Television for Auditors

Submitted to Company Newsletter in September 2009

The other day, as I was settling down on the sofa about to dig in to my hearty home-cooked dinner of microwavable oatmeal from Trader Joe’s, I noticed this black square with a silver frame across the room from me. My television seemed so foreign at the time. As I was staring at it, I started to wonder how long it’d been since I’d turned it on – weeks, months? I honestly could not recall the last time I’d watched the television. This troubled me.

I had to figure out what happened to my affinity for the tele, and then I realized the reason I don’t watch the television anymore is because there are no accounting-related programs. For real. Who wants to watch Dancing with the Stars or 30 Rock? Dancing, comedy? Sounds lame, which is why I have created an idea for a new accounting-related program.

The obvious choice is Real World. “This is the true story... of seven strangers... picked to live in a house...work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real...The Real World.” Um, pretty sure this is every day in the audit room. We just need cameras and confession rooms.

I am sure you already some interesting characters on your team. The senior who carries her full-size rabbit with her to client meetings and has the furry creature conduct SOX interviews. The tourettes-afflicted second year with multiple personality disorder, who sometimes fills out SAS documents signing off as Jimi Hendrix and sometimes as Samuel L. Jackson. The senior with joint problems of a senior citizen, who makes your massage his ankles and crack his knuckles and soak his feet.

No, these are just people on my team?

Conquering the Wild West One Wikipedia Page at a Time

Submitted to Company Newsletter in August 2009

So my new hobby is updating Wikipedia pages. Unfortunately all the topics I find fascinating are either not Wiki material or already covered.

• How to live in a West Village apartment with six foot ceilings with a shower in the kitchen and a ladder to get to your catacomb-like bed space – a topic I know well but not Wiki material.
• The pilot episode of 30 Rock – already covered.
• Islamic calligraphy certificates, Diocletianic Persecution, Certified Public Accountants – respectively, fascinating and covered, fascinating and covered, no clue what this is but apparently covered.

So what topics are left? What topics are truly riveting but obscure enough to still be unclaimed in the Wiki-sphere? Accounting pronouncements.

Apparently, if Wikipedia were a land-run, with settlers in their Conestoga wagons scrambling about the virtual plots of potential topics and laying stake to their choices of prime real estate, topics like Lance Armstrong would be like verdant land next to the sparkling, fish-bearing river. And yet, accounting pronouncements would be the equivalent of the dried up, infertile clay plot with annoying neighbors, which is why I was able to secure some forsaken Wiki space for my latest contribution. Ah yes, I wrote this Wiki page – SFAS 157. So if you’d like to add citations, pictures, discussion, etc, we could really fix her up and have a “homestead” we could really be proud of. Figuratively speaking, in keeping with the settler theme.

Other tidbits I learned while writing this article.

• Gopinath Muthukad founded the first magic academy of Asia in Thiruvananthapuram, present-day Trivandrum and the capital of the Indian state Kerala.
• The design of the Conestoga wagon, with its boat-like shape and sturdy frame, explains why I was able to successfully ford the river in the game Oregon Trail numerous times.
• Oregon Trail was actually a television series in the late 70’s; it was cancelled after six episodes.
• Apparently there is a Tasmanian politician named Lance Armstrong. I’d probably vote for him just for the name.

Why New York Is the Perfect Place for Auditors

Submitted to Company Newsletter in July 2009

I love the City. There’s so much to do and you’re never at a loss for bright, ambitious, enthusiastic characters. As the summer starts off, let’s all take time to appreciate the City. Let’s especially take time to appreciate being auditors in New York City. I know it sounds crazy, but there are so many reasons why New York City in the perfect place for auditors.

First, there’s the obvious. With the grid-like street system in Manhattan starting above Houston, the alphabetic avenues in Brooklyn starting past Prospect Park, and the sometimes confusing numeric streets and avenues of Queens, the City pretty much foots and cross foots itself.

The distance you walk from the train to the World Financial Center is long for a reason. It’s so you can crash more tourist pictures. I envision a pasty and slightly overweight Jan and Paul Goodman from Liberty City, Kansas posing for their family photo with Kenny and his braces and Cassie with a broken arm as they wear matching USA flag shirts and fanny packs in front of the Winter Garden. As they showcase the memento of the family trip on the fireplace mantle, they will always have to point out to their neighbors how some annoying New Yorker got in the background and ruined the picture. Yes, yes, that will be myself, immortalized in the Goodman’s family treasures, with sweat dripping down my face, cross strapped with computer bags and gym totes, and arms loaded with blue two-inch binders.

It’s a hot pick up line. In this epicenter for arts, culture, entertainment, fashion, etc, you meet the most fascinating people. It’s good to know I am one of those people. Oh, you interview celebrities for a living? I interviewed Jason Katsen in Cost Allocations for Sarbanes Oxley compliance just the other day. Hmm, you designed a runway show for Fashion Week? That reminds me of the time I designed the Management Rep Letter. Everyone was skeptical about moving the 32nd paragraph to the 33rd, but you know, we’re living in a post-modern age. It’s like I always say, “Join the zeitgeist or risk excluding a SFAS 161disclosure.”

Top Ten Internship Memories

Submitted to Company Newsletter in July 2009

I was a member of the Deloitte Intern Class of 2004. It was glorious. I recall lugging my Toshiba through the maze of subways, busses, and path trains.

1. A fellow intern and I decided to see how long Manhattan was one day, so we took the subway to 215th street and walked to South Ferry.
2. I made a lot of binders that summer, and I recall filling out “gray ropes“, which were just huge envelopes to ship binders back to the office to be archived. All interns and employees, be glad you don’t have to do those anymore.
3. For our intern community service day, we painted park benches in the Harlem area of Central Park. I recall having to paint around people sleeping on the benches.
4. I was assigned for two days at an international bank near Herald Square to reconcile the financial statements for a company using Polish GAAP to what they would be in US GAAP.
5. I recall filling out paper timesheets and faxing them in. Maybe that was just for interns.
6. One afternoon, my senior at the engagement was explaining something to me. I don’t recall what it was because I fell asleep right in front of her. I ran into her at a happy hour a year ago, and she brought it up.
7. We also went to a Yankees game one day. As I walked in, someone handed me a t-shirt. My fellow interns were curious why only I received one. Turns out, it was Free T-Shirt Day for kids under 13.
8. I was once assigned to an engagement in Brooklyn. Everyone told me it was a bad part of town. I looked it up when I moved back to the city to start working full-time. Turns out, the engagement was in now-uber-gentrified Williamsburg. I should have been buying up properties in B-burg when I was out there auditing.
9. One of my clients was in Jersey City. My parents were worried that I was travelling between states for work. It just sounded so far away.
10. Honestly, I still consider some of my fellow interns among my closest friends, so I encourage all the 2009 interns to take savor the summer and make the most of your internship experience by learning as much as possible on the engagements and keeping in touch with your fellow interns and teammates. For those who were interns at Deloitte, why not send an email or call up someone from your summer past.

Party Predictions

I wrote these party predictions a year or so ago while I was on Jury Duty.

So while waiting for jury duty, take three, to commence, I have started composing the below list of party predictions for Saturday:

1. You will inevitably end up playing that one Justin Timberlake song, whose name escapes me right now, reconnect with your inner Michael Jackson and create a new dance move the likes of which the world has never seen. A couple people will go blind from the sheer brilliance of it. Unfortunately, it will be a one-time freak occurrence, and you'll spend the rest of your life unsuccessfully trying to recreate the magic of that one night. The two bystanders rendered blind will always resent the fact they lost their sense of sight in vain. That's two less facebook friends.

2. Bobby will perfect the BGE, its presence will spread to the nearby UN building. Delegates still at work or settling down for a good night's sleep in the neighborhood, will sense the importance in the night, feel drawn like magnets to the 7th floor of 245 East 40th and catch the tail end of Bobby's sweet moves as the line "Call on Me" reverberates in the air. Enraged at the possibility of losing a national treasure like Bobby, strings will be pulled, red tape will be removed and Bobby will be allowed, nay, required to stay in the U.S. Unfortunately, he will not be able to stay in New York, as he will be touring the U.S. as the opening act for the Jonas Brothers for the next five years, where he will develop a coke addiction and never be the same. Bittersweet.

3. Christy, always prepared for a party, will undoubtedly arrive complete with her own deck of cards, shot glasses, roofies, and bong accoutrements. Someone (probably I) will switch her deck of cards with a deck of three's. Coincidentally, we will be playing the game "draw a three, eat roofie." I, however, switched the bag o'roofies with a medley of human growth hormone, steroids, and synthetic testosterone. We will all worry when Christy disappears for a few months, but all cheer her on when she reemerges as the U.S. contender in shotput in the Beijing '08 Olympics. The back hair and mustache will lead to speculation, drug tests will ensue, but she will keep her gold medal, because I, being a considerate friend, paid a premium for untraceable drugs.

4. Alisa, after snorting a line of cupcake frosting, will, in a moment of scientific breakthrough, combine her love of food with her fancy pants edumacation and create a new diet founded solely on the consumption of cupcakes and watching Gossip Girls. This new diet revolution will sweep the country and replace all other traditional weight loss plans. Years later, the diet will be blamed for the sharp increase in adult diabetes in the U.S. Oh wait, that's already happened, but people always feel more comfortable when they have a scapegoat. So that's nice.

5. Rod, in a moment of weakness, will eat his plant he has been nursing for the past few months. So upset with this, he will embark on a three-month soul-searching. He will hitchhike his way down to South America where he will befriend this new Amazonian tribe everyone is so crazy about. He will learn their ways and they will eventually induct him into their isolated community. A year later, he will realize the tribe never existed. He was just suffering the prolonged side effects of ingesting his mysterious plant.

6. Dave, after carefully assembling his new wardrobe, now feels a deep attachment to this holder of garments and other unknown wonders. The party will grow louder, and Dave will seek solace in this wardrobe only to discover the brightly decorated back board is actually a portal to an unknown magical kingdom called Narnia. He will free the Narnians from the Ice Witch and rule the land as a just, and fair king. However, we won't notice his absence because that's how magic wardrobes work.

7. Lauren will not be there. Lame.

Well, it's 11:28, and I have been sitting all morning. I am supposed to meet back at the courtroom at noon, where we will take attendance and then take a two-hour lunch. Me bored.

While Walking in the Neighborhood

Sign in front of a church in DUMBO

Discarded piano shell on Chrystie and Houston

The bicycle polo in the park on Chrystie

This is how our walk signs look.

When the President's airplane came too close to the downtown buildings, we had emergency evacuations.  The doughy cubicle dwellers, in their characteristic blue dress shirts, came pouring out of the skyscrapers.

Posted on Delancey and Bowery.  Unfortunately, it has all been taken down.

Things I Have

Excerpts of an article submitted to the Company Newsletter in April.

I have a lot of things in life. I have the full collection of “Now that’s what I call Music” compilation series. I have an extensive closet of Victorian era costumes for my pet rabbit, affectionately named Jane Austen Thumper. I have unedited footage for a Public Access television show I am piloting entitled “Reconcile Yo Mama,” which combines my three loves in life – auditing, break dancing, and yo mama jokes.*

*Basically, you have to use FASB excerpts to insult people’s moms while break dancing. I.e. Yo mama’s so dumb, she failed sale on FAS 140, and we had to consolidate her. Yo mama’s so big, we tried to hedge her exposure. Yo mama’s so dumb, she heard about fx translation and thought it was a new language she could learn from Rosetta Stone.