The life we call - the work life

As somebody who has recently treaded on from the student life to the work life, as somebody who never really wanted to enter the so-defined 9-6 work life, as somebody who never wanted to be one of those who can be bossed around, as somebody who never knew she could still be one of the above ever, I am surely in a very exciting phase of my life.

As a kid the house that I have grown up in also housed one of India’s biggest public sector banks. I have been talking to bankers since an early age – sometimes work related and sometimes personally. I have found their job as bankers of India’s one of the biggest banks at a small place like my hometown, a pretty relaxing 9-6 job one could think of. My knowledge about banking was limited to accepting deposits and giving away loans. Other than that - drafts, cheque books, ATMs are some of the other facilities that a bank provides to lure customers. The more customers the bank has it means more deposits and more loans meaning more business. It was even difficult to imagine that there could be any interesting role in banking wherein the banker does not get to meet the customer.

Now I am working as a banker in country’s one of the biggest banks, no more in my small home town but now in London. I am a banker with no on-the-road customer. My customer so as to speak is now an authority which needs some watchdog in each bank so that they can keep an eye on how the banks are doing their business, they can regulate them, they can stop any unprecedented events from occurring and in today’s scenarios they can stop banks from falling down. My customer is the Financial Services Authority of the UK.

How interesting do you think is this job when you are developing products which do not serve the need of any person but for an organisation? A major reason why I have enjoyed teaching so much is the “thank you” a student says when s/he gets up from a lesson I have delivered. I find it very rewarding. So what is the reward I get by making sure that my fellow bankers are in line with the guidelines laid out by the FSA? A salary / a job / a 9 – 6 brain storming everyday / a nice work atmosphere. I am currently getting all of these, but still something stops me from saying it is rewarding based on the reasons I have cited above.

What in fact makes it rewarding for me is the feeling that somewhere I am helping my bank and my fellow bankers realise that they should not take enough risk to go over the board, to be in a position where they can endanger the savings of those customers I have had acquaintance since childhood, to threaten the chance of a potential customer who is looking for a loan to buy a house, to cause a disturbance in the whole system. I may also say that I feel I am doing a noble duty, a duty towards the society by ensuring that my bank is not one of those who can suddenly go bankrupt leaving the whole world in a state of shock. I feel there should be more bankers like me in each and every bank as we do not have any right to cause the unrest in the world that we have just done. Indeed my work is pretty exciting.

Credit crunch jokes*

What's the definition of optimism?
A banker who irons five shirts on a Sunday.

City trader: "It's worse than a divorce. I've lost half of my net worth and I still have a wife."

Why din't the little boy get any money?
Because his mum has gone to Iceland.

A masked man holding a bank cashier up with a gun says: "I don't want any money - I just want you to start lending to each other..."

What's the difference between an investment banker and a pigeon?
A pigeon can leave a deposit on a Ferrari.

How many commodities traders does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They don't change bulbs, but the trading price of darkness plummets due to oversupply.

*Courtesy: The Londonpaper

Whose skin are you in?

Dear all,

This is a very special message to all of you, a cause which I care about.

I am a proud vegetarian and feel very happy about the fact that I am not the cause of an unexpected death of any living organism. "Plants, aren't they living?", I hear you immediately complaining, but then that is a matter of huge debate which we should probably avoid here.

I just want to make a simple request here, that we please stop wearing fur and leather as they are produced from animal skin which is extracted inflicting horrible amount of cruelty on them before they are finally killed. In case you are wondering, I do not have any leather jacket, used to have a fur coat which I disposed off last year and have vowed not to buy one again and I do not feel that it has made me any less fashionable. Fashion is defined by you and not by your leather or fur jacket which has been made from the skin of a speechless and uncomplaining animal.

I hope that the video and I have made you at least think about it.

Niedhie

Witnessing history

The events of the past few days convince me that we are witnessing history. The demise of Lehman Brothers, Wall Street’s fourth largest investment bank, would surely find its place in history.

I remember the day in March when I heard that Bear Stearns, Wall Street’s fifth largest investment bank, is heading towards bankruptcy. As an aspiring quant in investment banking I had applied for an entry level quantitative analyst role a month ago and was waiting to hear from them about my application. It was taking unusually long for a bank with a proper recruitment procedure in place to respond on my application. I was patient, waiting for a response was much better than hearing a rejection so I did not complain. Least did I know that I would straight get to hear the news of the bank struggling to survive and so being bailed out by the Fed and thereafter bought by JP Morgan Chase at the price of peanuts! Little did I know that the application which I worked on for hours and the cover letter which I got checked from my career counsellor at university and at least two other people were destined to go into the dustbin! Little did I know that those who would recruit me are busy saving their own jobs!

The memories of the crisis at Northern Rock, UK’s fifth largest mortgage lender, and how it had to be nationalised to protect the monies of the hundred’s of pensioners and savers had not even faded, that I was in for this jolt of a prospective employer who was taken over so as to avoid its demise. Things were going to be tough, I realised.

Having completed the course with the submission of dissertation, since the last couple of weeks I had been planning my strategy to go for the application spree again. I chalked out the banks I would target as a single application takes at least 5 hours of thorough research of the organisation. This research made me go through the current financial situations at each bank and I realised that Lehman Brothers was in a bad financial state. I was hopeful that like Bear Stearns, probably Lehman would also get a helping hand from the Fed so that even if my hopes of working for the bank are bleak, at least those working still have hopes of not losing their jobs. On Monday I was in for the second biggest shock, Lehman was not bailed out and so had to file for bankruptcy. 5000 employees in the UK were rendered jobless.

Merrill Lynch, Wall Street’s third largest investment bank, was also having its balance sheet in red, only to be saved by the proposed take over by the Bank of America. My housemate works for Merrill and though he has not been made redundant, since his contract gets over with the bank in a couple of weeks and there is no chance under these circumstances it would be renewed so he is looking for another job. But as he said, there are so many redundancies made by Lehman that getting a job at this point seems next to impossible.

The financial system is in shambles. Today’s BBC business news headline reads “US government rescues insurer AIG”. Mind you, AIG is the US’ largest insurance company and had the Fed not rescued it, it would have to file for bankruptcy. And then the whole system would have collapsed, we would have been experiencing the Great Depression of 1929. However I am not sure if the visible signs are any good to ensure that we are not heading towards it.

Blasts again

Can I please move on from writing blogposts about blasts? I had been really caught up with so many things in life, and just when I decided to sit down to update my blog, all that I can think of are the blasts in Delhi yesterday. But it was too much for me to take this time, I could not stop my tears rolling over my cheek when I heard the news. I could not take it anymore.

Central Park in Cannaught Place has so many memories associated with my University of Delhi days. I remember going there long before it had formally opened and chatting with its gateman. He informed me when it would open and who would inaugurate it. I so badly wished that day for it to open so that I can come down there and hang around with friends. Thereafter, when it opened I came down hundreds of times, mostly Saturday evenings to just chill followed by my favorite pastry session at Wengers. I used to love it. So yesterday when I saw the Central Park being bombed on a Saturday evening, I thought it could well have been me amongst the 20 dead and more than 100 injured in those blasts.

So the pertinent question I want to ask today is, what is my crime? Why am I targetted? Why does somebody want to kill me? Why do I have a threat on my life? How does killing me help somebody sitting across some border? To be very honest to those who do these henious crime, let me tell you something, even if you kill me, nothing will happen which you want to happen, the governments will remain unchanged about their stance, people will forget it the next moment and move on with their daily bread earning routine, life will become the same for all except that it will bring unsurmountable amount of pain to those who love me. So killing me does not help you achieve anything. And remember very well and for sure, that someday that me will be your daughter or sister and that day all that will change is your own life and nobody elses.

Blasts, Inflation, N-deal

The title suggests the way I would sum up the current social, economic and political situation in India. Notable political developments being- the political drama on the way the government proved its majority in the house, the dignified members of the solemn house behaved, Somnath Chatterjee expelled from his party (for me he and CPM were inseparable), the famous 'Sashikala' speech by the junior Gandhi, the upward movement in the stature of Mayawati as the potential prime-ministerial candidate of the 'third front'.

The news channels do not feel tired mentioning in headlines that inflation has dropped, I eagerly waited for the whole news to come up, inflation dropped from 11.91% to 11.8%. Phew! Is that good enough?! News flowing in that RBI is going to hike the Repo and CRR rates to contain inflation. At least somebody is doing something, the government does not seem to have any time to even think working towards containing inflation. First it was busy sorting out the chances of its existence, and now reacting to the 'demonic' problem of terrorism.

There has been a spat of bomb blasts in the country, the major cities like Bangalore and Ahmedabad under the scanner this time. The development that we so much boast of about India, has been becoming a cause of worry. Any city which is on an upsurge, should also get equipped to fight terrorist blasts, randomly occuring in any part without any notice.

But India, and these cities in particular, have shown commendable resilience. We have shown nothing can dampen the new spirit that India is shining with. We have vowed to reach the peak before we start looking down to see how far we have reached.