Every day on my way home I witness the spectacular skyline of Canary Wharf as a backdrop to the (fairly) considerable expanse of water that is Greenland Dock. More often than not, it is dark as I walk and the buildings look more stunning still. The lights glisten from a fluorescent yellow to blue, demarked by flashing red strobes that alert the planes taking off from City Airport of their presence.. My father, a veteran of the investment banking world, calls it 'Tinsel Town'.

These pillars of finance and monuments of capitalism seem quite strange to me, despite having worked there for near enough six months. The scale of each building relative to the others seems fairly arbitrary (the largest buildings aren't necessarily the institutions with the most prestige). It's quite weird too that this is really all there is when it comes to sky scrapers in England. The other populated business district of London, the 'City', is disappointingly short on average in comparison - no doubt a result of the way the city has grown up.

I moved out of my family home in North London to cut down on the considerable daily commute that I just about survived last year. During my internship I'd be working 11 hour days on average, but coupled with the 1.5 hour journey each way, this became a 14 hour day. After eating and showering, this left me with something short of thirty minutes each day of 'leisure time', which made socialising quite difficult. So with this in mind, I decided to bite the bullet and move out - for the sake of my social life, my physical well being (sleep!) and a change of scene.

It's expensive to live in London - no doubt about that. I'm paying nearly half my salary post tax, student loan repayment and share purchase scheme to the increased cost of living out (this includes my rent, food (which would be cheaper at home) and other expenses like utility bills).

This leaves me in a constant dilemma. It's a vast amount of money to spend for the sake of increased leisure time, and so I constantly feel the pressure to maximise my free time. It's made worse still by the fact that my first rotation as a graduate isn't actually in Canary Wharf - it's in the City (and so a fair amount closer to home in North London) and the working hours won't be quite as long. Conversely, I'm paying rent for a nice apartment that is close to the life of London - the incentive is to stay in and enjoy the apartment but the attractions of being in London are all outside. Confusion.