When I was in the first year, I was told that 2nd year would be much more relaxed and a lot less work. For me, it has turned out to be opposite. May be because I am doing many of the things of my own choice (all the subjects are electives in the second year) rather than having to do some of the things that I was not "really" interested in ( all the subjects are pre-determined by the MBA committee in the first year).

Being in second year perhaps means more responsibility with the student clubs as well. I am leading the "Environmental Group" of the Responsible Business Club and the Sponsors team of the "Doing Good Doing Well" Conference of 2007 and thats keeping me busy. As part of the Environmental group, Javier and I made a video on how to encourage students at IESE to be environmentally friendly and showed it to the first years with the messages like
1) crush the plastic bottle before you throw them
2) Turn the lights off when you leave a room
3) Turn the projector off when nobody is using it
4) Use printers that can print double sides automatically
5) Print PowerPoint and PDF files in multiple slides
I now have to show it to 2nd years this week.

Halloween Party:
Last week, we celebrated Halloween at the residence of "three witches" as they liked to be called themselves for that night. Seeing all the friends with different masks and dresses was cool. The best and the most surprising moment came when Anosha and Gaurav unmasked themselves at midnight. We were all wrongly guessing who those 2 people could be with those scary masks. It was a SHOCK when we realized it was our lovely amiga Anosha. Some photos from the night:

Juha de Finlandia y myself

Marc, Mark and Komal

Juan Ma with his Cuban cigar trying to get the attention of the pretty 2nd years who are on exchange to IESE from LBS, Cornell and Kellogg respectively:)

Climbing Pic D'Estats:

Last weekend, Adventure Club organized a trip to climb Pic d'Estats, the highest mountain in Catalunya region. We were 15 altogether. We left Barcelona on Saturday at around 2 in the afternoon and reached the "refuge" at around 6:30 by car where we stayed overnight. I had rented a car for the team, which meant more practice of my manual car driving.

On Sunday, we started our trip. The trip, I would say, was not easy. At one point, the route was just very steep and most of us were taking a lot of breaks in between. I myself thought of "giving up" if it was not for the continuous support of first year's Maite.

The path(marked by red) of the hike on the uphill part was the tough one. We then had to circle this mountain from the behind to get to the peak.

You forget all the pain and the hardship once you reach the top, right? On the top of Pic d'Estats (Height: 3143 m)

On the way back, having fun with some snow that was left on the top

Who says you cannot read Financial Times at more than 3000 m? :)

Career Forum:

Oct 23 and 24 were Career Forum days at IESE. I was pleasantly surprised to see my own photo in one of the posters. I didn't waste any time taking a photo with my own photo.

Who is it in the background?

Mediterranean Coastal drive in Spain and France :

On the long weekend starting from Oct 12th, Srijana and I went on a Mediterranean coastal drive of Spain and France. It was the first time I had rented a car in Spain. On the day we left, the drive along Costa Brava was beautiful. However, at times, the beautiful scenery was combined with curvy road, which was not helpful to Srijana's proneness to motion sickness. We didn't realize we had to pay so much road toll on the way. I used eaycar.com to do the rental. With no gimmicks, unlimited mileage, basic insurance coverage and good rates, I was happy with the rental.

A beautiful scene along the Costa Brava

A beautiful town along the coastal line in France

Srijana with some grape vines in the backgroud in France

Dashain festival in Barcelona:

Unlike last year, where we didn't even have the red powder to make the tika, this time we celebrated Dashain relatively better. I got the tika from Mukti dai of the "Mukti and Survival" band at Dashain celebration organized at Kathmandu restaurant. Mukti dai has been living in Spain for the last few years in Barcelona. Many of the Nepali we met during the party had Spanish 'significant others". I thought for a second, they applied the lesson I was told in one of my first Spanish classes in Barcelona "If you like to learn Spanish faster, find a Spanish girlfriend/boyfriend".

Received tika from Mukti dai, a popular singer from Nepal

A cultural mix: Spanish "significant others" of some Nepali living in Spain

Anil, Srijana and myself celebrating Dashian at home! Dashain is one of the big festivals of Hindus

Zurich trip (Oct 6, 2006):

As part of the European Entrepreneurship Accelerator course I am taking along with 2 other IESE students and 2 INSEAD students, we flew to Zurich to meet the CEO of Thommen Medical which is the highly growing company we are assigned to.

Switzerland is indeed very beautiful, as I have seen in many Bollywood movies. I took one quick photo from the inside of our car.

After the meeting, we were so hungry (we didn't have any lunch till 4 in the afternoon), we stopped by a restaurant to have some food )

# posted by IESE MBA 2007 @ 12:29 PM