Lost in Communication

Thursday morning wasn’t quite as chilly as yesterday, but I did notice a headline on the tube which read, “Below Freezing Temperatures mean Winter is Near.” It’s not even Halloween!!! Now, we get to wake up when it’s dark AND cold (which by the way, yesterday our room was like an ice-box again)!
I started off my morning at work completing the daily line sheet runs, trade amendments and cancels, and screen shots for my ongoing two-week project. I’ve got most of it down to a science now, so by the time I finished, the rest of the morning was pretty low key. Cue lunch time where I headed downstairs to the corporate caf for the special Mexican buffet bar which was much better than I was expecting. Soon after, Carlo came back to report that, as he was re-entering the building, there was a man with a megaphone protesting J.P. Morgan. Carlo thought it was pretty entertaining, but the security guards didn’t, shutting down all the entrances except one and intensely checking that people’s faces matched their ID cards before letting them scan through. Poor guy probably just wants his dividend back!
After lunch I was given another big testing scenario, CFX 1018, relating to splitting trades and their resulting flow downs. I encountered an unexpected finding and an error on a non-deliverable forward (error message and all!) so Carlo instructed me to send an e-mail to one of the head honchos in New York: it was my first nerve-racking moment! She sent a very kind reply AND added me to her contacts on the corporate instant messaging system, which admittedly, was pretty exciting. Next task was to execute the same trades, but reverse the flow between the systems, which ended up causing major issues. There is supposed to be a 20 minute lag in the flows when going the opposite direction, but 30, 60, and 90 minutes later no such luck. More e-mails were sent, and since I couldn’t do much else because of it, was able to leave a little after 5 o’clock.
Just before I left, I received a voicemail from a random number. Good thing I decided to listen to it because it was my cousin Emily (visiting from Spain for the weekend!) saying, “Hi Lauren, I’m at Gloucester Road station. My Spanish cell phone doesn’t work here so I’ll hopefully see you soon.” With no way to contact her, I jumped on the tube thinking of what my next step of action would be if I couldn’t find her. Thankfully, Gloucester isn’t that big, and after I got off I quickly found Em standing looking at the local map. After a big hug and a sigh of relief, she told me her next plan was to ask someone if they knew where the BU kids lived. Luckily it didn’t come to that (although I wonder how that would have gone over!). We walked back to Courtfield, hearing about her crazy day of travel, and dropped off her things before heading to Earl’s Court for Indian food at Masala Zone. We were all very excited; after our first visit exactly one week previous with Jocey, Carolyn and I had been planning our return ever since. The meal didn’t fail to disappoint, and we all headed back to Courtfield, stuffed and exhausted, to relax for the night.
Unfortunately, tomorrow I have to work, but Emily has a few things to explore on her own before I finish up work for the week. Then, the Morris cousins are hitting Londontown for the weekend!
      xo LC