Girl and City

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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Today I signed my offer with The Consulting Firm and mailed it. I received the offer package a couple days ago but I waited until my parents had a chance to review it before accepting it. Obviously, they were thrilled. I will be making more money than they had ever hoped for, certainly enough to be fully financially independent. In spite of the excessively expensive housing prices in Singapore, I can afford my own place in a condo in the city and still have disposable income to spare. It is a dream come true in every way.
I have only ten months standing between me and the next phase of my life, six of which is to be spent in school. I hope to travel for the other four months – perhaps to Europe with some friends, definitely to China to see my ailing grandmother.

Yesterday, I met WAF in The City for some shopping and dining. Although she was happy to hear my news, she was preoccupied with her own.
“I might be pregnant!” She hissed at me through the racks of a particularly tacky store.
“What?”
“I don’t know, my body has been acting weird lately.” She proceeded to describe to me just exactly how her body was acting “weird.”
“Have you missed your period?” I asked.
“No, I have it in a week.”
“So, it’s not for certain. It could just be your paranoia. Why don’t you take a test?”
“I don’t think I want to know.”
We dropped the subject as we continued shopping. Over dinner, I approached the matter again.
“I don’t know how you could not know. I mean, if you’re not, then you don’t have to worry.”
“But what if I am?”
“Even if you are, it’s not like you don’t have options. It’s not like it would be outside of your control.”
“If I am, should I tell him? But which one should I tell?” She had had unprotected sex with two different men on two consecutive nights a few weeks ago. Believe me, I work very hard at not judging.
“If it doesn’t make a difference to your decision, then I’m not sure you need to. But you may not even have to worry about that if you just take the test.”
She finally agreed that she wanted to know, and she wanted to know while I was there. So near the end of dinner, I slipped out and bought her a pregnancy test and she took it in the bathroom. She was testing a few days earlier than the test recommends, so the results are not necessarily conclusive, but either way, it came out negative.

“Phew,” she said, when she finally came out of the bathroom. She’d have to take the test again closer to her period, but at least for now, she was comforted. We decided we needed to celebrate – my job offer and her non-pregnancy – so we went to a swanky bar on the 51st floor of a building that overlooked the entire city.

“Cheers,” I said, raising my glass.
“What are we toasting to?” she asked.
“To dream jobs.”
“And no babies,” she added.
“Cheers,” and we clinked glasses.
As we sat outside on the wrap-around balcony, sipping champagne, and admiring the city lights, I silently took a snapshot of the view and vowed to remember it. For all my yearnings to get away, I still loved this city. It was beautiful and familiar and welcoming. It was the city I grew up in, the city that taught me about love and heartache and friendship. It was home.

“I’m going to miss this place,” I said, to no one in particular, and raised my glass as a toast to The City before I finished the champagne. Goodbye, Toronto.

I’m going to Singapore!

Yes, you read that right. Against all odds, and I really mean all odds, I got a job offer! This time next year, I will be working for one of the most prominent financial services consulting companies in the world. Moreover, the Singapore office travels the most, because most of the clients are not in Singapore (it being a city-nation, after all). Travel throughout the Asia-Pacific¹ region is par for the course, and travel to Europe is probable as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the dream job. Well, my dream job.
I thought I would get a good night’s sleep tonight, but I was so excited, I only slept 2.5 hours. Which is why I am writing this entry at 5:19 am².

So, to backtrack. I arrived in New York City at 6pm, after being strip-searched at U.S. Customs³. There turned out to be three of us going to the interview on the same flight, so we decided to take a limo to the hotel. (Ok, we didn’t, but we seriously considered it. After all, the company’s paying for it, and it would have cost the same as the three of us taking separate cabs.) The hotel was gorgeous, as most hotels in Manhattan are, I have come to realize. I had a king-sized bed, two huge mirrors, a flat-screen TV, and all the bells and whistles you can expect at a boutique hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Oh, and the room cost $400 USD a night. I checked their website. Yeah.
My room looked almost identical to the picture on their website:

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1. Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Australia. [↩]
2. I was actually up at 1:30am, but I tried to sleep until 3:45 am, at which point, I gave up. [↩]
3. Ok, not exactly strip-searched. But the customs lady chose me to do a “random search,” which consisted of patting me down thoroughly in front of the entire line, and having my suitcase opened and every pocket checked. [↩]

So I will be heading to New York City this Friday for my second-round interview. The position I’m applying for is actually in Singapore (my second choice was New York), but I didn’t exactly expect them to fly me to Singapore for a one-day interview.

Anyway, I should be preparing for this interview since it’s in financial services consulting and I know nothing about financial services¹, but instead, I am planning my trip down to the minute (are you surprised? When it comes to planning trips, I am like Monica²). But now I need to narrow down the list of things I want to see. I’m already staying one extra day, I can’t extend my stay any longer!

Here is what I have it narrowed down to so far. Keep in mind:

1. My hotel the first night is midtown (which I think is better than Upper East Side anyway) and my hotel the second night³ is near Columbia University (just north of Central Park).
2. I actually enjoy museums, especially art museums. I would not mind spending an entire day inside an art museum.

Saturday morning:
The interview will take all morning and then they will take us out to lunch. I will return to the hotel after lunch to change out of icky business formal clothes before heading out.
Saturday afternoon:
Walk from my hotel to the Empire State Building (10 min) and walk north along Fifth Avenue. The sights along the way include: Macy’s, New York Public Library (just pop in), Saks Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the Museum of Modern Art (at least one hour), Tiffany’s, Trump Tower, the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store, and the Plaza Hotel.
Saturday evening:
Dinner at one of the following along Fifth Avenue, depending on my mood.
Take the subway downtown and stroll through SoHo.
Go up the Empire State Building just before midnight.
Sunday morning:
A stroll through Columbia’s campus at dawn.
Breakfast at one of the following.
Visit The Met as soon as it opens.
Sunday afternoon:
Lunch in the Upper East Side at VQ Global.
Visit the Guggenheim Museum if there’s time.

I also want to visit the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History. I also want to go shopping in Bloomingdale’s, Loehmann’s, and browse Chelsea, Greenwich Village, East Village, and TriBeCa. I also want to see any number of musicals: West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Mamma Mia!, or Jersey Boys, but tickets are ridiculously expensive.

I definitely do not have enough time for everything. Huff!

1. Ok, that’s a lie. I do know things about financial services. I just discredit my knowledge because in business school, I’m surrounded by people who know lots more than me. Like, kids who interned at investment banks over the summer, kids who play on the stock market with their OWN MONEY, and kids who are just huge finance nerds because that’s cooler than being nerd nerds. [↩]
2. From Friends. [↩]
3. Because the hotel they booked was completely full and I had to book my own hotel for the extended stay. [↩]

Last Friday, I had two first-round interviews, both with firms I wanted to work for. The night before, I tossed and turned in my bed until 4am, finally fell asleep in front of the TV at around 6am, and woke up at 8am.

Even though I was functioning on two hours of sleep, I could not have been more awake. I did not have a drop of coffee the whole day.

After the two interviews, I spent the rest of the weekend worrying whether I would get a call for a second-round interview. On Friday night, I went out with some girls for Zee’s birthday. I hardly enjoyed myself as I was constantly checking my phone. Eventually, my friends made me take some shots with them so I would loosen up. By midnight, I was so drunk I couldn’t see straight, partly because I needed to shake off the stress of interview week and partly because I hadn’t drank in months and therefore my alcohol tolerance was nil. We picked up tons of guys that night, which is something I haven’t done since first-year. In first-year, I would have been flattered by the attention. It would have been a novelty to have a guy hit on me, buy me drinks, and want to dance with me all night. Now, I was indifferent to it. Even when I was dancing with a guy who looked like Justin Timberlake, all I could think about was my couch at home. I extracted myself soon thereafter and hopped in a cab, without even bothering to find my friends (I was sure they were each grinding some guy though).
On Saturday, I nursed my hangover while nervously waiting by the phone. On Sunday, I worked most of the day and wondered whether my phone was broken.

Today, I got a call saying I didn’t get a second-round interview. Fuckers.

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EDIT: I just got a call from my second interview on Friday and I GOT A SECOND-ROUND INTERVIEW! In NEW YORK CITY!! Fuck yeah.
I had figured that since I hadn’t heard from them in so long (usually they get back to you within 10 hours of the interview), I was definitely not moving on to the final interview. The likelihood of a second-round decreases exponentially with the number of hours you have to wait. Well I waited FOUR AND A HALF DAYS but it all worked out. Three second-rounds out of six first-round interviews? That’s a pretty sweet ratio.