School Done

Latest Update: I an amazing tour de force I managed to also wrap up my last two exams with 72 hours of finishing the Tri - not bad eh? This means that I have officially survived my first year at Haas - yay!! Does it make me feel stress free for a change? well not entirely, we are leaving for our Brazil consulting project in a week and as always there are a million things to do before then, including a 2 major end of year parties, 2 days of rafting and a move (yes - another one!) to the house I will be living in starting fall semester. Alas, the one step at a time method seems to be working well - all will be good in the end!

Tri Done

I finished my very first triathlon this past Sunday! I was a "sprint" (1/2 mile swim, 15 miles bike, 4 mile run) taking place in Napa Valley along the lovely Lake Berryessa. As seen from the picture we had a whole Haas crew racing and some did quite well (coach Matt won the race!) I was just very happy to finish in 2 hours and 27 minutes...

Please welcome the 2007 edition...

Today is the official last day of winterbreak, tomorrow it will be back to Haas and MBA life. Here's a short summary of what happened during break:

I moved to my new house -- see pictures below. I am now sharing a house with two of my Haas classmates. It is huge -- we have crazy amounts of space (the living room was built to host piano recitals, no joke) -- which is a nice change from my past room that was getting a bit too small considering my ever growing collection of books, binders and paper stacks. I do miss my old housemates - no more coffee drinking with Jane in the mornings, listening to Alberto's stories of his imminent americanization (growing muscles, meeting chicks...) and following the drama of Mike's romantic adventures, alas. The new house is situated between Elmwood and Rockridge in Berkeley, a cool area that i have loved exploring so far.

Travel: Denmark -> Berkeley -> Orange County -> Berkeley -> Lake Tahoe -> Berkeley.

Christmas in Denmark with the family, always a treat and it was so fun being there without worrying about what was happening at work at the same time. Global warming kicked in in full, we played a round of golf on the day of christmas eve...

New Years in the OC with my sister, as always involving the El Toro meat market and crazy barbecueing adventures...

Snowboarding in Lake Tahoe - this was the first trip to "our" lake Tahoe house. 23 Haas friends and I have rented a house up there for the season, bought season passes for Kirkwood and set up the wireless at the house, so there is pratically no reason not to be there every weekend (apart of course from other social events...)



Ok, this is *not the view from my new house, but a tourist shot from a break outing to the Golden Gate bridge. That's the bridge in the background and behind it San Francisco, Alcatraz and way in the distance Berkeley and Oakland.


The new house!

The piano-recital-size living room with my fabulous craigslist-find retro couch...

My room -- looks a lot like my place in Seattle i guess - nice and white...

I share a sun room office space with my roommate Mariette - so nice to have an office!


And of course a walk in closet, finally room enough for all my shoes.

We've got the Axe -- Berkeley wins "Big Game"!

I went to my first Cal (Berkeley) Football game yesterday which was nothing less than the 109th installment of the yearly"Big Game" against Stanford. I was a beautiful day at memorial stadium (which happens to be right next to the Haas business school on campus) and most importantly we won! It was a fun day out and a good way to not think about final- tests and -papers for a while... After the game we decided to act like undergrads and storm the field, which resulted in the lovely shot above of my Japanese buddy Jun and I with one of the Cal players - Go Bears!

Title Mania: VP of International

All, it is with great joy that i share with you the fact that I have accomplished one of my goals in life: becoming "VP of International" -- International Student Affairs that is :-)

Over the past week we have had elections for the MBA Student Association and I challenged myself to run, which included writing a formal platform and (gulp!) presenting it infront of 500 people (ok - in reality probably only 200 showed up, but trust me, that was plenty!) -- I can't tell you how much I learned to appreciate the public speaking class we took at the beginning of this semester!

Anyway, I ended up coming out ahead of no less than 6 other candidates and feel quite honored that apparently a majority of the Haas student body trusts me with a decent budget and the welfare of the international student population.

Shut Up and Sing

Went to the dixie chicks concert last friday and it was fantastic!

Free Speech Cafe - Amen

I keep discovering new and exciting things around campus, berkeley and the general bay area. Today I came across this little nugget of architectural and ambience joy on the UC Berkeley Campus, the UC Berkeley Free Speech Cafe. I have about a million pages of homework to get through today (chicago trip taking its toll...) and the joy of being able to study on a teak benched outdoor patio, partially shaded by pine trees from the california indian summer sun is almost overwhelming - long live berkeley - amen.