The more you try to plan your life, the more it seems to rebel. Much like a bratty child that hates being told what to do (an affliction I still seem to have), life hardly follows your elaborate plans. I have gotten to a point where I let the cruel mistress “fate” take her swing, and deal accordingly. 

The idea of fate has always bothered me. Not being able to control my own destiny makes me uncomfortable. With age, I have realized that fate is not based on the decisions YOU make, but rather on the infinite number of factors you have zero control over. The control you have is on how you react to these situations. Alas, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that sometimes this “lack of complete control” of one’s own situation is sometimes positive. Rarely do we understand all of the consequences of our actions, nor can we foresee what actions would be ideal given future circumstances. 

I believe I ended up at Stern as a result of some deity-based intervention. I had my heart set on Kellogg, as I wanted to pursue a career in marketing, and there is no better program in the country for said vocation. After months of going through marketing presentations and preparation, I soon realized I didn’t want to be in that field, instead realizing that finance was my calling. Always being fascinated by the financial sector, I couldn’t believe the revelation did not come sooner. No doubt, the road ahead is a long and arduous one, but I feel happy with where I am going. I ended up at a school much better suited for my new career path, and find myself falling in love with a city I thought I previously understood. 

I plan to spend this summer in Kuala Lumpur, interning at Goldman Sachs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if life threw another curveball at me. But this time, I’ll be ready, staying back on the ball, waiting to crush it. 

I have been terrible at keeping up to date with this blog. So many times I have been walking home and had a thought about something or the other, only to have it slip away as I climb four flights of stairs to my shoebox apartment. I know that more than anything, this blog serves as a way to vent, and I need to keep it updated, if for nothing less than my own sanity.

School so far has been incredible. Upon arriving, I thought I understood what business school was all about. I soon found that I was wrong. Incredibly wrong.

I expected everyone to be, in a word, boring. Not on an intellectual level, but on a social level. Being only a few years removed from undergrad, and with most of my friends just recently finishing undergrad as well, I yearned for that level of emotional freedom. No work to worry about, just play. I thought that my new colleagues would be concerned with the suit/tie portion of school, and not the jeans and tshirt part. Boy was I wrong.

I thought I knew what I wanted to do. Consulting seemed like the perfect gig. Then CPG marketing seemed cool. Then sports marketing. Then entertainment marketing. Then internal strategy for tech companies. Looking back on it, it was a pain to go through all those fields to realize they weren’t for me. But in my journey, I found something that really excites me and have begun the process of pursuing it.

I thought I was never going to get to travel again. Wrong again. I am visiting some companies in January in Malaysia with Jack, and plan to travel through some combination of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia afterward. I am going to Japan with 100 other MBA students for spring break. And if I am lucky, I will be studying for two weeks in China after spring semester. From minimal exposure to the pacific rim to potentially working there over the summer. Needless to say I am excited. 

I thought I knew how amazing New York was. Nope. It is truly something you don’t appreciate until you live there. The food, the people (or more accurately, the crazies), the culture, the stores. Oh, and the food. No, it’s not perfect. And I like it that way.

I am looking forward to the next few months. I will do my best to update in more detail about the city and my life within it soon. If for no other reason than to help maintain my sanity. Because that is not easy to do around here.

The date was fast approaching. What had seemed like an eternity away was now just around the corner. I remember receiving the acceptance email from Stern like it was yesterday. Now, several months and many goodbyes later, it was finally time to start packing. I started the slow process of figuring out what to bring with me and what to leave behind. Fitting everything into an 8 square foot box proved to be a challenge, but I got through it pretty well.

The problem came when I was ready to close the box. I kept getting the feeling I was leaving something behind, but I could not figure out what that was. I had gone through my mental list 100 times over, but couldn’t figure it out. And then I realized, it wasn’t that I was missing something. I was hesitant to close the box because it would make my move official. I felt as if I was in a movie, with violins playing in the background as I closed the box.

I had never been so excited and sad at the same time. This was an opportunity to live in a city I have wanted to live in since I was young. An opportunity to attend a great school and meet some new people. But at the same time, I felt as though I was leaving something behind. In the book of my life, a chapter was ending, a chapter I enjoyed very much and wish I could reread.

I realized that I was looking too much at what I was leaving, and not enough at what I was going towards. I went through the same process when I graduated high school and went to college. I felt the same way when I graduated college and moved closer to home. I would not trade the outcomes of either of those situations for anything. I suspect I will say the same thing about my New York experience in a few years. In fact, I am sure of it. This will be one of the great adventures of my life. A chapter that I will love to reread over and over again. It’s time to start reading this new chapter, instead of flipping back to the previous chapter.

To call me an Apple fan-boy may be a bit of an understatement. My first computer was a Macintosh and I still have fond memories of searching for Carmen Sandiego (who I believe is second to only Jessica Rabbit in cartoon hotness) and deciding whether to caulk the wagon or ford the river (ferries were for farries). I loved my Macintosh and was utterly heartbroken when my family switched to Windows. For decades I toiled with Bill Gates broken excuse for an operating system, taking solice in the fact that I could now play games like Duke Nukem and Sim City.

Eventually, I made my way back to Apple. I now own a Macbook, iPod, Time Capsule, and iPhone. I have since convinced my dad to buy a Macbook Pro and my mom is on her second iMac. Our dog would be Apple is it was possible. Yet, when the new iPhone came out, I did not preorder one.

I want to be perfectly clear that the new iPhone is an amazing phone. It is just no longer the ONLY amazing phone as it has been in the past. A lot of people questioned Steve Jobs when he announced an Apple phone. I was not one of them. I payed a grotesque amount for the first generation, but believed it to be worth every penny. There was nothing out on the market that came close. Much like switching operating systems, however, I hated giving up Verizon for AT&T. I currently have an iPhone 3G, which means I have been on AT&T for close to 3 years. There is no comparison  between the networks. The iPhone was so far ahead of other phones I had no choice. Steve Job’s arrogance has finally pushed me to the dark side.

Jobs is a brilliant man, but humble is not a word that I would use to describe him. He took the concept of the original iPhone to Verizon first, and they were not interested in signing an exclusive agreement (Jobs essentially asked them to share huge revenue streams with Apple, something that had never been done before and seemed like a poor move given that Apple had never sold a phone before). It still seems Jobs hasn’t forgotten being spurned by Verizon and he is making his fan base suffer. He believes his phone is so amazing that people wouldn’t dare switch for the sake of reliable service. And this is where he lost me.

As of July 15^th, I will be a proud owner of an Android device. I understand that it will be a transition, but I have realized that my phone is a PHONE first and a toy second. The android based phones have not quite caught up to the iPhone, but they are pretty damn close. Here are 5 reasons, besides Verizon, why this fanboy switched allegiances:

1.     Better integration with Google products. This seems simple, but using google based products on android phones is much smoother. Add in my new found obsession with google voice, and it will be a welcome switch.

2.     Open software with no developer limitations- I guarantee more developers will begin to forsake Apple’s restrictive parameters for the open world of Android.

3.     Screen Size- Yes it matters. The screen may not be as sharp on the Droid X, but it sure is easier to look at.

4.     Mobile hotspot- Power up to eight (8!) wireless devices from my phone? Yes please. And once the device is rooted (cracked), this will become free!

5.     Android only apps/interface- I love the iOS interface. But Droid has some things that are pretty neat too. Swype will change the way we text/type on a touch phone. Speech to text is key for texting while driving. Google Navigation (for free) is amazing. And these are just a few interesting ones.

Don’t get me wrong. I am still an Apple fanboy. But the dark side has done just enough to convince me to see what not owning an iPhone is like. And I don’t mind it one bit.

hah:

One of my lifelong goals in life has been to write an autobiography (or have someone like Gregory David Roberts or Tim O’Brien ghostwrite for me). Sometimes when I think back on the experiences of my life, it occurs to me that many of my stories seem exaggerated or improbable. Perhaps when I was telling the story the first time, I fabricated a small detail to enhance the effect, and that detail became part of the tale. As time went on, it was hard to differentiate what was real and what I added for effect. Years later, I can still paint the picture in my mind with broad strokes, but the details I have a hard time deciphering.

(Side Note: My ADHD is pulling my attention at this point. As much as I want to go on a tangent about how this type of story evolution was exactly how all modern “holy texts” were derived, I will stay focused on the topic at hand)

Even if I strip out all of the added details and exaggerations, I am left with a life story that is, in my biased opinion, quite remarkable. I have visited 19 countries, lived in Pakistan, Costa Rica, Italy, Spain, Canada, India, and France for periods of two months or more. I have ridden an ATV up a mountainside to the base of Bran Castle, home of Vlad the Impaler (ie Dracula), in Romania. I have parasailed in the Italian countryside. I have skied the Swiss Alps. I have gone “sandboarding” in the dunes of Dubai. I have hiked Mount Chirripo and seen the Pacific and Atlantic oceans standing from the same point. And yet, after all of my so-called adventures, I find myself searching for a bigger and badder adventure. The next chapter in my book.

I think this is why I find the prospect of starting school in the fall so utterly terrifying. For those of you who don’t know, a typical MBA program goes something like this: start school, finish first year, summer internship, second year, and boom. Start your job. 60-hour weeks, limited free time. Granted, you will get two weeks off a year, but chances are it will be used to visit family, or if you are really crazy, head down to Miami or the Bahamas. No more chances to backpack across South America. No more opportunities to travel the Orient. Instead of writing the next chapters in my life, I will simply be reading them. Job. Wife. Kids. Grandkids. Sitting on my front porch wondering where the last 50 years went.

Those of you who know me well know that if I could do anything in my life, I would travel. We have so little time on this planet, and there is so much to see and do, I think it is incredibly stupid to spend the prime years of our lives behind desks. I truly believe that we are brainwashed into believing that if we don’t work, we are not “doing something.” To me, work is a means to an end. I work to survive. I don’t work because I enjoy it. I never will. I will be happier in some jobs than others, but I will never be completely satisfied until I get to start writing the next chapter in my book.

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.  ~Lao Tzu

So its been a few weeks since the Healthcare bill passed and I still don’t know how I feel about it. Most of you know that I am a pretty liberal person, but something doesn’t sit right with me.

Leaving all indigestion jokes aside, it bothers me that in the long term someone will have to subsidize any fat ass that doesn’t care enough about their own bodies to avoid this filth. I find it nauseating that any human would even think of putting this monstrosity into their bodies. Is it cruel for me to not care if these idiots have health care or not? Is it fair to those of use who eat our fruits and veggies everyday? I think this sandwich should count as a preexisting condition and companies should be allowed to discriminate against poor eaters the way they do against smokers or drug users. Just because their vice is accepted by society, gluttons should not be given a free pass. Eat what you want, just don’t expect the rest of us to pay for your triple bypass a few years down the line.

Nerdy photo of the day

brewinknights:

I used to work with an older man, about 8 years older to be exact, who never finished high school.  At times he struggled to write sentences, or even sign his own name. So it made sense for him to work in an industry where he never had to sit behind a desk punching at a keyboard, or even bear the weight of a pen.  School never challenged him the way he wanted to be challenged, so he said, and he grew content of living in a fantasy filled room of the home of his grandparents. One day they told him to get a job, so he went to the one place zombies existed, the movie theater and got a job cleaning popcorn off the stained carpet and hauling out the trash 18 hours a week. I was his boss, one who had gone through high school and then on to college. Through years on struggle I had earned my degree and he knew of it.

One slow day at work, he came up to me, shifting the broom from one hand to the other and asked what seemed to have been bothering him for his whole 6 hour shift.

“What did you get your degree in?”

“Business.”

“How much you think that degree is worth?”

“Let’s just say if I was paid for all the time I put into it, I wouldn’t have to worry about rent or bills for quite awhile.”

“So you have that nice plaque holding your degree on your wall when you go to sleep one night, and the next morning you wake up to find zombies have taken over and killed everyone and everything you have ever loved. You and you’re degree are the sole survivors of the world, how much would your degree be worth then?”

I had never thought of that beautiful piece of paper that way, but it seemed he had for numerous years, and it occurred to me that’s the way educational institutions never challenged him. The rest of the day went by and we didn’t say much to each other than work related matters until the end of our shift. Perhaps he felt like he insulted me, or perhaps he felt he brought me down to a level playing field. As we both made our way out and were saying our goodbyes he turned and dropped one last bit of knowledge on me.

“If they ever had a degree in weaponry, like medieval times stuff, I might go back to school. I’d probably even get masters in it. Just in case, you know.”

After that day he wasn’t just another usher welcoming the guests and cleaning the floors. In my eyes, he was a scholar prepared to take on the end of the world.

Two weeks from my favorite festival of the year! After wavering on whether I could go or not, I am officially in countdown mode for the greatest 3 days of the year. This may or may not be my last Coachella for a while, so I plan to take advantage of it.

This year more than any, I plan on relying on other people’s opinion on acts to see. I have been trying to listen and find new acts, but my iTunes always ends back on Empire State of Mind :)

So who do YOU want to see?

My top 5 as of now are (in no particular order): Them Crooked Vultures, Atoms for Peace, Hova, Guetta, and Deadmau5.