Battle of the Es

After attending the MBA Top fair, I have been pretty impressed with schools in Spain. Ok, I fell in love with Barcelona when I went there and I had vowed to come back again but that’s besides the point. IE,IESE, or ESADE, which one would it bE?
Ok, that was corny but never said I wasn’t…..

He Works Hard for the Money

From Sunday to Wednesday, I managed to work 47 hours and I still have today, Friday and possibly Saturday…
Sometimes, I dream that I can be off by 7PM but somehow the dream never comes true!
The worse part of it, one can get used to that routine….

BS in Excel Studies

I believe that Excel should be offered as a major in college. Let’s face it, what seems to be a relatively simple spreadsheet program has become an integral part of the day to day lives of so many people.
It’s incredible how we have learned to depend on this Microsoft product.
Before Excel, what was there? Nothing? How did people build financial models? Did modeling ever existed before the advent of Excel? Cell, what a fitting name!

As I have a few spreadsheets to fill with formulas, numbers, and arcane add-in functions to feed to a machine that with simulate a process I have not much knowledge on, I pause: What did I take engineering for? I should have just bought an Excel how-to-guide and I would have saved thousands of dollars in loans and opportunity cost.

Let me go back to once sacrifice a few hours to the Excel god!

Musical Hospitals Speak Spanish on their Vacation

I do not like hospitals. I do not enjoy visit people in them. I do not enjoy passing by them. Therefore, I don’t regret having given up my childhood dream of being an MD. I think I could have been one as long as I don’t have to deal with sick people and as long as I don’t have to be physically in a hospital.
I think I am obsessed with Shakira’s “La Tortura”. I was a casual fan but I can’t help listening to the song and watching the video even more.
I highly recommend Kanye West’s “Late Registration”. At times, it’s very dark as Kanye West is so earnest in his self-criticism but it’s definitely one of the best albums this year….
I should really brush up on my Spanish. I speak it but I feel self-conscious at times as I forget some words and need a richer vocabulary to express my complex thoughts. I always noticed that drunk, I was much more fluent. I wonder if that phenomenon has been studied. Alcohol % in the blood vs. Fluency in foreign language would be an interesting graph.
I am currently suffering from post-vacation depression. I miss my friends, the freedom I had over my time, the beach…

On Commuting, Katrina, and Knees

My first day commuting by bus and subway went pretty well. I actually got to read one full issue of the Economist! I have many that I barely had the chance to touch. The commute time is actually not that bad from my job to my place.
I think I made the right decision. We will see if I sing the same tune in late October!
This Katrina thing, call me sheltered (I just cut my cable) but I just happened to see the first images coming out of NO last night. I was amazed how desolate the situation is.
I feel a kinship to New Orleans, a city I never visited, because of the historical ties between Haiti and Louisiana. This has turned into a very unfortunate scenario, something I would expect to see more in my home country than in what is the most economically advanced country in the world.
I also started jogging again despite my bad right knee. I blame soccer but I only played for 3-4 years and I never managed to be a great soccer player so how in the hell am I having knee problems. One time, I went skiing and it was an ordeal.
I need to go see a specialist. Pain is not fun and I hope I can manage to keep staying active for years to come…

My Ipod is Dead

How will I know be able to learn Portuguese using the hundreds of Pimsleur mp3 files I downloaded?      

Doing My Part

So I decided to do my part for the environment (and my pocket too) and started taking the bus to work. No more 10 minute car rides by myself in the morning allowing me to sleep in as much as possible. Armed with my bus pass, I can now mingle with the dozens of commuters with unhappy faces every single day and have the pleasure of riding the same bus back in the afternoon. I must admit, I like taking public transportation since I don’t like to drive. I just don’t like waiting for the bus. I think that in a distant future, a chauffeur would be appropriate.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking during my vacation. It’s funny how one’s brain starts functioning normally when not in front of Excel spreadsheets every single day.  Intelligent conversation with people one respects is mental steroids but legal. Could I be an intellectual Sammy Sosa? How does one quantify “smarts” home runs? What do they consist of? Why am I speaking about baseball, a sport I don’t really know that much about? I blame my American friends…..
Speaking of Dominican Republic, many things are happening down there that are not pleasing to me. While I understand some of the backlash coming from the large number of illegal immigrants from Haiti, burning 3 Haitians is not justifiable in my book. I do hope 1937 will not happen again. I have many friends who live there now. Most likely, they are safe as they are from the middle classes. Yet, as Haitians, we are all one, from the slum dwellers to the Ivy-league-educated fellas. No worries, no plans of entering Haitian politics since technically, I am not even allowed to run.