Birthday in Brugge

Birthday in Brugge

by Rebecca Smith

So, on Friday we left for Brugge. I went into work, bearing cakes, as that is the custom here. I found a card left on my desk (I say my, but really I don’t have one, I just move from desk to desk whenever someone goes on holiday) and was gifted with a picture postcard of my future royal husband, Wills. Louise, one of the 2 other women in my department, said she had never in her life bought any royal family memorabilia before this (this statement was accompanied by a look of horror at the memory). So I guess I owe her one. I left early to meet Suz in the station downstairs. We took the express out to Stansted where we basically walked around a maze in order to reach the check in and another to reach the gate. That’s what you get for budget travel. Then, you wait in this boarding pen with your fellow passengers, where you are constantly reminded that once you board the plane you can “select” your seat, which is the nice positive spin on what I like to call a mad dash for seats. Poor little grandmothers are knocked over and polite British propriety is tossed aside in deference to the ultimate goal of winning this unreserved seat lottery. It’s madness--almost as bad as Black Friday, but not so much. All this so we could have a seat on what appeared to be a shite-ier version of the Magic School Bus, now with wings. The chairs were fashioned of some plastic material and spaced so you could just about stand upright throughout the flight for your comfort, in other words they pack you in like sardines. Ahhh, budget airlines. So what else did I expect for 2p rtn. Oh well, for the most part the flight was fine, except that the ride was like off-roading in a Ford Focus with no shocks. Lovely. The landing was superb, that is if the result you are going for is the Home Depot paint-mixing machine. In which case, SUCCESS!!!

So right, so we landed in Brugge, where we then boarded a bus to town, which dropped us at a taxi stand outside of town, where we took a cab to our hostel. I say hostel, but I think the Belgian word for this must translate in English to “pit of Hell” because this place truly was. Or at least it was on the cusp of one of the rings. I mean it was quaint and lovely if by quaint and lovely you mean craphole where you fear you might be cleaner if you had never set foot in the shower. I had to shower in the dark one morning, and am sad to say, that probably made the experience more enjoyable as I could not see anything.

But besides the accommodations, Brugge was lovely. We ate and drank, and ate, ate ate ate, and ate, drank drank drank and drank, shoppy shopped, just a bit, ok a large bit, sampled some chocolate, and by sample I mean bought 12 kilos, ate some more. We ate moules et frites (or mussels and fries/chips as the Brits call them), we ate gaufres (mmmm waffles), chocolate, chocolate gaufres, we even had pizza one night (where I was horrified to hear Suzanne compliment the chef on making “the best pizza” she’s had “outside of New York” OI!), and pastries. Oh the pastries. We went to this one shop so many times we were loath to have the shopkeeper recognize us and, rather than just not go back and get more pastries (why the hell would we do that, they was damn good pastries) we attempted to disguise ourselves as Canadians. Thankfully she didn’t remember us, so we got a pastry…or 2, or 7, ok we had her box up a tray for us…..SO WHAT?!?!?! Boy those were good pastries.

One night when we went out, we wound up at this small pub where the bartender was singing along to the music with a baritone like Pavarotti. There was a group of drunk Scotsmen singing along as well. They knew every word to every song, lame or not, that came on. It all began with “And I would walk 500 miles and a I would walk 500 more…..” you know. And it went from there. Finally Suz and I had had enough of lame tunes, requested some Bruce or “Sweet Home Alabama.” They played a couple more including Charlie Daniels’ “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which surprisingly the Scotsmen knew, before they played Sweet Home Alabama….and lo and behold, NO ONE knows the words. For GODS sake, they knew every single word to “Devil Went Down to Georgia” But “Sweet Home Alabama” they look dumbfounded. I mean its only one of the greatest sing along songs EVER!!! Oh well, CRAZY SCOTS!! There were these crazy girls in our room at the hostel. One girl, whose name we could not remember the WHOLE weekend, was celebrating her birthday too, same day, HOW CRAZY is that? And her cousin had just moved to Hoboken, HOW CRAZY is that?? And she had gone to Catholic, HOW CRAZY is that??? And the last night we were there, we all went out together, and then Suz and I got tired and bored, so we left, but they stayed out. When we woke up the next morning, they had not come back. They rolled in at like 10 am saying that when they got back they had missed curfew (which was 4 AM) and wound up sleeping in some guys they had met Grandmother’s bed, HOW CRAZY is that???!?? Well, as it happens, that was TOO crazy for Suz and I. So we peaced out like they had the Black Death, and what else, went to eat. YAY!!!

While in Belgium, I treated myself to many excesses and just kept hearing myself say this phrase as justification, “It’s my birthday, so what!!” So, I sort of bought myself a designer bag to carry my crap to work in…..WHAT---I needed it!!! Mmmmmmm Longchamps. And I of course needed to buy stuff to go with it. No jk, I needed pants, so I bought some and then some shoes and a sweater and……oh who am I kidding, I went a little crazy. “We all go a little crazy sometimes.” So next time, I will need to keep myself a little better in check, so I don’t eat till I roll down the street and then convince myself that all this eating requires a little exercise in the form of handing over my credit card (ie lift from wallet, lunge forward, swipe, return, and repeat, don’t forget the signature and the actual act of shopping, walking, trying on, carrying heavy bags……IT’S GOOD FOR ME!!!!!!!) So after all this excess, it was difficult for Suz and I to hop back on the Magic School Bus (well it would have been hard for us to just “hop” on anything, what with all the eating and drinking we had been doing), and go back to the budgetary lives we had to lead in London. So with a tear in our eyes, we reboarded the bus to the airport. Ahhh but the adventure continues.

At the airport we were loaded into another pen-like waiting area, where the sport of the day was people watching. There was this one woman with some sort of GROWTH (Suz said it was a zit, I thought it was chocolate, Lord only knows what it really was) under her nose and she was popping large chocolate truffles into her mouth like they were mini M&M’s and Suz and I thought this was excessive while we worked our way through an entire box of chocolates and watched. HAHAHAHA hypocritical, NO!!! Then Suz and I started to try and pick out the cute guys. Suz liked this one guy, and then he started to pick his nose a bit, and by a bit I mean stuck his finger up there and started massaging his brain. Boy was digging, “There’s gold in them thar hills!!!” Muah ahahahaha, ewww gross!! OK then we got on the plane and were treated to the most hilarious safety demonstration EVER. The girl stood right between us (remember the cattle call for seats, yeah well we had to sit across from each other), and she looked like a Nordic Amazon woman, extremely tall and strong looking, and yet was extremely awkward and nervous looking through the whole presentation, it was obvious that she was watching her co-flight attendants for her “lines” if you will. It was SOOOO funny. I mean all you have to do is wave your hands and demonstrate a seat belt, you don’t need to remember much. She had some major stage fright going on. GRRRREAT!!! My flight attendant looks more afraid than me, the passenger on the bus with wings. What does that say to me, the person risking her life with a budget airline…..??? Oh well, we made it home safe and ready to plan our next budget airline based trip!!! YAY!!! OK, till next time!!

Henley Management College

Henley Management College

by Rebecca Smith

Just a short note about our time at Henley Management College. I brought my digital camera, so I have some pics to post. YAY me!! OK so we had to leave work early to take the tube to the train, to the coach (or bus), to the college, where we were shown to our lovely single rooms in a hotel style dormitory. LOVELY!!! It was heaven, but we were living on borrowed time. We then had a short introduction to the college, and dinner. After dinner we had some business team building activities dealing with managing groups. We each had to work in a team to decide what the whole group was going to do in Henley-on-Thames that night, but we each had a role to play within the group, which we were not supposed to reveal to our group. We had a half an hour. My group was a bunch of strong personalities and half of us were leaders who generally trusted people to work together and do things right. The other half were control freaks. I had to bust out my acting skills to portray a laissez faire leader, because as we all know, my OCD precludes me from generally trusting other people.Anywho, somehow my team came up with the bright idea of a small pub crawl to be followed by skinny dipping or cow tipping. We had basically no information, but we had the energy and the spunk to cheer about it in front of a crowd. Our facilitator was an old guy named Peter who will later be teaching us about Managing Information. He loved us, and bought us all a pint. Every other group did not seem to work together very well. Blah blah blah, ie WE WERE THE BEST GROUP, WE'RE #1!!! The rest of the groups presented similar ideas. In the end we all just wound up wandering drunkenly around the small suburb of Henley-on-Thames. There are some pics to support this.

The next day we all had to continue to participate in team building activities and listen to lectures. Generally boring stuff. Then we went home and went out for my VERY Merry UN-Birthday (since I am going to be in Belgium on my actual Birthday), from which I sadly have no pics as the batteries in my digi cam went bust (it eats batteries like they grow on trees, ok non-sequiter....whatever). I on the other hand am thanking GOD there are no pictures, as this was a debaucherous evening involving quite a bit of imbibing on my part at a seedy local joint (ie tourist trap) called Long Island Iced Tea Shop. So moving on. Blahbiddyblah, look at the pretty (and pretty embarassing) pictures. I actually just realized I can't actually post pics on this website, so go to my website at www.anglefire.com/nj3/beki and then figure it out from there. Pretty self explanatory. Cheers!! Next stop Belgium!!! Happy Birthday to me...la di da!!!

Writing from Work

Writing from Work

by Rebecca Smith

OK, so sorry that I haven’t written in a long time. I have been extremely busy. I only have Internet access at work, and I have yet to figure out what I need to get in order to plug my computer in, so I refuse to do that for fear of creating an exploding computer instead of a functioning one. Therefore, I have no opportunity to write while I am at home. So I try to squeeze it in at work, but I am extremely busy trying to learn all that I need to about my job and the French markets, and then actually apply said knowledge to my job. Accccckkkkkk, extremely difficult. I know nothing. All the people here have been here for a long time, or if they haven’t they have been doing similar work at the Sydney office or the Zurich headquarters, or just leading glam lives in foreign countries. Ahhhhhhh, so now I join those ranks, but at the bottom of the pole since I truly have no experience in this and no prior knowledge. I am picking up as much as I can as fast as I can, but it’s all just a bit overwhelming. The subject matter is pretty straightforward….traders make trades and then put them into a system, clients confirm these trades through similar system, we see both these system feeds on a screen. If something goes wrong, that’s where we come in and fix or chase up traders. This I got, easy peasy. It’s the how of it where I get lost. There are so many little system tricks and rules to the markets. I am not using anything particularly familiar either, no nice safe monopolizing corporate software like MS in use here. But I really enjoy this job. It suits my personality to a T!! It involves making the screen look neat and tidy and finding the correct places for things, and just basically being extremely OCD, otherwise the company loses money. Perfect. And I really like the company. It is excessively user friendly. They really want well-rounded employees. Even when they make cuts or outsource, they do everything in their power to move employees to another department. They would much rather keep employees that they have invested time and effort with and just put them elsewhere than to lose them entirely. It’s fabulous. The team I work with is great. It is primarily male dominated. And they all have a slight cockney lilt. They replace th with f. So 3 is said free. It’s extremely confusing sometimes. Oh well. So my flat…hmmm my flatmates are all really nice. I really like them. I am very glad I got the girls I got. I think we will all get along quite well. I was very afraid I would wind up with one of the several girls who I will not name or call names, but let’s just call them bitches. All I have to say is phew!! My actual flat on the other hand….hmmmm, where to begin. Well I think the best place to begin is the crushed orange velvet walls. Who knew that this was possible, let alone that someone would actually purposefully opt for this particular décor faux pas? Well now I know. I think this particular decision involved quite a bit of hallucinogenic motivation, as the crown moulding has been painted (i.e. RUINED) to match the wall covering. The carpeting is horrendous. There are some acid trippy geisha sitting on shroom pictures hanging in our entrance hall. There is a scary pair of parakeets looming over us in the living room. We have an enormous and over the top faux baroque bombe chest with matching gilded mirror hanging above to accent the evil parakeets. Oi! Just oi!! Faux marble bathrooms. Enormous depressions in the kitchen floor beneath the stained white linoleum. Oh it’s just lovely. Besides all that, it’s perfectly nice. I actually think we lucked out. It’s not small at all. It’s actually quite a nice size. I like it though. It’s a great location, we have a balcony, its pretty large, ...there are good qualities...so I will stop complaining. Oh quick note, someone posted me a note as anonymous saying that they were the last person on earth to buy a computer and now they would try to keep in touch better. Ummmmm, hello….ANONYMOUS!?!?! Who are you, how can I write back to you if I don’t know who you are? At least this time I have an excuse for not keeping in touch. I don’t know whom I have to keep in touch with. Muah hahahahahaha, I have beaten the system. Anyways, so yeah, this weekend we have to go to Henley Management College, in Henley-on-Thames where the famous regatta happens. Not so excited, but who knows, it might be fun. But I doubt considering we are spending most of our time in lectures and seminars. Yick!! But next weekend, departing on Friday September 26…..can anyone tell me why this is an important day?!?!!? (HINT: It’s my Birthday, write it down, remember it, celebrate it, It’s a NATIONAL holiday—in my opinion) ….right so, on that day, Suz and I depart for Bruges in Belgium….why Belgium you ask…..well let me tell you. Here in the UK they have a few small airlines that often run deals to European destinations for really cheap. Ryan Air is one of these. When we were trying to find a cheap flight for my birthday we find one to Bruges for £0.02. That’s right 2p +airport taxes. Wa HOO!! Super cheap, and good beer, and good chocolate, and good waffles (or gauffres, to you French speakers)….and it only cost us about £20 to get there. So top that. We wanted to go to Barcelona, but no available flights, especially not any for 2p +airport tax. So that is what I am doing for my birthday…flying to Belgium to gorge myself on the aforementioned good stuff there. Right…so what are you all doing for my birthday? A parade, oh well that’s so nice! A benefit concert in my honour. Terrific. OK well, talk to y’all when I next get the chance, or when I have something more interesting to report.

***PLEASE NOTE*** the preceding message includes some words you may recognize, but believe are misspelled. DO NOT PANIC or write to me telling me my spelling and grammar skills are poor. Remain calm and walk slowly to the nearest seating implement and avail yourself of its accommodating nature. These seeming typos are in fact correct British spellings of these words. So get over yourself.

First Weekend

First Weekend

by Rebecca Smith

OK, so craziness. I just finally got a "mobile" after much hassle and purchase and return cuz I found a better deal and blah di blah. Yet, I need to charge for about 8 hrs then register it and then I will have my number. So for now I will give you my address, which is:
Flat 7 Embassy Court
43/49 Wellington Road
London NW8 9SX
United Kingdom
Tel: 0207 449 9540 (but this is subject to change)

OK now onto more exciting things......NOT!! So we are living in a hotel in Bayswater for the time being, which is a really cool area right near Notting Hill and Portobello Road. Very young and hip and studenty. I started work on Thursday (yes, that would be two days after I arrived). So needless to say, at around 2 pm every day I was ready to keel over. My office seems really cool, its enormous!! My department has about 13 people in it, but we all sit at open desks on a floor with about 500 other people sitting at similar workstations. I do not have my own desk yet. I have not had to do any actual work yet, since they have been busy and unable to train me. My training starts on Monday. They have put me on the 10:30 am to 7:30 pm shift. That's right, shift. We cover the international stock exchanges and therefore need to be open for all of them even if its on a Bank Holiday. Meaning if I am one day put on the Chicago exchanges, I get the 2pm to 10:30 pm shift. Not at all looking forward to that. Oh what is it I do you ask....well, I think...and I say I think because I have absolutely no understanding of finance....I think since I am working for the Exchange Traded Derivatives Department, I monitor all the trades on all the exchanges of Futures and Options, and make sure they are all reconciled and cleared by EOD (that's end of day for those of you who aren't in the know). That's as best as you will get from me. OK so I am about to run out of time. So just drop me a line or something. Talk to you later.