quick b school update...

figure i'd give all my AVID readers a quick bschool update, as its obviously been dominating my thoughts and actions here...

Got the Rejection from Stanford. Not surprised about this as they didnt give me an interview, and you have to have an interview to get in.

Got the Waitlist from Harvard. Initially obviously a bit dissapointing, but still some really great news, so i'm really trying to stay optimistic and excited about the opportunity. I'm ganna try to visit the school soon somehow, to show them that I really want to be there....! Also i heard that round one apps (which I applied for) were up 24% but round 2 were down 10%, so maybe i'll have a good chance of getting in.

Interview with columbia here in Barca next week, interviewed waived by Kellogg (due to my location i'm assuming) and no word yet from MIT. These 3 are due to tell me mid march early april....


ps. check out my facebook for some water polo picss....

47 hours in Lisboa, 6 hours in Zeregosa, and 28 hours in Grand Canarys...and 724 pictures later

so yes, I do have a problem with picture taking. I love architecture especially historic european architecture so I take lots of pictures...what do I do with these? I dont put them on facebook (dont know why, i just dont) and I havent put them up on my ofoto page...maybe i should do something with them...who knows.

So just a quick update, done a lot of traveling in the last few weeks. For 3 kings holiday i took a last minute solo vacation to Lisboa Portugal. An ok place, glad I went, but not on my list of places to go back to, or recommend others to go to (especially from the us)....

We also had a game in Zaragosa, a city about 350km away from Barcelona...We played the first place team (we were in second) and played really bad and lost by 1. They had a packed house, and a small pool, and I could barley hear myself think no less the reff's whistle...We lost by 1 cause our offense sucked, and we couldnt shoot outside of 5 meters...fixable things, but the next week all we did was swim...>AWESOME.
So that was our second loss and i think it put us down to 4th place, which i was pretty pissed about.

We then had a game this last saturday in Las Palmas, which is on the Grand Canary island of the canary islands which is a group of 7 or so islands off the western Sahara and Morocco. We played really well and in an outdoor pool, which was a bit cold, and won 9-3. Not sure what place we are in now, but it was good to win by a lot, something we havent done in a while...

doing a lot of thinking latley about a lot of things...big life changes on the horizon for me.

i find out about HBS tomorrow. so if wish me luck.

Also i just stood up in my bed for obama's inauguration....wow. Amazing, a new day for america and the world, sorry I'm not at home to enjoy it with my friends and family...

also, im tired of people giving me weird kinda dirty looks here everywhere i go...wtf. i thought i was imagineing it but im not...

sucess is my only motherfucking option...failures not....


allah 'o ackbar...

new day, a new year,....a new life?

Whats up peeps? Ive been away from the blog for a while, well lets be honest my once a week blogging is probably never ganna happen...so to be more realistic lets say its once a month...haha

the last few weeks were kinda difficult for me for various reasons so I'm going to skip some of that. Although I did spend a great week in Manchester with my parents watching some soccer games and taking "tea walks" through some gorgeous british countryside chillin with the sheep in the mud...

We won our last game of the year, 12-6 which was great. We just finished a 2 day tournament in which we lost in the finals, to the team we had just beat 12-6...the tournament didnt really matter, and thus my teamates and I kinda played like 'flojos' so whatever...i did score twice in each game including a sick spin lob in the first...havent done one in a few years so it felt pretty good...I'm starting to take more of an active role on offense. My position is primarly defensive and I like to be a play-maker on offense, I actually like a pretty assist better than a goal, but I’ve not been a real goal scorer on this team..that being said our usual goal scorers are sometimes up and down, and its not good for us to rely on only 1 or 2 dudes to get us the 'W'....not george bush..thus ive taken to shooting more, and as my shooting percentage is probably in the 80% range (i only shoot when I have a high probability of scoring, otherwise I find it more prudent to wait for a better opportunity...) its going pretty good…

I found out yesterday that for the next few weeks I was the only person signed up for my 2hr/day spanish course...they gave me 2 options, get my $ back and wait 4 weeks for another round of courses to begin and hopefully more people to sign up, or join the 4hr/day course that starts at 9am....now I'm not really good in the mornings, and 4 hrs a day is a TON of spanish, but if I dont have the spanish class to occupy me during the day I feel a bit lost, and bored, and useless....so I guess its 4hrs a day for now.

My teamates and I got a nice xmas bonus, and my coaches also gave me kinda secretively a xmas basket of ish...which is all like candy and fattening...I'm currently 89 kilos, which is a bit under 200lbs, which is a feat that I dont think i've done since probbaly junior year....of HIGH SCHOOL...so maybe they are trying to fatten me up. I dont know, its working though im eating a ton of it right now

New years was great, had some friends from College as well as High School here, and we had a great dinner and went out to some local bars and enjoyed the night. Its a spanish tradition to eat 12 grapes at midnight, 1 for each chime of the bell...not an easy feat but we managed...we ran into a lot of random people, including some sweet Punjabi Mc's who were from the US visiting and having a great time...although they kept asking my friends if I was indian, so im not sure they were actually indian, despite the headdress and all...

thats bout it, nothing to exciting...the 6th of janurary is a holiday here..they have A LOT of freaking holidays. Its the day of the 3 kings, supposedly when they came and brought Jesus his gifts...now I always thought that that was on his actual birthday but as I watched on the tele during xmas night, much of that story is probably made up anyways.

anywho, who's santa clause?

.....and then we lost.....

So as the title of this blog so subtly hints at, we lost our first water polo game in the liga yesterday. Up by 4 at the end of the first, and with a 2 goal lead most of the game we let up and got beat in the last 3 minutes of the game...very disappointing as this team was the second placed team and a win over them would be huge. I however am not all that upset as I think that losing every once-in-awhile is good for a team and will hopefully motivate my teamates and coaches a bit more. Still not really happy with practice as we can go 2 - 3 days a week without touching a ball, which I think is ridiculous, and the extent of our "Strategic" practices are scrimmages against other teams. Learn by doing is great, but sometimes you need to take baby steps in that direction.
This was my first game in almost a month as I had to sit 1 out due to my pinched nerve, and we had 2 weekends off. I felt pretty shitty but played really well scoring 2, and stopping their primary offensive player, the 2 meter man, from scoring any goals...

Anywho, had a good college friend Debbie visiting this weekend with 4 of her friends from LSE. They had a lot of fun and while I didnt get to hang out with Debbie as much as I liked, due to the polo game as well as not wanting to go do the same touristy thing's ive already done twice or three times now, I think they had a lot of fun.

I've found a new website to download movies and tv shows. Which is good and bad. Good cause its almost free and my itunes bill was getting LARGE. Bad cause now I have tons of access to shit that I dont need to watch as I should be doing something else during....eh such is life.

Had my HBS interview this week in Madrid, dominated, so everyone cross your fingers for me

aight just that quick update...happy holidays and new years to everyone. I'm looking forward to spending a few days in manchester with the rents, hope everyone has a good crisis free holiday season.

...the groove.....

So I apologize to all my avid blog readers, all 9 of you, for not having posted in such a long time....
Don’t really have any excuses or reasons for such I just never got around to it.

Lots happened since I last got on. Here are some highlights:

- we've played like 4 or 5 games and won them all. We are currently "top o' the table" and hopefully will stay there for the rest of the year.
- Visited the rents in Manchester for a few days, and watched 2 soccer games...that was good

- Started teaching English every week two a sibling pair, brother and sister. The boy is truly amazing as he speaks fluent French, Spanish, Catalan, and takes english in school and asks to take private lessons from myself and a Chinese teacher....

i've limited the hours that I teach as I dont really like doing it...not exactly sure why but I always feel like i'm unprepared (probably because I am) and I dont enjoy trying to figure out lesson plans on the fly...

- I've also been taking 2 hours of spanish class a day for the last 2 weeks. The class isnt exactly what I need, I'd be better off studying on my own, but know that I wont do it...

-I've also been going to a nearby gym 4 days a week and lifting which is great, as the facilities at our pool kinda suck...

-News on the MBA front. I finished my 3rd application to columbia and also got an interview request from HBS!!!!! This is great as they interview almost all the candidates they take, and supposedly only 20% of the people that apply get interviews. My interview is in Madrid on Dec 11th...im a bit nervous as I dont speak very complex English here, and I wanna be able to use my full English capabilities to convince the interviewer why i am...well why I am "the shit"....so if anyone wants to jump on skype and quiz me, that would be dope...


-Each weekday morning i head to the same bar/cafe called Nakayupenda ("love" in Swahili) and have breakfast, croissant with a cafe con leche...I really enjoy this as all the people who work there, are sweet dutch younger people with great outlooks on life. I frequently hang out there and just chat with them, and I have become good friends with a few of them (3 of them attended my thanksgiving bash...). Sweet peeps and they let me make my own cafe every morning which is sweet!

-We had a game in Bilbao which is in Basque territory where they dont speak catalan but they do speak basque, and would rather speak that than spanish. Its a really small and beautiful town thats done an amazing job with blending modern and old school architecture. They have a pretty beautiful Guggenheim museum there, and I liked the building which was created by Frank Ghery, the dude that designed Princeton's new science library...I like the museum in bilbao more to say the least.

-This week I had a friend from High School, buzon, come visit for thanksgiving. We made a pretty sweet as meal. I bought "Pablo the Pavo", at 5.3kilos at a polleria around the corner. I marinated it with spices the day before and then the day of thanksgiving we made stuffing and ish and prayed that my small/shitty ass orno=oven would cook the thing. I also had 10 friends over, some American, some Dutch and my roommate and a few brough some stuff for us to eat and we basically had a huge fest.
Direct quotes: "first time I ever enjoyed thanksgiving food" (crazy but ill take it as a compliment) and "best turkey i've ever had"...I would have had more rave reviews but 4 of our attendees were first time thanksgiving goers. Buzon also made us all go around the table and say thanks which was really nice.....

-As for this weekend. Well this weekend was long and interesting. I pinched a nerve in my leg while lifting. Half my cafe and the top of my left foot lacks a degree of sensitivity and kinda feels like its asleep....because of this I didnt practice a few days this week and my coaches wouldnt let me suit up to play. I was not happy about this, but at the same time maybe the break would be good for me...i wish it was as my foot is about the same. I'm going to try some acupuncture and maybe some chiropractor visits... I also went out with Buzon to a club on friday and yesterday my teammates had a dinner in a nearby town, Sabadell, and we went out till 5am....was fun but hanging out in super packed places and trying to speak spanish with loud ass music going on is difficult...id rather have it less crowded and be able to move around and dance and what not...

-today was nice and relaxing, i woke up LATE...made french toast with Panatone bread...interesting but difficult as the bread is hard to manage, and cut, as it comes in round dome shaped pieces...then I went and met up with the manager from Nakayupenda and we went and watched 007...not the best, but entertaining enough....

basically things have settled down for me and I've got a groove going between the cafe, lifting, class and practice....its not the best groove ever, but a groove, at least for a while, is stabilizing and nice...

dats about it....when you peeps coming to visit me?
I am NOT coming home for xmas as people killing each other in Walmart's scare me and my parents are coming out to Manchester and i'll meet them there and hang out for half a week....

Peace....

"to reach heaven you must first go through hell"

Those awe-inspiring words were delivered to me by an awe-inspiring 9th and 12th grade English Lit teacher Mr. Bud Mayfield (see sarcasm).

But if they do hold true, as he frequently showed us in chosen title after chosen title, regarding the journey that any good protagonist must take before reaching the promised land, I sure hope it works in my favor as well..

Ps. Sorry about the length of this post….

So after the sad departure of Abby I had a few days to work on some bschool apps. As most of you know I’m applying to bschool for the fall of 2009. I’ve been working on my GMATs forever, and while they haven’t gone as well as I hoped I still have a great story and great skills to get me into the school. So firs app up, Harvard. So by this point im probably half way through the essays, in the middle of editing most of them when the motherboard on my computer just dies…..GREAT! I think it had something to do with power conversion, which is BS since lap tops come with built in converters…

So while I had my homeboy Kumar Walia go to my storage unit in the BK and pick up an old lap top of mine I still had to bang out the rest of this application. That saw me sitting in ghetto call center/internet (I don’t wanna say Café cause there was nothing café about them and they didn’t serve any caffeinated drinks..) spots paying at least a euro an hour to use the net. It also saw me in numerous moments of total frustration and aggravation whilst I tried to sum up my being, weaknesses and accomplishments while 10 little kids, with no idea of what personal space is or just being quite, yelling, screaming and kicking me while playing video games all day….didnt these kids have anything better to do? Like go to school????

The internet cafes also closed really early so I couldn’t hit them up after practice, so all work had to be done during the day (which meant waking up early…lame) and I couldn’t do stuff when I’m usually most productive….So with tons of time wasted in the cafes I really didn’t have time to study…for my GMATS. Yes in some sort of weirdly organized way I had allowed myself to be able to take 3 gmat tests before the Harvard application was due (you can only take it once every 31 days, so I had to space them out perfectly). However Barcelona and other Spanish cities unfortunately did not have them on the day that I needed them, either before or on the 15th of October. Thus after finding a cheap flight with easy jet I flew to Lyon for a 2 day trip, basically to take the GMAT. After getting to lyon and spending the better part of one day in an inetnet café, struggling with a French keyboard, which is similar enough to make u think its regular but a few key keys are switched around, like A, M and W I didn’t get to see much of France. The next day all psyched for the test I got to the testing station a bit early, with my proctor not showing up until at least 30 min after I was supposed to start the test. The good news, I would be testing alone, so no annoying outside noises, and with a us keyboard, the bad news, I did worse than I did when I took the test the second time….AWESOME! So not only did I pay all this money to fly out to Lyon, and spend a night in a hotel and pay for the test, and TAXES, YES TAXES, on the test I did worse….Oh on top of all of that after the test was done I was still freaking out cause my last recommender still hadn’t finished, AND I had no where to stay the night…my hotel that I booked was only for 1 night.

So after spending another 2 hours at an internet café, this one was actually a café in France, I waited until my recommender got it done, thanks MIKE! Had me sweat a bit but last minute is the way I like to do things (obviously) …then I spent the rest of my time trying to find a hotel…which turns out in a Lyon there only about 70 hotels….

So what did I do next? Freak out? Nah, went and smoked a habana and chilled on some steps watching French people pre party in the streets….i actually like the idea a lot…wish we could do that in the US, would save us on bar costs for sure as well as the issues with driving places back and forth all the time….just do it in the street outside the bar area then go to the bars….After hanging out in a bar or two at around 1ish I decided to take a walk around town and also a good time to check out and walk into hotels to see if they have any space. After about 2 hours, with a stop at Mcy D’s which I was trying to parlay into a short term spot to stay at (which I guess that late it was only for take out) I wound up going to over 15 hotels all of them being full….so at around 3am I made my way to the bus station, which was of course closed and finally resigned myself to how I was going to be spending the rest of the night…

…since I was tired from the test and walking I couldn’t stay up all night, so I tried the first hour on a concrete bench in a park. The park was kinda shitty as it was all under construction but wasn’t to big and not to much foot traffic so I got a bit of sleep…but concrete is COLD, and doesn’t warm up, and I had or thought I had little bugs biting my ankles making it impossible to sleep!!! So after struggling to get any quality sleep for about 2 hours I walked around till I found a wood bench which kept my body warmth…

Things I learned: find a hotel earlier than a few days before especially in smaller French towns where no one speaks English
2) concrete is cold
3) the cardboard that homeless people use is for this cold
4) sleeping outside in a park in a country that uve been in for 20 hours is NOT FUN
5) the gmat sucks, and I suck at it…as well as all general standardized testing…

So I then got back to Barca and my perfect week ended with being told by UPS that in addition to the 360$ that I needed to pay nitin back for to send my computer over night, which didn’t get here until a week later, I had to pay 200$ in customs fees…what an awesomely expensive shitty back up computer…but its better than the internet spots so I cant complain that much…

…sorry about the gripe session or for lack of a better term “bitch session” but it feels good to get that all out…but back to my earlier quote, I hope that this was my week of “hell” in this case and that “heaven” will be getting into HBS…lets hope, pray, or whatever it is we may do…

Now onto waterpolo…

So since I last reported we’ve had our first 2 actual league games. The first one we won by 1, with me picking up a trash goal as the game winner with less than 2 minutes left. It was great to start our first official game….The second game which was yesterday was a mess. The refs kicked me out, and both our 2 meter men, thus we were left with no real 2 meter defense or offense….Despite being down 3 goals we came back and my teammate scored the game tier with about 20 seconds left….
Our league is kinda like Premiership football where you can have ties, and the winner is not decided by a tournament but rather by accumulative points. Win-3 Tie-1 loss-0. So right now we have 4 points…

Still having some issues with how we are spending our practice time, but I’m hoping that will improve this week….we Play Olot another Barcelona team this weekend, then have a weekend off which I’m going to spend in England visiting my parents…

Just got back from a bar meet up with some Americans that I met trying to find work as a teacher through the Spanish version of Craigslist and got some dinner and watch the barca game…cool to meet some other people in a similar situation as me and see what they were doing and how they were handling it ext….

Hope all is well with everyone in the us, I’m going to be sending out a short update email soon with my schedule on it so if anyone wants to come visit they can feel free to do it around and during my games in Barcelona….

Sorry about the length again.

J$ out…

2 weeks ago....

so wow, I have 5 blog followers, thats freaking nutz! Anywho I'm sorry to all of those that have missed my posts, Its been a while and I'll explain all now and later.

For now I'm going to write 1 post about 2 weeks ago and then write another one about the last week.

So lets see where I left off...ahh yes 2 weeks ago. So Mike "McLovin" Mclean and I had a pretty great time hitting it hard, and making new friends around the city. With the leaving of Mike came something even better (sorry mike), but Abby came and visit for four days!

We had a lot of fun, and despite an early wallet stealing incident (yea so the dude I ride home with everyday basically tells me each time to watch out for my shit) and 10 minutes after Abby gets here and we sit down for dinner her purse is stolen...Khoder (similar to fuck, but have seen it used for 'jesus' as well..)

But after which we had a great time, went and saw some of the cooler things in Barcelona, some I have seen and some I haven’t. Also rented a vespa for the day which was pretty awesome, and I'm trying to figure out how to get a permanent one without breaking the bank, or any laws. Abby also got to see our final match in the Catalunya cup (inter-barcelona cup) that we won. She also got yelled out by some crazy fans on the other team, I guess they werent happy with where she was sitting...

Then had a really sad and tearful goodbye as she left and started her adventure to France.... :(

Polo has gotten better. I see now how they structure the swimsets, and while it wouldn’t be my preferred way of doing it, Im sure by month 7 ill be tired of swimming and enjoy the easy sets. I'm still a bit frustrated though because we dont do much strategic work or even controlled scrimmages, which is how i'm used to learning. It gets even more difficult when our coach tells us to do something during a game that we havent before practiced, not the best way to go about things, but i'm sure it'll get better soon...I hope...


anyways thats the "q and d" or Quick and Dirty for now, i'll finish the rest of my tale tomorrow, for now its bed time.....