Disappointment

Monday night, almost midnight. Just came back from my Monday night classes some time ago and, after grabbing some light dinner and providing some additional comments to the marketing case that my group is turning in tomorrow, I am about to go to bed. I am exhausted.

It’s been a tough day essentially due to my trip to Austin, Texas, with the soccer club during the weekend. It has been my first visit to the “lone star state”. Austin is a nice city. Full of students and with a very long street full of watering holes on both sides. I didn’t go out much, though, just for dinner and some drinks on Saturday night after being defeated. The weekend has been nice overall although much worse – or disappointing, more accurately – than expected. We did not play well and we didn’t even make it through to the quarter finals but that’s the small part. I guess I have learnt some other stuff that I hope will help me in the future.

For nearly a month me and two of my colleagues have been organizing the whole trip, putting in more hours than what people think. Paying tournament fees, collecting money from people, booking hotels, arranging for the rental of vans for the whole team or looking for the best deals to fly to Austin for all players. Once in Austin, it was up to us, as the club captains, to buy food and refreshments, taking care of our stuff, being on top of everything so that all runs smoothly and, more importantly (as it has proved this time), trying to keep everybody happy when it comes to playing games.

We are just a bunch of friends traveling together to have a good time. We definitely want to win tournaments but, above all, at least in my view, it is all about having a great time playing my favorite sport. The previous two tournaments had been smooth and I was expecting the same thing. However, things do not always go as one wishes and when it comes to “leading” – I put it into quotation marks because, as I have said, before captains we are just friends taking care of the stuff and trying to make people have fun – 18 business school students (each of them with that stupid leader inside of ours and, additionally, when it comes to soccer, the coach in each of us) the outcome has proven completely unexpected this time.

Everything is easy when you win but when it is the time to lose just because the opponents are better things are not that smooth. This is exactly what happened last weekend. It’s amazing how some people, grown up men, may lose their temper and focus, criticize team mates and bitch captains in their face. I guess that certain analogies may be drawn with work life in this respect. Maybe I have learnt something. Well, I have in fact learnt the kind of people I wouldn’t like to work with. One knows about those people from his previous work experience but these situations probably help to keep the eyes wide open.

No more philosophy for tonight. I am going to bed. My whole body is sore and my raspberries in arms and legs won’t let me move much.

Ciao

Lack of inspiration

Damn, it’s been two weeks since my last post. I hadn’t noticed that it had been so long. Time is really flying this semester, in every sense. February is almost over and in just a little bit more than two months my first year at Stern will be over too. I guess that the reason why time flies is because I’m having a particular good time this semester. I’m enjoying the courses and my leisure time. But with so many good stuff going on I haven’t been very willing to write. I am not inspired at all.

I was about to go to bed and I have decided to write a post, just not to lose the habit although there is not much to tell. Today I have had a CorpFin quiz. It only accounted for 10% of the final grade but it’s not been that good. I thought I was gonna do better but I missed a couple of easy questions in a pretty stupid way.

One interesting thing that happened last week was our visit to the Metropolitan Opera as part of our marketing class. We spent the whole day there, attended a short rehearsal and had the chance to talk to the management. It was a good experience and tomorrow I’m meeting with my group to prepare the write up that is due next week concerning the Met’s marketing strategy to re-launch it among a younger audience.

As regards my summer internship it keeps moving forward. Slowly but forward. The employer has already got clearance about me (hell, it’s amazing that sign off is needed – credit check, criminal history, etc – following a report issued by a specialized agency) and now I’m just waiting for the offer in writing. It shouldn’t take too long…. Once I get it I will have to buy dinner to my closest friends from school. We have kind of institutionalize it and it will be my turn. We celebrated last Sunday a friend’s summer internship at a Portuguese restaurant with bacalhao a bras and vinho verde!!

On Friday I will be off for Austin, Texas, with the school’s soccer team. It will be our third tournament of the year. Let’s see if we are able to get the trophy this time. I promise a post about the trip.

Going to bed now. It’s late and I am tired. Ciao

Winning Eleven

…or Pro Evolution Soccer, as you want. One of the best PS games ever, worldwide. Soccer brings people together and games like this do the same thing. It’s 130 am and a few friends from Italy and Argentina have just left our place. We have played a great tournament among the 8 of us, first Round Robin style and then semis and final.

It’s been exactly like playing back in my country. People get nervous, angry, desperate…same feelings although it is just a console game… and that’s what makes it so much fun!!

We may be different but in the end it’s simple things like this which tell us that we are more alike than what we think.

By the way, I have won the tournament. I had to say it…!

Ciao

Windchill

Goddamn it! How the hell can it be so cold? I have just come back from my first late evening class ever (from 6 to 9 pm) and the temperature is 14F which, in turn, is -10C. But that’s just the beginning b/c the windchill (the effect from the wind) makes it feel like 5F or -15C, as you want.

I had only experience once such a cold weather and it was skiing. We don’t have snow at all these days. On the contrary, the sun shines and it seems like is warm and nice outside….wrong perceptions!

No many news. The semester keeps going. This week I am gonna start three new courses. Three electives with a strong media component: Entertainment & Media Industries, to get a perspective about the whole industry, sector by sector; Business of Sports, which seems like is gonna be great fun, going through the world of professional sports and the way in which money is made; and M&A, a self explanatory course but with a special focus on media and taught by the COO of Viacom!

So far I am enjoying quite a lot my Corporate Finance course with Damodaran. The guy is really good and the lectures are good fun. However, it’s a pity that he’s so popular b/c we are more than 300 people in an auditorium and the class is not interactive. Anyway, we have this project consisting of analyzing a company and I have picked Dreamworks. I will have to go through every single aspect of it, from corporate governance (something that we have already covered in class and that has taken me back to the very first presentation I had to give to the partners at one of my previous jobs) to valuation. Then I will have to compare my findings with those of my study group’s mates’, who have picked companies such as China Mobile or Apple.

The weekend was good. I went out on Thursday night and I went with some friends to a German restaurant to celebrat a friend’s birthday…some wheat beer and then some fooling around with a girl from the early first semester. Nothing happened, though. I was able to cool down and prevent things from going “out of control”. Much better this way. I also went out on Saturday to another friend’s birthday party at a place in the Lower East Side. It’s funny because before heading over to the bar we got kind of drunk at home watching Dirty Dancing (I hadn’t seen it!) and Girl Next Door (you guys gotta see it!). I ended up in my room singing and dancing on my ow, pretty wasted actually, before leaving for the party…

Well, time to finish. I am a new addict to Heroes, a show from NBC. It’s really cool, about some guys who are a little bit like the X-Men but in the real world. I am gonna see a couple of episodes on my labtop before sleeping. Oh, almost forgot….and yesterday I watched the whole Super Bowl game, 4 hours in front of the tv, commercials included….this is America!

Ciao