Its been eventful times since I last wrote. These are the worst times to start a job on wall street , in fact in finance. At the same time this will impact the mindset of all people starting a job now. Now everyone knows that there is no firm too big to fail. Now everyone knows that the bigger the bubble, bigger is the crisis looming after it bursts. Now everyone knows that risk management is such a big deal. If you can price the risk, you have achieved nirvana in finance. This downturn has been slow in coming but it surely and slowly gained speed and mass and became an avalanche.
There are always silver linings in the cloud , if you can see it. Now with the passing of pure-play ibanks and all banks becoming commercial banking , commercial bankers have more choices available now ;)
I guess this crisis is not going to end any soon, so I will keep touching on it in future posts.
It has been great to start a job with Citi. Its the biggest brand in financial services and has a lot of talented people. The best thing is that you can make a long career in Citi since it is so big by geography and business. Citi really never sleeps.
Moving to NY was pretty easy. I found a place through craigslist
on a waterfront apartment in Jersey City. This view of manhattan downtown from my apartment is really beautiful. There are a lot of indians around which is both good and bad.
I am slowly getting used to the fast paced NY life. You walk fast. Catch the subway. Stand in the crowd on the train. walk out quickly at your station. catch another train. walk fast......and so on....My train to long island city is one stop away from manhattan midtown. Since citi is the only company there, i see the same faces everyday going on my train. NY reminds me of mumbai except that it has much nicer trains.
I do miss the lovely Carolina life. Sunny and wide open and beautiful. The weather in NY is getting worse. A funny thing happened yesterday. While i was walking from the subway station to my home, I saw a girl waiting at the corner of the building. I found it surprsing that she was waiting outside in such wretched weather. As soon as I crossed her beyond the corner , she fell in step behind me, closely following me. I then realised that she was waiting to follow someone bigger in the 15mph cold head-wind !
