Africa Photos are UP on flickr. If you're interested....

.... hola dear readers. I have posted about 1/4th of the photos taken on my drive through Southern Africa, and should you care to view them they can be found HERE. There are a few of them, like 600, so I only took the best ones. Enjoy, and once I get some free time, I'll be posting my movie (maybe) on Youtube.

Cheers.

Cada día yo veo uno caso tan feo.

Yes. Every day I read over cases, practice frameworks, go over personality type questions, and further try and make myself into the perfect candidate. Why? Because I need a job (or "trabajo" as they say here), and not just any job, but one that will allow me to challenge myself, be fun, ever changing, and propel my somewhat ambitious self up the ladder of life, I mean it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to do it for me.

And while all this is well and good, and while I’m up against thousands of other MBA’s who are also looking for jobs (plus those who already have them), I begin thinking to myself. Do these cases really prepare me for a job as a consultant, or do they simply test to see preparation? Personally, I can stipulate to the weight of a Airbus 360, or market size the amount of Zulu spears sold in Paris each year by dwarf sized Kazakhs. But so can anyone else who’s done their homework.

I think the real rub is in the strategy cases, the ones that really test your mettle alongside the skills that you took away from your MBA, ones that test not only a "framework" but test ingenutiy, innovation and problem solving skills. Those are the ones that separate the boys from the men…

… and unfortunately I have to say, that those are the ones that I still need to work on, because, while fun and possibly and adventure of a lifetime, Africa did nothing to help propagate my employment status. Oh well... back to the books....

"....so wait, direct material costs were how much?, $123,456 No, that just doesn't sound right." :D

School, Television, and Flu

No, not quite the sequel to the 1989 drama, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, instead life since school began anew December 7^th. I’m taking, Analisis y Prevision de la Coyuntura, Consumer Behavior, Leadership and Human Development, Social Entrepreneurship, Impact of Culture on Business, and International Finance, as well as finishing up my lessons in Spanish (Nivel 6b – the highest nivel there is, not bad considering I spent 3 months in Africa not using the language). May drop one of them though, don’t know yet.

Moving on, Thursday I became amazingly ill with a bad case of the flu, it was so bad in fact that I only made it out of my flat once and that was to head to the Dr.’s office, who gave me a nice little chest x-ray to check for any infection of TB (mandatory since I've been having a dry cough, and spent some time on that continent down south). Luckily no TB, and I got myself a nice picture of my lungs. But that is not to mean my long weekend wasn’t eventful. Oh no, I slept a lot, I sweat a lot, and I watched a lot of internet TV because there was absolutely nothing else I could do.

Which in all has not been the best thing considering I have an interview coming up and wanted to prepare for it this weekend, and especially so since it will probably be in Castilian. So now, I get over the remnants of the flu, get myself into high gear and hope that this post makes sense cause my logic circuits are still dealing with the remnant effects of this virus.

The final countdown

Term 5, the end of the MBA (almost). I’m actually sad writing this post, because I know that what quite possibly was thus far the best chapter in my life is slowly coming to an end. We walk as a class in mid March, and then head off on our own, each one in their own direction. But that’s still three months away, and I’ll leave the sentimental stuff for the end.

I honestly can’t wait to get back to BCN (The strange city where the population actually refers to its city by its airport code), see friends, and get life back into the swing of things. Meaning, more job hunting, interviewing, dinners, events, new people to meet, and then eventually come to the end of this whole MBA thing in a much worse financial position than when I went into it. But the ROI should be enough to compensate my more than adequate debt, hopefully pay it off in 2-4 years, and then start building some serious equity.

As for the job search, going pretty well I would say. So far have only been dinged from a small fraction of companies, have interviews coming up in January with ones that I want to work for, applying to even more, all where I can see myself happily consulting, and enjoying the work. The only thing is, I want to stay in Barcelona, and I would give an arm and a leg for it. So, we’ll see, and most importantly, I can just say that it’s good to be back home, as of tomorrow 14:00. J

By the way, this is home.