Archive for May, 2009
Hello from the UK
May 26, 2009 by nate, under General, Travel.
Hello everyone,
I have been busy since I arrived and am now settled so I can start writing an e-mail just about every week, I hope.
THE WORK:
I arrived in the UK early Monday morning exactly two weeks ago, May 12th. I am currently interning in the Accounting department for a company called SGB which is owned by Harsco Corporation based in Camp Hill, PA.
My work is about one mile away from where I live, which I walk to and from everyday and every other day it rains.
So what do I do at work? Here’s a list of things I’ve done so far:
- Completion of UK National Statistic – Form reporting basic accounting to the UK government for the public to see. All companies of the UK are required to publish financial information.
- Completed US Long forms of 12 Harsco subsidiaries – Used to determine change in GDP
- Converted US GAAP financial statements such as income statements, balance sheets, cash flows, into UK GAAP in Microsoft Excel. After many adjustments, I created the year-end report of 2008 of the Harsco entity, Harsco Investments Ltd. (HIL).
- Sarbanes-Oxley Testing: Follow the set procedures of Harsco to determine if the employees are performing their duties and acquiring the correct approval. I will dig through binders of Q1 2009 in different sections from loans to journal entries and randomly select pages to verify they are correct and signed by appropriate persons.
- Working on finding invoices to send to our French subsidy to support their expenses because they are being audited.
- Analyzed and calculated ratios from the balance sheets, income statements, and statement of cash flows of a SGB entity in Dubai to assist an upper manager for a meeting.
So to sum up everything: a lot of numbers and little excitement. Here’s a photo of me at work – for your viewing pleasure.
THE EXCITEMENT:
I live in a small town, population just under 10,000, which is about a 45 minute train ride south of London. There is not much in my area and just about every store and restaurant closes around 6-7PM. Fortunately, the train station is just a 10 minute walk away.
Last week when I was walking to work, the most exciting day of my life in Leatherhead occurred, so my co-workers told me. I witnessed a very big fire of a Youth Club. Why is this so exciting? Well, I took a picture of this fire because it was quite large and as the BBC reports, there were over 40 firefighters and 8 fire trucks present. In the picture attached, you’ll see a not so happy English mother, but ignore her and see the fire.
TRAVEL AND ENTERTAINMENT:
On my first weekend, I traveled to London. The train costs £10.40 (~$15) for a round trip as well as complete and unlimited use of the metro. I went back to where I lived previously but it is not the same without my other friends there. I did manage to see a few people I met previously but London is not the same for me anymore.
This past weekend, I visited Brighton – which is a town along the Southern coast. I saw the pebble beaches and was able to walk along the board walk and visit the pier. I did take a few pictures and they will be coming shortly. Brighton is a great place but I discovered that traveling by myself is not nearly as fun or exciting, if at all. I found myself becoming bored and went home after a few hours.
On Sunday, I went to the League 2 Playoffs. Basically, League 2 is the third largest league (Premiership, Championship, League 2) and this game would determine which team was promoted to the Championship League. My landlord, Andy, is a longtime fan of Skunthorpe United as well as a season ticket holder so I went to the game with him and a bunch of his ‘mates’. The match took place at Wembley Stadium, the second largest stadium in Europe with the capacity of 90,000. The match I went to was 50,000 fans of Millwall, the opposing team, and 9,000 fans of Skunthorpe. The 9,000 fans are roughly 1/5 of the entire population of the town Skunthorpe. I have attached a photo of the stadium for you to see because it is just enormous and spectacular. The game was very exciting with Skunthorpe winning 3-2. The 50,000 Millwall fans were not the happiest and the police came out with riot gear as well was riot horses. Now, that was exciting to see but it was rather safe where I was at.
FUTURE PLANS:
Tomorrow I am attending a Cricket Match with a few co-workers after work. It should be interesting. My landlord was attempting to explain the game to me but it really does not make any sense at all. It’s sort of like baseball with two batters (facing each other), one pitcher, and no bases. Confused? – You should be.
I will also be traveling to Holland for two weeks with an auditing team to help out with the SGB Holland audit. It should be interesting to see how Holland does business and hopefully I can learn a lot!
CONCLUSION:
Overall, I am having a so-so time but I know things will become much better once I make a friend or two.
Cheers from the UK,
Nathan
