Back in London and busy again

Greetings from London!
Well, as you might have guessed from my incommunicativeness over the past couple weeks (is that even a word, incommunicativeness?) I have been busy!

Since returning to London, I have (a) started an internship with KPMG, an international business services company specializing in audit, tax, and advisory. I fit in to the UK member firm's financial services advisory/performance management block. It's been a fun couple weeks of learning my way around, which is how it always goes with a new job. Nice people. Admittedly, I felt a little lonely after a week and a half among British speakers. However, I have admitted to myself that I'm American to stay, and I feel much better about my American-ness now :) In fact, I even met another guy who started at KPMG US and is now working for the UK firm.

I got to go out for curry with my immediate (Investment Management) team last night. It was fun. We had a meeting where everyone summarized what they've been up to and what clients they're on/hope to secure. I met a couple partners (who apparently rake in the dough, around £ 200,000 min per year in salary + bonus/profits) and a lot of people whom I haven't even seen in the office (they've been putting in 130% client time). We had a meeting Monday night called "Cascades" as in, information cascading down the chain to the little guys on the bottom, which includes me. Apparently the division I'm in grew by some huge proportion and the company as a whole has done really well this last year. They set the bonus pool to £ 59 million this year, a big jump from last year. Of course, that doesn't compare much with the Goldman Sachs bonuses of up to 200k. Their traders went out that night to a ritzy bar and asked for the most expensive cocktail available - TEN OF THEM. Well, at 385 pounds a piece ($700ea), those added up, and the Crystale and other drinks they got brought a two-man bill up to £ 13,000. Ridiculous. Yeah. These people are absurd. Send a bit of that my way (at least pay me for working! ;-)

Those people would be described as POSH. The origin of the posh term is this: when British women used to go to India, they would faint with their huge dresses and corset if they were on the side of the boat that faced the sun. So when they ordered tixx, rich women would order P.O.S.H. tickets, meaning Port Out Starboard Home, which would put them on the left (North) on the Eastbound journey, and the North on the way home. Both ways in the shade. There's your etymology for the day.

I am thoroughly enjoying my current class, which meets Fridays only. The professor makes the class what it is (great!). He's very relaxed, brings in food every week, and is very well-read when it comes to thinking about international management. It's funny how much I could loathe an Organizational Behavior class under Prof. Zenger-Baker but love a nearly-OB class on international management, organizational structure, change, leadership, etc. under Prof. Lang. I guess that's a sign that the teacher has a large impact on student perceptions of the subject. I gave a presentation today, on a case study about Acer, Inc. the Taiwan-based computer maker. We have fun discussions about how outrageous prices are here in the UK, and how the professor always orders off ebay US, buys in Germany (his car!), or asks his sister-in-law to send goodies over from the US. He recently got an iPod which he loves. Did I mention we share a birthday, which happened to be the first day of class?! Yeah, he brought me a bottle of champagne (from Champagne, France) the following Friday. I don't suspect he anticipated it, but I brought him the chicken and bacon sandwich he had requested, so we did a little gift exchange a week late.

My birthday, by the way, was a kick. We went to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a pub that dates back as early as the late 1500s. Our table was near an original copy of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. It was a nice experience. I suppose Rome was a bit older, but this did the trick. I had a nice chunk of lamb and was given Phantom and Josh Groban in concert DVDs, as well as a Phantom mask just for kicks :)
I am, by the way, still a little in awe of Les Mis, in case you were wondering. Saw a crude play called On Tour. It was small & intimate (i.e. ~100 seats), but yeah just dirty.

My roommate got back from Croatia/Bosnia alright. All his limbs intact. Fortunately he had hired a translator/guide, 'cause he said he almost stepped on a mine, but the translator stopped him.

I'm going to a Man City v. Fulham football game tomorrow afternoon. Don't have any particular loyalties, but it should definitely be a good time.

I'm going through this course called Alpha, which is a course discussing the very fundamentals of Christianity in a pretty intellectual environment. It's kind of taking the world by storm, as in, around 10% of the UK population have been on Alpha, and it's definitely getting big in Boston/elsewhere in the US. I might have a hankering to lead a course next semester. We'll see how that pans out.

Hope this gives you some rough overview of what's going on with me. Send me food or chocolate or cards if you like :)
Love you all.
-Brian

Brian Patton
43 Harrington Gardens
London, England
SW7 4JU
UK

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Brian Patton
http://people.bu.edu/bjp/
http://people.bu.edu/reallife/ourstories.html