I know, I know... I've been completely useless at writing a blog this year; failing at my New Year's resolution to write on here more. I endeavour to try to find more time to keep this updated. In the meantime, here's a quick catch-up of my life since January:
Undertook my masters project in biophotonics at the University of St Andrews - "A compact violet diode laser system for the optoinjection and transfection of mammalian cells" - under the supervision of Professor Kishan Dholakia.
Spent 10 weeks shut away in a laser lab working on said project. Initially, designing and building the laser system and then aiming it at Chinese hamster ovary cells.
Completed (ish) my project and handed it in (I should try to find a way of uploading it online...).
Moved back home for a bit and went to New York for a holiday with my family (took plenty of photographs of food, of course).
Graduated from The University of St Andrews with a Master in Physics (Honours) First Class.
Traveled for a month with one of my friends from my internship at Fermilab. Visited Mexico City, Guanajuato, Teotihuacan, Cancun, Amsterdam, London and Edinburgh.
Moved to London, where I am currently attending 4 weeks of technical training for my new job as an investment banker.
Long story short: having far too much fun in London (minus trying to start studying for the dreaded JSDA exams) and will be moving to Tokyo in a couple of weeks to start my new life over there. I'm pleased to have a visit from my family to look forward to first, though. Can't wait for afternoon tea in Sketch and bbq ribs from Joe Allans :)
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
MIA
Apologies, it's been a while. So you may have noticed that there have been a distinct lack of blog posts recently... For that I am truly sorry as I had promised family and friends that I would keep them updated on my adventures in Chicago by writing about them here. Oops. In my defence, I was having too much fun to blog. The work at Fermilab ended up being fairly straightforward (potentially more on that another time...), which effectively meant that I treated the entire experience like an extended holiday in America. Thanks US Department of Energy for funding my ten-week vacation in the States! I'll eventually get around to explaining some of my work on here, seeing as that is kind of the point of this blog, don't worry.
So, "what next?", I hear you cry. Straight after returning to Blighty (and I mean straight after - I only spent 21 hours at home) I moved down to London, where I'm now undertaking a six-week internship with Promontory Finance in their London office. I'm one and a half weeks into that now and am doing an amalgamation of various compliance and regulatory-related odd-jobs for my bosses. It's really just your stereotypical internship in the City.
Whilst here, I've also been interviewed (officially, not just over the phone from my apartment in Chicago (just realised I'll have to explain that later too...)) for a graduate position in structuring with RBS Japan in Tokyo.
More on everything at a later date. I promise. Well, I promise-with-my-fingers-crossed-behind-my-back...
So, "what next?", I hear you cry. Straight after returning to Blighty (and I mean straight after - I only spent 21 hours at home) I moved down to London, where I'm now undertaking a six-week internship with Promontory Finance in their London office. I'm one and a half weeks into that now and am doing an amalgamation of various compliance and regulatory-related odd-jobs for my bosses. It's really just your stereotypical internship in the City.
Whilst here, I've also been interviewed (officially, not just over the phone from my apartment in Chicago (just realised I'll have to explain that later too...)) for a graduate position in structuring with RBS Japan in Tokyo.
More on everything at a later date. I promise. Well, I promise-with-my-fingers-crossed-behind-my-back...
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Change of plan
Chicago here I come!
So I've officially accepted my place on the Intership for Physics Majors (IPM) programme at Fermilab for summer 2010. Slight change of plan from working on the trading floor at RBS in the City... In fact, it's not really sunk in that I'll be spending 10 weeks working in the US of A yet. I'm not even sure what I'll be doing - I don't get assigned to a research group/project until much closer my starting date of June 7th. I'll still be experiencing work in the Big Smoke - I've lined up a 6 week internship with Promontory Finance in London, which starts as soon as I finish up at Fermilab. I'll most likely be working on some anti-money laundering stuff when I'm there (in between hitting up Topshop and Sketch every weekend...).
I'm going to be busy busy busy this summer! It's better that way: I get bored far too easily and can't stand sitting around for too long :)
So I've officially accepted my place on the Intership for Physics Majors (IPM) programme at Fermilab for summer 2010. Slight change of plan from working on the trading floor at RBS in the City... In fact, it's not really sunk in that I'll be spending 10 weeks working in the US of A yet. I'm not even sure what I'll be doing - I don't get assigned to a research group/project until much closer my starting date of June 7th. I'll still be experiencing work in the Big Smoke - I've lined up a 6 week internship with Promontory Finance in London, which starts as soon as I finish up at Fermilab. I'll most likely be working on some anti-money laundering stuff when I'm there (in between hitting up Topshop and Sketch every weekend...).
I'm going to be busy busy busy this summer! It's better that way: I get bored far too easily and can't stand sitting around for too long :)
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
EDI -> LHR ; KingsX -> Waverley
It now feels like a very long time ago, but here's what went down in London town at the end of January:
Wednesday 27th
Headed down south for my RBS assessment centre on the 06:30 flight, driving past RBS's "head"quarters at four in the morning... Don't see why they can't do some of their assessment centres in Edinburgh; it would have made my life a lot easier! Shame all the trading floors are in the City... Got into central London in time for two large coffees and a sandwich before heading to New Broad Street.
I walked in to be greeted by a small sea of black suits - I was one of only two girls out of a group of twenty students. They wasted absolutely no time in getting started and sent us off in two separate groups. My first exercise was to review four financial/business opinion pieces and make a five-minute presentation (including a poster) for my 'boss', in 40 minutes. Yes, you heard me, I had to read four two-page newspaper articles and make a five minute presentation in the space of forty minutes. I then went straight into my first 30 minute one-on-one interview to give my presentation and then have a Q&A session with my interviewer. Swiftly followed by another two 30 minute interviews, a 40 minute data-analysis test and then a 30 minute numerical-analysis test. I didn't even have time to go to the toilet (I had to sacrifice some of my test time to go and spend a penny!).
As expected, I much preferred the interview section of the day to anything else. Two out of three of my interviewers were really friendly and nice to chat to. I got asked some absolute corkers though:
What is 7! (seven factorial)?
What is the square root of this? (All mental arithmetic, I should add...)
How many trees are there in Canada?
How many piano teachers are there in London?
Thankfully, I have done these type of 'brain teasers' before so wasn't too taken aback!
We then got a wee tour of one of the trading floors in their Broadstreet office. IT WAS HUGE. I couldn't quite believe the scale of this place compared to the trading floor in Tokyo, which at the time I had thought was quite big!
After being awake from 4am and enduring five and a half hours of assessment centre, I could barely speak. So my mum and I (she had come down with me for some retail therapy) headed off to China Town for some good grub.
Thursday 28th
Headed to Promontory Finance Group's London office in Devonshire Square to say 'hi' to the team there. I got to meet pretty much everyone who works in the office (currently a small team of 10 people, although they are looking to expand to about 40 this year) and they were more than welcoming. The risk management based consultancy work that they do sounds really interesting and varied and they seem like a fantastic company to work for.
I then hopped on the tube to Westminster, avoiding all the non-existant extra security in place for the Chilcot Enquiry (there was one helicopter hovering overhead, that was it) and made it in plenty time for my Expert Group Meeting. We spend the vast majority of the meeting going over the fianl draft report, working out how it was going to be formatted, which bits to emphasise and which bits to discard. A few of us, myself included, have written 'example boxes' to add some personal anecdotes. Hopefully, it will be published quite soon - I will be sure to post links on here when it goes live.
After the meeting, I met up with my mum to wander around Liberty for far too long, and we then headed for dinner at Joe Allen's (my 'old' favourite place in London).
Friday 29th
My day off! This was my opportunity to buy all the things from Topshop Oxford Street that aren't available in the Edinburgh shop :)
After getting in a fair amount of shopping, we headed to Sketch on Conduit Street for some afternoon tea. This was quite possibly one of the best ideas my mother and I have ever had. The place is out of this world! It is my new favourite place in London. The building was recently bought-over and renovated into four different restaurants and an art gallery (if you watched the most recent series of 'Master Chef: The Professionals' it featured in one episode). The whole place is so eclectic and surreal that you half expect a member of Cirque du Soleil to cartwheel down the entrance hall as you wait to be seated in 'The Parlour' (and, after soaking up the atmosphere and decor for five minutes, you wouldn't be the least bit perturbed if they actually did...). The afternoon tea was delicious and very reasonably priced for what we got:
I am very aware that this is turning into a food blog again, but it was too good not to mention!
The attention to detail in this place is second to none and no effort has been spared anywhere - not even in the toilets, which are Swarovski-crystal and glass-bead encrusted. This sculpture was just chilling outside the Ladies:
Needless to say, we got so carried away by it all that we ended up missing our train home. Oops.
Wednesday 27th
Headed down south for my RBS assessment centre on the 06:30 flight, driving past RBS's "head"quarters at four in the morning... Don't see why they can't do some of their assessment centres in Edinburgh; it would have made my life a lot easier! Shame all the trading floors are in the City... Got into central London in time for two large coffees and a sandwich before heading to New Broad Street.
I walked in to be greeted by a small sea of black suits - I was one of only two girls out of a group of twenty students. They wasted absolutely no time in getting started and sent us off in two separate groups. My first exercise was to review four financial/business opinion pieces and make a five-minute presentation (including a poster) for my 'boss', in 40 minutes. Yes, you heard me, I had to read four two-page newspaper articles and make a five minute presentation in the space of forty minutes. I then went straight into my first 30 minute one-on-one interview to give my presentation and then have a Q&A session with my interviewer. Swiftly followed by another two 30 minute interviews, a 40 minute data-analysis test and then a 30 minute numerical-analysis test. I didn't even have time to go to the toilet (I had to sacrifice some of my test time to go and spend a penny!).
As expected, I much preferred the interview section of the day to anything else. Two out of three of my interviewers were really friendly and nice to chat to. I got asked some absolute corkers though:
What is 7! (seven factorial)?
What is the square root of this? (All mental arithmetic, I should add...)
How many trees are there in Canada?
How many piano teachers are there in London?
Thankfully, I have done these type of 'brain teasers' before so wasn't too taken aback!
We then got a wee tour of one of the trading floors in their Broadstreet office. IT WAS HUGE. I couldn't quite believe the scale of this place compared to the trading floor in Tokyo, which at the time I had thought was quite big!
After being awake from 4am and enduring five and a half hours of assessment centre, I could barely speak. So my mum and I (she had come down with me for some retail therapy) headed off to China Town for some good grub.
Thursday 28th
Headed to Promontory Finance Group's London office in Devonshire Square to say 'hi' to the team there. I got to meet pretty much everyone who works in the office (currently a small team of 10 people, although they are looking to expand to about 40 this year) and they were more than welcoming. The risk management based consultancy work that they do sounds really interesting and varied and they seem like a fantastic company to work for.
I then hopped on the tube to Westminster, avoiding all the non-existant extra security in place for the Chilcot Enquiry (there was one helicopter hovering overhead, that was it) and made it in plenty time for my Expert Group Meeting. We spend the vast majority of the meeting going over the fianl draft report, working out how it was going to be formatted, which bits to emphasise and which bits to discard. A few of us, myself included, have written 'example boxes' to add some personal anecdotes. Hopefully, it will be published quite soon - I will be sure to post links on here when it goes live.
After the meeting, I met up with my mum to wander around Liberty for far too long, and we then headed for dinner at Joe Allen's (my 'old' favourite place in London).
Friday 29th
My day off! This was my opportunity to buy all the things from Topshop Oxford Street that aren't available in the Edinburgh shop :)
After getting in a fair amount of shopping, we headed to Sketch on Conduit Street for some afternoon tea. This was quite possibly one of the best ideas my mother and I have ever had. The place is out of this world! It is my new favourite place in London. The building was recently bought-over and renovated into four different restaurants and an art gallery (if you watched the most recent series of 'Master Chef: The Professionals' it featured in one episode). The whole place is so eclectic and surreal that you half expect a member of Cirque du Soleil to cartwheel down the entrance hall as you wait to be seated in 'The Parlour' (and, after soaking up the atmosphere and decor for five minutes, you wouldn't be the least bit perturbed if they actually did...). The afternoon tea was delicious and very reasonably priced for what we got:
I am very aware that this is turning into a food blog again, but it was too good not to mention!
The attention to detail in this place is second to none and no effort has been spared anywhere - not even in the toilets, which are Swarovski-crystal and glass-bead encrusted. This sculpture was just chilling outside the Ladies:
Needless to say, we got so carried away by it all that we ended up missing our train home. Oops.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Where's Holly?
I’ve been getting it in the neck from my family as to why I’ve not been keeping up with this blog and, to be honest, I don’t really know why I never kept up posting after coming back to Scotland. So, lets get back into the swing of things and start writing about what I’ve been getting up to – there’s no time like the present (and I am bored revising for exams…).
Upon returning home from Japan, I had just under two weeks to relax and get over my jet-lag before going back to university for the fourth year of my physics degree. During Freshers’ Week, I popped over to Glasgow one evening for a gathering of all the SaltireFoundation interns. It was really nice to swap stories with everyone.
This year, I signed up for evening classes in Japanese (I’ve just finished the first semester’s worth) as I really hope to go back to Japan one day soon, and having a better grasp of the language would certainly help!
Starting in the final week of September, I have been flying down to London to attend bi-monthly meetings as a member of the Science For Careers Expert Group. We meet to discuss the future of education, careers advice and careers available in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects and then pass our results/findings onto Lord Mandelson for government to act on accordingly. The group (which is chaired by Diana Garnham and funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) wrote a draft report on what we’d been getting up to at the end of December. I’ve got another meeting in a few weeks, so it will be interesting to hear how well it went down…
In November, I almost went to Paris for an Intel ISEF affiliated event but, unfortunately, the week before I was due to go, Intel got fined in excess of £1 billion, which meant they couldn’t afford to send me. Boo hoo. Hopefully I might get to go next year if they aren’t too poor.
I spent most of December filling in ridiculous numbers of application forms and updating my CV to try to bag myself an internship for summer 2010. Currently, I’ve applied for two completely different fields:
1) Particle Physics Research
I thought I’d try my hand at applying to CERN and Fermilab again this year, in the hope that they might say yes if I keep pestering them. On the other hand, if they keep saying no, I’ll take the hint…
2) Finance
I undertook the mammoth task of completing the online application forms for analyst (sales and trading with maybe a bit of structuring thrown in) positions with RBS, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan at their London or New York offices. I’ve got my assessment centre for RBS in London at the end of the month, so wish me luck! After speaking to the careers advisor in St Andrews, I also had my CV passed on to the London office of Promontory Finance, with the aim of working in Risk Management. I heard back from them this morning and, quite amazingly, they have offered me a summer internship! I’ve made plans to go to their office and say ‘hi’ whilst I’m down in London to find out what exactly working with them would entail.
In between all this gallivanting, I have, of course, been studying and trying to end up with a physics degree. I’ve just finished my first semester of fourth year classes (scary stuff, I know…) and am in the middle of revising for my exams that are on Thursday, Saturday and Monday. This semester hasn’t been as enjoyable as previous years’, and I can’t quite put my finger on why… It could be that it was a bit of a come-down getting back to studying after being in Tokyo, or the fact that the labs aren’t as interesting, or that some bits of my modules (non-linear optics & optoelectronics, laser physics, atomic physics) were a bit of a drag, or possibly all of the above. Regardless, I’ll stick it out and see what happens.
And there you have it; a whistle-stop tour of the last 4(ish) months of my life.
Upon returning home from Japan, I had just under two weeks to relax and get over my jet-lag before going back to university for the fourth year of my physics degree. During Freshers’ Week, I popped over to Glasgow one evening for a gathering of all the SaltireFoundation interns. It was really nice to swap stories with everyone.
This year, I signed up for evening classes in Japanese (I’ve just finished the first semester’s worth) as I really hope to go back to Japan one day soon, and having a better grasp of the language would certainly help!
Starting in the final week of September, I have been flying down to London to attend bi-monthly meetings as a member of the Science For Careers Expert Group. We meet to discuss the future of education, careers advice and careers available in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects and then pass our results/findings onto Lord Mandelson for government to act on accordingly. The group (which is chaired by Diana Garnham and funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) wrote a draft report on what we’d been getting up to at the end of December. I’ve got another meeting in a few weeks, so it will be interesting to hear how well it went down…
In November, I almost went to Paris for an Intel ISEF affiliated event but, unfortunately, the week before I was due to go, Intel got fined in excess of £1 billion, which meant they couldn’t afford to send me. Boo hoo. Hopefully I might get to go next year if they aren’t too poor.
I spent most of December filling in ridiculous numbers of application forms and updating my CV to try to bag myself an internship for summer 2010. Currently, I’ve applied for two completely different fields:
1) Particle Physics Research
I thought I’d try my hand at applying to CERN and Fermilab again this year, in the hope that they might say yes if I keep pestering them. On the other hand, if they keep saying no, I’ll take the hint…
2) Finance
I undertook the mammoth task of completing the online application forms for analyst (sales and trading with maybe a bit of structuring thrown in) positions with RBS, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan at their London or New York offices. I’ve got my assessment centre for RBS in London at the end of the month, so wish me luck! After speaking to the careers advisor in St Andrews, I also had my CV passed on to the London office of Promontory Finance, with the aim of working in Risk Management. I heard back from them this morning and, quite amazingly, they have offered me a summer internship! I’ve made plans to go to their office and say ‘hi’ whilst I’m down in London to find out what exactly working with them would entail.
In between all this gallivanting, I have, of course, been studying and trying to end up with a physics degree. I’ve just finished my first semester of fourth year classes (scary stuff, I know…) and am in the middle of revising for my exams that are on Thursday, Saturday and Monday. This semester hasn’t been as enjoyable as previous years’, and I can’t quite put my finger on why… It could be that it was a bit of a come-down getting back to studying after being in Tokyo, or the fact that the labs aren’t as interesting, or that some bits of my modules (non-linear optics & optoelectronics, laser physics, atomic physics) were a bit of a drag, or possibly all of the above. Regardless, I’ll stick it out and see what happens.
And there you have it; a whistle-stop tour of the last 4(ish) months of my life.
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