Today was my first day at the client's office and it was great. Met the team at the office first thing in the morning before heading down to the client with Joanna. Jo is full-time auditor from PWC New Zealand and she said that I'm one of the few people that she understands and that understands what she's saying. I'm not surprised. She makes the crocodile hunter sound like the queen.

Once we reached ground zero, it was immediately down to business. Jo gave me tons of excel files, bank statements and balance sheets to tally and agree. She came with the assumption I was lock and load, so she totally went through the figures and explained them to me like I knew what she was talking about. She had obviously not paid much attention to the fact that I told her in the cab that I was a social science student. For a good 10 minutes, I stared at the figures and was thinking OMG. At this moment, an epiphany in the voice of my Financial Accounting prof said "IAN!! YOU CAN DO THIS!".

Shocked that Prof Tony had personally come to say hi in my head, and snapping out of my dyslexia, the numbers started to make sense. Through the day, I was balancing financial statments, chasing staff for transaction records and making sure numbers were agreeing. It was so wierd because the staff (like Jo) immediately assumed that I had some intrinsic source of immense Auditing experience and started spewing 5 syllable accounting words that even Tony had not mentioned before. The PWC lanyard around my neck summoned an instant souce of expertise that I was obvioiusly not aware of. I really learnt alot today and it felt great learning from Jo.

One of the figures in the lease records didn't tally. After masterfully executing a rapidfire sentence of 100 different accounting terms. one of the clients, Gillian, looked at me, suggesting that this anomaly was where my auditing expertise was required. With her gestulation and her eyebrow movement, I somehow deduced she was indeed insisting that adjustments were made to the entries after they were done wrongly. It was almost as if she had a question mark on her forehead and it was my God-given power to rememdy it. I paused for a moment to gain compure. Another moment. "OH YES THAT'S RIGHT!" I forced, "thats great then, it makes sense. The numbers do agree. Thanks Gillian!" I forced harder, trying to smile. She immediately smiled back, question mark gone, very happy with herself that Mr PWC Auditor had approved her oh-so-excellent accounting method. They really should rename Assurance "Reassurance" instead.

I love the work. It's challenging and meticulous. Can't wait for tomorrow.