Evening Guests Only

Another Farcical Wedding
I just got back from a wedding up in the Yorkshire Dales, which if you've never been to I highly recommend provided the weather is good, as it was during my visit. Unfortunately the wedding was terrible and scant reward for driving 5 hours each way, spending a great deal on hotels and generally making a huge effort to be there.

Our reward was to sit through the usual church ceremony snooze fest, followed by not being invited to the actual wedding itself. Instead we were 'evening guests', which as a concept is fine - but only for people who are invited locally. So the six of us drove off and found a nice country pub for lunch and to watch a couple of horses die horrifically in the Grand National (I always enjoy winding up L about such things as she's a huge animal lover). Thereafter we checked into the wedding hotel and spent the next 5hrs in a bizarre situation as effective wedding outcasts or second class citizens: drinking (at our own expense) in an atrium within sight of the wedding doors but not actually allowed in.

It was funnier because the others also recognised the situation as being ridiculous - the bride, who was the only connection we all had with this whole event, did come across as totally selfish however (perhaps fair enough, it was her big day).  She wandered in for a token hello to us all, but clearly didn't give a shit that we were there and didn't recognise the effort - or more importantly didn't ensure WE recognised that she recognised the effort. 

I've been through a situation like this once before, so this clearly happens all the time due to poor wedding planning. If anybody is planning a wedding, for goodness sake think about the experience all of your different types of guests will have. For guests who will have to travel from distance, either invite them to the full day or don't invite them at all - penny pinching is not worth it.

Ethical Dilemma? Nope
I took some time out for CFA study as well prior to my wedding fun last week. The main achievement was not my progress in ploughing through the course, but rather displaying my already questionable morals by lifting the entire set of one of the more popular 2010 study guides (in convenient pdf format) from a torrent site. The irony of this given the huge 'ethics' section of the course was not lost on me - or that thousands of other would-be candidates have clearly done the same judging by the seed and peer numbers.

What possessed me to take the hard road of making my own notes is quite beyond me. With this innovative new approach, and having just spent the morning quietly printing out around 800 pages courtesy of the bank's printers, I am now all done with making notes and can focus on the review (which won't take long), and then properly learning all this, memorizing the formulae and crucially practicing questions and preparing for the 5th June exam.

In this internet age of designer drugs, I'm sure most of my competitor candidates will be high on modafinil and other cognitive performance enhancers while I pass out mid-afternoon from exhaustion. This little tactic however, is an admission by me that I need to abandon my noble aim of going through the course at my own pace to learn everything (and get side tracked by applying what was learned to various investment scenarios or candidates), and instead focus on passing the level 1 exam.

If I had continued on my current path, the pressures from balancing work with study would simply have meant I would still have been not finished reviewing the course much less been preparing for the exam proper by the end of May. I have another two weeks off in May in the run up to the exam, so this is going to be a really shit couple of months all in all.

The main plus upon getting back into work today was working out just how little work my colleagues have done in my absence. Both the other new guys are off today - one with man flu and the other from tripping on a pavement yesterday and getting a bruise. Never let it be said that men don't feel pain more than women, particularly on a Monday morning.

So my sole job for the day will be interviewing some candidates for hire later on - unfortunately for the candidates, any too exceptional (if there are any) will suffer as my primary criteria will be to ensure they are good but know less than me. Where the Dark Lord is concerned, I don't intend to be outshined by any other new hires, and instead shall ensure I remain amongst his favoured elite footsoldiers, not to be sacrificed during culls or temper tantrums.

That's a survival tip for those considering a long-term career in banking by the way.