Summertime

Last night those in Barcelona celebrated the official beginning of the summer with La fiesta de San Juan, when everyone comes out on the streets and lights firecrackers. So at Barceloneta, Barcelona's (in)famous beach stretch, were 3 generations of IESE students - two from class of 2007, a dozen from 2008 and representing class of 2009 was one brave soul.

It turned out to be almost like a picnic, people bringing food, blankets, cava & wine flowing freely, with a free spectacle (the fireworks!). It's almost exactly one year ago that we were right there, meeting everyone for the very first time, all starry eyed, not knowing what lay before us. Yesterday, with the exception of knowing people around us, the rest was pretty much the same. I can't believe it's been ONE WHOLE YEAR already. Pics have been clicked, will post them as soon as someone emails them around.

The job front has been fairly tranquilo so far. I've been told that on the coming friday we have the monthly (or is it quarterly?) Office Day where everyone from the Madrid office comes over to the Barcelona office (or vice versa) to meet and talk about projects, evaluations, presentations and some general banter. Another occasion to test my Spanish, which I must admit, atleast feels like it's getting better.

First Day

I doubt if the title requires any explanation - I officially inaugurated my summer internship today... and boy, what a day! I knew that some of the people at the firm spoke spanish so I was ready for just that - some spanish. What I didnt expect was to spend the last 11 hours talking to everyone single person - even the non-spaniards - in spanish.

Alright, it's not a fair complaint. I know I'm gonna look back at this with a smile, but for the moment though, I yet have to come to terms with my present situation.

But let's go to the bright side - the people were nice. I've been placed on a business strategy / market launch project(which I exactly what I wanted). I'll be based out of Barcelona and might have to occasionally fly to the client location. There's free food and drinks in the cafeteria.

I have a feeling this might go well. Fingers crossed!

Brief interlude...

... between the reality of classes, cases and exams and the reality of having a job. This week has been perfect - warm weather, no school, not having to get up early, daily dinners and drinks - except that it's also been the week of saying good-byes to people you've become friends with over the past year, even though it's for a maximum of 6 months (esp. for folks going on exchange). Wonder how hard it'll be saying good-byes when we finish the MBA!

But life moves on. My immediate concerns for the moment are buying (another) suit for the internship, wondering what it'll be like to work after so long, and how I'll fare on my final exams, not necessarily in that order.

For now, it's time to convince Melissa there's no way they're letting her board her flight with that much luggage, then drinks with some folks at L'Illa, followed by dinner and a long night's sleep. This rocks!

Ya esta, part 1

I haven't had time to update my blog since the mid-terms, and there's a very good reason for that. Three good reasons, really, viz. Nike, Telefonica and AT&T. We finally finished all the reports in time (much to everyone's surprise) and had the respective presentations over the last week.

AT&T (for Corporate Finance) went pretty well considering it was a merger negotiation, and although we did expect to run into trouble, both our team and the other behaved like adults, so no complaints. Call me biased but I feel ours was by far the best presentation in the class!

Nike (for Operations Strategy) was actually quite fun, with the EMEA Operations Director sitting with us in the classroom as team presented their analysis and recommendations for the project, and then rounded everything off by giving us some very good insights and tips from his experience. He was even nice enough to bring Nike caps for everyone (prompting "so this is what you do with unsold inventory" from some bright spark in class). Needless to say pictures were clicked with the entire class looking like a big advertisement for Nike. While I don't have the class pics yet, here's some of us showing off our gifts -



Finally, Telefonica (for Competitive Strategy) went well considering I wasn't picked to present the project - it was a lucky draw so only the really "lucky" ones got to present.

That's it... that was the last lecture and report for the whole of the 1st year. I can't believe 1 whole year has passed already, and come Tuesday - after 2 days of exams might I add, people will go off on their summer internships and then on exchange, so I'm not going to see some of my closest friends well until January next year... it sucks!

One last thing before I go - a couple of pictures of my section (A) and my team (A1) that we took some time back. Melissa, Victor, Joris, Mario - I'm gonna miss you guys! Go kick some ass and see you in Jan 08!