This afternoon (technically yesterday as it is already past midnight), IESE High Tech club organized a talk session with the founder of Loquo.com Ubaldo Huerta. It was one of the best sessions I ever went to. He had this fantastic story to share with us, how he left his high paying job in Silicon Valley and moved with his savings to Barcelona to start a new life. After that, the idea of Loquo.com was born. Similar to other great examples like how Microsoft and Google started, the work of Loquo.com basically started in his apartment. Until sometime back, he was actually hosting it from his apartment. He told us about how his wife and most of his friends thought he was following a stupid idea and how he sometimes wondered if they were right. He warned us that starting our own company is basically deciding to be our own slave. Although you are not working for anyone, you can't afford to go for a day in a beach because you feel the inward pressure from the things in the "to-do" list you haven't completed yet. He also told us about the tough negotiation phase when he was approached by Ebay for the acquisition of the company. I could relate his experience of how as a seller, he had to start of with a maximum and then lower it down to some practice sessions in our negotiation class. A great success story indeed!

I was at times comparing his story to mine. I also have this site vanasthali.org which I, along with my friends from my high school, started as a networking site for alumni of our high school. This site was born as a part of my senior project of my undergraduate program. And it flourished and had more than 1500 members. Last time I was in Nepal, I met 4 smart students from a top engineering school in Nepal and had them work for this project. I covered all the development cost. After few months of work, it was live. It was hosted by this company called supplehost.com. Since the last few months, the site has been down, I have not been able to contact the people from SuppleHost via phone or email. I have a feeling they went out of business. And along this, I have learnt an important lesson the hard way. I did not have the latest backup of the site before it went down. In fact, I think I only had a backup copy just when I started hosting with them. I will wait for few more weeks and start all over again with whatever data I have. My high school friends have contacted me saying they are willing to host the site, so hosting would not be a problem and it would be in safe hands as being alumni, they would understand the value of keeping the site live and kicking.

This weekend was a party weekend. As much as I wanted to study for my Spanish exam, the dinners were too fun to miss. First one was the one at my only Finnish friend Juha's place. His girlfriend Mari cooked wonderful Finnish food. Mari spent at least 3 hours to prepare the wonderful food. We were really lucky. I was always asking for "mas" food. Before we left, we made sure we sang "kiiiiiiitos Mari". "Kiiiiiitos" means "Thank you" in Finnish. Here is the photo.
From the left, Madhur, Carol, Juha, Mari, Anosha, myself and Noshaba at Juha's place. My wife took the photo, so she is not there.

Then on Saturday we had a Japanese dinner at Dom and Atsushi's place. Dom, Ats and Kyoko had prepared at least 15 items, sushis, teriyaki and what not. Ats and Dom were in kitchen most of the time to make sure there was enough varieties of food on the table. To add to that, Satoshi brought some "saki" to make the perfect combination. I thought Saki had a high percentage of alcohol, only then I realized that it had "mas o menos" same percentage of alcohol as in wine. Later on we sang songs from different countries. I sang this Nepali song called "aama ra babu le rojeko" which everyone knows that it is the only song I know how to sing.
Japanese dinner: Thank you Dom, Atsushi and Kyoko!

And yesterday was my birthday. My wife gave me a pleasant surprise. Now I am also eligible to become a member of "golden club" in IESE. I will be playing bingos.....yeahhhhh!!!!

Today, we took a group photo of MBA 2007 Section A today. The main photograher was in the centre but Misha who took the picture with my camera couldn't be in the center to take the picture. Here is the corner view:

Thanks god, its Friday. Second semester is really taking its toll. I haven't been blogging lately. It has been exactly a week since I last wrote something. I don't really have any excuse.

I seem to be preparing better for my classes this semester. There were times when I didn't even use to read a case last semester. This semester I have at least been able to read the cases if not analyze them before the classes. This helps in not getting lost during the entire class. I have been loving Managerial Accounting the best. More than the subject, it is the Professor who is really really amazing. He is confident, articulate and has a very good ability to explain something.

Now that my internship search is over, I am thinking of getting active in different clubs. Theater Club is the one I think I will be joining soon. I also like to start my own Environment Club. I am hoping to start my fresh campaign in getting some initial core members next week.

I am also enjoying reading Financial Times these days. (We all get a "free" copy of Financial Times at IESE.) In the first semester, except for the political news, I didn't use to understand much of the core Finance news. My friends now ask me why I am reading Financial Times as I already have a banking internship. I tell them that I just enjoy reading it. I guess its always easy to enjoy doing something when you are not doing with a direct target/result in mind.

I have also joined a health club this time. Its 15 minutes walk from my house. These was a waiver of the "joining fee" of about 65 Euros if we signed up during January. It was a sweet deal and I didn't waste any time in taking advantage of the offer. I mostly enjoy swimming. It helps me energize after a long day of class.