I'm going to South Africa, Cape Town, and oh yeah .... a

Is what I got on my Corporate Finance final. Not too shabby, but still not a hundred. Anyways, Portugal was interesting, Oporto historical quarter is dead, the houses are all falling down, no young people at all, just drunks, heroin addicts, and the old – as in old people. To be honest, I was shocked to see all this as the old city reminded me a bit of Ukraine, well, L’viv to be exact, run down and unmaintained. Going into the country the general gloom of Oporto’s city center was lifted, and the rolling hills in the Douro valley really were quite scenic, the wine was great, and the bacalao was everywhere, really you couldn’t get away. The beachfront, filled with young people, expensive cars, gave reasons a plenty as to why Brasil has so many good looking women.

Speaking of Brasil, I will not be going there for exchange, I was accepted to Cape Town, and will spend the latter part of this year studying, traveling, and learning how to surf in South Africa – the last being strictly dependent on whether my leg will recover from whatever injury it is I have. Basically, I’m limping everywhere, have a super tightness all over it, and pain 24/7. And I went to the doctor on Thursday – cyclobenzoprine, and an MRI.

In other news, I’ll be heading to Romania over Semana Santa for an 8 day long excursion into Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldova, and during which I will probably get drunk on a Monday as it is my birthday. And the wheels on the clock go round and round. Wrinkles and gray hair are already starting to appear, what’s next, gravity taking over? Beh… I’m not liking this getting older nonsense.

And that’s about it, Term 3 has started, soon we’ll be ½ way through this damn MBA, and I can’t believe time is flying by so quickly. 18 Months in Barca is turning out to be nothing. Anyways, enough of my rambling, back to writing these bloody internship application cover letters.

Transformers

So we had a get together at my place this last Thursday, and “The Touch” was playing (You Tube link below) – which my roommate Benjamin put on – anyways, it’s from the transformers movie. And watching the video reminded me of something.

Back in 1987, when we first got to the States, transformers were huge, super cool for all the kids, and everyone wanted the different parts to build the mega robots. I remember being in Toys ‘R Us with my mom and some other woman who I can’t place one day, and I really wanted a transformer. Well, I recall, my mother that day, thinking about it, and finally saying that she would buy me one. So I went and chose the cheapest piece, took it home, and was a bit disappointed as it did nothing.

But what I’m trying to get to here is that, even though we couldn’t afford it, she sacrificed the couple of bucks that now seem like throw away change to make me happy – and sometimes I think of that moment, and realize what an amazing, wonderful, loving, caring, woman she is, and recall all the sacrifices that my parents made for me so that I would have a better life. Thanks mom and dad, and one day, I hope that if I’ll be ½ as good a parent as you were… well… you get the point.

So people, this may sound, touchy feely, a bit nancy, and so on, but hey… remember your folks, they truly are amazing people.

Kocham Cie mamciu :)

I spent 45 minutes on the phone with dell tech support...

... in Spanish and all I got was a lousy hard drive. That is being shipped from the Netherlands. Today, we had our MPO (Managing People in Organization) final papers to hand in, and my PC's desire to break down did no one, and by no one me, any help, especially since I had to rush rewriting the bloody thing. Meaning, I didn't get to proof read it, and its final quality is far inferior to that what was lost due to hard drive failure. Thanks DELL!!!!!

We also had our Corp. Finance test today as well, which I think went pretty well, and tomorrow we have Operations Management in the morning, and Environmental Issues in the afternoon. We'll see... and finally wednesday, Marketing in the Morning, which I'm a smidge worried about, esp. since I'm not the one doing the PPT design this time, and finally International Taxation, which OECD rules aside is proving alot easier to study for than I imagined. Don't get me wrong, I don't plan on going into tax, but at least I'll get passing marks, which given OECD text (for anyone who has read it sans law degree will tell you) is not exactly Harry Potter and the MBA.

Then Thursday we're off to Portugal for the weekend, and then the start of Term 3. Time flies when you're in Barca. On the internship front, no Nr. 1 no Nr 2... a bit bummed about it. Had 1.5 interviews, but eh... and still no sign of life from the other companies that I've applied to. I'm inclined to think appropriating a chiringuito on the beach, say Bogatell, might not be such a bad idea. - And then there's the option of just devoting myself to this business plan I've been fidgeting around with, and making my money promoting - promoting NY style of course, Barcelona is slowly starting to go Haute Couture - and what with the pathetic dollar, I may stay here after all.

Cheers,

Today was one of those special days...

Right, so we have Term 2 finals coming up next week, and this weekend sees the Barcelona version of the MBAT held at IESE. No football for me however, since I
totally messed up my leg a few weeks back doing just that, playing football. Instead I decided to devote this weekend to going over international taxation, finishing up
my MPO paper / final, and having an all round productive weekend hitting the books and preparing for the inevitable finals.

But... oh yes... but... sometime in the middle of the night as I was defragmenting my hard disk, the Windows Blue Screen of Death appeared, ok no big... happens.
Well in my case, this resulted in me not being to log back into Windows, or being able to finish my paper, or download any of the material I needed to from the intranet.
Instead I spend 45 minutes on the phone with Dell tech support in the U.S. that I had to pay for - 1.800 numbers arent free when dialing from abroad, and the Spanish
Dell was closed until Monday. Now... If I had nothing better to do than hang around and socialize, I probably would have left it at that, but as my access to the web, my
docs, etc... is directly correlated to how well I do, I've spent the last 6 hours, first trying to get into my PC, to do this I had to reinstall Windows, and then figure out
in safe mode, how to hack into my other accounts in Windows installation numero uno, and back it all up. Oh... and I found out via the nice people at Dell that
my HDD is done for. I'm going to reinstall everything on a new formatted partition after I back it all up now, but I need a new drive anyways - more useless PC work coming my way.... oh happy days ahead. I'm so pissed off... at least I managed to get my files...

I swear, prospective MBA students, GET A MAC!!!!!!!