#102. Mountain Time (Thursday, May 11, 2023)

What was your best day…of living your normal life in a different location?

Back in 2018, in the name of operational resilience, my institution set up a second site in Calgary for all its financial markets activities. By 2023, the Calgary office had been fully functional for a few years, and half the traders on my foreign reserves team¹ were based there. So, with a conference in the U.S. next week and me finding the idea of a “triangle” trip irrationally fun, I decided to make my once-a-year visit to Calgary – to work with and hang out with those colleagues in person.

There’s always a strange shift in surroundings that comes from living out of a suitcase in a hotel room. And it becomes extra interesting when you are simply doing the same job you’re doing for forty-seven other weeks in the year.

This included working in Eastern Time and waking up two hours earlier each day; hence why I booked the Westin a literal one minute walk away from the office tower. And the tower was a cool factor in itself. We were on the 17th of 38 floors, so it was pretty awesome looking out at a city skyline like a big-shot for the first time². Plus, Calgary had this unique Plus 15 system of skywalks connecting 130 total buildings, so you could make your way anywhere downtown without ever stepping outside.

And with end-of-day being 3 pm each day, my after-work agenda all five days was packed:

Monday: Drinks with Luis Trejo, trader in the domestic group and my best friend at the Calgary office³, at this large fancy-looking downtown bar, from 3 pm to 9 pm. Suffice to say, we got way deep on his thoughts and mine w.r.t. our work projects, our institution, and all other aspects of our lives.
Tuesday: I decide to see some Calgary sights, and my first place of interest is…the Calgary Central Library (which, in fairness, is massive and futuristic-looking). But as I exit the building, I see huge swaths of people walking south. So, with great curiosity, I follow them. And it leads me to the Saddledome (the hockey area where the Flames play), where I find out there’s a Shania Twain concert starting in an hour. I spontaneously buy a ticket off Stubhub and, despite only knowing three of her songs, end up quite enjoying the performance. Especially since Calgary is country music central, so the place is sold out with 19,000 hardcore fans in cowboy hats.⁴
Wednesday: I actually have to work on something until 10 pm. All part of the experience.
Thursday: This is the peak social day. It starts off with Happy Hour at a bar on the ground floor of our tower. Then, I head with Luis, along with Seung, Simon, and Paul (traders on my team) and Joe and Clair (domestic team), several blocks up to 17th Avenue – the main entertainment area in the city. We have dinner at Noble Pie, where I stuff myself with the best pizza I’ve had in recent memory.⁵ Then we go to this cool indoor-outdoor hybrid bar, before finishing the night with rounds of cocktails at this basement bar. By the time Luis, Seung, and I step out, it’s almost midnight Mountain Time.
Friday: Right after work, I take a one-hour shuttle to Canmore (town on the edge of the natural wonder that is Banff National Park), where I meet with my good friend and former co-worker Surya Srinivas⁶. We have dinner at Rocky Mountain Flatbread (second-best pizza), hike around the river, and drive out to some of the views on the edge of Banff – which hit different at nighttime. All while catching up on everything from the past two years. We do a similar thing the next day⁷.

Before I know it, it’s Sunday and I’m loading myself onto the airplane (while basking in the perfectly ordinary yet awesome week I just had). To my next destination, a place of great contrast to this.

New York City.

I worked in foreign reserves from 2018 to 2023, between my two stints in debt management (#114, #109).
Which I didn’t get from my 4th floor desk at Ottawa head office, despite it facing the Parliament buildings.
He had previously worked for two years in Ottawa head office. When he visited Ottawa in June that year, I went drinking with him for three of five days, then he stayed at my house for Canada Day weekend where he, Jerry (#120), and I hung out and drank for pretty much the entire time.
This inspires my trivia question at the next morning’s team call (a twice-a-week ritual given I’m the specialist, #118): After the top-three (The Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson), how many of the next 55 best-selling musical artists of all time are still active?” Impressively, the answer was 50 (Shania included). Though my Calgary colleagues find it more impressive (and hilarious) that I actually went to a Shania Twain concert.
And a nice change of pace from the previous four nights of eating a The Keg Steakhouse at The Westin, which was the only nearby place open late after my “other activities” (Sunday I flew in late).
We were together in debt management in 2015-17, where I labeled him a savant since he knew almost as much random trivia as me. He was now at a different government-related institution working almost entirely remotely, hence his choice of residence.
In the afternoon and evening (me valuing my life enough to not join him in a morning free solo climb), we hit a few more landmarks in this mountainous expanse then do a more challenging hike up Tunnel Mountain.