The World Financial Center

Is where my office is. I like watching the people around here. A lot of them are tourists, who come in to see the Winter Garden and the supposed center of the financial world. The big offices are mostly banks and other financial institutions offices (Merryl Lynch, American Express) and also some law firms and other lesser institutions. It is easy to recognize the investment bankers. They tend to be men in their 20s or 30s, they move around in groups of 4-5, they are mostly white and, sometimes, Indian (from what I have observed though the Indians tend to move around in pairs more), sometimes Asian, never black. Now that it is warmer out, they take off their jackets to reveal white, off-white or light blue shirts (sometimes you see a pink shirt - that is probably the English guy in the group) with matching ties.

The snippets of conversations that I overhear are usually uninteresting, though difficult to ignore because another characteristic of men in large groups and expensive suits tends to be loudness. Yesterday though, as I walked into the elevator dazed out from a long day of uninterrupted staring at the screen, I overheard one of the more interesting ones. Two Indian guys (probably some super-smart engineer or physicist kids on H-1B visas) with strong Indian accents were talking about how one of their white, American colleagues got fired by their Japanese boss (they work for Nomura, a Japanese bank) for making repeated references to Pearl Harbor in the course of a meeting such as "we don't want another Pearl Harbour, do we?" Apparently, that is not such a funny subject in Japan...it was interesting how these two guys were so happy about it: they totally identified with the Japanese sensitivity and thought that their boorish American colleague deservedly got the sack.

I need to leave now. I have spent way to many hours at the office this week.