Adventures

In theory at least, assuming exam disasters, I am through the first stage of the MBA. It has been quite a roller coaster ride so far and last September seems so long ago that it appears that my life is now being measured in dog years. Although 'Not Rocket Science', the course is rather intense to say the least, with endless group work, lectures, fancy jargon and almost entirely meaningless two-by-two matrices. Sleep has mostly become a memory, weekends generally merged into weekdays, the pile of textbooks and reading stands as tall as a small pony, my eyelids now have lines where no lines existed before. Despite, or possibly because of, all this hard work, it has been a fantastic experience so far. Here is a list of things that spring to mind that happened in the last 10 months:

• Outdoor team building and adventure weekend at Brathay
• Accounting, Economics, Corporate Finance
• Soft Management Skills and Personality Colour / DISC Profiles
• Community Project helping market Wythenshawe Hall
• Business Research Methods, Managing International Business Systems
• Marketing with Stephan Henneberg
• Management Information Systems, Operations Management
• Strategy with Gary Davies
• People Management and Organisations (PMO) with Richard Phillips
• The Minto Pyramid - presented by Barbara herself!
• MBAT - MBA Sporting weekend in Paris
• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Project that went on forever
• Project working on mobile marketing in pubs
• Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) Finals in North Carolina
• Meeting loads of other MBA students from around the world
• Presentations from CEOs and Execs of blue chip companies

Catherine and I hoped on a fast ferry from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire for a few days break in County Wexford, Ireland last week. Her parents built a house near the beach in the late 70s in a remote area of Wexford up the coast from Kilmore Quay. The region is charmingly known as "Bastardstown".

Catherine and I lived in California for a little over 4 years. In that time I can probably remember nearly all the individual days that it rained. For example, I remember that it rained on Halloween night 2003. It also rained once in April forcing us to have lunch indoors. It rained one weekend and I took photographs out of the window. Apart from that it was basically either sunny or slightly overcast with a haze. When we left I had forgotten what damp was, clouds were a slightly strange sight, wearing anything other than a T-shirt was for wimps and the worst thing you could say would be that you were a little too hot.

Returning to England, and Manchester in particular, was always going to be a shock. It turns out that Manchester flourished as a cotton town precisely because it was damp; its climate suited the mills. Arriving in April we were treated to glorious sunny days and long evening with new growth of trees and birds singing everywhere. We even had a nest of baby birds near our window; how bad could it be? How wrong could I be. After about two week of this the weather must have noticed that we were back and identified our rain deficit. Like a soggy tax collector it decided we must pay and pay we did. The period from May until now has seen more rain than ever before - or at least since records began in the mid-1700s. It will come as no surprise that it is raining now and that if I were to drive somewhere I would need headlines because the cloud is so dark - yes it is 2pm.

I have finally managed to conquer the 8 Gigabytes of photos from India and have annotated the albums to give some potted story of our travels. I'll not mention more here but encourage any interested parties to view the India gallery.

Life continues, this time in Manchester. More to follow...

Well here one is in India. We are into our second week now and have done a speed tour of Rajasthan (Filthystan) and are now heading South towards the Jungle. Everything has been a little hectic to say the least over the last few months but we managed to escape from Los Angeles having sold all our stuff and shipped the rest. After a quick dash to Manchester to find a flat that wasn't above a launderette and covered in light layer of filth (vomitarium) we randomly flew into Dehli with no particular plan whatsoever. A quick visit to the Government travel advisor suggested that the most sensible plan would be to go 'super posh' and hire a car-and-driver. This we did and we have now be luxuriating in a range hotels from the spectacular, clean and totaly empty (except us) Havelli - to some slightly less exotic ageing hotels. Still - when you look out the window and see a large expanse of filth-infested trash coverered in an extra layer of filth with a dead dog on the top you can't really complain too much.

India is certainly a land of extremes - from the rancidity of the open sewers often spring fantastic palaces and forts clearly once (or still) decorated in sumptuous marble and gems. Ridiculously ornate stonework has been everywhere so far and yet as soon as you exit the gate you are met by hordes of touts, 'guides', beggers, and people selling random crap. Anywhere where 'supertourists' (rich, old, Western, people) have been you will be asked for money or just about anything -- photos of them, empty bottles of water, spare shampoo (rub hair), pens (writing motion on hand), money (rubbing of fingers and thumb), money for watching shoes, money for going to the toilet, money for carrying bags, money for not carrying bags, money for entering the museum, money for bringing a camera into a museum, money for crossing a border, etc... etc... etc... Neyhi Dandayvaad (phoenetic spelling of No thank you in Hindi).

With 6 hours to go before Christmas Day 2006 begins in Pacific time I might just be able to sneak under the wire with some warm winter wishes before blogcrastination gets the better of me. Of course having been in LA for almost 4 years now it would be imprudent of me to mention the C-word so I hope you all have a very Happy Winter Solstice.

My mum and aunt finished their spectacular train journey in LA last Friday. Starting in Denver they took in mountain scenery all the way to San Francisco before travelling down the coast. Expecting 3 days of glorious sunshine and progeny/relation-guided tours what they got was 2 inches of rain and a sick person. Everything started ok with a 'lovely walk' by the Venice Canals and beach in the sun.

Ajay pointed out that as President of SoPS I could officially take a guilt free holiday this President's Day Monday. Unfortunately, it was my turn to give lab meeting on Tuesday morning so the end of last week was a little frantic. Amy, Greg and I drove up with Riley and arrived at about 2:30am Saturday in an chalet complete with portraits. On arrival Riley immediately ran to the TV and waited expectantly until it was turned on. He clearly enjoys TV and unlike most dogs actually watches things on the screen move around and gets very excited when animals appear. After a slightly lazy start we hit the slopes with fresh powder and more snow falling. Powder, although much more tiring, is great on a snowboard and you really feel like you are floating along. Steep runs are also less intimidating without the scraping sound of the ice and I was much more comfortable on the harder black runs. The double black diamonds at Mammoth (ratings are relative to the rest of the mountain) are still far too steep for my liking and quite frankly give me the heebie-jeebies.