gremmie.net

wow. That lunch was delicious. It was even better since it was on the dime of Bear Stearns. This is what I’m talking about. Having spent several months laboring away on the project we presented only a few days ago, since it was passed by the primary committee, the Managing Director took my team out to lunch. You get a certain feeling in your stomach when the big guy whips out the American Express CORPORATE, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. This frenetic change of pace suits me well. We went to a place called INPENDEMA, a Brazillian/ Portuguese grill in mid-town. God, only in New York.

I’m also coming to learn quite a bit about how this place works. If there’s one thing that pisses me off, it’s that I feel like I can’t do enough given what little exposure I currently have. But, so it goes - so it goes.

On an unrelated note, I use Azureus to Bit Torrent things and the things I’m currently Bit Torrenting are the entire Bob Marley Discography, the entire Rolling Stones Discography, 800MB worth of Led Zepplin - cause you GOTTA get the led out! - and for posterity, Chapelle Show, Season 1. The reaches and vast expanses of the internet give me a vague sense of hope that supercedes the reality that perpetuates the myth of what?! Wait, what the fuck am I talking about? Anyway, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I’ll stop. In the meantime, look at this scary-ass picture of a clown high on “clown juice” counting how many fingers he has.

Ah lunch time. The one time of the day where I can sit back, relax, and - what? - time to go back to work? DOH! Having arrived at 8 a.m. for a video conference with our offices in the UK, I found myself in awe of the things we’re capable of doing today. There we were, 10 people in a large boardroom on the 13th floor debating whether or not to implement a new Investment Advisor Valuation Model with 3 other guys in London via two 100 inch screens side by side. It was like something out of 2001: Space Oddysey.

I was at Bear until 10pm last night working on the presentation the rest of my team put together for the above reason. I didn’t stay because I had to; rather I stayed because I wanted to. In fact, Rahul said I should go home when six o’ clock rolled around. But given the fact that I was actually enjoying what I was doing I said I would stay to help out. And you know what? This morning after the presentation, Rahul thanked me for staying as late as I did since it was above and beyond the call of duty. Moreover, he made sure to let me know that he had informed the Uber-Boss, Wayne Buchan of my diligence. I guess in life sometimes gratitude really does exist.

So needless to say I love my job. I JUST started getting into the day to day activities but ultimately what matters most is that I enjoy what I do. It would seem that my past experiences have always been positions I’ve loathed going to, but enjoyed collecting a paycheck from.

On a related sidenote, Bear Stearns is a no-cash building. And for those of you who are amply retarded, that means that CASH has NO PURPOSE here. All forms of payment are administered through your ID card which permits you through the lobby, opens various doors and the unsuspecting legs of girls who see it and think you’re rich. SUCKERS.

Having looked at and deciphered numerous Prospectuses(Prospecti?) today, I have a little down time. And since I have no friends and everybody hates me, I’m blogging. That’s not true, I have friends, they only SECRETLY hate me. I think the only drawback to posting from work is that I am unable to add pictures to the website via FTP, believe me, I just tried. So there will be no fun pictures associated with any of the posts I make from Bear Stearns. Here’s a tissue to dry your eyes.

The prospect of owning an iPod is something of a wonder and a necessity. You see, every morning I have a 40 minute train ride to feed and another 25 minutes of random other commuting time. The commute, despite its length isn’t so bad. I enjoy being stepped on by grisled old men Wall St. types while trying to get on the train. And what’s more, I enjoy the dirty looks the good-looking preppie chicks shoot me while waiting for the train. Yeah, like I’d ever fuck THEM. So I’m thinking of getting an iPod. After a little research I decided that to wait for an iPod mini is a meritless task since it pales in comparison in terms of capacity to the 20GB one and for a difference of $50 it hardly makes sense to get something just because it’s pink. Although I really do like pink. More on that later. Just imagine, listening to “5446/Ball N’ Chain” or “Man of the Hour” in your own private music heaven, I have. If I had a wishlist, this would be it.

Does anyone out there know what a Credit Analyst is? Take your time, there’s really no rush to answer. I have all day. Give up?? You sure? Alright, a Credit Analyst is a guy who measures the potential exposure risk for trade credit lines against a Firm’s tolerance level based on Internal ratings and trade limit distinctions. For example, if you are Cititbank and you want to trade $50,000,000 in Credit Default SWAPS over a period of say 5 years, you’d go and get a Credit Line to do so, and this is what I do for a living, only my entire portfolio consists of about $10 Billion in Notional moolah at Bear Stearns.

I started yesterday and have been enjoying myself immensely. Now granted is has only been 2 days, but I can see myself really digging into the line of work, in this kind of environment, making this kind of money. Maybe the satisfactory contrast between this job and my others since fininshing college is what’s making this such a pleasure. All I know is that I’m happy. Not that any of you fuckers care.

To detail my first day, which was yesterday, would be kind of difficult at this juncture seeing as how I seem to have forgotten about most of it. Not on account of a bad experience; rather a state of amnesiac euphoria: I don’t remember most of it. It’s similar to having mind-numbing sex, you blank afterwards. Or at least I do. Maybe I should get that checked out. Anyway, here are the bullet points: 1. Orientation - bored to tears, got free Bear Stearns work bag. 2. Lunch - with 2 team members and 1 Managing Director. 3. The cafeteria has GREAT food and it’s dirt CHEAP. 4. I learned exactly what it is I’ll be doing. And that’s about it. I took the train home absolutely elated and filled with glee, which is the same thing but is repeated for effect. It’s kind of like those kids you see on Christmas specials with stop-motion animation, you know, the retarded ones. Island of Misfit Toys anyone?

I’m actually posting this from work on my lunch break having just devoured some seasoned chicken with garlic orzo and steamed carrots. I hate steamed carrots and so do you. However, these were damn good. So enough about carrots, I have to go look over some Prospectus’ from JPMorgan Chase. Gremmie out.

It’s sadly ironic that this blog is up right now. You see, the past few weeks have begat numerous occassions and musings from which I could have set the tone for this malarky. For those of you who really don’t know what irony is and happen to use it interchangeably with the word coincidental, go buy a dictionary and look it up cause every time I hear it I want to strangle you. Irony as it’s defined at M-W is when the exact opposite happens of what is naturally supposed to happen.

Moving right along, not to backtrack or anything but recently i got a job here.

Turns out they needed someone in the Global Credit department. Or if you’re Matt A, the “Buy! Sell!! Buy! Sell!!” department. So from now on instead of calling me ‘Matt’, or the more affectionate and slightly more cacophonic ‘Fuck Face’, you may refer to me as Gordon Gecko I even put a nice little link in there in case you’re retarded. And if you’re in my tight registry of readers, magic 8 ball says “Very Fucking Likely” that you are.

Those of you who came here looking for information on the greatest rock band of all time, you came to the right place, only you didn’t because I deleted everything today to start anew. So if are one of about 16 who still can’t live without some Gremmie in your life, e-mail me and I’ll be sure NOT to write you back.

It has come to my attention that the past few paragraphs aren’t friendly. They aren’t kind. I think the fact that it’s deadly late, my bum is aching, and that there’s only a pane of glass between me and the band Train is putting me on edge. Well everytyhing except the part about Train, they’re standing right next to me. Well actually only two of them are standing, the others are unconscious on the ground having been gunstocked by a sledge hammer the size of a wooden duck. Yes, WOODEN duck.

And finally, having begun to understand the myriad of possibilities asscoiated with having a blog, you can expect a lot more shit. In the meantime ponder this chunk of wisdom, “Wise man say ‘Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.’”