Internet At Last

I'm still at Bristol during the week, but we moved to the Marriott at the city center. It's next door to a huge shopping plaza that opens 15 minutes after we leave for the Orange client site and closes about an hour before we get back to hotel. Lovely. The Bristol attractions all operate on simlar schedules. On the bright side, there's plenty of restaurants. While staying at the Hilton on-site, we had carvery every day.

Friday evening I went out with my awesome ITRA grad friends. Unfortunately, we went to Clapham and visited the a club without a dance floor. Woot... It took nearly 2 hours of night buses to get home. (I did get hit on by a middle aged black man while waiting at the Elephant and Castle N89 bus stop. He'd loudly say something polite and conversational, like "Coming home from a night with friends?" then add under his breath "Yeah, come home on my bus baby, you know what they say about black men is true.")

Yesterday I... what did I do yesterday? I don't remember. Not much. Today was James's nephew's first birthday party. I still don't see the point of a first birthday party. The kid had no idea what was going on.

... And tomorrow I'm back to Bristol. There's once again no internet in the hotel, which is shit. (Hmm, that's a British expression.) On the plus side, I don't work during the day on Friday in exchange for being the independent arbitrator for the EuroMillions lottery at night.

I need life updates from everyone!

Real Work

This past week I started my actual job at my first client. Unfortunately, my client is located in Bristol, so for five weeks I have to be at Paddington at 8:30am on Monday and I get back to Blackheath at 7pm on the Friday. I'm not a fan of this schedule. It wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't just moved in, and if our Bristol hotel was in the city rather than being in the middle of nowhere. Despite being a Hilton, there's no free internet, and nothing to do except go to the gym (ewww).

My job itself involves doing walkthroughs of internal controls, testing a sample of data to ensure the control functions, and formally writing the results. For example, if there's a control in place to make sure that leavers of the firm have their account access removed within three days, we may test a sample of leavers from HR and ask for "evidence" (usually a screenshot) that their access had been removed. Not the most exciting stuff in the world, but if I stick with it, I'll be able to do more advisory work. My next assignment involves data marts, an assignment a new grad is very lucky to get!

Yesterday James and I helped clean out our old house in Wimbledon. Today I met Nic, Jonas and Nadine for lunch, a tour of Greenwich Market, and drinks. It was great to see them and talk about people we knew at Lehigh. Nic is from Bexleyheath, which is a short bus ride from Blackheath. It's a nice little irony, considering we meet at a schetchy nightclub in Bethlehem, thousands of miles from here.

British Telecom

I think I forgot to add that my new flat is without internet until Sept. 26th. This is mainly due to the monopoly BT wanting to charge £120 to "re-connect" our line, and Virgin Media having a very long wait list, likely because BT sucks ass.

So if you haven't heard from me, that's why. I apologize.

Use Your Imagination

Alright everyone, just pretend that I've been regularly calling/texting/emailing/messaging you over the past month and you know exactly what's going on in my life.

As I've completely failed to keep in touch, this blog is my way of saying "I'm sorry". Don't be offended that I'm not communicating with everyone I know personally, because a.) I wouldn't have enough time and I'd end up not communicating with anyone, and b.) this is more polite than copying and pasting, which I have been known to do on Facebook.

Now to the point. I spent this summer working as the Assistant Director at Skymeadow Girl Scout Camp near my home in PA. Like every other summer at camp, we were all overworked and underpaid, but I had an amazing time and wish I could to back. (I think there's photos floating around Facebook somewhere. Check out Ace's gnome, he tells all.)

I flew to London on August 9th and started work on the 10th. I spent the first and third week of my training at a posh (to use the British word) training center in Guildford. I was with 20 ITRA grads from across the UK and Ireland. Photos do exist, but most aren't very flattering. Please don't look for them.




Oh yeah, you may not know what ITRA means. Officially I'm an Associate with Ernst & Young -> Advisory -> IT Risk and Assurance. I help make sure that program controls are doing what they should do. For anyone not lucky enough to have CSB 311, in short, I do walkthroughs and testing of all of the controls between the user and the data for any application that has a material effect on a firm's financial statements.

This past week I was managed to get chargable work helping with a TAS (Transaction Advisory Services- different world than Advisory) project for McKenzie. Despite being told many times that EY only advises firms and never implements anything, I discovered that exceptions do exist. I spent the week fixing a few bugs and identifying far more in a .NET project. :-D

Last week James and I moved into a few flat in Blackheath. It's a sweet little town only 12 minutes by train from London Bridge (where my home EY office is), and our flat is just up the street from the station. If anyone wants pictures, tell me. The flat is still a work in progress. We're missing a few crucial pieces of furniture and kitchen supplies. Most of my decorations and homey stuff are under the basements steps at home in PA.

Will I stay at EY forever? Probably not, ask again in a few years. Will I stay in London forever? Probably not, ask again in a few years.