In the words of one of my favourite sports announcers of all time…business really has picked up both in and out of Lab49 Tower. The finishing touches are being applied to both the global marketing plan and my website content, with our final presentation slated in for Friday morning. I have also recently been able to get a closer look at some of the innovation taking place in The Lab with the recently released iPad. Some of the apps I saw demonstrated were, for lack of a better word, awesome. And I’m not even from a finance background. I can only imagine that when this stuff is unleashed on clients they will be wearing smiles that far exceed the regulation size.

The weekend brought no respite (not that I’m complaining) as the team paid another visit to Central Park with the sun splitting the skies. Here we did lots of standard Central Park stuff and were enjoying a fairly laid back day until a man whose skills and charisma I fear I will never be able to describe appeared on the Great Lawn.

He came, he saw, he played ultimate frisbee…

This guy was unbelievable. I’m by no means a UF expert but the stuff he was doing was clearly out of the ordinary. Frisbees were flying left right and centre, backwards, forwards and sideways. It was like playing the ‘Our arrows will block out the sun’ scene from 300 in reverse. With less gore and more frisbees. Except when a frisbee goes astray and hits someone of course…

The best thing about all of this was this frisbee-Jesus character was almost as old as his biblical namesake. He must’ve been the guy who invented the sport! When this guy isn’t playing ultimate frisbee I’d be willing to bet he is thinking about ultimate frisbee.

On a slight side note, we had a funny moment in work on Monday when we were telling Ross about the frisbee oracle and he said he had also seen a misleadingly decrepit looking Demi-God launching frisbees the length of Central Park at the weekend. I heard he threw a pass from the hot dog stand at the edge of the lawn to Boston.

Saturday evening brought with it our chums from Poughkeepsie and a trip to a karaoke bar. Needless to say my rendition of ‘I Want It That Way’ by The Backstreet Boys led to a record shattering 3 hour 27 minute standing ovation.

And then, my dear reader, there was Sunday. A day which will live long in my memory. Sunday August 29^th 2010 was the day I attended the WWE Wrestling live event in Newark New Jersey, ending a 13 year Jones-absence from WWE shows. Anyone who has read my blogs and picked up on all the wrestling references will know how big a fan I am. For those who didn’t notice this, allow me to spell it out explicitly:

I AM A VERY BIG WRESTLING FAN

I left the apartment late but showed my usual aptitude for getting to the train station just in time for my train to leave so I arrived at New Jersey’s Prudential Centre with half an hour to spare. This meant I could explore the arena for a while and check out the ridiculously priced merchandise stalls. It also meant I could meet this guy:

Enough said.

The show was, of course, fantastic and I hope it isn’t another 13 years before I make it to my next one.

Not sure where this fits into the rest of the post so I’ll give it a special customized place right here:

I recently heard my new favourite US sports commentator exclamation and feel I have to share it with the world…

After seeing someone smash a home run out of the stadium in a baseball game the guy screamed the following: “Food and beverages on this European flight are COMPLIMENTARY!!!”

Wow.

After work on Monday a sizeable group of Lab49ers headed out for some drinks and a meal as part one of the Scottish Interns 2 part goodbye spectacular. Earlier in the day we presented Strategy Practice-head Fred with a gift (in the form of a personalized hockey jersey – the perfect gift for any Canadian) to thank him for all his help over the last 8 weeks as he was heading off on vacation the next day. All of this was made slightly more stressful/exciting by the fact that the gift had still not been delivered by the postman at lunch time on Fred’s last day. Thankfully it surfaced early in the afternoon but not before I had ran across Manhattan in an elaborate wild bear chase which included 3 post offices, a policeman running down the street behind me whilst whistling at me and a near miss with a kebab stand.

That was a nice digression, back to the goodbye spectacular. We moved on to a traditional Southern Style BBQ  joint where I had another one of ‘those conversations’ with fellow engineering graduate turned Lab49er, Lance. He identified the things he learnt during the few years he spent in the engineering industry after graduating as being very rare and sought after in financial services ,software development and project management, where he now works. More good career advice for an indecisive Aero student…

It was also during this conversation that I figured out what has been one of the most valuable things I have ‘learned’ since I came here. By being in the office and observing/watching/hearing/eavesdropping on whatever has been taking place I have picked up a fair bit of knowledge on how projects are scoped and managed, how client issues are resolved and various other businessy nuggets. Much like jaw-dropping, earth shattering, buffalo busting, blog padding ultimate frisbee skills and the secret to why Devil Dogs are so tasty, you just can’t teach that kind of stuff.

I’ll close with another famous quote from the same commentator I referenced at the start of this post:

Finding the time to squeeze in everything I still want to do in work and life in my remaining 4 days here is going to be ‘Tougher than a 2 dollar steak!’

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.