Archive for May 14th, 2007

Daily Archive

Mon 14 May 2007 (18:17)

London Travels – Day 7

Posted by smalrus under London - May 2007, day-to-day
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unionjack.jpgWe woke up and went to class, where we spent a lot of time prepping for the visitation to Barclays Capital later on in the afternoon. For lunch, I grabbed some Subway and then made a quick change into some business attire for the Barclays Capital exhibit.

Barclays CapitalAs has been evidenced here on my website, in the last month or so since Barclays and ABN Amro announced their merger intentions, I’ve taken a great interest in reading about the developments. As such, I’ve additionally taken an interest in the operations of the Barclays Group, PLC, so the opportunity to get to meet with people at Barclays Capital and tour the global headquarters was quite interesting.

We first met with John Winter, head of European investment banking and debt capital markets. He gave a short presentation on the company, its growth, and some of its various sources of revenue. Following that, a couple of people who had graduated from the Barclays internship program spoke to us on their experiences. One of the women was from McGill’s management faculty, so it was interesting to see another McGillie there. From that, we were able to get a tour of the trading floors, which was particularly of interest to me since I’ve never actually had the chance to see a trading floor. Surprisingly, it was a lot tamer than I expected, but was inspiring to think that so many large financial deals are corresponded right from that room at that time.

Our Group at Barclays CapitalAfter the Barclays tour was over around 4pm, we all took the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) back to the hotel and I decided to get some WiFi time at the cafe. After getting some e-mails sent out, talking to Judi, and posting some backlogged journal entries, I headed back to the hotel and met up with Charles and Mike.

We decided to go get dinner and walked down toward Leicester Square for quite a while before finally settling on The Porcupine, just off Charing Cross Road. I went for the steak and ale pie, which reminded me of a brisket pot pie, marinated in beer and without all the rest of the stuff in the filling. Very good traditional pub food for a reasonable price.

It just so happened that we didn’t go out in the evening, so we were back in the room around 10:30 to do some light reading and then go to bed.

 

Mon 14 May 2007 (13:21)

London Travels – Day 6

Posted by smalrus under London - May 2007, day-to-day
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Yesterday was actually a rather uneventful day here in London. I woke up on the earlier side for London and decided that I was going to go to the internet cafe to seek out a WiFi connection. However, I forgot that it was closed on Sunday. So I went back to the Pancake Cafe for a small breakfast and then headed back to the hotel to see what Charles was up to. I was going to go to the Tottenham v. Man City Premiership match, except I needed to get on WiFi to see where the game was, how much it was, and all the details.

Ultimately, I went to Starbucks thinking I had found a connection, but I failed. Judi called me because she had woken up early and we were able to to talk for about an hour, which was good because without WiFi, with outgoing phone charges otherwise costly for me, and with a 5 hour time difference, it’s been difficult. But as I told her, she’s talked to me a lot longer than any of the other guys have talked with their girlfriends on this trip.

Around 2:30, Charles, Mike, and I headed out next door to the British Museum, home to the Rosetta Stone. From a linguistic perspective, I find it fascinating that this one tablet was able to bridge the gap between East and West. I spent about three hours touring the museum, though one could probably spend a month looking at everything in detail. Ultimately, you start to notice that all the Roman artifacts are similar and all the Grecian artifacts are similar and so forth… What fascinates me more is not the difference in techniques of Assyrian stonecarving, et al., but the concept that 2000+ years ago, there were actually people that touched these carvings, made them with crude tools and used them for a functional or aesthetic purpose. I mean, in 2000 years, I’m sure that archeologists will unearth our remains and notice that a screwdriver is not much different from another screwdriver, or that a comb is still a comb. But the fact that someone actually used the artifact – that’s what’s interesting.

The museum must have closed around 6, because at 5:30 the docents started to get traffic flowing toward the exits. I went back to the hotel, talked to Professor Flowers and then waited in the lounge until about 7:30. I went up to get Charles and we met up with Mike, Amish, and Mahesh and ultimately Charles, Mike, and I went to dinner at Cagney’s, off Southhampton Row. After Amish and Mahesh joined us later, we all left together, thinking that it was not really a place that we would be eating at again for the remainder of the trip.

We stopped for some snacks/drinks and headed back to the Amish and Mahesh’s room, where I had a Strongbow cider and the other four guys (since Tim was at Stonehenge) had some scotch. Charles put on some Miles Davis and all of us started talking about the university, different courses and professors, and what we’ve done thus far. It was a pretty good discussion and then around 11, we headed up to our room and hung out til we fell asleep.