Andorra

This post should be full of photos but actually it isn't. "But why?" you are probably thinking. The reason is simply that i had no camera with me and i haven't receivet yet the photos from the ones who had it.
The trip to andorra was amazing. Very cool resort, with a lot of slopes and ski-lifts, great snow conditions, sun the first day and snowy the second, cool group of friends. The mix among skiers and snowboarders was good, i think around 65/35. There are other cool ratios about the ski trip. In fact the usual ratio of 80/20 in terms of men/girls which affects the IESE environment has fluctuated a lot during the trip. And here comes in your mind the second big "but why?" of this post. I will explain:

- overall trip ratio: 70/30. Don't be fooled and overexcited by this 70 percent improvement in girls' population because actually what happened is that all the new entrances were iese students' partners. So they have to be considered a sort of bad debt, which reports the net ratio to the usual 80/20.

- Jacuzzi time ratio: 100/0. I don't blame girls to have not come to join 10 men in a jacuzzi where the bubbles didn't allow to see what was going on under there.

- Vintage disco club ratio. When we went into the club it was quite early for the spanish time so there were only IESE students. Beginning ratio: 80/20 (net value, if u don't understand go back to first bullet). But around 12 many locals entered the club and the ratio changed drastically... to 95/05. Exaclty, a crew of young andorrian men filled the existing empty spaces among the iese bodies. If you don't know how an andorrian young man looks like just take a Nehandertal men and dress it with a pair of nike and meke him dance a rain-dance.

So.. now that you know all the ratios of a Business School you are ready to sustain an exam on Life Accounting.

Always those germans...

Between XVIII and XIX century a German mathematician called Carl Gauss brought to life the gaussian distribution and her daughter.. the gaussian curve. Since then, several generations of MBA students have been threatened by the gaussian curve. This curve is subtle.. she can catch you in every moment and when it happens there is nothing you can do. You are doomed. You can study like hell for days, but if she decides its your turn, you are fucked up, man! During the day the curve lays under the sun on an X assis. She just change her position on the to follow the sun and from time to time she stretches a bit.
Today we had two exams: operatioanl finance and managerial accounting. The first one was considered easy by the most (los de mas). Probably the curve will be very short and concentrated on the top of the X assis. On the contrary, managerial accounting was a real pain in the ass and i'm sure the curve will be stretched on the low side of the X.

Now the funny thing: tomorrow we all go to the ski trip in Andorra, and the curve won't follow us! Yessssss!

Dogs

Tonight i was driving home after a nice dinner with some friends, the triffic light was red and I was just watching at people crossing the street. Among them, a japanese guy with a beautiful labrador. When he reached the other side of the road his dog saw another one just a few meters on the sidewalk. And he started pulling and barking to the other dog. "wooof wooof woooof" The other dog, a smaller one but very angry probably because its dog-wife always pretends to have headache, started barking even lauder and the two owners of the dogs were very in trouble in holding the two animals.

You see. Dogs are far in front of us, they are beyond. I'm here in spain since 6 months and i'm still making fun of myself with a ridicolous italian-english and trying to survive in every spanish class. I don't understand the difference between POR Y PARA and the pronunciation of Awesome,Awful and Asshole. These dogs don't even know each other before, they haven't take any language course. Nonetheless they can meet on a saturday night and start saying "Hey you bastard (in their world this is not offensive), you have pissed on my tree!" and the other probably replied "Lick my ass dude!" (this also is quite common practice in the dog world, so we are still in a gentlemen speech). This is amazing. This is something we should think about. And learn. So... lick my ass dude. Good night.

by the way.. "woof woof" in italian is "bau bau".

Operational Finance... i will miss you

Today was our last class of Operational Finance. The subject itself was not very interesting except for the first 3 lessons. From then on it was quite repetitive. Nevertheless the professor is amazing. He is at the same time serious and very funny. He is a tall german guy with an undefinite age (he can be 20 or 50.. who knows). Actually he is not the guy in the photo. The photos is just taken among the winners of an international photo award. Today was just a review session before the final exam and there was room for a lot of fun, COW (comment of the week) included. The professor answered some questions...

Q: "Do we have to make assumptions during the exam?"
A: "You have to read, not assume"

Q: "When we evaluate deferred taxes, do we have to consider different depreciation methods?"
A: "I haven't understood depreciation in my whole life.. I'm not going to ask you about different depreciation methods"

Just to mention this COW which made me laugh for 10 minutes
Professor: "To reduce the patients' queue we should have Doctors working from 8am instead of 9"
Robain: "Yeah but patients will start coming at 7!"
Vlad: "They are SICK!.. man"

Boston Callin'

Well.. it's quite a bit since my last update. Ok i'm sure you haven't spent sleepless nights waiting for this but let me tell you what happened. On friday me and Matteo

went to Milan

because we both have second round interviews with BCG. The interviews were scheduled for monday and I leveraged the free flight tikets to visit my family and my friends. Among them no particular news. A new couple has formed in the last months

while the old, ever blazin' (and maybe unconventional) ones still resist to time passing by...
. We went out for a good Italian pizza and then in a club but it was hard to convince my friend that 3,30 is the time when the night starts and not its ending. I told you bacelona is going to change me! On monday I got the interviews. The interviews were scheduled for 9 in the morning but to be sure to be on time i was out of the office at 8,15. In 45 minutes I got almost frozen and overexcited by the 3 coffees already assimilated (bars are your best friends when there is such a cold outside). Then i got the two case interviews: 1) A supermarket chain buys another. Analyze the synergies that might arise from this acquisition. 2) Some data about Fanta and SanPellegrino sales in Italy put on paper by the interviewer, I was asked to give an analysis of the market and margins and suggest how the latest can improve its market share.
I thought i did not so bad and indeed on Tuesday i got an offer.
Muy Bieeeeeeeen!
And the second good news is tha Matteo got an offer as well!
Muuuuuy Muy Bieeeeeeeeeeen!

PROS
- lot of money
- high value of the experience in terms of "name on the CV"
- high value of the experience in terms of learning and personal growth
- i don't have to spend so much time in looking for an internship stealing time from studying

CONS
- another job in Milan, i would have preferred an exotic experience (like peeling chickens in papua new guinea)
- i will be sodomized by 10 weeks working days and nights forgettin about the concept of "sleeping", "eating" and "weekends".

Vale, venga! It's time to go to bed, i'm really tired today.

Un abrazo.

* Disclaimer: People, names, photos and prentended love relationships might not correspond to reality.

Technical difficulties

Sometimes to comunicate in 3 different lenguages becomes tricky...
Kathi writes:
tomorrow we´re going to italy, to his place at the comer lake
Kathi writes:
lago di coma
George writes:
como
Kathi writes:
nada

This post is boaring . Don't read it.

This week started with a big change in our apartment. Alex is gone.. alex is living with his girlfriend now, in a small town very close to barcelona. Now our 4th flatmate is Pierre, a French guy, very smart. If you want to read about pro and cons of this change you can read a good report on Noelle's blog. This week there is a little vein of sadness in the air. People are very concerned by the classe of this term. Actually is true that life is much more hard now than in the last term. Ok we are much more skilled in approaching cases (well yesterday i was arake until 2am to finish but it's still acceptable) but we have 3 quantitative courses higly paced. So somebody is still in the mood of thinking "i'm gonna fail the MBA" and sadness is in the air. Well.. not for me. I'm facing problems too with some subjects but i'm sure that the Gaussian Curve will help us all in this sense! Another friend of mine is sad because he has just ended up a 12-year relationship with his girlfriend. I was trying to say something to make him feel better but i wasn't able to carry any relationship over 1 year in my life.. I'm not the best consultant about this. If anybody has some good idea... suggestion are well accepted. Ok.. this post is quite boring and I realized that i have nothing special to say.. so let's change the original title and close here. Managerial accounting is going to start in a few minutes!