First post from the headquarters!

Inspired by Andreea but a bite late though: Happy 2007 to you all!

Well, at least in my case I have no doubts that this is going to be a fantastic year, both personally and professionally - together with the start of the new year I've started a new career and a new life, in a new city, new country, new people around me... almost everything is new, except for the company and department that I work for!

Explaining this better by detailing what happened in the previous year: I joined PwC and the Data Quality group in November/2005 for a 12-month internship based in the Brussels office, with Andreea coming from Romania and teaming up in December. Needless to repeat her words posted below: 2006 was an year packed of great experiences within PwC and AIESEC. The opportunity to work in a global-wide team spread around the world was really interesting, specially the part of being coached from America by our US-based managers (Tim in New York and Sanjay in Washington). We also had the extraordinary opportunity to travel to the US and London, meet our Global Information colleagues in person and get to know the headquarters of our company (and of course, check out these great cities as well!). It was also my first year with AIESEC, I had lots of fun and made very good friends that I really miss and hope to see again, soon!

But the highest point of my 2006 was in October, when I signed my permanent contract to continue working for PwC and GI, this time together with Tim and Dave in New York City! It has always been my ultimate objective since I joined AIESEC in Brazil in April/2004 - to get a permanent job abroad after the internship. It was indeed one of the happiest moments of my life, since I combined the realization of this objective with another one I also had: to live in this amazing city!

It's been already one month since I started living and working here and I'm still very excited about it. As I said in the beginning, it's a whole new life for me in this year that begins. The company and the department didn't change, but the challenges I'll be facing certainly did and I'm really looking forward to assuming these new responsibilities. It's a career that just starts, and this feels really good and motivating!

I really can't stop saying "thanks" to Tim, Neil, Jan, Karel and all GI colleagues that made this fantastic opportunity possible. And of course, I'm also very thankful to AIESEC: not only for all the fun and great friends I've made, but also for your great work in keeping and continuously improving the partnership with PwC - I'm here in New York now writing this as a result of this dedicated work. Karel, Norica, Crystal: good job and thank you so much!

Andreea already posted some nice pictures of us in the NY office (gosh, can't believe I didn't cut my hair before meeting Sanjay and Tim for the first time!), but here go two new ones, including this one of the area where the office is (Midtown Manhattan) as seen from the Empire State Building at night. Can you see the red arrow marking my window on the 34th floor? So, next time I'll be posting some photos of the view I have from there everyday !

Till next post!

Eduardo