Rants and Raves

This post is dedicated to all the little things I deal with while going about my daily business here in New York. While I'm at it, I also feel like mentioning various other tid bits about my life here. Here goes...

Maneuvering through crowds: I have become an expert in maneuvering through crowds. It only takes a couple weeks of dealing with hot, sweating

 bodies all around you all the time to figure out how to become efficient and strategic at street walking. The first thing I usually do when I step out onto the

 street from my apartment or subway or where ever is to scan the street for a couple seconds to check out the scene. The point is to asses the level of human congestion and then decide at what pace I want to walk at and then strategically plan out my side-steps and swerves about 2 to 4 feet in front of me. Planning how I'm physically going to get around a slow or oblivious walker 2 to 4 feet in front of m

e gives me time to decide the best way to bypass them without touching them. I have become a passive aggressive street walker here and its worked well for me so far. Its definitely a New York skill that I will take with me in the future.

Parking: Thank god I do not drive a car here. I don't know how people do it! There is a parking garage right next to may apartment where you can park for the day for $32 or for the month for $432. Seems reasonable. Also, as my picture indicates, do not mess with the NYPD or parking enforcement.

Subway: Ahhh the NYC subway. I realize I have developed a love/hate relationship with the su

bway. I love it because it is efficient. period. I hate it because its dirty, smelly and about 15 degrees hotter than the streets above it. The best part is when I am eagerly anticipating the arrival

 of a train because of its nice, cool air conditioning only to jump in it and immediately realize the air conditioning doesn't work in that car. Its like stepping into a smelly sauna when you're already sweating with clothes on. And like everything else around here, no one really seems to care or notice and everyone just deals with it and goes about their day.

Garbage: Where do I begin? This entire island of Manhattan smells like shit. (excuse my language but its true) I am not exaggerating when I say that every morning on my way to work I wa

lk by the biggest piles of garbage on the street that make me gag they smell so bad. It is amazing to me how much trash this city produces. EVERY night there are HUGE piles of garbage on the street waiting to be picked up by the garbage man who makes the most noise he can at 3am. This picture of is what piles up right outside my apartment EVERYDAY. There are about 2 to 3 of these piles on every block. And the best part is that NYers don't recycle! Coming from Seattle this was absolutely unacceptable to me of course, but I've talked to people about it and they have all sort of acknowledged that people don't recy

le her for the most part. Shame.....

Where I live: Hells Kitchen. Or so I thought. Whenever people ask me where I live I say 34th and 9th in Hells Kitchen. And they're response is "Oh, that's not Hells Kitchen. Hells Kitchen is right North of you and Chelsea is right South of you. You actually don't really live anywhere." And I'm like, "Um, ok?!?!" My point is that NYers are very particular about neighborhoods. Neighborhoods here are not like Seattle where one bleeds into another; neighborhoods literally begin and end at specific streets and people get really defensive when you are 'incorrect' about where you live. That its annoys me.

The Brooklyn Bridge: Its beautiful! I walked the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset a while back and it was gorgeous. I took some really great photos. enjoy:)

P.S. Pretty much all of you know I'm going to Istanbul in Sept. and given the recent (and increasing it seems like) terrorist attacks in Istanbul due to the religious/political instability of the coun

try, I made sure to register my information with the U.S. Dept. of State. fun times.

Visitors in the Big City

I'm sorry I've been MIA for almost the last month; I've had visitors for the last two weekends and thus have been really busy! A couple weekends ago it was girls' weekend out in Manhattan. Somehow 6 of us from our sorority/college days managed to all meet in the city. Given the crazy schedules that everyone lives I was greatful to have some quality face time with my friends....knowing that people live in different parts of the country that may not happen again for a while. Its funny how life takes people in different directions, literally and figuratively. All of the following people that partook in the weekend festivities and that I'm about to list I went to undergrad with and we are all friends from our Sorority: Emily has been living and working in NY for the last two years. Given that she loves the NY lifestyle and has a great boyfriend, she plans to stay here for a while longer. Meghan goes to Law school at UW and is here for the summer interning at a law firm. She is fabulous and wonderful but as a side note she lived in a different sorority in college...one would never know or care about the difference now. Laurie goes to Med school (4th and final year!) at USC and was also here doing an internship at a hospital. I like that Laurie is adventerous and always down for anything. Ashley lives in Boston and came down to hang out for the weekend. She says Boston is the Seattle of the West Coast so I plan  to check it out before I leave. Always a great friend, Ingen came all the way from Seattle to see her girls and check out life in Manhattan. As she called Manhattan a chaotic shit-show, I think 3 days was enough for her:) 

We ate at a great Italian restaurant in Alphabet City in the Easy Village (I got lost getting there). Its weird how there are sub-areas of neighborhoods......we also went to a great bar that I don't remember the name of. We also made it out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island which was on my list of things to do. It was a whole day ordeal and w

e spend most of it waiting in line. I really liked Ellis Island, however we didn't spend a lot of

 time there so I plan to go back at th

e end of August when Matt comes to visit. He's a history buff amongst other things. I plan to search through the database to find my grandfather's name and information. I'm going armed with a copy of the original documentation that recorded my grandfather's entrance to the U.S. through Ellis Island. My aunt brought the copy with her when she came to visit this last weekend and I realized why I didn't find his name the first time I was there: his last name was spelled Augoustinos, not Augustinos like I thought this whole time (meaning my whole life!). Its neat and interesting to trace family roots. 

This last weekend 8 of my relatives and 2 family friends came to visit me and check out the Big City. We went to some great restaurants including BLT Steak and Tao. Both restaurants are Manhattan hot spots as indicated by their geographic location (Upper East Side on Park and Madison) and the crowds that gather there. Tao is an Asian fusion restaurant frequented by celebrities. Asian Fusion is the hot thing here...the food was great at Tao but I think Seattle has much better Asian food in general. For desert, Tao gave chocolate fortune cookies with fortunes that read "Prepare for a tease" and "Those who say 'yes' have more fun".....yes they do. (Gosh, blogging makes you thirsty....hold on)... Anyway, the personal highlight of the weekend for me was watching my first-ever Broadway sh

ow; actually I saw two and I have to say that I am officially a Broadway junkie!!!! I'm in love with Broadway shows......they are absolutely amazing entertainment and worth the price. I saw Legally Blond and Wicked. Watching them made me almost want to become a singing, dancing, acting broadway star:) I'm going to try to go to a couple more while here. 

Having visitors has been fun and made me realize what I usually realize on the weekends....that visiting New York is more fun than actually living in New York. Maybe because you can enjoy all the excitement and fun that the city has to offer without having to deal with the everyday ordeal of hard-core city living........

Blue Ocean Defined

All my fellow MBA friends were probably laughing at me when I mentioned that I wanted a "blue ocean" career in my last blog. Sometimes I feel like I'm swimming in one big red ocean here in NY. For those of you that have not been through an MBA program the following definition (borrowed from Wikipedia) will shed better light on this well-known business concept of a blue ocean vs. red ocean strategy. I personally love it:)

"The metaphor of red and blue oceans describes the market universe. Red oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the red ocean bloody. Hence, the term red oceans.

Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored. 

The corner-stone of Blue Ocean Strategy is 'Value Innovation'. A blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovation that creates value simultaneously for both the buyer and the company. The innovation (in product, service, or delivery) must raise and create value for the market, while simultaneously reducing or eliminating features or services that are less valued by the current or future market."

BNP Paribas and Wall Street

Many people have been asking about my internship with BNP Paribas and how things are going there....so this blog is to update everyone on 1)who it is I actually work for and 2) what I actually do there. BNP Paribas is a french international bank. The company has HQ in Paris and has a huge presence in Europe, but also throughout Asia and a small presence in the U.S. Unless you work in banking/finance you may not have heard of them. What was surprising to me was that there are some people (in Seattle) who work in the industry (or who want to work in the industry) and have never heard of BNP Paribas. That was a little surprising and disappointing given they are one of the strongest and largest banks in the world. I work under one of its 3 main business units, Corporate and Investment Banking. Under that business unit, I work in Client Coverage. Client Coverage is responsible for managing the bank's relationships with its core banking clients (corporations and institutions). Client Coverage also manages the bank's entire exposure to these clients to make sure that the bank's "portfolio" maintains a healthy level of credit risk. In other words, we need to make sure that BNP Paribas makes a profit from providing products and services (loans, swaps, fx lines, M&A services, etc.) above and beyond what it costs the bank to borrow money itself. We also need to make sure the bank gets repaid the billions of dollars it lends out to companies. So far I've worked on the analysis of companies in the steel and chemicals industries. All the companies that we manage, analyze and do business with are multinational companies so it gives me the opportunity to learn about and better understand industries from a global perspective, not just the U.S. 

About 50% of the people I work with are French and french is spoken all the time. As expected, BNPP is  very international....there are young people from France, Romania, Argentina and Italy that work in our group. The french people are not as socially outgoing as I was expecting, but they are nice. In general the group (which numbers about 30 people) is very nice. I'm happy to be working with a non-US bank because everything from culture to personalities are refreshingly different. And my working hours are completely reasonable....probably a combination of the slow credit markets and the fact that its corporate banking, not investment banking. 

There are about 18 people in my graduate internship program, most of them are from NYU, Cornell or some other private east coast school. I am the only one from the west coast. In general all the other interns are pretty nice, once you get past the cocky first impression they give off. I've made good friends with one Indian girl who goest to NYU's Stern, so I'm asking questions and getting all the info/dirt on what its MBA program is really like. I'll report that at a later date. 

I'll admit, I've always wondered what its like to work on "Wall Street" and here's what I'm finding out. If the majority of your happiness and self-worth is derived from the brand name of the company you work for, your title within that company, the social status that goes with that job title, and the size of your paycheck, then working in banking in NY is the place for you. The glamour of working on Wall Street is a powerful thing for many people (within and outside of the industry) and the hope of living that "glamour" is what draws so many young MBA's to NY. But what young professionals don't seem to think about is that in a downturn in the financial services industry (currently happening) you have no job security here. People are being laid off all the time here from their glamourous banking jobs with no other banks wiling to hire them, despite having an ivy league degree and 10+ years of Wall Street experience. The reality is that even within the labor market in the financial capital of the world the laws of supply and demand still hold. There is just so, so many people from all over the world (mostly young) all wanting to work in finance in a market with not enough job opportunities. Its highly competitive and sometimes I feel like I'm just another ambitious MBA looking for a job on Wall Street like everyone else. Its gets tiring. I've realized that I don't want to be that person, its not who I am. I want to create my own "blue ocean" career. I can't say exactly what job I would like to have upon graduating (it will certainly still be in financial services), but  I have a good idea of what my skill sets are and what job characteristics suit me. I also have a good idea of how I envision my career fitting into my life. Sometimes I feel like I know or have realized things that other people my age here in Manhattan have not. I'm not sure what that is, but some higher knowledge certainly exists....above and beyond the rat race and the daily grind that most new yorkers have come to know and accept.