Week 2 in Lab49 Towers/The Palace of Wisdom (still not sure which alias I will christen it with) began with a chat to Ross about how things had been going so far. Although still slightly shaken and on edge from my early morning run-in with the centipede, I managed to hold it together for long enough to say I thought things were going well. My confidence has grown as I have become more familiar with the many acronyms and quirky sayings which populate most documents I read and conversations I have. Things which I was blissfully unaware of on day 1 and have since got to grips with include SDPs, MDPs, FX, MTA, NYC, Dropbox, Bench-Time, Pips (not the fruity ones) and COFFEE. My favourite piece of finance jargon so far is undoubtedly the swaption. As a huge metaphor mashing, vocabulary hybridising fan, as shoven by this sentence (shoven (n.) - shown + proven. An emphatic proof), I am filled with gleelight whenever I stumble upon such a word. The swaption is the financial services equivalent of the flaperon, my favourite aircraft control surface!

After work on Monday we joined Lab49's entire NY staff at a swanky midtown hotel for a very interesting presentation about the company's future direction by the 3 founding fathers of The Lab. I don't think too many interns get to meet the people who actually started the company! After a lively Q and A session with the staff, we left the conference room for a food and drinks reception. Whilst there was a distinct lack of Devil Dogs, the rest of the food was delicious and included some particularly memorable Chinese turkey dumplings which, unfortunately, I had to eat with chopsticks. Add that to the list of things learned.....

This was followed by a trip to one of New York's many rooftop bars with around 10 colleagues. The view was spectacular, coming 2nd only to the drinks prices in spectacularity-factor. Particularly impressive was the military style response of the staff to even the slightest drop of rain. As soon as there was any hint of the heavens opening legions upon legions of staff (well at least 3) would appear with what I can only describe as big sticks. The big sticks were used to hook onto, and pull over the retractable, greenhouse-esque roof, keeping the champagne, and it’s less important, less valuable guests dry. This was also where it was confirmed to me that I should change my name to Bobby for the next 6 weeks. One of my fellow Lab49-ers asked my name. 'Chris.' I said. Due to my accent he thought I said Claus. Yeah, as in Santa. My name to him and the group of people he was chatting to for the rest of the night then, was Claus. Ho ho ho. One of the IBM guys suggested I use Bobby as this sounds the same in English as it does in Glaswegian, so when I ordered my next coffee in Starbucks, the name I gave for collection was Bobby. It worked a treat. Luckily, I didn’t try to repeat this in the tightly securitized Federal building we had to go to when registering for Social Security.

Tuesday morning was my 1st introduction to the NYC work hard, play hard culture. Everyone was as bright eyed and bushy tailed as the same troop of laser eye surgery enhanced foxes from my 2nd blog and certainly didn’t look like they'd drank anything other than grossly overpriced vitamin/electrolyte water (another local phenomenon) the night before. Fred Mantha, head of the Lab49 strategy group, spoke to us in more detail about the project we would be working on and set things in motion by giving us some research to do and present at a later date. Again, in order to avoid breaching client confidentiality, I won't be going into detail on what this has entailed.

One thing I will go into detail on is how quickly time seems to be passing. Everyone I spoke to before I left assured me this would happen but even I have been surprised by how fast the days seem to be disappearing. The quartet of virtue (better name than the New York 4, I’m sure you’ll agree) made some big plans recently to ensure we can fit in as many interesting U.S activities as possible. Off the top of my head these include many nice meals in many different places, U.S Open tennis, a Yankees game, trips to the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Centre, A U.S Highland Games event, Fire Island, Long Island, Short Ice Island, Boston, D.C and a soccerball game this weekend. Speaking of soccerball, I have thoroughly enjoyed the American commentators on ESPN. Their commentary, whilst occasionally cringeworthy is always highly entertaining:

 ‘Celtic could turn this goal-lite draw into a 3 point game-match if they can dunk this penalty shot past the goaltender before the end of the power play!’

Ok it wasn’t quite that bad but you see the point.

Anyway the point which I think I was trying to make was that there is so much to do, and so little time left in the power play period this off season.

In other developments I am pleased to report that Jones vs. Centipede II – ‘The biggest blockbuster of the summer’ seems to have been postponed indefinitely due to breach of contract on the part of my many limbed opponent who didn’t show up. Maybe he got legless the night before.

On a sadder and more alarming note, it has recently been brought to my attention that I recently ingested a small quantity of tofu. Yuck. This happened at an all you can eat take away buffet restaurant where I encountered a chicken-looking substance and put it in my box only to discover that it tasted absolutely horrible. When I returned to the same shop a few days later I read the sign above this ‘delicacy’ and it was indeed tofu. Also the place I bought it from charges you for your meal by weight. Here’s some New York advice from me to everyone using these places. Avoid potato wedges and large chunks of turkey. An abundance of these pushed the cost of my lunch that day to over $15. Oh and obviously don’t eat tofu.

That’ll do from me for now, I’ll see you all in a New York minute!