Canary Wharf

hello everyone,

finally we have got sunshine, perhaps after 5-6 days. this afternoon when i suddenly looked outside the window, wow there was bright sunshine. even though as a person coming from pakistan where the weather u all know is quite warm [warm will be a massive understaement], i initially liked the cloudy and rainy weather. but as ppl suggested to me, i had gotten sick of it. so thank god we have sun out this afternoon finally, i just hope it stays this way over the weekend. speaking of the weekend, we have a long weekend, monday is a national holiday here.

so tomorrow, i.e. saturday, ill be going 2 london in the afternoon 2 spend the afternoon and the evening with some of the @ trainees in london. the plan includes clubbing at one of the london nitelubs after the dinner at a russian restaurant but i dont see myself doing dat :D i just cheked their menu online, and they have fish courses. its an expensive restaurant. im not sure if i wanna risk so much money 2 try the russian taste. ill decided when the time comes, tomorrow evening.

during this week i got my debit and credit cards and today i got my first salary too, woah! before today i was left with just 10.79 pounds, so it was a good thing 2 happen, receiving the salary. the sad part is dat 60.8% of it will be going 2 my landlord. if u r wondering y, here is the reason: in UK when u move in u pay one month's rent along with a security deposit, which is equal to one month's rent. so u end up paying two month's rent when u move in. last month i didnt pay him the security deposit. so ill be paying it with this month's rent. lets hope i can manage comfortable in the remaining 39.2%. only time will tell.

and last weekend, i went 2 london 2 see a freind [kashif] from pakistan. he just finished his undergrad from LSE [london school of economics] and now is working with blackrock, which is the asset management arm of the famous merrill lynch. since we both share a deep passion for finance, he was happy 2 take me 2 canary wharf, one of the two financial centres of london, the other one being the city. and what a place that was. huge sexy buildings, well sum of them were sexy, and all of them belonged to the sexiest financial services firms: credit suisse, citigroup, hsbc, lehman brothers, barclays, barclays capital, bank of america, to name a few. one building would belong to just one firm. the rest of the firms are based in the city. since it was a weekend, the area was completey deserted. in kashif's words, on weekday evenings this is full of people dressed in suits who are all stressed up. after all they work 70 to 120 hrs a week depending on which sector they wud be in. kashif works 70 hrs a week and he is asset management. his flatmate works 100 hrs a week and he is in investment banking, deutsche bank - one of the leading IBs. goes without saying they all eran handsome salaries.

now ill go out 2 enjoy the sunshine.

cheers.