New York New York

Well I'm back to blogging and back from a short trip to US. The first one week of training at Chicago was an incredible networking opportunity. MBA consultants from US, European schools and ISB came together for the one week orientation. Impressive pedigrees once again (Kellogg, Duke, UCLA, Rotman etc.) and I got a pretty good picture of what the firm's true strengths are. An added incentive was the opportunity to attend the firm's 25th year celebrations at the Field Museum, Chicago. That weekend I rented a car and drove to Champaign, IL to be with my aunt and cousins. Good fun overall.




And then I reached New York. I was put up in a nice swanky apartment one block away from the Lehmann Brothers office (Anyways the signboard just changed to read Barclays Capital) and a three blocks from Times Square. Living in the financial district and walking to work early in the morning is quite refreshing and inspiring, if you understand what I mean. Meeting my clients was the primary agenda and all the planned meetings went very well. Now they will know who they are talking to. My counterparts in the NY office are a nice bunch of people although there is a bit of crib from everyone about running ongoing sales operations.

New York is really vibrant. Times square is incredibly lit up and is buzzing with activity even on a regular weekday midnight. It is a pity that I could not go and attend any broadway show. Hopefully I'll go again soon enough and get to watch one of them. That week the New York office celebrated the 25th year celebrations (I'm being branded as a party animal for making it to celebrations in three offices) and the venue was the Plaza Hotel. Now that is an amazing venue, the place where Michael Douglas married to Catherine Zeta Jones and one hotel that is featured in lotsa Hollywood movies. One more slice of luck :). Champagne flowed freely once again but I somehow find Gourmet food rather plain, need to develop a taste for it !!! Walking across the Rockefeller center and Waldorf-Astoria etc made my day everyday.

The weekend was dedicated to visit the patel points like Wall Street, Statue of Liberty etc with my friend from Infy. The Statue of liberty is definitely one of the best sights in the world. I stood spell bound at the base for a full 15 minutes. The statue is at once enigmatic and grand plus the copper blue hue gives it a sublime bliss. I could not help but compare it to the "Veiled Rebecca" in the Hyderabad Museum for the amount of detail that has gone into its making. A lunch at Saravana Bhavan also happened and I just can't forget the badam halwa. Overall a fruitful trip.