Girl and City

A few nights ago, I went to see the Wizard of Oz, the musical. It was surprisingly good, particularly the munchkins who were all (very talented) elementary school kids. The scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion were amazing singers and dancers, and surprisingly, the lady who played Dorothy was the least impressive of the troup.
During intermission, two other girls and I ran across the street to a jazz and supper club where we quickly drank a glass of wine and shared a chocolate crepe before running back into the theatre for the second half. A musical, jazz, wine, and chocolate in the same night? How often does that happen?
I have never gone to a musical before, so I can check that off my life list¹! Now that I’ve seen one, I want to see more, many more!

After the show, I rushed over to an Italian restaurant nearby where SRF was celebrating a belated birthday. I was obviously late for dinner, but they poured me some wine and we had a jolly good time. I arrived just in time to explain to the dinner party why the wines they had ordered didn’t taste good (I had become the resident wine connoisseur to my friends ever since I went on those wine tastings last year). My alcohol tolerance is an embarrassment now², but that hasn’t stopped me from drinking.

We went to The Club³ after dinner⁴, except there was also a fashion show launch party there that night, so it was packed. I ran into a lot of people I hadn’t seen since second-year. Every time I ran into someone that night, they offered to buy me a drink, so two hours in, I had already had five drinks, none of which I paid for. It didn’t help that one of my friends from TheBusinessSchool had bought a private booth and bottle service and was handing me vodka tonics whenever my hand was empty. Free drinks are the worst way to stay sober (if that makes any sense).

Then I ran into YAR. Remember YAR? He is now in TheBusinessSchool, a year below me, and we had had lunch together a few weeks ago. I remembered that I still owed him lunch since I let him pay last time, but in order for it not to be a date, I’d insisted that he let me pay if we went out again. So I offered to buy him a drink when I ran into him, thinking this would absolve me of my obligation to take him out to lunch. Since our date two years ago, I had realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea for us to get involved. Besides, we didn’t leave things off very well last time, since he kissed my friend after taking me out to dinner. I was also under the impression that he currently had a girlfriend. Unfortunately, by the time I bought him a drink, I was far too inebriated for my own good.

Ironically, as a result of my buying him a drink in order to get out of buying him lunch, I ended up sleeping with him.
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1. You have no idea how great it feels to actually be making progress with my life list. I encourage everyone to make one! [↩]
2. Case in point, chugging that glass of wine during intermission made me tipsy for the second half of the play. [↩]
3. It is the official club of TheBusinessSchool because we go every week. [↩]
4. I wasn’t dressed for clubbing, and hadn’t planned to go out originally, but in my tipsy state of mind, I was easy to persuade. [↩]

I mentioned in my previous posts that I have been doing a lot of shopping recently, and it’s true. See below for photographic evidence.

Most of these are from my two trips to New York, although the make-up is from Toronto. There are four dresses in the photo, all from New York. Three are from a boutique I found in SoHo on my first trip. The white dress in the bottom right was the dress I wore to TheBusinessSchool formal, and the dress in the top right is a dark grey business casual dress that I wore to the offer dinner last week.
The fourth dress is from Forever21. There’s been a trend towards ballerina-inspired skirts recently, and this layered black and cream dress was too cute for me to pass up.

I also bought a Coach wristlet even though I have been resisting Coach products for its “over-trendiness”. Unfortunately, I realized the usefulness of the wristlet as a small wallet when I don’t bring a purse to school and ended up buying a hot pink one.

My mom actually dragged me shopping with her in Toronto and I ended up buying some make-up even though I hadn’t really planned to. The Shiseido brightening products are a wonder for your complexion, and I needed some new lip gloss. I have no justification for buying the Oscar de la Renta perfume other than the fact that I was waiting for my mom to finish shopping and wandered into the perfume section. I’ve always believed in having one “signature perfume” but I never put too much thought into it when I was younger. A few years ago, I bought a Shiseido perfume that was light and sweet, but after careful consideration, I don’t really think it’s “my smell.” So I was going through the perfumes and man, there are a lot of different smells out there! After smelling a few, my nose was starting to tire, my head was beginning to hurt, and even my vision was starting to blur. So even though there were a few that I liked, I quickly grabbed this one before I talked myself out of buying perfume altogether. I chose this one because it is a lot less common than the other ones that I liked (for example, I liked JLo’s perfume, but it seemed too popular) and I want my smell to be unique, just like a signature.

Not shown in this picture are: the Anne Klein watch I bought on my first trip to New York, the Adolfo Valencia luggage I bought on my second trip (like this but in baby blue), the Body Shop reed diffuser kits (now making my apartment and my parents’ home smell real nice), and chocolates I bought for my parents.

I know many of my entries these days have been rather materialistic – about my travels to New York, shopping sprees¹, limos and champagne, etc. – but my life hasn’t been all about that.

If you recall, the day I got my job offer was also the day my father was fired. Since then, my mom has been bringing home the paycheque. Needless to say, this arrangement is not exactly ideal. My father has always been “motivated to succeed” and losing his job deeply hurt his pride. Moreover, there aren’t a lot of jobs out there these days, especially for a man of his seniority and experience. I have been hesitant to ask how the job search is going when my parents call me because I don’t want to give him unnecessary pressure. His own pressure to be the man of the house should be more than enough.
But from what my mom has told me, my father’s pride may be his undoing. He is so convinced of his own value and self-worth that he has been very picky about what jobs he applies to. Obviously, an entry level job would be beneath him, but at the same time, can he really expect to get a high-paying management job when firms are trying to slim down their middle management in this recessionary period?
Due to his own stupid mistake (long story regarding his email settings) the job search has been fruitless and it has already been a month. This weekend, when I got back from New York, I finally broached the subject with my father as we were in the car.

It was clear that there were very limited job opportunities in his industry of expertise, although his IT skills could be applied to other industries as well. He mentioned that he had seen (comparatively) more IT job postings in health care and banking, and I immediately encouraged him to pursue those leads. At first, he was reluctant, as he would essentially have to “start over” as far as domain expertise, but I told him that if he got in early in an infant industry, he could get promoted fairly quickly. He seemed to take my advice, and the more we talked, the more he warmed up to the idea of doing IT-related things for health care (which I convinced him was a recession-proof industry with heavy government subsidies in Canada, and therefore, more stable than banking). He might have to take some time to re-train himself, but he actually seemed excited about having to learn new things and the prospect of a new challenge².

The conversation left a few impressions on me. It made me realize that even my father, who has a PhD, who has worked for over twenty years, has insecurities about his abilities. It made me realize that I have valuable information and insights, particularly because I go to business school, that are applicable to real life and useful for pragmatic decision-making. It made me realize that my parents see me as equals. My voice has always been heard in our household since there’s only three of us, but giving advice to my dad about his career really cemented this feeling.

At the end of the conversation, not only was I able to shed some light on recent trends and give some advice on attractive industries, but I was actually able to make my father feel excited about his career. I could tell he had been dreading fully plunging himself into the job search because it would re-confirm his unemployed status, and it would also make him anxious about his abilities and value to a potential employer. But after this discussion, he was infected with some of my “the world is your oyster” talk. Even though he is much older than me, I really do believe that he can start a new career, that he can find a job that he actually wants to get up in the morning for, and that it can totally be worth it to start over.

So, Dad, here’s to starting over. Cheers.

1. I have yet to write about what I bought, which I plan to as soon as I have time to take some pictures. So yes, more materialism to come. [↩]
2. As opposed to finding another job doing exactly the same thing, particularly a management job with few technical challenges and more HR challenges. My father is not really a people-person. [↩]

Last Thursday, I went to New York for TheConsultingFirm’s “Sell Day”. It is basically a dinner that they invite all offerees (everyone who got an offer) to, and try to convince you to accept the offer. There were also some people there who had already accepted their offer, like me.

Most of the offerees there were vying for the New York office, but I did meet two girls who were also going to Singapore (and had also already signed their offers) < -- potential roommates!

TheConsultingFirm had booked out the second floor of Country, a restaurant in mid-town New York that has received considerable praise since its opening in 2005. Unlike the name, the restaurant was not "country" at all, it was very much the height of cosmopolitan sophistication. The finger-food that came around during cocktail hour was impeccable. There was a particularly memorable lobster pastry that makes me want to go back to New York just for another bite.
After some cocktails, finger-food, and mingling with the consultants and other recruits, we got down to dinner.

The dinner consisted of a butternut squash appetizer, which was smooth with the subtle hint of autumn ingredients. For my entree, I chose the mushroom risotto, which was creamy and very flavourful. For dessert, there was a hazelnut chocolate mousse cake, as well as miniature chocolate fruit cups and dipped chocolate "kabobs".

For everyone who had already signed their offer, or announced that they were going to sign, the firm had prepared an expensive bottle of French champagne. Several consultants hinted to us that we should open up the champagne right there and then, but I wanted to save mine and share it with my parents. After all, I am the most indebted to my parents, and they are the least likely to ever have expensive champagne, whereas I will probably have plenty of opportunity to be wined and dined during my consulting career (in fact, later that very night, some of the partners bought us several bottles of champagne at the afterparty).

At the dinner, one of the consultants who interviewed me in the first-round came up to congratulate me. From her, I learned that not only was I the only one from my school, but also the only one from Canada. There's nothing like the weight of your nation's reputation sitting on your shoulders to make you drink faster. All the other recruits were from top American universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, UPenn, Cornell, MIT, and so on. Ironically, I became the center of attention for being the only Canadian and for coming from a school that few had heard of.
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I don’t know what’s gotten into me. It seems like I keep going clubbing these days, even though (I thought) I was over that scene.

More importantly, I get unimaginably bad hangovers now, and each time, I swear I’m never going to drink again – it’s that bad – and then, a week later, I find myself at another pre-drink. What is up?

I think somewhere between October and now, I realized that I have more sex appeal than I used to. I mean, I used to be more desperate and naive¹, and while that might be appealing to some (har har), now, I am an older, more confident version of myself. I’m also ten pounds heavier, but surprisingly, that hasn’t stopped guys from hitting on me.
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1. Sad, but true. It was especially bad in first year because I was so curious to explore this “party world” and I was getting over MFL. [↩]