EY/Asia Newsletter Submission

Being a foreigner in this country is not as easy as most of us make it seem. We do not see our families every week. Taking vacation time off does not consist of swimming in the beautiful beaches of Hawaii. It means traveling to the other side of the world in a cramped aircraft with four hundred people you do not know. It means twenty hours of torture and patient anticipation of your mother’s beautiful smile. It means submitting TRAX entries weeks in advance and facing the prospect of losing laptops holding twenty gigabytes of client information in a third world country. Being an international E&Y professional also means disguising a rather ugly accent, being asked questions that do not concern your country, and cringing through hours of baseball just to play a part in an animated conversation at the client site the next morning. Being an international student at a small liberal arts college in the flatlands of Ohio is a trivial matter. Being an international worker in one of the largest accounting firms in the world, in one of the biggest cities in the world, is multiple levels apart. I was in two minds because of this very fact. I wanted to work and help pay back my parents for all the financial sacrifices they made sending me to Ohio Wesleyan University. I also knew I wanted to study further, broaden my theoretical financial skill set, and therefore cleverly avoid corporate America for another year. One program made two desires fulfilled. One program made three years a contract. One program made the final four semesters of college make complete sense. One program made my first five twelevemonths in this country an absolute and gratifying triumph. Your master plan, well and truly.

I made a telephone call at three in the morning Indian Standard Time on the 27^th of December 2005 - the day I found out I was accepted into Ernst and Young’s YMP program. The news could not wait – it was four days to January and my new year had already been made. Receiving a letter from the University of Virginia confirming acceptance was the icing on the cake. I was nervous before I started school and for good reason. Four years prior, I was faced with the prospect of making friends in a country I did not know, in an academic environment that was completely different from what I had experienced before, with two diminutive suitcases that enclosed seventeen years of my beloved possessions. And here I was at The University, a campus thirty times the size of Ohio Wesleyan, facing smart people from all over the country who showed up primarily to stake their claim in a dog eat dog corporate world. It took me a little while to make my first few friends because I behave like an introvert at first glance. It also took me a while to get used to the rigor of eight hours of financial accounting drilled into my brain during class, and a further five hours of taxation, business law, cost accounting, and auditing while the sun made its slow summer descent. Soon enough however, I realized why this program was special. I made friends I could trust and relate to all over the country, exponentially improving my Ernst and Young network. I studied under some of the best professors in the country, people whose books I had to work with in some of my accounting classes at Ohio Wesleyan. I lived in one of the prettiest cities in one of the most stunning states in the country. I had to pay not a dime.

I eased into work at Philadelphia because of all the training I had already received at UVa. This made adjusting to corporate life an inconsequential matter. Everybody I have met at this company has been an exceptional teammate, coworker, friend, and mentor. This program defines Ernst and Young in the public accounting world and certainly makes it stand out. I cannot thank Ernst and Young enough for presenting me with an opportunity that made my parents proud. I do not know how long the program will continue but I do know I cannot wait to head back to balmy Charlottesville for the summer and complete the curriculum. I will not miss EY/AWS during the next three months but I will have a loaded busy season to look forward to.

A Nookie day

My eyes open to a bright white light. It's awful enough that I can only see shades of yellow and blue. Does that freakish thing a million miles over my head have to be so disconsiderate? Through all my wonderful fifteen years in this planet, the yellow ball has always been my morning enemy. I tried chasing it once. It stood umoved and unperturbed and unsympathetic. I should have realized that chasing the monster was a foolish task. It was, like I said, a million miles away. Hmm..I digress. My legs ache from all the mud running yesterday. I can barely stand - Easy now old boy - Yeah, nice and easy. Sniff and sniff again. No traces of canned meat yet. The human feeds me the same thing every day, with a slight change in diet every month. She thinks I'm too fat. Somebody should tell her the world is shaped like one of her rectangular ebay boxes. Bumbling idiot. Skin and bones I am, nothing more and a lot less.

I make my way up the wicked flight of stairs. The hunger is chipping away at my inner soul and I need the bloody can. Ah - The wonderful times of yore. I would run up the stairs and down again. And up. And down. The human would follow me and feed me those wonderful treats. The stairs were a source of affection and love then. They serve only a purpose of hunger satiation now. The human isn't in her room. I smell her torrid perfume and I smell her companion's too. So this is why she dissapeared last night. A rendezvous with another human. I am angry and I am a betrayed being. The human had taken all my love and given back an ounce. Just when the ratios were turning around owing to the human's unsuccessful mating attempts, the companion entered out of the blue. Quite literally - I am color blind you see. I digress again - The human must be found, and in a hurry.

Two hours pass and there is no sign of the human. I start to get worried even when I do not mean too. My natural emotions take control of me and possess my throat, resulting in an unwarranted deep howl. I blame my damn mother. She must have been a wolf like the legends of the past. I am not a straight breed, I'm quite positive about that certain fact. Howl deep and howl low, that should get some attention. The white one comes plodding down the stairs. "Nookie!" he shouts. I ignore the fool and continue howling. The only person I care about is the human and the howls will be answered. It always does. It may not be in a few hours, may not be in a few days, but it will be answered eventually. I haven't tried another technique because the howl has never, ever, failed me.

I trot up and down the living room full of the nasty ebay boxes. No wonder the brown one and the white one don't like this place. The human is quite messy and does not care an iota about her own house. I overhear the human arguing with the brown one quite often. The white one too. I do not blame them - the human has to get her act together if she wants to succeed in finding a mate. Yet, I am quite the old dying brain. The human did after all have a companion last night. And the companion took her away. I guess I will want the house in a rampant mess afterall. Fuck the brown one and fuck the white one.

I smell the torrid can. The human must have spoken to the brown one and informed him of her delayed arrival. The brown one shoddily scoops out the meat into my bowl. And sneers. You vile brown man. I hate your kind. You stamp on my tail on purpose and you throw liquid crystals on my face. You stare at my eyes for minutes on end and laugh when I ask for the door to be opened. You demand information and goods from my master and curse with the white one behind my master's back. And you do all this knowing there won't be any retaliation. I wish I had teeth and I wish I had my strong jaw back. I'd tear you open like an insignificant rat. And I will not have to eat canned meat for days. Damn you, vile one.

I sense my master's jeep - It's a few blocks away. The smile comes back and my heart is at peace. My darling human is back - the love of my life, the spirit of my soul. The keys clatter in the hole and the massive doors open wide. I look out with my tongue dripping clean and my tail wagging wild. I howl like the wind beneath the sea and I bark like a monk on fire. My master, the human, is back. She brushes past without a care in the world because the companion follows her. No loving look and no expected kiss. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The companion be cursed. The human race be damned. My head droops to an ungainely low and I fall back to sleep at the same spot where I awoke. Life has no meaning and love has no purpose. I am, after all, only a dog.

©Govind Mohan – http://govindmika.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.