Did anyone else begrudgingly return to their office jobs last week? Of course you did, and of course I don't blame you for wishing the holidays weren't over. But look on the bright side; there are so many great new bars and restaurants that have opened around town to keep your social calendar busy all week long, from Manic Monday to Thank God It's Friday. As for our beloved Eagle Street precinct, my newest post on The Urban List is a full wrap up of the hottest new 'it' venues and the long-established favourites of this classic stomping ground. I am very qualified to be your tour guide of this neighbourhood—trust me, I'm a lawyer.  Photo Source: The Urban List (http://www.theurbanlist.com/brisbane/a-list/eagle-street-edit)
Last year, the most popular corporate team bonding activity seemed to be cooking classes at Spring. Unfortunately, I have never been much of a cook. But luckily, I am much more better suited at the new corporate team bonding activity that seems to be trending right now: cocktail making class. I had the pleasure of attending two cocktail making classes during the silly season, one of them being held at the ever popular Limes Hotel. Here is a little sneak recipe for those of you who might be entertaining guests at home. I love Pimms ... it's a perfect a drink for the summer season! Pimms punch
1. Add to a karaf: - 180mL Pimms
- 60mL Gin (Limes used Hendrick’s Gin which is from Scotland and distilled and aged with cucumber)
- 60mL lemon juice
- 3 x strawberries finely sliced
- ¼ orange finely sliced
- 1 inch cucumber finely sliced
2. Stir through the ingredients and then add: - a handful of mint (FYI the mint should be handpicked and twisted in your palm to release the flavour)
- ice
- 190mL ginger beer
- 120mL lemonade
- a dash of tonic water
3. Stir together and garnish with some extra mint Enough for around 6 pax (depending on how thirsty your friends are of course...)Limes Hotel and Roof Top Bar142 Constance Street Fortitude Valley For more information: www.limeshotel.com.au  Just another low key night at Limes, right? If you are interested, check out my brief overview on the cocktail-making class from the highly regarded bartenders at The Laneway.
Welcome to 2013 you beautiful, beautiful yuppies of Eagle Street!
I trust that you have all enjoyed some well deserved annual leave over Christmas and the New Year. Hopefully you strutted back into the towers of power feeling refreshed and ready to keep working for the man, or rather, keep working for the weekend.
I have some good news and some good bad news for you. The good news is that I have scored myself an amazing opportunity to live and work in Shanghai this year. The expat dream to move to London is so passé; these days, it is all about the Asian century. If you are unsure of what the 'Asian century' is about, it looks something like this:
Just kidding, though I will try my best to avoid death-by-getting-squashed in an overcrowded pool in Shanghai at all costs. On the downside, the blog will be on hold for a while as I have actually taken an 'extended leave of absence' from Eagle Street. It is the kind of leave of absence that you get the partners to approve despite the silent acknowledgement that there probably won't be a return date unless things go horribly wrong overseas and you need to come crawling back to your old job with your tail between your legs. The last few blog posts will be posted up this week. Thanks for following the blog and I hope you all keep living the yuppie dream on Eagle Street. If you have any ideas about keeping up the blog, please leave a comment or send me an email at info@eaglestreetyuppie.com.
Enjoy your last few hours in your Eagle Street offices for the year. I hope the partners left you a generous Christmas gift on your desks this morning.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my yuppies! "Don't talk to other groups about our team leaving the office early today. Otherwise I will get an angry email from the Managing Partner accusing me of letting the entire firm go home at lunchtime." - The Sneaky Partner
Forget about your advent calendar, everyone on Eagle Street knows that it is all about your event calendar when it comes to the festive season. Did all of you behave yourself at the firm Christmas party? I hope so for your own career's sake, but then again, I also hope that there were a few scandals at the party to make headlines for the Monday morning gossip session. Just quietly, I am pretty chuffed with the list of invitations that I received for this month's festive social calendar. Here is a sneak preview of my busiest week in the silly season. What could be better than the firm Christmas party? The practice group Christmas party, of course! This is a real opportunity for each practice group to showcase how generous the partners in their group are to their employees. The stingy partners will often insist on a low key activity for their group, like a weeknight BYO dinner or a Saturday picnic where everyone has to bring a plate of food. Thankfully, I belong in a practice group with partners who enjoy their fine wine and who are very generous when it comes to celebrations. We knocked off work early and jumped on board the a luxury charter vessel to enjoy four hours of boozing and cruising (in the most elegant possible way). The cruise was also an excellent tour of the prestige riverfront homes owned by various partners of the firm.
Every year, we invite the team of one of our major clients to a fancy wine tasting dinner. This year's dinner was held at the Hilton's Vintaged Bar and Grill. And every year, it gets pretty loose. There is one paramount rule when you work in professional services: the client is king. This rule still applies in a social setting. If the client casually mentions that he really enjoyed one of the wines that we tasted, then we send over a case of that wine to his office the next day. If the client wants to see the sommelier slice a champagne bottle open with a sword, then we will immediately procure the sommelier to do exactly that. If the client wants to kick on in the Valley until 2am after dinner, then you know what the answer is. And if the client wants documents to be sent out first thing tomorrow morning, then you better get your hungover ass back to the office at 8am the next morning no matter what. Vintaged Bar and GrillAddress: Level 6 Hilton, 190 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane Phone: 07 3231 3265 Website: http://www.vintagedbarandgrill.com  Photo Source: The Laneway (https://www.facebook.com/TheLanewayBris) Let's skip over to the other side of the spectrum. Being in professional services also means that you can be a valuable referrer to other professional services firms. That is how I scored myself an invitation to a cocktail-making class at The Laneway. If you haven't already heard, cocktail-making class is the new corporate team bonding activity. (I hope it surpasses the cooking class trend because I have never been much of a cook.) The highly regarded bartenders at The Laneway run the class with a demonstration of the finer points of making a French 75, Caiprioska and Amaretto Sour. After each demonstration, we joined them behind the bar in groups of four to make the same cocktail, albeit much less eloquently. By the end of the night, most of us were far more interested in drinking cocktails than making them, so we never got to learn our fourth cocktail recipe. As for pulling up the next day, that was not a problem - didn't I mention that the event was hosted by experts in recovery? The LanewayAddress: Level 1 (upstairs from Urbane and The Euro), 181 Mary Street, Brisbane Phone: 07 3229 2271 Website: http://www.urbanerestaurant.com/the-laneway/Spotted on Brunswick Street: a poignant quote about office parties on the blackboard outside Gertie's. There are many reasons why Gertie's is one of my favourite local watering holes, and funnily enough, the insightful blackboard happens to be one of those reasons. The blackboard once read 'Octsober? Heck No!' so I decided to stop my self-imposed alcohol drought a few months ago. Another time the blackboard told me that 'New York is the only real city' so I bought tickets to New York for my next holiday. It sounds crazy, but I trust that blackboard as if it was my fairy godmother speaking to me in chalk riddles. I certainly enjoyed cocktails and tapas at Gertie's to celebrate the end of an amazing year with the team from The Urban List. Gertie's Bar and RestaurantAddress: 699 Brunswick Street, New Farm Phone: 07 3358 5088 Website: http://www.gerties.com.au
With plenty of Christmas shopping to do, I have recently had to cut down on my lunch budget (no more foie gras until the new year). If you are in the same boat too, then check out my newest post on The Urban List that is a wrap up of the best cheap eats in the Brisbane CBD.  Photo Source: The Urban List (http://www.theurbanlist.com/brisbane/a-list/cbd-cheap-eats-edit)
Do you know ... the coffee man? The coffee man? Who lives down on Eagle Lane? Yes, the coffee man. This month, Eagle Street welcomes a new addition to the caffeine haunts around town: Tall Short Espresso. For those of you who can appreciate the Shrek reference, there has been a gingerbread man invasion down on Eagle Lane. They reside in the Kombi Van and get served up with every coffee order that is placed at Tall Short Espresso. In stark contrast to the corporate Eagle Street surroundings, the Kombi Van and the baristas are all a bit hipster. We don't mind though, the coffee is pretty decent, the queue is way shorter than Aquila and Campos, and I've grown attached to enjoying my soy cappuccino with a gingerbread man on the side.
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This is what happens when you call a client to try and finalise a matter on a Friday afternoon:  © Karlien Du plessis | Dreamstime Stock Photos |
"Sorry mate, can I call you back about this deal on Monday? I can't talk right now - I'm about to tee off."
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I spy with my discerning eyes an abundance of young and naive Eagle Street wannabes lurking around the office buildings at Eagle Street, all of whom are wearing full corporate suits in the heat of summer. You know what that means: it's summer clerkship season. Like most firms, we invest a lot of time and effort to impress our summer clerks and to show them how glamorous it is to work in a top-tier law firm. Here is the Eagle Street Yuppie guide on how to be a star summer clerk and how to be an inspirational mentor or buddy to a summer clerk.
The summer clerks have arrived! Eager to learn about the yuppie lifestyle on Eagle Street, of course.
Advice to summer clerks
- Do have legitimate hobbies outside of study and work. The weekly office newsletter came out with a brief interview of all the summer clerks. Every one of them listed 'travel' as one of their few interests. Travelling is not a legitimate interest, it is normal and regular activity that everyone enjoys (except for close-minded freaks). If you lived in a third world country for several years working on an international aid project, then you can tell us about your travel experiences. But otherwise, go find some real hobbies and interests.
- Do learn to respond to names like ‘summer clerk’, ‘newbie’, ‘December’ and ‘January’. There are so many vacation clerks that come through our offices each year and it is really hard for us to remember all of your names. So we come up with nick names to distinguish all of you, like ‘summer clerk’ and ‘winter clerk’, and ‘December’ and ‘January’. If you get offered a graduate job and come back to our team, then we might bother to learn what your real name is.
- Do not make remarks about how exciting it is to be working in the city. Get over it. It is not that exciting.
- Do not order hot chocolate, chai latte or tea when your buddy or mentor takes you out for coffee. You may as well just order a milkshake with a cookie on the side. Grown-ups drink coffee, so if you don’t like it then you better grow up and adjust your tastebuds. There are many instances where we have changed meeting agendas, brainstormed new strategies and networked with potential clients over a casual coffee break. Drinking coffee is a social skill for powerful people. The more bitter, the better.
- Do not complain about what practice group you got placed or about having to sit in a workstation rather than in an office. Suck it up – it is for three or four weeks. Remember, you are at the bottom of the bottom. Hierarchy is important in a big firm and you have to prove yourself at the bottom before you can move up to the top.
Advice to mentors and buddies
- Do take your clerk out for coffee, lunch and work functions. It is your role as a buddy or mentor to pretend that you have a really good work-life balance and that no matter how late you have to work every night, there is always time for long lunches (like on Foie Gras Fridays) and an abundance of young professional networking functions that make it all worthwhile.
- Do a brief background check on your clerk. It is always fun to make pre-conceived judgements about what your clerk will be like depending on what university they went to and what extracurricular activities they have. And also, you really need to know sooner rather than later if your summer clerk is the son or daughter of a partner or client of the firm. Make sure you treat those clerks especially nice ... or else.
- Do give your clerk interesting work. Nobody wants their clerk to sulk to the other summer clerks about how boring the work is in your practice group. You have to prove that your practice group is one of the sexy areas of the firm. Otherwise come February next year, none of the graduates will put your practice group in their preferences and your team will end up with the dud graduate.
- Do not take your clerk to a really important client meeting – you just never know when they will spontaneously pipe up during the meeting and say something dumb. A few years ago, we took a summer clerk to the completion of a big transaction. His purpose was to stand there as an extra body so that we had an even number of lawyers on both sides of the transaction. Unfortunately, summer clerk kept asking questions to the other lawyers in the room about the transaction as if he knew what he was talking about. It was really embarrassing. I can’t believe the firm still took him on as a graduate.
I say ‘Marco’, you say… ‘Polo’! Look to the motif stamped on your favourite Ralph Lauren shirt if you don’t what I'm talking about – the horseman carrying a mallet is playing one of the oldest sports in the world: polo. Last Saturday, Doomben Racecourse was transformed into an elegant stomping ground for the Paspaley Polo in the City. When I say 'stomping ground', I literally mean a stomping ground. Field guests based themselves in the chic marquees to spectate the stylish sport, and then at the game intervals, they strutted onto the polo field in their smart casual (and damn sexy) polo attire to stomp the divots in true polo tradition. I love stomping the divots. It's what makes polo so much more exciting than the races.  Polo is the sport of kings - that's why our two favourite princes play polo. How does the game of polo work? It involves eight riders (four to a team) who have enough skill to play hockey from the top of a speeding horse. The winning team scores the most goals in a six-period game, with each period (also called a ‘chukka’) lasting seven minutes. Did I even pay attention to the game? No, not really. Whilst Australia’s top players and horses battled it out for the coveted title, I was kept busy enjoying Veuve Cliquot in the marquee whilst commenting on 'fashion faux-pas' on the field. Forget about racing style hats and fascinators, polo fashion is about being relaxed yet sophisticated, with practical footwear to stomp the divots. For the ladies, stilettos are a definite faux-pas - think wedges, espadrilles and glamorous flats. For the gentlemen, opt for brogues, loafers or driving shoes. And go easy on the coloured chinos - red trousers are super stylish, but neon green is a bit too dramatic.  From the polo fields to the new tiki hut at Alfred & Constance. Logical: no. Fun: yes. We were somewhat reluctant to leave when the Paspaley Polo wrapped up late in the afternoon. That is a gentle way of saying that we were the last rowdy table still there when the event staff kindly asked us to leave so they could clean up. Luckily, there were many other field guests who were keen to kick on. The solution: we spontaneously commandeered a shuttle bus to take twenty friends (including a few charming Canadian expats) from Doomben Racecourse to the new Alfred & Constance in the Valley.
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