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| Tonight was Leif's last night in Boston before he and Jody kick off for Spain tomorrow. We celebrated the culmination of his two year educational escapade with a gorging feast at a Brazillian BBQ called "Midwest Grill" in Cambridge. Yeah, I know, not the name I was expecting either. But there's a certain je ne sais quoi about a restaurant where waiters walk around serving various forms of meat (from garlic sirloin to chicken hearts) skewered onto large swords.
Tomorrow I will study more about financial instruments and institutions after which I will go insane followed by an attempt to purcahse a bicycle pump from the International Bike Shop downtown. Wednesday, more of the same. Thursday I will fly home to the Bay Area to pack up and ship out some of the loose odds and ends I casually forgot. Actually, it's mostly an excuse to see a certain few people.
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| I'm officially moved into my Boston apartment. With some extra time, I've taken to reading again. First up was a special gift from a special friend called The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It officially ranks among my top ten favorite books and is a prisitne example of a novel which deals with Nietzsche's early existentialism. Merely being a novel, it doesn't take a stand or argue on the position of Nietzsche's concept of "eternal return," rather it puts forth characters that live in a heavy world (i.e. one in which the eternal return would be bearable . . . even desirable) and those that experience life as unbearably light (i.e. as an experience not to be repeated - one that exists only during a blink of an eye). The ending is deliciously non-final - Kundera ends the book mid-thought. The whole time while I read it, I kept feeling back to the time when I read Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov. The latter is another masterpiece in existentialist literature (and one which I will read again here shortly), although Chrisitian existentialism as opposed to Nietzsche's less evolved nihilistic existentialism. Bottom line, though, if this existence is truly "light" as I believe Kundera intended, then indeed, each day will become more and more unbearable for me.
Does it sound like I know what I'm talking about? Cause I don't, you know.
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| Assuming there are no unforseen circumstances, the VE EOL plan is proceeding as follows:
7/13: quit work (or rather, start the re-entry deceleration burn of my vacation balance)
7/14 - 7/20: interleave the following tasks in the most enjoyable (or least deplorable) fashion possible
- Pack
- Burn all evidence of my backdated options (for any humorless lawyers reading this - not you Debro - I'M JOKING!!!)
- Prepare for and cook paella on the 19th
- Kill off any remaining HBS prematriculation classes and tasks
- Blow my last paycheck on useless goods and services
- Cautiously avoid el gato del techo
- Get carpets cleaned
- Steal two years worth of student supplies (refer to previous legal disclaimer)
7/21: return to work for my "official last day" to sign papers and autographs . . . okay, not really
7/22: hop in car with Tom to begin journey, sleep in Salt Lake City
7/23: Salt Lake City to Des Moines, Iowa
7/24: Des Moines to Cleveland, OH
7/25: Cleveland to Boston . . . Woo Hoo!
For a blog supposedly about life at HBS, there sure haven't been many HBS related entries ;).
More recently, I spent a killer weekend in Southern California with friends and family for the fourth of July. Bobe and Michelle on Saturday, Joe/Marie and John/Monelle on Sunday, Joe/Karin in San Diego on Monday, and a family BBQ on Tuesday. Again, pictures will tell a better story. Refer to appropriate Flickr site.
Very excited about Italy winning the World Cup. But, what a headbut from Zidane!! You rock, man. End your career on a red-card. Earn the disdain (hey, that rhymes with a grossly anglicized pronunciation of Zidane!) of your peers and countrymen. I suppose you could quote the great Kurgan, "It's better to burn out than fade away!" Dickhead.
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| With just a few weeks left in sunny California, it's time to put my nose to the ground and get some last minute stuff done. Apartment: check (address to follow). Driving assistant: check (Tom is coming up from Flagstaff to help get me there in three and a half days). Cell phone: check. Parking: ummmm, crap. Please hold . . . hmmm, looks like that might take a while.
Damn, now my train of thought's been interrupted. Doesn't matter, it's 100 degrees outside and I need to get changed for my bike ride home. Someone hurry up and slap some sense into me. Guess I've been doing all kinds of wierd illogical crap lately.
More to come.
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| While there's a lot that has transpired this month, I am most preoccupied with the gross inadequacy of e-mail (and the written word in general) as a medium for issuing requests. For some reason, asking for a favor in an e-mail is often met with an attitude I'd expect from someone whose family I just threatened. What gets me even more is that grown men with executive titles run screaming to mommy Senior VP without first attempting to clarify with me that indeed I was NOT trying to threaten the lives of their children. Unfortunately, I guess that "Can you design this product" must sound like "Would you like to watch me drown your family" in certain dialects of Chinese. Maybe they just like to watch mommy VP send e-mails to wide distributions telling me that threatening executive families is not the best way to satisfy our customers. Of course, the "But I never threatened them!" response would only exacerbate the problem since, in some languages, it translates to "Your God would lose to my God in a mudwrestling match."
Just over a month to go!!!
At least the wine at lunch helped cheer me up somewhat.
Speaking of wine, check out the picutres from my latest wine tasting parties of my flickr site.
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