I guess I haven't been mentioning about work stuff for some time now. One piece of good news which I have been meaning to put on my blog is.... remember the nasty trader who made life really difficult for me and Kat on that fateful day when he unwound his trades? Yep he's gone now - HURRAY! - sorry if I seem mean but it was like a huge burden has lifted off my team! :)) Anyway he has got a much better deal with another IB so... conclusion is it's a win-win situation.
Another big change is that we have all just moved down to the trading floor last Monday. Apparently it's to build better relationship with the front office since we are all very reluctant to go down to the trading floor to talk to them directly, and so perhaps the bosses think putting us seated side by side is the solution. And to do that, we have to forgo our cosy little corner and forgo our big L-shaped tables *sigh*. Now, we are seated in rows just like them. Only difference is that they have like 6 screens each (2 piled up on top of each other in 3s - and I wonder how much angle of head oscillation they cover in a day. I'll most likely end up with a sore neck.) and they probably have like multiple phone lines each too. So you can imagine how much noise we are subjected to now.
I ain't complaining though, it's just a change that we all have to deal with it. Honestly, I wasn't looking forward to this move (so do many of my colleagues) but I guess it does help foster some relationship building with them being so close to them now. Whatever PnL issues we have, we just need to pop by their desks. :/
December is the month of Christmas parties and so we had our first one for the year last night with the whole GEM team: mainly traders, us in finance, and the ops guys. So in place of the usual D&Ds we have back home, over here they book a club and everyone get their - favourite - free flow booze of course (except me coz I think food is more important being Singaporean) and just party the night away. This year they booked this club called Worship which I think is smaller than last year's venue (think: credit crunch) but well as long as there is alcohol and music, I think the rest don't really matter to them. But overall it was fun and much better than last year's party. So many of them just got so drunk and danced non stop. Most of us left at abt 1am and today, everyone's very quiet in office... many of whom are having a bad hungover. All can't wait for the day to be over. No one's saying it loud but I can feel it in the air, coz by 5pm, many were gone for the day.
p/s Today was some budget talk by the UK finance minister so all the front office people were crowding around the tv listening to him. One of the changes he is proposing is to levy a 50% tax on bankers' bonuses exceeding GBP25,000. As you can picture, when we heard that, all our heads just automatically turned in their direction coz obviously it will never affect people like us.
Another big change is that we have all just moved down to the trading floor last Monday. Apparently it's to build better relationship with the front office since we are all very reluctant to go down to the trading floor to talk to them directly, and so perhaps the bosses think putting us seated side by side is the solution. And to do that, we have to forgo our cosy little corner and forgo our big L-shaped tables *sigh*. Now, we are seated in rows just like them. Only difference is that they have like 6 screens each (2 piled up on top of each other in 3s - and I wonder how much angle of head oscillation they cover in a day. I'll most likely end up with a sore neck.) and they probably have like multiple phone lines each too. So you can imagine how much noise we are subjected to now.
I ain't complaining though, it's just a change that we all have to deal with it. Honestly, I wasn't looking forward to this move (so do many of my colleagues) but I guess it does help foster some relationship building with them being so close to them now. Whatever PnL issues we have, we just need to pop by their desks. :/
December is the month of Christmas parties and so we had our first one for the year last night with the whole GEM team: mainly traders, us in finance, and the ops guys. So in place of the usual D&Ds we have back home, over here they book a club and everyone get their - favourite - free flow booze of course (except me coz I think food is more important being Singaporean) and just party the night away. This year they booked this club called Worship which I think is smaller than last year's venue (think: credit crunch) but well as long as there is alcohol and music, I think the rest don't really matter to them. But overall it was fun and much better than last year's party. So many of them just got so drunk and danced non stop. Most of us left at abt 1am and today, everyone's very quiet in office... many of whom are having a bad hungover. All can't wait for the day to be over. No one's saying it loud but I can feel it in the air, coz by 5pm, many were gone for the day.
p/s Today was some budget talk by the UK finance minister so all the front office people were crowding around the tv listening to him. One of the changes he is proposing is to levy a 50% tax on bankers' bonuses exceeding GBP25,000. As you can picture, when we heard that, all our heads just automatically turned in their direction coz obviously it will never affect people like us.
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