Another Year, Another City

A friend recently remarked that the last year and a half has brought too many transitions for me, and there’s a lot of truth there. I’ve blogged through most of my moves and that’s a lot of posts! This year, I’m giving the Pacific Northwest a chance to win me over. I’ve been in WA for three weekends now, having started work a few days ago in Redmond. This past week all my stuff from my home in CA got here and I’ve spent most of this weekend unpacking boxes and finding a place for everything in my new apartment.

Work has been pretty busy already and unlike my previous jobs, the expectation here is that you’ll just carve your own ramp-up plan and get upto speed. This is new for me, but also interesting because it allows me freedom to ask my questions, form my impressions and understanding. Also, for the first time in my career I am not working in a cubicle and that’s a whole new experience. Here everyone gets their own “office” and while that’s great for some privacy and concentration, it’s also really quiet. I like being in the thick of things, where all the action is happening. You learn a lot just by accidentally overhearing a conversation or you’re able to provide clarification easily. Here the quiet time in my office makes me wonder what I’m missing out on that I should be learning. The one constant at my new company is that everyone is really passionate about their product, their company, their job and they work hard everyday to take their vision forward. This is refreshing and inspiring.

The bad news is that I still miss the bay area terribly. Every evening on my drive home, I have to convince myself that I can make it another week without wanting to go back there. There is nothing wrong with Bellevue, it’s nice, it’s green and it rains but I’m indoors anyway so how does that matter?! But it’s lonely, everything’s new, I don’t know where to go for anything and for once, I have no clue what to do on the weekend. Remember, I don’t own a TV either. I hope I figure things out soon enough so that I can stop feeling so displaced all the time.

The big question weighing on my mind these past few days has been what car to buy. I sold my Nissan in California and I’m ready to upgrade to something that’s a little more powerful. Should I get an SUV? Is it too big for me? Is it something I can use in the city? 

Role Models

As an early user of Google Plus, I have come to love the flexibility and selectivity the social network affords me, especially in comparison to Facebook, whose privacy settings I have finally given up trying to understand as they apply to the timeline format. More on that in a different forum. I started to add companies to my circles when they first came out with that. And recently I’ve started to add people I don’t personally know. I call this new circle the People I Admire circle.

To this circle, I recently added Drew Houston. This was in part inspired by reading about him in the much tweeted about LA Times article (which, by the way, doesn’t really add much to the much circulated Forbes article about him and Dropbox) and also in part inspired by his Google+ profile. I discovered that he went to undergrad the same years as I did, albeit in a totally different part of the world! He, and the article, made me think about my years as an undergrad, around the time I began this blog. I think about my ideas, motivators, priorities at that time and hold it up against what they are today. If you had told me back then that I would be where I am today – literally and figuratively, geographically and professionally – I would have dismissed you as an incompetent fortune teller.

bI realize now the importance of having role models. But that’s just such a generic thought. I wish I had known the importance of having role models for the right reasons. My undergrad major was driven by my desire to escape computer programming. I turned to mechanical engineering because it’s what my father had done. It was an easy choice. In retrospect, it was a great choice, I loved my coursework and the skills I acquired. But in 2001, I had no idea what it entailed and what I was going to do with it four years on. Same time, half the world away, Drew Houston was getting into MIT and thinking about starting his first tech company.

Back then I didn’t know he existed. Today I admire him immensely, not just because he has this wildly successful company that actually means something to a lot of people and not just because he has this strong vision of building the next Apple or Google. I admire him also because as someone who is the same age as I, he has shown vision, maturity, motivation and determination to do something with his life. I think the word I’m looking for is focus. He has remained focused on the thing that matters most to him professionally, and given it his all. He’s just one example. There are other thirty year olds I can hold up… or the twenty two year old Doogie-Howser-of-the-tech-world co-founder I met a couple months ago; or the Google Guys whom I’ve admired pretty much all my professional life! In comparison, my own professional history reads to me like a drifting log.

I am still trying to figure out what my “thing” is going to be… you know, the thing that you were born to do, the one you’ve been preparing for your whole life without actually knowing it. A month ago, I stood at (what seemed at that time) a very important, life altering crossroad in my professional life. I had been building up to it for a while now, taking certain decisions and choosing a path to get there. When I finally reached, I threw out the obvious choice and selected an entirely different one to go down (remember the drifting log?). I still can’t extrapolate forward the dots in a way that makes any sense. But I now have role models whose successes, failures, tenacity, creativity and focus I can look up to. I am fortunate that my role models are real people, who I could easily run into at a terminal at SFO. It makes the dream seem that much more achievable. It makes me believe that I will be able to connect the dots someday soon. All I have to do is keep moving forward.

Truth Be Told...

It has been an eventful few months. Being the normally reticent person I am (at least online), it comes as a surprise to me that I feel this urge to let it all out on this post today. Two months ago, I found out that for me and a hundred and fifty of my colleagues, the end of the year will be our last day at our current job.

Since then my emotions have alternated between deliriousness at the freedom from a place that I had been unhappy at for a while and lost at having to start the job search all over again. Since then I’ve thought a lot about my work and my time there. Places and people and how much I enjoyed being part of it/them. I think about how the excitement of it all slowly morphed into dissatisfaction over the course of this year, at the pace of activity and the lack of challenge. Since then I have also realized that this year has been a blessing in disguise.

A Darden alum I spoke to gave me the best advice – it is not personal, move on. I have had the opportunity to meet with my colleagues since then and I take comfort in the fact that I left at the top of my game, having garnered respect from the people I worked with and knowing that they appreciated my contributions at work. And if I ever doubted that comfort, I have had help and support pouring in from friends, ex-colleagues, ex-bosses, neighbors… I am blessed to have this support system around me and I didn’t even know about it. No one gets anywhere without help and I certainly would be nowhere without the support, emails, phone calls, introductions and what-have-you that everyone in my network has been offering up.

Working in corporate America comes with its own share of risks, maybe more so than working in corporate India. You have to be competent, driven and constantly performing. But you also have to be visible and audible. But most importantly, at corporate-anywhere, you have to be good to the people you work with so that when you get thrown a curve ball you have the support system in place to make the most of it.

I am looking forward to the close of the year because next year I get to start all over again (more on that in a different post). I get to move to a different city/state, a different company and get to expand my professional network. My new company has a great relationship with Darden and a lot of Darden alumni, and I’m looking forward to connecting with them

The End of Summer

I was thinking about summer vacations from my childhood today. I remember I used to have one or two months off in the summer (varied based on the school I went to, and I went to a few). Some summers we visited my grandparents, others I went to summer classes during the day. Funnily enough I remember with great clarity the summers from my childhood; my adolescent summers, not so much. I remember thinking back then on the last day of school that I wanted to do something “useful” that summer. I don’t know if I ever defined “useful”. Obviously I didn’t do much useful back then, else I’d have remembered. I’ve thought about those summers a few times since then and always wished I could get them back again.

Here in San Fran, I don’t know whether we really had a summer. Sure, we had some brilliant days but I wouldn’t know much about them if they came from Monday through Friday. My indicator was the view from my window at work, of the expanse of the Bay, of the flights coming in or going out from the airport a few miles south… and then on really clear days, you could see San Mateo bridge in the distance, the unmistakable lopsided arch the bridge makes. I may sound wistful, but I know for a fact that even on those days I had much rather be at my desk, working, than anywhere else. Adulthood is strange. You want the vacations, but then you don’t want the vacations.

And now, before we know it yet another year is coming to a close. I smell winter in the air. I see more leaves fly from beneath the wheels of my car when I drive out than I did a few weeks ago. The sun comes up later and sets earlier. I love the winter, especially in California where there is no snow to deal with. But suddenly, like the kid back in school at the end of a summer spent lazing in the sun, I feel like I may have missed out – on perfectly good weather, time, conversations, people. I want to wake up in the morning to sunlight streaming through the blinds, sit by the patio with the doors open. I want summer to come back. I want it to be the beginning of September again, the beginning of summer.

Baseball at the Ballpark

Last week I went to my first baseball game ever. My company holds its annual company day at the games every year, where they take all employees to watch a home game (right term?) at the Giants Stadium, tailgate included. If you know me you’ll know that I cannot be bothered to show up at a cricket game (though there are exceptions to that), and so I figured that I probably wouldn’t go to a baseball game any other way. This seemed like a good introduction to the sport and to understand first hand why this country is so obsessed with this sport even though they think cricket is the most boring game ever.

It is with a degree of amusement that I conclude that baseball, much like its bat-and-ball cousin from the east, is all about the hype and the emotion and less about the game. In fact, I will go so far as to say that baseball is probably the real gentlemen’s game, over and above cricket. There’s no chest thumping, fist-in-the-air declaration of strike/out, cursing at the batsman/striker and fighting with the umpire. The players come to the pitch, do their thing, chalk up their stats and leave. Home runs are action-replayed to the soundtrack of Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life or Van Halen’s Jump or any other heavy-riffed-guitar-playing-hair-band tune. Everyone has a good time, and crowd participation is way better and not resorted to throwing stuff on the field. Unfortunately, no one proposed on the big screen (or does that only happen on tv?)

So now that we have my expert opinion of the game out of the way, I have to spend some time ruminating on the stadium itself. Giants stadium, also known as the AT&T Ball Park, is H-U-G-E! Surrounded by the bay on three sides and downtown San Fran on the other, the view from up where we were was phenomenal. Blue blue ocean, dotted with boats of all sizes and the San Mateo bridge in the distance. It was great to see my colleagues outside of the cubicle setting, and good to catch a break in the middle of the week.

I wish the Indian cricket team would come play a game at the Ballpark. Now that would be a game I would gladly go to!

Missing

picture from Fall 2008, welcome picnic for CO2010 at Flagler

Being loaded on medication and working in your pajamas gives you plenty of time to think. And be introspective. And acknowledge emotions you have suppressed because of your daily routine of being too busy.

A couple weeks ago, my Strategy professor from Darden, Prof. Greg Fairchild, was in San Francisco to discuss a case born out of his research into social enterprise. We discussed a venture capital firm that believed in investing in companies that brought in a double bottom line – social good as well as the profits. I remember sitting in a class during the first couple of weeks at Darden – don’t remember which – where we repeated in unison to the question, why do you do business – “to make money.” Graduation and plus-one later, Darden has been great about drilling into my head that a business is about more than just the money. I cannot tell you how many times in the last year I have reminded myself of that lesson.

I took a friend with me to Greg’s case discussion. My friends and family being in India, and my own lack of words to describe my experience at Darden, I have never been able to fully share what it feels like to be sitting in a Darden class. So when the opportunity presented itself, I took one of my closest friends to the Marriot for this discussion. Driving back home and ruminating on the experience and the discussion, she told me that that evening was the happiest she had seen me in a long time. At the time I assumed I was just happy to meet a professor whose class was one of my favorite ones at Darden. My friend argued that there was a certain energy in the “class” – and in me – that evening that she had not seen before (and she has known me for over six years now).

This weekend is my first year reunion at Darden and I will not make it there. As I read blogs of current students at Darden, I almost wish I was back there. I’ve realized what my friend was talking about. I miss Darden, so very much. I miss being there, being challenged every day, being forced to think about big pictures and social good and learning life’s lessons. I have realized that my ability to throw myself completely into something I am doing has resulted in me filling up my calendar with “work” things and forgetting about big picture living. And when I am with my Darden crowd – at a brunch, at a case discussion or a happy hour – I come alive, because here are the people that prove to me every day that it was not a dream. That it happened and that I will always have those two years at school.

I stand by my decision of not attending reunion due to various constraints, but come Saturday I will be wishing I was sipping wine at Flagler Courtyard and catching up with friends and professors and the staff at Darden, telling them of all my adventures since I graduated last year.

And the Groom Wore Flip-flops!

Post backlog...

In February, I headed down to the Florida to participate in my first American wedding, to be a part MV’s very special and very beautiful wedding. It even ended up being a reunion of sorts! A bunch of us from the Bay Area met up at SFO and flew in to Fort Lauderdale together. From there we drove down to Islamorada, the venue of the wedding and the resort where we were to stay the weekend. There we met up with classmates from different parts of the country. And best of all, we had friends coming in from London and Paris too! It felt like Beach Week all over again – lazing by the pool, Bloody Mary’s for breakfast, beautiful sun and ocean… and I even saw a Jelly Fish (now I know what they look like!)

MV, a fellow section D’er is the epitome of grace and everything that’s classic and timeless. And her wedding was just an extension of her personality! The night before the wedding was a barbeque by the pool where the guests mingled with the couple and other friends. It was great catching up with people I haven’t seen since graduation, finding out about their new post-Darden lives and exchanging stories… People seemed happy in their new routines and yet nostalgic about their time at school. The wedding was beautiful; the couple took their vows as the sun set and a gentle breeze blew in from the ocean. MV looked more beautiful than ever, if that is even possible! She was radiant in her wedding gown. The groom wore a casual khaki suit and flip flops! After the ceremony, we gathered at the pier for a picture of the couple with their Darden friends. The couple took the floor for their first dance to lit sparkles and warm fire on the pier. And then a lovely dinner, where MV and CG had ensured that the vegetarians had enough options. Dancing followed and then we hung out by the pool one last time before we left after breakfast with the couple the next morning.

My first American wedding was more enlightening than I’d ever imagined. I don’t know any two people who are as good together as MV and CG. I was touched by their warmth to their guests despite it being their special day, touched by their thoughtfulness (welcome packets of aspirin, beer, granola bars etc) and as always, in all admiration for their beautiful ceremony.

It was a wonderful weekend, one that I’ll remember for a very long time. Best wishes MV and CG! Here’s to a life full of happiness, laughter and love.

No more excuses

Sunset picture from my window at work

It seems to have become a trend of sorts for me to disappear from my blog for weeks on end and then resurface with a post on an excuse for my disappearance… like anyone’s counting! I won’t make excuses this time. I’ve thrown myself headfirst into my (not so new now) work, into settling down in this (not so new now) city and just generally reconfiguring life and times overall. At some point I even had a nice end of year post crafted in my head all ready to be hashed out on the keyboard but I let it go. Now it seems that the urge to write has built up inside until I finally was able to put fingers to keys to hash this out before Facebook, Netflix and all the other distractions on the interwebs drag me away again.

In the months since I last posted, I have found and made a home for myself in this wonderful area and while not everything has been perfect, I think I have made peace with the fact that that’s exactly how it’s going to be – not perfect but good and definitely something I can work with. I have been trying desperately to get my reading habit back but I’ve had to contend with just reading the California drivers manual!

The weekends have been passing by in a blur of social and home-related activities. In the nesting process, I have a project every weekend that I have to tackle… one weekend it was the linen closet while another it was the bookshelf. Needless to say nothing gets done a hundred percent but I am working on it. Add to that a baking/cooking project and a mandatory me-night that I’m trying to make a habit out of. I want to spend the next few months reaching out to the community at large, trying to get to know places and faces and events around the Bay and discover newer interests and pastimes.

The Darden group in the Bay is a large and fun gang of people and so there have been frequent meet ups and social events. We recently even hosted current Darden students at our respective work places and I’ve had a very satisfying time playing alumnus to students and helping them with my insights on school and recruiting (which is after all the all consuming sole conundrum of business school life). Slowly but surely it is becoming a way of life to make time for Darden centric events – be it phone calls with students or socializing with the D-crowd in the Bay.

I think I am on track in the reconfiguration-of-life project!!

The End of a Long Journey

... And the beginning of a new one.

I am writing this from LAX as I wait for my flight to San Francisco. Chances are I will continue this on my flight (yay for free wi-fi) and then continue some more from San Francisco. There is a lot to say, and I’m hoping to make up for the silence of the past couple of months. I board this flight today with some small degree of trepidation but also with a fair amount adrenaline rush that can only come at the beginning of a new adventure. I’ve lost of how many flights I’ve boarded in the last six months but I can tell you that this is the sixth city I will be heading to in as many months and hopefully I’ll stay here for a while. As I checked in my mammoth suitcase at the curbside check in a while ago I thought to myself that I’d feel very suicidal if I had to lug it through another airport any time soon! Thankfully it is the end of a long journey that began at Charlottesville and took me to multiple places and people… but it is over finally.

From having zero job-offers to finally getting something I was so passionate about (but didn't realize until epiphany struck), life has changed indeed! In my obsessive search for the perfect job over the past two years (and anyone who has been through the process will tell you it’s a two year process), I have discovered much about myself and not all of it has been flattering. But all of it helped me narrow and broaden my search as the situation demanded. That discovery helped shape my final decision and the subsequent move from the east coast to the w(best!

It is normal to be job-search-obsessed in business school. I thought it was just my class reacting to the havoc the economy wrecked on us. But as it turns out, it is an affliction of every bschool student no matter what the economic climate is. And dutifully job-search obsessed though I was, I will openly admit that it was not without a large dose of self-doubt and the road was not always clean and clear. I will also admit that my ultimate success was not so much hard work as it was just sheer luck. And that is what makes the “success” so hard to celebrate. There are others in my class – some close friends too – that still haven’t found their offers and I know that the difference between them and me today is just dumb luck, a fortnight and nothing more.

I was discussing with a classmate today about our respective job searches and while he has found success too, we both had to acknowledge that we owed our success and sanity to our network of personal and professional contacts. Our alumni base had been very generous to us during our search process, even if just with advice and words of encouragement. Our classmates at Darden have been great with all the support, the couch to crash on or even just over the phone with all the positive cheer.

While my life moving forward is very different from the way I had envisioned it during the summer of 2008, I am pleasantly surprised and very thankful for the way it did turn out. Don’t punch me in the face, but sometimes you just have to trust the process!

On being desi

Earlier this year, I spent a weekend in DC with a couple my family knows well, who have been like second parents to me while at C’ville. Over filter coffee (Tamil style) one of the mornings, I got to talking about their story of how they came here so many years ago, met and married each other and now had a full, happy life in this country. I wondered who had been their support system when they first moved here, at a time when Indians in America were concentrated in the Universities and the Valley and were not as ubiquitous as today; I had them, and over my three years in America, various other people, who have been my support system to help me settle down. I wondered who was there for them, whether they brought a year’s worth of tamarind from India for sambar and special idli rice and even their filter coffee powder!

Since my move to Florida, I had not cooked anything Indian, and had survived on fruits and pasta and ramen noodles… nothing wrong with it, but when I started craving curries and rotis I knew I had to fix it. At one of my fruit-buying trips at the local Publix, I spotted an Indian. I struck up conversation with him and asked him to give me directions to the Indian store. And as a freebie, he threw in directions to the Indian temple too! So this morning I drove up to the Indian store and within ten minutes I had a basket full of frozen rotis and daals and spices. I got to talking with the store owner and she offered to give me ideas on all the spices and stuff I would need to get my kitchen started. As I browsed through the aisles (there were just two), I savored the sound of all the people shopping there and the various languages they were conversing in.

I have always believed that as someone who cooks a lot Indian food at home, I wouldn’t want to go to an Indian restaurant on the weekends when I eat out. By that same principle, I’ve always tried to get to know non-desi folk at school/work because I rationalized that I left India to get to know people of the world. But today, as I perused the aisles of the store, I savored the little India around me, enjoyed speaking Hindi with the people there and felt comfort and at home for the first time at an Indian store.

I guess no matter how much we try to acclimatize ourselves to our new “home” land – America or Argentina or anywhere else – we never really stop being desi… You could suppress the desi-ness but it comes out in the least expected places and times… sometimes all it takes is the sight of bhindi (okra) and you can almost smell it frying in your kitchen in India. To my desh on its 64th year of Independence, I hope you know that your influence stays strong even so far away.

A Third Summer

This past weekend I moved to Florida to begin work with a company on a short-term basis. While the move proved more difficult that I had expected – more on that soon – I was struck by just how different the weather here is compared to any of the places I’ve lived at in this country. After a dry, hot start-of-summer at the Ville and a hot-by-day-cool-by-night summer at southern California, the heat and humidity and thunder storm filled weather of Ft Lauderdale is quite a change… and quite reminiscent of Madras.

The move here itself was very last minute – due completely to my own denial that the vacation with the sister had to end! – and therefore not as smooth as I would have liked. My achievement for the week would probably be successfully navigating from my hotel to the office without the GPS and without getting lost! Work, on the other hand, is pretty fast paced and energizing, which is great! I have been on the job for three days now and I am already staffed on an engagement and have deliverables due pretty soon! Work hours are long, compared to any of the places I have worked at before, and I am still trying to squelch the temptation to pack up at 6pm!

Personally though, the move has been challenging. For the first time, I am struck by how much I have relied on my social network and support systems in the past. I am not all alone here – MV, a fellow Section D’er, and her fiance – live/work in Miami and have been a phenomenal source of help and support, especially in the first couple of days after I landed here. But I miss my sister and miss eating healthy home cooked meals. But maybe I should use the time back on the east coast to do a spot of travelling… definitely something to work on.

(obligatory iPhone picture for this post coming soon - how about a thunderstorm?)

A Lament on Leaving... and Arriving

Since I last wrote, I’ve disposed of more than eighty percent of everything I owned in Charlottesville – things known and unknown – having managed to fit the remaining twenty percent into two suitcases and backpack and made my way across the breadth of this country to California. I miss Charlottesville and everything about it, most of all, the comfort of putting one foot before the other and knowing exactly where I am going.

And then there’s California! Although it’s always great to go back to the Bay Area, SoCal’s a whole different ball game altogether. Hanging out with family is always great and is the reason I’m here to start with. I’m also having a ton of fun playing tourist and although I’m yet to spot a celebrity I take comfort in the fact that I wouldn’t be able to distinguish a celebrity if I sat next to one in a restaurant, since everyone here seems so umm… dressed up all the time! My need to disconnect (something I’d been wanting to do since I got back from Beach Week) has resulted in me not having contacted my friends in the area yet, but I’ll get to it eventually I know.

I’ve been trying to acclimatize myself to normal life, whatever that means. Actually that’s exactly my problem, I’m not sure I know what normal life means. I tried picking up my reading habit again, except that in the two years I’ve been out of the books-scene, it seems to have changed a whole lot. I am trying to get my hands on some fiction because I don’t want to read anything that reminds me of a HBS case, and I can’t find anything on the bestsellers list that doesn’t involve vampires and murder. I think I’ll eventually give up and read the Niall Ferguson book, The Ascent of Money, that’s staring at me from my sister’s desk.

I’ve enjoyed exploring Los Angeles and the surrounding areas and seeing a lot of places that are familiar from the movies. My Universal Studios visit is still pending (the sun here has been scorching), however I have enjoyed going to the Walk of Fame area immenseley (and went there more than once!). No prizes for guessing which star had the most number of visitors around it at any given time.

(End of a) Beginning of the End*

For the past week or so I have been living the retired life right here in Charlottesville. Well retired might be inappropriate, more like the job-seeker’s life. Every day I drink my morning tea in front of my laptop as I catch up with email, make my incredibly long to do list and post something from my apartment for sale on craigslist.

I experiment with my breakfast – because it’s my favorite meal of the day – and a good breakfast of pancakes and fruit puts me in just the right mood to tackle the day. And then I come to my “office”. There is a bunch of us that comes to school every day religiously to hole up in an LT room and work on looking for work. It’s like going to the office – it builds the discipline of sitting in one place for hours to get the job done, and on coffee breaks I control the calories by walking past the classrooms and the tables laden with delicious food for the MBA for Execs people and hanging out with the other office-goers.

Allow me to whine a little please. I hate packing. Phew, there it’s off my chest. I love travelling don’t get me wrong, and I would happily brag that I can pack real quick when I have to do a trip. But packing for moving is absolutely a nightmare, no matter how many times you’ve done it before (and I have unfortunately done it too many times). I also have started to believe that perhaps my suitcases shrank while they were in the closet these past two years!

I leave C’ville at the end of this month because my lease ends and it doesn’t make sense to hold on to this place any longer. Everyone’s leaving and it makes me sad to watch them go… with some people I feel like I may never see them again and it’s scary and sad all at the same time. I am heading to SoCal first to spend some time with my sister and hope the family-treatment will help settle the chaos that my mind has been these past few weeks. I always have fun when I hang out with my sister and this time we’re planning a west coast road trip which will be great. I’ll move to the bay area next month and just take it from there.

But before all that is the mammoth weekend of packing that’s coming up tomorrow. Wish me luck.

*inspired by this Bon Jovi song called Welcome To Wherever You Are.

My own C'ville Goodbye Tour

In my last post I wrote about wanting to show my parents around C’ville and all the places I hung out at during my two years here. Last week, we did just that and then some more. I took my parents to eat at some of my favorite joints here, showed them the sights and sounds of some places that were almost second home to me and then also took them to a few places I hadn’t been to for lack of time. From favorite restaurants to hole-in-the-wall crepe joints to the vineyards and the caverns... it's been a week full of picture taking and playing the tour guide!

In addition to showing them around, I have also been doing a few goodbye lunches/dinners/coffees/breakfasts when I can, which has been difficult with them around but I still try. I think the one ritual I will really absolutely miss in “the real world” would be my Sunday brunch/breakfasts (not so much Sunday after school, since everyday has been Sunday!). Just like this morning, I had a wonderful brunch with Oren and some of my other favorite Darden ppl and I tried to stay in denial that I won’t get that again – unless we all turned up reunion (in which case, Oren, can we go to Blue Glass Grill please?) which is a year from now.

I always knew I was lucky to be here in this beautiful town but more importantly among these wonderful people… in fact, I have never found myself among so many like-minded, likable people and as Prof. John Colley told us on our last day of GMTA class, it doesn’t get any better than this. And as I show my parents around and try to relive my out-of-class experiences from the two years, I feel like this is my own personal goodbye tour of C’ville.

My parents leave for California in a week’s time after which I begin my own process of moving there, selling my stuff and emptying out my apartment into my two suitcases and a backpack. I want to keep everything, yet I know I can’t. I am yet to de-Dardenize my laptop – archive emails and documents – and honestly, I’m just procrastinating.

Here’s a picture of breakfast this morning before the Roots left C’ville – that's right, Mimosas with breakfast, because we can!

Graduation

The view from the day after

600 cases, 8 quarters, countless cold calls, late nights and TNDCs later I am finally an MBA.

Yesterday the Full Time MBA Class of 2010 at Darden graduated, under the encouraging gaze of Thomas Jefferson’s statue at Flagler Courtyard and under a blue-gray sky that threatened to spill over any moment.

First we had the main graduation ceremony at The Lawn in Central Grounds (UVA) where the whole university’s graduating class (ie from all departments) gathered to take their degrees. After a lot of balloon-flying, clapping and hooting, we were finally allowed to shift our tassels from the right side (no degree) to the left (degree bestowed). It was a great feeling to be sitting in that historic place and to know that I will forever be an alumnus of this beautiful and historically and intellectually rich university. From there on, it was on to Darden for our ceremony and to receive the diploma. As I sat there and clapped for all my classmates getting their degrees and later walked up to take my own, it dawned on me that the umbilical cord was finally being cut, and we were free to go out into the world to do everything we dreamt of when we came here.

We went to the grand staircase outside Saunders Hall right after the ceremony to take our picture and then it was pictures time with the family, friends and whoever we could find. One last grand Darden bagged lunch later, I was home.

After a lot of confusion on rain or not, I was so happy that the rain decided to wait until after the ceremony. In fact, as we finished our pictures at the grand staircase, the first big drops of rain started to fall and by the time my family and I made it back to Ivy, it was pouring in earnest, as it can do only in Charlottesville.

I’ve had a night to sleep over this new status as an MBA and Darden alumnus. Somehow it refuses to sink in. I woke up this morning expecting to feel different, but I was disappointed. I was the same person, still unable to function without my morning tea, still basking in the wonder of having a United States driver’s license and still very much in love with Arch’s FroYo! Somewhere inside me I know I’m now different, much better than the person I came here as, two years ago. On the outside I am still me, cringing that yet another goodbye is here, wondering when the stability I have craved for but always avoided will come to my life.

This morning I earnestly missed my Darden friends, wished I had another day of trudging through the school for a class, yearned to call some folks for coffee at our favorite coffee shop at Barracks Road and as I type this out, I’d rather be hanging out at Italian Villa cracking jokes with the gang than in my room going to bed before midnight. Real life calls, but I will always treasure the friendships and adventures this place has allowed me to have.

This morning, as I drove my parents around my favorite places in C’ville, I couldn’t help but think about all the people in my life that made this incredible journey possible. From support, to essay reviews, to just their time on the phone/messenger/person when I needed it. The list is too long, but this roll of paper that is my diploma would not have been possible without their support.

Dear Darden, you will be missed, but I will cherish the title of being a Darden alumnus for as long as I live.

Beach Week at the OBX*

*post backlog - late post
I spent the last 5 days of my Darden life at the Outer Banks in North Carolina on the Darden week-before-graduation tradition known as Beach Week. The whole class heads down to Nags Head and rents houses by the beach. It’s a week of relaxing, partying, hanging out with classmates for perhaps the last time. It’s the last week of the crazy lifestyle that business school has been. And it didn’t disappoint. After the mad pace of the last two years, my five days at OBX were just the opposite, from early morning tea on the patio gazing at the sea, to late night movies and wine with breakfast!

I was in a five bedroom house with a few other people. We had a large living room, fully equipped kitchen, a pool, hot tub and plenty of great views of the ocean. We spent our time between the various houses, cooking and eating and hanging out by the water… One day we went to explore some sand dunes but for the most part we lay by the waters (pool, hot tub, beach) and hung out in other ppl’s houses playing board games or cooking/eating.

While the first few days were cloudy, rainy and gloomy – best way to enjoy a seriously dangerous LASA party – the last two days were beautifully sunny and going by the tan I returned with, we really made full use of those days. By the last night at OBX, my housemates and I decided to skip the last official Darden party at the Pit, and stayed home for a pyjamas and movie night.

We drove back via Richmond late on Thursday and stopped for dinner at the Capital Ale House – a place I highly recommend for their large variety of beers. We also decided to surprise a friend’s boyfriend at the airport.

My folks get in town Friday night, just as graduation festivities begin at Darden. Graduation! Can you believe it? I can’t!

Pearl Jammed!

In what has been a fantastic year – musically – for me, I managed to get another item checked on my wishlist! Yesterday I - along with regular concert goer and friend Nacho and a Peruvian exchange student - went to watch one of my favorite bands, Pearl Jam, live in concert as part of their Backspacer Tour at Jiffy Lube Live (formerly Nissan Pavilion) at Bristow VA.

Expensive ticket rates and a quickly falling cash balance had me wavering on the decision to attend this concert. Back in undergrad – which seems like a whole different era ago – I’d sworn to a friend that if either of us ever had the opportunity to attend a Pearl Jam concert the person would make it and send the other a picture of the ticket stub! While I have been out of touch with that friend, the temptation to experience something like this was too tempting. SO I gave up, asked the voice of good sense to shut it, and bought my ticket to go; and it was the best decision I could have made!

Eddie Vedder and his lead guitarist, Mike McCready, were on a roll yesterday. They played a lot of songs from the Ten album, which made me and the crowd really happy, in addition to some of my favorite tracks from the avocado album. Eddie Vedder talked about Haiti, Sean Penn, Goldman Sachs and aeroplanes in between the power packed performances. I think Mike McCready clearly stole the show with the awesome guitar solos. My favorite moments were when he played the guitar solo for one of the songs holding the guitar behind his neck… and the 8-minute rendition of Black.

I have to also touch upon the arena and the overall experience. It was the atmosphere I had read about and watched on tv. Tailgating before and after the concert, lots of colored hair, lots of alcohol (and some funky smelling cigarette-things too) and general rock-spirit. Although older now since my days of wanting to do this, it was great to just watch all of this first hand. The arena was smaller, with plenty of parking and vast expanses of grass.

The music enthusiast Pearl Jam fan in me was very very happy yesterday!

Set List: Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, World Wide Suicide, Got Some, Brain Of J, Save You, Given To Fly, Present Tense, Down, Unthought Known, Insignificance, Even Flow, Comatose, Faithfull, All Those Yesterdays, Black, The Fixer, Do The Evolution.
Encore 1: The End, Just Breathe, Garden, Why Go, Wasted Reprise, Life Wasted, Blood / Atomic Dog.Encore 2: Better Man / Save it for Later, Spin The Black Circle, Alive, Sonic Reducer, Yellow Ledbetter.

Red to Green

The importance of being idle.
It's been nearly a fortnight since I’ve been done with school. Last Monday I turned in all my papers and projects and finals. Last Monday, for the first time in two years, I turned my GTalk chat status to green. And that’s significant. You see, after being busy for two years, with always something or the other to look forward to, it is really weird to see nothing on my outlook calendar now (except golf lessons and social engagements).

I spent the first few days of freedom not knowing what to do and just really getting annoying with the slow pace of the clock ticking! A group of us have begun golf lessons but the rains have been ruining our plans for the last three days now. Several brunches, dinners, coffees later, I see my cash reserves depleting faster than I can control. I have also been trying to make sense of all the stuff I have collected over my two years here, all the way from the four foot stack of cases and course packs, to tee shirts to magazines and a bunch of other odds and ends. It’s unbelievable how much stuff I’ve accumulated. I discovered things in my closet that I had forgotten I had. Darden’s last Outreach program of the year was the clothes and food drive and I managed to give away a bunch of gently used shirts and sweaters away – I figured if I had not worn them in the last year, I probably was not going to miss them either!

This week a classmate organized what he called the Charlottesville Goodbye Tour – a week of dining at restaurants in the town that we have not been to in the last two years (mostly out of budget constraints). And although I couldn’t make it all the evenings, I had the opportunity to dine (maybe for the last time) at one of my favorite places at the downtown mall.

Ivy Gardens already seems quieter and lonelier, with the number of UHauls pulling up as people move. Facebook is full of people finding apartments and basically setting themselves up for the transition to the adult world. While I am looking forward to it myself – it would be great to have a paycheck – the weight of the job search and the uncertainty has been causing a good deal of stress.

The family arrives in town for graduation next week. I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with them this time around, showing them places of significance from my two glorious years here at the Ville.

The Veggie Tower dish at Bizou, Downtown Mall

Last Day of Class

Today was my last day of classes at Darden. My brain refuses to process that the madness is over – no more three cases a night, excel models, hanging out in the LT rooms trying to hammer out a model worthy of a cold call. The ride’s been hard but boy has it been good! This experience comes highly recommended for anyone looking for a complete outside-the-comfort-zone experience in business school.

There will be room for reflections and wrap-ups later. I am on my way to the last Cold Call (social) of the year to be followed by the final deliverable of the Leadership and Ethics Through Theater class, which is a play they are staging this evening at Abbott Auditorium.

I couldn’t bring myself not to have this video from the Follies last week (by my classmate Shepro) on my blog. It was a great way to wrap up Follies and had many students in tears. Since then we’ve all watched that video on YouTube multiple times; today, as farewell to students in my General Managers Taking Action class, our professors played this video for us (and then took the whole class out to lunch at The Tavern!).

Home Stretch - Last Week.5 of Class!

We’re on the last week and a half of classes here at Darden. And things have never been crazier! Trying to find time on people’s calendars for an hour long meeting to discuss our project has been impossible! We’ve come to the stage where we are – counter-productively perhaps – splitting up and meeting in batches to get our work done. It’s that insane out here!

Meanwhile Q4 – about which I haven’t written much lately – has been awesome fun from the academic standpoint. Yeah you’re thinking, who even goes to classes anymore in Q4. But trust me, all of us do, and all of us are engaged and MOST of us are reading our cases! I’m doing four classes – Data Analysis and Optimization (awesome!)with Casey,one of my favorite Darden professors, Marketing Analytics (love it!), General Managers Taking Action (carried forward from last quarter) and Hot Topics in Ops & Technology, which is another speaker class and is my third class with Prof Tim Laseter. I absolutely love my courses this quarter and I feel like I’m getting so much out of my ‘technical’ (ie spreadsheet) courses that I get a real kick out of ensuring I'm fully prepared for these classes! This quarter I have also officially relinquished all my club responsibilities at DSAS and the Blog Club making it hard to remain in denial about leaving this place.

Of course, since this is Darden, if you’re working your brain off at school, you’re also socializing like crazy and Q4 is the pinnacle of it all. Dinners and I-got-a-job celebrations are spilling over into the weekday evenings and the result of it is that every day I push the limit on just how late I can wake up in the mornings and STILL make it to my classes! And I haven’t been late to a single one of my 8AMs (although I did ‘forget’ to wake up for one).

The weather has been kind of erratic, oscillating between cold, rainy and sunny and the pollen count super high so Halls and tissues and sniffles are commonplace these days. I think we’ve all just decided we’re going to carry a jacket to school anyway, just in case! We have concluded our headshots for the Yearbook, pledges for the class gift (100% of our class pledged!) and ordered for our diploma frames – so yeah I guess we’re definitely getting out of here soon!

This weekend is the Alumni Reunion weekend and there’s a festive spirit going on in Flagler, with the tent put up and the banners up. Again, it reminds me of last summer when I watched the Class of 2009 gear up for graduation. And it signals to me that the end is near. In fact, same day next month I will be wearing the cap and gown and getting my diploma. And I still remember sitting on the other side of this great two year experience wondering if I would make it out of here in one piece.

I’m putting up these pictures I took on my phone a few weekends ago when the weather was awesome and I was sitting by TJ’s fountain and contemplating life, the universe and everything in between. That’s correct, I still don’t have an offer and I’ve hit the panic button.