I had my presentation today. I talked about this at some length in my entry yesterday and I am sure that some of you may be dying to here the outcome of my hours of preparation. I am glad to say that it is now over and done with. On my way to college this morning, dressed up quite smartly with leather shoes and jacket, I felt pretty confident about it all. I feel that I may have developed a mild level of arrogance during my time in Tokyo; the feeling that I am better than the people around me. I suppose this can sometimes be true but in most cases it is merely an illusion and the fact that I may be better at some things does not make me better overall. Anyway, back to the presentation… I think it went pretty well. I think I love performing in front of an audience; I know I am quite quiet when it comes to social events or even amongst a group of friends but given the chance to stand in front of a group of people and present as I did today, I get a rush of adrenalin and I enjoy it. I don’t know how great a public speaker I am but I have had some presentation training now and I feel much more comfortable presenting than I did prior to my internship. So, the presentation went well and I hope my grades will reflect that. All I have to do now is finish the log book!

I realise one thing now, more than ever, I love her and nothing can change that.

Today was my last day at Lehman Brothers; I’m not sure whether I will be returning as a full-time employee but my internship ended today. We had a few drinks afterwards at a bar/cafe afterwards and I went round the floors with another intern earlier in the afternoon to say our goodbyes.  We spent about an hour on the other floors talking to the other interns and employees that we had had the pleasure of working with. I didn’t know quite what I felt when I returned to my desk. I know that I really had enjoyed my 6 months at LB but a part of me started wondering whether I really wanted to return. Admittedly, this week has been somewhat strange in regards to the lack of actual work and also being my last week, but before that I was not really looking forward to my last day. Anyway, my internship is over and all that is left are the memories that I’ve made and decisions to make. I really am more confused as whether I want to live in Japan and work here. To be honest, the main reason for living in Japan wouldn’t be related to work. The biggest challenge is building up those social networks, replacing those friends that you made over the years. Over the last 6 months, especially the last couple of months, I’ve made new friends but it’s difficult to replicate the networks that have built up over 10s of years. The one reason that may sway my decision is the one battle that is still raging within me.

I really am so confused. I know I’ve had a lot to drink tonight but drink doesn’t create feelings, it only uncovers them. I love her so much but I really am so lost. I get so down sometimes but yeah, I’ll definitely give a longer update about my time at LB and all of this emotion at a later date …

I decided to take a “well earned” half day off work this morning; to be honest, it wasn’t really because I needed a break from work but more a way of escaping from the nothingness that each day this week has been filled with. Anyway, I went to Yodobashi this morning and bought a new laptop. It was pretty much an impulse buy but I had been wanting to buy a new laptop for a while now. At the moment the new laptop is being used as a second monitor as it does not actually have much installed on it except Firefox. Once I return to LDN, I’ll be installing a few more pieces of software but I intend to use it more “on-the-road” so minimal installation is best. It has Vista and Aero, Flip 3D, etc so it’s pretty cool. I also installed this open source software called Synergy to use this as the second monitor.

I wanted to post this next bit in a separate entry as it does not really relate to what I talked about in my previous entry.

So, my mentor returned from NYC today and I feigned surprised when I saw him sitting at “my desk” when I came into work this morning. He’s very picky about what he has around his desk as I found all my stuff piled up by the side of the desk. Also throughout the day he’d ask if certain things lying around were mine and then proceed to put them on my side – there’s a mini divider between our desks. Anyway, I suppose it’s his desk and he has a right to do so!

Anyway, one major surprise I had was that on the desk next to the keyboard was this object, which I didn’t think was even available yet…

As some of you know, I had my final leaving presentation for my internship at LB today. The presentation involved a brief 10-15 minute talk on what I have done during my time there and also the things I have learnt. I had a major panic yesterday evening when I checked my email to download the presentation and start practising. The departmental servers were playing up meaning I could not access my account and I fretted for hours wondering if I should head into the office – it was a national holiday yesterday – to fetch a copy of my presentation. Fortunately, after a few hours of panic, and an hour or so more after that when I found out I had somehow archived a large chunk of my inbox, I finally got around to practising. I found that my initial draft contained far too much content and also the splattering of the Overview slide throughout the presentation did not work well. Anyway, this morning I spent a considerable amount of time going through the presentation again, retouching and rewriting it, and this afternoon I presented. I decided to start off with a quote from Sir Isaac Newton as I thought it was relevant and a high impact opener. Some of you may have guess this already from the title of this entry but the quote went as follows: