or 3 hours there and only came back around 4pm.
Then, I went for a birthday party of a Croatian classmate. He lives with another Indian and one Turkish classmates of mine, and I hadn't spoken to them properly in months, since times have been hectic and we are in different streams, so I decided to go there and make sure I get to talk to catch up with some people, finally! They had nice Sangria and very good music - I even heard Rachid Taha at some point :-).
In the evening, most people headed over to school for the "SANZA (South Africa New Zealand Australia) - Party" hosted in the school, but I decided not to go. Instead, some of us went out for pizza close to Baker Street. After that , my day was still not over, instead I watched "the Goodfellas" on DVD with my husband. The film is okay, but I don't know why people (or should I say guys? ;-) ) rave about it. The guy seemed utterly stupid to me from the start and I was not surprised by how he ended. I think it would help some people to ask "why?" once in a while instead of being at awe about people who seem to have money that came from nowhere. Anyway, then I fell asleep :-).
SUNDAY
I had to get up early today because my parents paid me a short visit. They came back from holiday in the US via London Heathrow and had about 6 hours between their flights, so they came into Paddington with the Heathrow Express and we met up. We walked towards Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill/Bayswater in the cold rain - welcome to London! We went to a nice Lebanese cafe - I think it is called Al fresco - and had hot tea to warm up and lovely hot mashed aubergine with chick peas and pita bread. Then we went for coffee and I brought them back to Paddington station. It was cold and rainy the whole time, but that was okay because I knew I had a lot of work to do for school. I'll be away for MBAT next week so I need to get everything done before we go to Paris.
First I had to do the Cost Accounting assignment on customer profitability due tomorrow morning. Despite the exam, we still have an assigment due Monday morning 9am. Luckily it was one of the easier ones, so it didn't take me too long. The previous ones have been a nightmare requiring a couple of hours of effort on a Sunday night, but this time luckily it was short. But that was offset by the nightmare that is our current Macroeconomics assignment. Because I missed one class and didn't do my reading at the beginning of the term, I missed all of the theory and formulas on capital accumulation, growth accounting, labour productivity and so on. Of course, the assignment covers exactly the topics I missed and consists of 8 questions requiring calculations, theory, application, everything. So I had to read a few chapters in our Macroeconomics book and did all the calculations, since this was the most straightforward part. I haven't answered the qualitative questions yet though, these will require some more thinking on my part.
Then I was hungry and went to Brick Lane in the East End with my husband. There was some Bangladeshi celebration going on and the streets were full of people and food stalls. We still decided to eat at our favourite place though - the Sweet and Spicy. We always order the same - Pilaw Rice, Karahi Gosht, Tarka Dal, Peshawari Nan (try this coconut bread if you haven't!!). Then we were stuffed and decided to walk to Moorgate instead of taking the tube at Aldgate East, thereby enjoying the stroll through the City.
Once home, I decided to do some more work, this time preparation for my internship though. I started reading "Options, Futures and other Derivatives" by John Hull. It is very well written and detailed, and I have high expectations to finally understand more than I currently understand in our Finance 2 class. I really need to prepare a little, because I believe I am one of the few people going into trading/structuring without any finance background and without any kind of quantitative background, so I have realized in recent weeks that it would help to get up to speed before I start.
(btw I have updated the post on impressions from the ibanking/finance job market, since the finance club has sent out and overview of who's going where. Not everyone filled it in, so again these are minimum estimates, but we have a great group of people going to the top ibanks and even quite a few people who landed jobs on the buy side, so things look great).
As you see now, after a few pages of the book I decided to call it a day though and thought I should write something here, because I probably won't till after the MBAT. I must say, living in London is very nice, and despite having to do some work for school on the weekends, it turns out there is still a lot of opportunity to explore London and socialize in between.
SATURDAY
Saturday started off with our Cost Accounting midterm exam. They like to schedule our exams for Saturdays, apparently because there are not enough lecture theatres available during the week to accommodate all of us at once. The exam was hard and there was a lot of time pressure. I was happy though, because I find when exams are easy the results are much more unfair, because then professors subtract points for every little deviation from the ideal solution. On the other hand, in hard exams the normal distribution kicks in automatically and the professors do not need to force it onto the results. So I think it went well. Usually, I would head over to the Windsor, our closest pub, straight after the exam, but this time I had different plans.
MBAT is next week, and I realized that I need to buy new sports shoes! Some time last week, I started thinking about how old my Adidas running shoes actually were, and it hit me that I had bought them some time in 2001! It was shocking. Then I took a closer look at the shoes and was embarrassed I have been wearing them all the time, they were dirty and falling apart. Anyway, so I went with two classmates to a huge sports department store in the South of London, and bought new running shoes as well as football shoes, since I'm playing women's football at MBAT. I also helped my friend pick roller blades so we can go roller blading in Hyde Park together as soon as the weather gets better again. Then the other two checked out climbing equipment, since they are planning to climb Mont Blanc in June. We spent 2 or 3 hours there and only came back around 4pm.
Then, I went for a birthday party of a Croatian classmate. He lives with another Indian and one Turkish classmates of mine, and I hadn't spoken to them properly in months, since times have been hectic and we are in different streams, so I decided to go there and make sure I get to talk to catch up with some people, finally! They had nice Sangria and very good music - I even heard Rachid Taha at some point :-).
In the evening, most people headed over to school for the "SANZA (South Africa New Zealand Australia) - Party" hosted in the school, but I decided not to go. Instead, some of us went out for pizza close to Baker Street. After that , my day was still not over, instead I watched "the Goodfellas" on DVD with my husband. The film is okay, but I don't know why people (or should I say guys? ;-) ) rave about it. The guy seemed utterly stupid to me from the start and I was not surprised by how he ended. I think it would help some people to ask "why?" once in a while instead of being at awe about people who seem to have money that came from nowhere. Anyway, then I fell asleep :-).
SUNDAY
I had to get up early today because my parents paid me a short visit. They came back from holiday in the US via London Heathrow and had about 6 hours between their flights, so they came into Paddington with the Heathrow Express and we met up. We walked towards Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill/Bayswater in the cold rain - welcome to London! We went to a nice Lebanese cafe - I think it is called Al fresco - and had hot tea to warm up and lovely hot mashed aubergine with chick peas and pita bread. Then we went for coffee and I brought them back to Paddington station. It was cold and rainy the whole time, but that was okay because I knew I had a lot of work to do for school. I'll be away for MBAT next week so I need to get everything done before we go to Paris.
First I had to do the Cost Accounting assignment on customer profitability due tomorrow morning. Despite the exam, we still have an assigment due Monday morning 9am. Luckily it was one of the easier ones, so it didn't take me too long. The previous ones have been a nightmare requiring a couple of hours of effort on a Sunday night, but this time luckily it was short. But that was offset by the nightmare that is our current Macroeconomics assignment. Because I missed one class and didn't do my reading at the beginning of the term, I missed all of the theory and formulas on capital accumulation, growth accounting, labour productivity and so on. Of course, the assignment covers exactly the topics I missed and consists of 8 questions requiring calculations, theory, application, everything. So I had to read a few chapters in our Macroeconomics book and did all the calculations, since this was the most straightforward part. I haven't answered the qualitative questions yet though, these will require some more thinking on my part.
Then I was hungry and went to Brick Lane in the East End with my husband. There was some Bangladeshi celebration going on and the streets were full of people and food stalls. We still decided to eat at our favourite place though - the Sweet and Spicy. We always order the same - Pilaw Rice, Karahi Gosht, Tarka Dal, Peshawari Nan (try this coconut bread if you haven't!!). Then we were stuffed and decided to walk to Moorgate instead of taking the tube at Aldgate East, thereby enjoying the stroll through the City.
Once home, I decided to do some more work, this time preparation for my internship though. I started reading "Options, Futures and other Derivatives" by John Hull. It is very well written and detailed, and I have high expectations to finally understand more than I currently understand in our Finance 2 class. I really need to prepare a little, because I believe I am one of the few people going into trading/structuring without any finance background and without any kind of quantitative background, so I have realized in recent weeks that it would help to get up to speed before I start.
(btw I have updated the post on impressions from the ibanking/finance job market, since the finance club has sent out and overview of who's going where. Not everyone filled it in, so again these are minimum estimates, but we have a great group of people going to the top ibanks and even quite a few people who landed jobs on the buy side, so things look great).
As you see now, after a few pages of the book I decided to call it a day though and thought I should write something here, because I probably won't till after the MBAT. I must say, living in London is very nice, and despite having to do some work for school on the weekends, it turns out there is still a lot of opportunity to explore London and socialize in between.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
You know the first term is over when...
- people are throwing farewell parties and wish each other happy holidays- you start looking for Christmas presents
- you sleep 9h every night plus take long naps in the afternoon
- you finally get to see the Velázquez exhibition in the National Gallery that opened in early November
- you get to check out some a cool vintage dresses on Portobello Market- you finally write to your best friends back home
- instead of complaining about assignments, you are sad that time passed so quickly
- you scan the job postings on the Career Services website, realise you have signed up to dozens of company presentations and that you should start writing cover letters soon
- you go to Royal Albert Hall to sing Christmas Carols- you know it will soon be time to take some serious career decisions
- you start thinking about what to pack and prepare for the flight back home
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Sunny weekend in London
Life is still very relaxed here. Unexpectedly, it turns out we don't have any "real classes" till October. We are spending our time during the week mainly on preparing our CVs for the CV book, getting introductions about leadership and management and other such issues. The only real course would have been Business Statistics, but I'm waiving that one, so I have 5 free days over the next two weeks. It's really not very busy yet in academic terms, so I get to go to the gym everyday, which is very nice.Contrary to weekdays, weekends are very busy. On Friday we had our first off campus party. A classmate who owns a house in Clapham threw a big party in his house, which I think about 60 or 70 of our class attended. Moe was so kind as to share his vodka with me, so I had a splendid time :-), even though one of our classmates who apparently was a DJ in his pre-MBA life didn't show up.
On Saturday I went to Harrod's food section with my husband to get some good cheese, which is not so easy in your average British supermarket. I love Harrod's food section, if I could I would buy all my food there. Last night three Indian classmates had a little dinner party. We were in a group of about 10 or 15 people, enjoyed Indian food and lots of wine and had a very good time.
Today was the warmest day in London so far, and I went to Hyde Park Speakers' Corner. If you want to see freedom of speech in action, this is the place to go. It is all quite useless though, as the speakers seem to be mainly fanatics who are not interested in listening, and the same goes for most of the listeners. The highlights were an American Muslim preacher claiming that men and women weren't equal ("because my wife doesn't pay any bills, but I pay bills") and an English guy claiming that Christianity was the religion of peace, and Islam was the religion of war and violence, unsurprisingly he ended up surrounded by a group of 5 Arabs shouting at him.
Then there was a Jamaican who claimed he was an angel (little did he know that he had another angel listening to him :-) ), and an English woman who simply insulted her audience. Overall, an interesting experience, I am constantly astonished how much energy people spend on trying to convince others of their religious or political opinions, since in my experience it is a completely useless effort and a big waste of time.Then I had the great pleasure to meet a Maroccan friend who is just starting her MBA at HEC. She wrote me once because of this blog and since then we had been emailing once in a while. So this was the first time we met in person and I enjoyed it very much, even though there was not enough time. When I started this blog, I was mainly focused on helping other applicants, I hadn't considered the fact that I would actually make friends this way, but now this "side effect" is highly welcome :-).
Overall, the weekend was excellent, it is simply impossible to be bored in London. The great part is that the weekend continues on Monday, since I am waiving statistics :-). But I have two cases to read, so tomorrow I actually intend to do a little bit of work as well.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Getting settled in London
Things are going very well here, I arrived safely despite the London terror threat (there had to be a benefit to getting up at 4am and flying a no-frills airline into Gatwick!) and managed to survive 2 hours of tube to finally reach Fulham.
Then I went to the HSBC branch to open up a student account. To my surprise, it was opened on the spot and I can now transfer funds to the UK. This will be very helpful for the flat search. Before that, I also went into the Royal Bank of Scotland branch to see what my dormant account from my student days was doing (I never got around to closing it when I left the UK in 2004). I thought I only had 3 pounds left but it turned out I had 7 pounds left so I treated myself to a Cafe Latte and a Smoothie in Costa Coffee :-).
I also have a UK mobile already. Before flying in, I ordered a SIM card from O2, so there it was waiting for me this morning. For pay as you go contract they definitely offer the best deals, great bolt-ons (something similar to package contracts but much more flexible) and also, if you top up at least GBP10 per month (which is easy) you get 50min calling time for free. So it means for just 10 pounds per month you can have 50min and 100 sms, without having to sign a contract. This is the deal I used when I studied in the UK.
I also picked up my student ID this afternoon. The LBS building was deserted. Thanks, Hobbes, for the advice about the photo for the ID. Something is wrong with the camera these days though, the photo is really dark, but it seems to be the case with everyone, so I think they have to retake them for those of us who came in early.
So with all these things done, I'm almost hoping I don't find a flat too soon. What am I going to do here for three weeks???? ;-))). Just joking, luckily London is not a boring place at all and there will be plenty to do. But seriously, all I have scheduled for the next 3 weeks is viewing flats, meeting friends and going to the pub every evening, pretty easy going schedule.
Now I'm off to a pub in Notting Hill and then will head to view my first flat. I have another appointment to view a flat on Saturday morning in Bayswater. Things are going well, lots of offers coming out on accomodation and there's plenty of time, so I'm not worried at all. After almost a year of counting down, London life has started very well :-).
Then I went to the HSBC branch to open up a student account. To my surprise, it was opened on the spot and I can now transfer funds to the UK. This will be very helpful for the flat search. Before that, I also went into the Royal Bank of Scotland branch to see what my dormant account from my student days was doing (I never got around to closing it when I left the UK in 2004). I thought I only had 3 pounds left but it turned out I had 7 pounds left so I treated myself to a Cafe Latte and a Smoothie in Costa Coffee :-).
I also have a UK mobile already. Before flying in, I ordered a SIM card from O2, so there it was waiting for me this morning. For pay as you go contract they definitely offer the best deals, great bolt-ons (something similar to package contracts but much more flexible) and also, if you top up at least GBP10 per month (which is easy) you get 50min calling time for free. So it means for just 10 pounds per month you can have 50min and 100 sms, without having to sign a contract. This is the deal I used when I studied in the UK.
I also picked up my student ID this afternoon. The LBS building was deserted. Thanks, Hobbes, for the advice about the photo for the ID. Something is wrong with the camera these days though, the photo is really dark, but it seems to be the case with everyone, so I think they have to retake them for those of us who came in early.
So with all these things done, I'm almost hoping I don't find a flat too soon. What am I going to do here for three weeks???? ;-))). Just joking, luckily London is not a boring place at all and there will be plenty to do. But seriously, all I have scheduled for the next 3 weeks is viewing flats, meeting friends and going to the pub every evening, pretty easy going schedule.
Now I'm off to a pub in Notting Hill and then will head to view my first flat. I have another appointment to view a flat on Saturday morning in Bayswater. Things are going well, lots of offers coming out on accomodation and there's plenty of time, so I'm not worried at all. After almost a year of counting down, London life has started very well :-).
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Off to London - on my own
I'm finally back from Switzerland and off to London tomorrow. My partner suddenly fell ill and we had to rebook his flight to Saturday. We have an increasingly weird history of never flying together. It is becoming eerie. In January, I was off on a business trip to Paris and we decided he'd join me privately to have a look at Paris, so we could at least spend the night together (at that time I had to fly to the US quite frequently). When we came to the airport, they had canceled the flight and somehow rebooked me but not him, so we couldn't go together, I had to go to Paris to my appointment and he stayed. When we went to Switzerland, we arrived at the airport 30min before take-off and it turned out he had left his passport at home. He joined me the same evening, taking advantage of the fast rail connection with Zurich. And now here we are, scheduled to take a one-way flight to London and, again, I'll go on my own.
No need to feel sorry though (at least not for me) because these coming days will be busy!
Thursday: collect student ID from LBS, visit estate agents to set up flat viewings, open up bank account with HSBC, view my first flat at 8pm, afterwards drinks at my sister's house in Fulham
Friday: wait for my UPS shipping to arrive, browse findaproperty.com and call estate agents, go to pub in Maryleborne to meet with French undergrad friend
Saturday: follow Patxi's advice and walk around preferred areas for flathunting: Maryleborne, Maidavale, Bayswater (my friend's idea, according to him the greatest place to live in London, let's see!), pick up my partner from the airport, join my sister at a party of some German friends of hers
In addition to that, we have the flathunter's pub crawl coming up next week, we meet in a local pub EVERY WEEK DAY at 7 pm, so that will keep us busy, too. So, busy London life is approaching fast. I hope next time I post I have some good news from my flatsearch.
No need to feel sorry though (at least not for me) because these coming days will be busy!
Thursday: collect student ID from LBS, visit estate agents to set up flat viewings, open up bank account with HSBC, view my first flat at 8pm, afterwards drinks at my sister's house in Fulham
Friday: wait for my UPS shipping to arrive, browse findaproperty.com and call estate agents, go to pub in Maryleborne to meet with French undergrad friend
Saturday: follow Patxi's advice and walk around preferred areas for flathunting: Maryleborne, Maidavale, Bayswater (my friend's idea, according to him the greatest place to live in London, let's see!), pick up my partner from the airport, join my sister at a party of some German friends of hers
In addition to that, we have the flathunter's pub crawl coming up next week, we meet in a local pub EVERY WEEK DAY at 7 pm, so that will keep us busy, too. So, busy London life is approaching fast. I hope next time I post I have some good news from my flatsearch.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)