SWEET HOME CALGARY?!
FIRST DAY AT WORK
I suddenly bolt up in my bed, thinking that I've slept through both alarms because I feel way too alert. I look over and my glasses-less eyes tell me it's 3 a.m. I don't believe it and grope in the dark for my Ironman which I remember setting on the bedside table. It comes alive with an eerie green glow and confirms that it is in fact a God-forsaken hour. I curse my body for not knowing that I've skipped through 2 time zones as I try to fall back asleep.
Welcome to the PIT! This is the area where all the real time trading occurs. Each person sits at a station which is equipped with 4 17" LCD flatscreens stacked in a 2 x 2 matrix to form one big mother of a screen! The idea is that you have so many windows open, you need to have THAT MUCH desktop space to see everything. There are about 20 of these stations arranged in an oval and on a wall near the centre of the pit hangs a beautiful 50 inch plasma screen which is, at that moment, tuned into ROB TV. Every so often you hear different sound bites coming from different workstations: Homer Simpson screaming "Doh!", someone else screaming "Bow to your sensei!", yet someone else screaming "I bet you I can throw this football over that mountain!" (I guess you have to be a movie buff to know where each of these come from - ask Brian Lim). Basically, these are the equivalent of sirens, warning the team that power generation or market prices have changed beyond a certain threshold. Because the success of this office depends on reaction to quickly changing market landscapes, these sirens always draw attention. This tidbit alone should give an idea of the type of people that work here. I honestly thought that each person was coming from or about to go clubbing. Well, more like a jazz club because it was a tasteful fashion sense. It's a young crowd, each person pretty laid back, but sharp as a whip especially when it comes to energy financial analysis and transactions. Our office alone was responsible for a quarter of company's financial success last year. So, yeah, it can be stressful but there is also a lot of yourthful energy. For once in a very long while, I am now finding work challenging. I was bombarded with a lot of new concepts and applications. One of the biggest fears I had prior to starting was what if I was a complete failure at this, despite having uprooted and moved my whole life out of Ontario? What if they fired me, made me pay for all the relocation expenses and I had no other work contacts out here? Well, as the day progressed, I found that I grasped a lot of the ideas quickly, despite the exhaustive amount of material that was thrown at me. I've got lots of homework which is reading over corporate risk management policies. But, I feel very enthusiastic (are you allowed to use that word to describe work?) about the learning ahead. It's hard but doable. OK, gotta stop procastinating by blogging instead of reading!
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