Training

Well only one a week left of training now. It's still very interesting, but I'm definitely ready to go home now. The weekends can be bad, but the nights at the hotel are also boring. I've pretty much tried all the restaurants in the West End that I care to try, and I've reached a point where I just want a simple home cooked meal. Preferably together with my wife, but that is still a few more days away.

This week we've had risk, gas and power scheduling, property management and equity production. I'm fairly sure that I need to read up on the area that I'll be working with on my first project, as all that information is difficult to remember. Luckily the various types of scheduling and trading are similar, so some of the courses were just as much a refresh course as an introduction to a new subject.

One of the big things last week was our risk test. From day one, we've been warned that we would have to take a test after having gone through the risk course, and that the test had been derived by the owner of the company. He also used to teach the class, which I guess have historically added to the stress factor of taking the risk course, but everyone was like "So, have you had you risk test yet?". One of the first questions we got when meeting a coworker was about the course and the test, so naturally an amount of tension started to build up. The test was only a multiple choice, so I felt fairly confident that I should be able to get through, if not by remembering the correct answer, then at least by finding the wrong answers.

The day arrived where we had to do the test, which was scheduled to be at the end of the day, and we started out with the remaining half day of the risk course. The guy teaching us is very good, and definitely knows what he was talking about, and he was nice enough to go through a few test questions with us. It turned out that some of these questions were actually in the test, so there were a few easy points :) Anyway, we got the test, which was 40 multiple choice questions, and we were given 30 min to finish the test. I got through the questions in about 15-20min, and decided to go through my answers just once more, in case I missed something. It turned out to be a good decision as I found about 2-3 really stupid mistakes. Having finished the test, most of us went downstairs to the bar located on the ground floor of the building, and had a few beers. It turned out to be happy hour, with $2 a beer, so we had quite a few...

I haven't gotten the test back yet, but i was told I got 29 out of 40 right, which is okay considering the average was 28 point something. We weren't the class with the highest score, they got 29 point something, but we still did pretty good. Rumor has it that someone aced the test, but no one had admitted to this yet.

The test was Tuesday, and Wednesday was happy hour at the hotel with free beer and food, so we got slightly drunk that night too...the beginning of an unhealthy week. On Thursday we were supposed to meet up with a bunch of coworkers at a bar in Uptown, for an improvised company happy hour (at hour own expense naturally). Unfortunately the weather turned on us once again, and no one wanted to go outside, so we ended up in the downstairs bar once again. Luckily Thursday is also happy hour day with $2 beers...see the pattern?

Friday was property and equity production, which hadn't been taught in a while, so the class was full of coworkers who wanted a refresher course. It gave us a fairly good overview of what happens from gas, oil etc. is taken out of the ground until it's ready to be shipped and sold. This sort of tied everything together, so we've now been through all the processes from a hole in the ground to the product being used. We were all fairly tired after a long day and a couple of days of drinking, so I ended up lounging in my room reading and watching TV. Well after having been a trip to the mall to get an iPod clock radio...I needed something better than a pair of tiny laptop speakers to liven up the room.