Eccheccazzo! (italians rule at columbia)

So far the Italian community of Columbia has proven to be super cool. Most of them are McKinsey sponsored people, which makes me re-think my opinion about the company's culture. They are really nice, smart and party-lovers. Good mix isn't it? I share with some of them some classes and team-projects and I'm really going along very well with them.
Last week we met at a very cool party at guesthouse, one of these top clubs in NY where people line out for hours before giving up and going somewhere else. I don't like to queue for clubs and i went there just because of some contacts of Serena. We were guests of someone table and I faced a continuous flow of bottles of alchool that threw me on the ground in few hours.. I was very wasted but still conscious! Yesterday Valerio invited me to join him and others to the French Tuesday. This is a be-weekly recurring event in NY which takes place every time in a different club. Apparently these french are trying to keep the event for members only (valerio, who is a member, told me that to be elected you have to be invited by other members and the submit your cv and other stuff... bah!). The invite said "Dress code: business chic". I've been through business casual, business smart, business formal... business chic found me a bit unprepared at 8pm... 30 minutes before the appointment. Ok.. let's go for the suit.
Before going to the party we met some people at Serena and Medea's place. They have a fabulous flat on the 72th. I love wooden flor,red briks and pop-art on the walls! Other people joined the warm-up at the flat. Ops.. what i see... jeans and sneakers. Mmm.. puzzled face (mine and valerio's). Ok let's try to go to this french party. The guy at the entrance was french obviously.. with that typical o-ring lips expression... So we started to enter.. crossing the fingers for the guy in jeans. Ladies first! The guy, keeping the eyesight to the height of the waist kept repeting for each of us entering..
Enjoy..
Enjoy..
Enjoy..
Enjoy..
Enjoy..
NO.
Fuck! He stopped the guy with Jeans. So.. REWIND! Everybody out. Ok we cannot leave one guy out alone.. let's go somewhere else together. We went for dinner and I have to say that to be a plan B was really nice. We laughed so much! Here is Valerio trying to show how big was the diamond on the ring of a columbia student recently get engaged (but Serena immediately pointed out that size doesn't matter, it's the purity that counts).

One thing I need to mention about the recruiting environment here. There are a lot of presentation and events by banks and consulting companies. More than in IESE. Every day there is a schedule of 6 presentations at least. Impossible to attend all of them unless you have the gift of ubiquity. However, the funny thing is that all the students dress up in super business formal attire. Nice suits, shining black shoes, cufflinks, leather bags. Wow.. very serious stuff is going on here. But then you go there and what happens during the presentation? They offer you pizza and beers! But not analcholic beers. Real beers! And very greasy pizza! So you are there with a bunch of first years eating pizza and licking sticky fingers (every body licks his/her own)! Is it serious? In IESE this would never happen!