DONE!!!

My last exam (Financial History) was Friday, and went well. We all went for drinks at the Bear after, and had a swell time. Leaving the exam schools for the last time was a bit weird... the exam went fine, and we went out the Merton street gate (pictured below) instead of the front door, another Oxford tradition. Juergen and I were discussing how much our test taking abilities have progressed since the first exams in Michaelmas: now we have every minute of the exam planned out. For example, when I went in yesterday, I had 2 hours to write 3 essays on 3 of 7 options, and a minute by minute plan of how to get that done. The plan was as follows:

:00 to :15 - regurgitate all notes, without even LOOKING at the questions. Just get them all out where I can refer to them. In my one-track mind, once the "writing" track starts, the "remembering" track gets shut down. 8 weeks worth of Financial History notes actually look a lot like the board below. It's also creepy to see how much better I am at memorising that stuff now. 4 or 5 times through and I've got it all committed to memory. That was certainly NOT the case back in the fall.

the regurgitated notes basically look like this

0:15 to 0:25 - write first essay outline... outlines are KEY to to writing essays easily. I leaned that the hard way at Oxford.

0:25 to 0:45 - write first essay... it's amazing how I can write and think about other things at the same time, and how I can put sentences together on the fly now.

0:45 to 0:55 - write second essay outline

0:55 to 1:15 - write second essay

1:15 to 1:25 - write third essay outline

1:25 to 1:45 - write third essay

1:45 to 2:00 - review essays... I got to this about 3 minutes late, because I got a bit carried away with talking about that 1929 crash. Still, it's kind of amazing that I kept so close to schedule.

Of course I also have all my little test taking rituals down... 3 Pilot V-ball .5 pens, green piece of paper with student ID number, ID card on desk, watch off and sitting on desk, reading glasses, cloth cuff links (the metal ones clink too much when you're writing), etc. Because this was my last exam, I wore a red carnation, which looks nice with the subfusc. Normally, if I have to answer 3 questions of 7, I know about 2.5. This time, I knew 5! I actually had to spend some of my outlining time picking which subjects I knew the most about... I suppose that is, as Pete would put it, a good problem to have.

Juergen, me, Ryan and Heidi leave via the Merton gate

waving goodbye to the exam schools... the red carnation means this is my last exam

The saying above the exam school clock is the "legend" or motto of Oxford University. It says "dominus illuminatio mea", which means "the lord is my light" and is the opening words of Psalm 27. I like to think it means "lord show me the light"... and I think of some poor student sitting in the exam school hoping for a little divine inspiration. :)

Today, I wrote my last bit for my Customer Insights group paper, and revisited my Negotiations paper one last time. The group paper will get polished a bit by my fellow group members, and handed in by Mike on Monday morning. The Negotiation paper is an individual one, and I will hand that in Monday myself. It's due before noon, so that's about all I have to get done at this point! It feels great to be done, and great to have done well at the end. I was pretty worried about Financial History, but it worked out well after all. Now just 2 days until Ethan and Eban get here, that will be fun fun fun! My friend Eric Peterson from Seattle is in town today with his folks, I think we're going to have some dinner, and maybe I can show them around a bit.

Powered by Zoundry

stay on target

my desk, 12:19 am, 28 june 2007

Just one more day of studying and then the financial history exam happens at 9:30 AM. That will be my last Oxford exam. Ever. I can now talk about the effects of legal tradition, social capital, endowment and politics on financial development. I can also tell you the 4 main academic perspectives on why the 1929 stock market crash became a depression. On Saturday, I help out a bit on a customer insights group paper for Monday, which is also when I simply turn in the negotiations paper that I've already written. I think the weekend will be relatively chill. I really dig this financial history, it's like economics with better stories.

Getting to the end. I can see the exhaust port just down the trench. I'm about to turn off my targeting computer. It's time to let go and feel the force...

(credit is due to cory for introducing this one to the lexicon)

Powered by Zoundry

one more down

Finished my media strategies exam today. Weird exam... not really heavy on specific questions, more sort of looking for you to expound upon things. I thing I did well enough. Now it's 1.5 days of writing for Customer Insights, and then 2 days of studying for Financial History, the killer test. That will be a beeeeeotch. Oh well, it's all over in less than 7 days now. And with that, I will leave you all with one of my very favorite pictures of all time... me and my moustache (don't worry, it's a few years old).

Powered by Zoundry

farewells and one last ball

This week I have a cold! La-me. I've just finished my negotiations paper, which was actually pretty fun because I got to analyse a negotiation I was familiar with. As it turns our, Michael Moore is making a documentary called "Sicko" about the fiasco that is the US medical system, and they wanted to get my band's domain for the movie. They wanted it for free, and we wanted $100,000... needless to say it didn't pan out too well. Anyway, it was interesting to analyse the negotiation using all of the theory I've picked up over the last 8 weeks. Too bad I didn't know about that stuff when they first contacted me a year ago! One of the neat aspects of this paper is that I asked friends, mentors, colleagues, and family members how I should tackle the negotiation, and analysed each of their inputs separately in the paper, so I'm posting it here for folks to read. If you can cut through the academic BS (required when writing academic papers), it's kind of funny and interesting. One hint: BATNA means Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement.

One of many funny things about Oxford is that every time you choose to do one thing, you are giving up on something else. You really have to get used to juggling stuff. So, because I had a fever last tuesday night, I had to miss my pal Brandon's birthday. But, I still managed to get to a dinner at AJ and Caroline's wednesday night and the St Cross Ball thursday night. Admittedly, I took it easy and went home early, but I just couldn't bear to pass up on these once in a lifetime deals. I missed Jimmy Carter's speech at the Sheldonian thursday because I had to get some progress on the negotiations paper. :( Pat Butler (latest Birdbath bassist) actually got to meet the man. Pretty darn cool.

Dinner with the Dennisons, Jurys and McInerneys

AJ and Caroline were kind enough to have the 6 of us over for a roast lamb dinner... good stuff. We chatted and teased each other, and talked about courses, but underlying the whole evening was the spectre of leaving. I may see these folks a few times over the summer, and then once again intensively in September for a week... and then everyone is off to their far flung destinations and back to normal life. I caught a photo of Claudia leaving with Andrew and Ava, and I wondered when we would sit down to a dinner like this again? I was hopped up on cold medicine, and just sat in the corner enjoying everyone's company, trying to keep from getting everyone else sick.

Gabe, Caroline, AJ, Ava, Claudia, Andrew

Reba, Katie, Gabe (giving me the hard-ass look)

McInerneys out the door... when will we see them again?

St Cross Ball

My friends Renee, Vai, and Shannon are all members of St Cross College, which is a new college in a very old building (the Pusey House... love the name!). St Cross is small and really beautiful. The ball was masterfully planned by Ms. Shannon, and had a French Revolution theme, complete with a beheaded Marie A. I was still sick, but feeling better. We all met at the famous Eagle and Child for dinner before, and then went to the ball. There was dancing, champagne, lawn bowling, croquet... all good silly Oxfordy stuff.

Reba and Monica in the cab on the way over

Renee at the Eagle and Child

Brandon in the cab with the Thames (Isis) in the background

Monica at the Eagle and Child... what a cutie!

me and my lovely wife at the ball

Reba and Vai at the guillotine

later on that night...

Sylvester Awards

I touched on this briefly in another post, but thought I should go into a bit more detail... every year, there is a silly awards show, called the Sylvesters where the MBAs vote on funny awards to give each other. I won the "Inaugural <name witheld> Best Use of Class Mailing List Award" which is basically for sending out too many weird requests to the class email list. The person who really deserved this was so obvious that they decided to name the award after him. He would send out these crazy 5am drunk mails that really did not make sense whatsoever... I just asked a lot of questions. :) And of course, another incarnation of the Birdbath, I think the 7th(?), played a few songs. I wrote a song for the occasion, called "Fear and Loathing in the OX1". OX1 is my post code. I'm going to try to do a home studio version of this this summer when I get time.

Reba is so cute when she lays down the rock!

Tales from the Birdbath version 7 (me, Pat, Reba, Gabe)

obligatory Oxford dudes in tuxes drinking... Ashish, me, Claude, and Kaz

(note: I've prepared an alternate version of this photo here. Ashish, please let me know if you prefer it to the original)

And one more...

Not sure exactly why, but I just LOVE this one of Reba.

budgie.

Powered by Zoundry

view from the deck

Today I'm stuck inside with a cold and studying for my Financial History exam next week. :( I would like to be done with school now. Actually, it's not much further to go... two classes are totally done, and I'm nearly done outlining my final paper for one class. That leaves 2 exams and 1 other paper. It will all be over in 1.5 weeks, no matter what happens! Here's a view from the deck over the Thames (Isis) with all the summer greenery. A coot has been raising a chick down in the shrubs to the lower right. The geese, ducks and even swans have chicks right now too. It's neat to see the little fuzzy new birds all over.

Powered by Zoundry

got a new camera

This is utterly stupid, but I go a new camera, and wanted to try uploading some video via youtube to the blog. Reba lost the old camera a few weeks ago when she was out drinking with the WAGs, so I had an excuse to get a new one. I guess it's OK, it's a Pentax Optio L30... 7.1mp, 3x zoom, iso3200 and with anti jiggle software built in. Seems cool enough.

...a bunch of folks from next year's class came out to the Jamfactory with some current year folks for lunch and Q&A. So I decided to try out the new camera. Yes, that's right. This post is stupid.

Powered by Zoundry

nearly done

Things are coming to and end now. 9th week of Trinity term has begun, so I have taken my last class at Oxford. Unless you count the 1 week "capstone" course at the end of the year. Apparently we have to write a paper and do some group work as well. So, while that technically will be the end, practically speaking, we are just about through... left on the list are:

* write two papers (this week)

* sit two exams (next week)

* summer consulting project (two weeks in San Francisco, 6 weeks in Oxford)

* write up the consulting project (last week of August)

* 1 week capstone class and papers (1st week of September)

...and then I graduate from the OX1! OX1 is my post code in oxford. Speaking of this, we played an end of year awards ceremony this past Saturday, this time it was me, Pat, Reba and Gabe. The show was lots of fun and we debuted a new song, "fear and loathing in the OX1"... sort of a mba at oxford theme song. I plan on making a recorded version with protools once I'm done with exams and papers. Here are some pics of this latest version of the birdbath...

pat sings "big bottom"

in all our glory

my sweet wife on the drums

gabe throws down some sweet indie style noodles

my mouth is big

The plan for the fall is shaping up. Reba wants to travel a bit, so it looks like the "get a job" part of this whole deal will be going on hold for a bit. I get done with school on Sept 15, and then have a month off. I think I'll go back to Seattle for a while, and maybe visit some folks around Europe too, until Reba finishes her contract on Oct 16. Then, she and I will go on some trips together... Santorini, Cedar Key, maybe Belgium finally. Then, mom and maybe dad come out for my Merton graduation ceremony on Nov 3. After this its a trip to Normandy with mom for two weeks. Then for the last bit of November and December, we'll be in Seattle. At the end of December it's out to Taiwan to see Frank and June's wedding. Then, some time in Hong Kong and it looks like we'll have a train trip to Tibet after! Neat-O! THEN, back to Oxford to find a gig, get a London apartment, etc. This Wednesday we extend the lease to February 15 so we'll have time for all this... it's kind of scary because I really want to get a job lined up now... I guess that's conservative part of my nature. At the same time, I really want to have some cool travels with Reba, and with my mom, and it's really important to Reba to have some time with her family and new nephew at Christmas. Decisions, decisions. Well, after we sign the February extension on the lease this Wed, the decision will be pretty much made!

Powered by Zoundry

springtime

I've been really busy with papers and visitors, but this picture was just too cute to not post...

me and reebs strolling through the gardens at merton

Powered by Zoundry

all day all night

This week has kind of sucked. I've been up all night writing papers every night since last Wednesday (including the weekend). Well, every night except one, and I'm not going into that. Today I got up at 5AM to write, and got home from group writing meetings at midnight. Then I wrote again until just now (1:30AM). I just finished a business plan review of a really really stupid company called "froghop", which was a dotcom era mobile outfit. The plan actually had the words "contrived serendipity" in it. That made me want to punch. And "vortal" ...that actually gave me the creeps. It reminded me of that super stupid time of the world where dotcoms were still the shit and every dickweek with a black turtleneck and a "smart drink" was a "genius" and bound to be a millionaire. Crazily, Froghop are still around (but doing something waaaay different than this stupid business plan says). I guess I can read a business plan now and analyse it from the the Sahlman's Fit model and Seidel's RACE model. Don't know what the RACE model is? That's RIGHT you don't because my professor Victor Seidel hasn't published it yet! Cutting edge academic Oxford sheeeeeeat, beeeeeeotch! Yeah well, Victor's a pretty cool guy, and I'm happy for his framework and everything, but it's really not that big of a deal. Just another one of those models you use to talk about stuff in business school. Who knows, maybe he'll be the next Michael Porter. Then it would be one of those models that everybody gets forced to use to talk about stuff in business school. :) Plus, it could be a whole lot worse: he could be making us buy his expensive book just so we could read about his framework (some profs actually do that). Instead, we get it in lecture notes. Maybe when he writes the book he'll start making MBAs do that, but I don't think so, because he really is a very nice guy. With a lot of damn degrees. Ok, so I am exhausted, I am sick of papers, and I have 2 more to write this week, and then I will get drunk on friday. Maybe thursday. And I am having one icy cold vodka right now. Because I'm icy cold cool vodka like that.

me at 1:30 AM

minor note: the blogger template I've been using for the last 3 months has dates built in. so I'm discontinuing the prefixing of entries with dates. like you care. but it's a big deal to me, I sort of feel like I've turned a corner. sometime ask me about how I like my coffee lids to line up.

Powered by Zoundry

19.05.07 catching up

I have a LOT to cover... so much has been going on since my last post.

Grades

Please refer to my previous post on UK Grading before reviewing these scores, they're actually pretty good. :)

I have my grades from Hilary Term back in. I'm not going to go over them in excruciating detail like I did first term, but some post mortem is in order.

Macro Economics : 59% - this went OK. The course content literally changed my life and gave me a whole new way of thinking about things, but in keeping with my previous Econ Department experience, scores are grudgingly handed out. For future Oxonians, the good news is that Macro will make you think and work really hard, and will open your mind a lot, but they almost never ever fail anybody. The prof said, "I've only ever failed a few people and they really tried to make me fail them".

Financial Management : 54% - I'm frankly relieved to have passed this one. The test was a sucker punch, the prof gave us 3 exams to review from, and none of them were anything like the actual exam. The fact that the instruction was generally rushed and poor didn't help. Too bad that this is such an important subject. In any case, I'll take my marginal pass and be quite happy.

International Business and Global Governance : 59% - I should have gotten a better score on this, but it was fine. The class was really interesting and gave me lots of new ways to think about business in an international sense. I also learned some pretty good stories about international fuckups like the CNOOC - Unocal deal, the Sakhalin Island - Shell fiasco, and the truth behind Nike's "sweatshops". Great prof too.

Developing Effective Organizations : 72% - Distinction! This class wasn't as hard as it should have been, and didn't teach as much as it should have, but the stuff we did learn was organization building gold. I learned some great stuff. For future Oxonians: I was on a great team here, and it really paid off.

Marketing : 52% - Barely squeaked by on this one, which is pretty stupid because I learned a ton here, and really feel like I have a much better sense of the real marketing expertise. Unfortunately, the prof sat an impossibly long case for the exam, and it stung me and everyone else. Whatever, I know what I know, and they can't take THAT away from me!

Operations Management : 62% - Just fine on this one, another class where I learned a lot, though the instruction often left a lot to be desired. This subject is so rich and so deep that you could probably spend a year just getting the basics, so a one term course covering lean production, taylorism, six sigma, IDEF0, fragile systems and yes dad, even Goldratt's OPT, is a bit silly. You just can't learn all this stuff meaningfully in one course, and they didn't expect us to.

Entrepreneurial Project : 70% - Distinction! Here are the presentation and the business plan. This was another case of having a kickass group. Initially, it was my idea to make a business plan for a brewery, but it changed a LOT from there. In the end it was beer made to pair with food, sort of like wine. We had a lot of fun, and did a lot of fun (and not so fun) research.

Overall, my average this term was 61%, down from 63% first term. This makes sense as last term was VERY hard and stressful. But, I made it, and still have an average above 60%, which is pretty cool.

Class Progress

This term's classes are coming along well, but there's a lot less work than last term. This is good, because last term almost killed some of us. If you think I'm exaggerating, ask my friend (who shall remain unnamed) whose immune system got run down, at which point he broke out with a major case of Shingles, and had to go home halfway through exams. He was sick as a dog, and still hasn't really recovered. He's not the only example of people who's health crumbled under the stress. This term has been a lot heavier on social stuff, balls, electives, cool speakers, etc. than the last two, even though I'm still working in the library on most saturdays and sundays.

Media Forum

This was the 3rd instalment of a yearly event that brings high level folks from the media industry to speak. We had: Lawrence Aldridge, SVP at Disney; Rene Olivieri CEO Wiley-Blackwell; Chris Cramer MD of CNN International (just retired); Robert Crozier, VP/MD Forbes Europe, Middle East and Africa; Johnathon Wilson Director of Marketing and Business Development - Wall Street Journal, and a bunch of other people. I chatted with Kevin Baughan, Head of Technical Strategy at Virgin Media and most incredibly: Ted Nelson, the guy who came up with the work "hypertext". There were lots of other people I probably should have talked to, but there was only so much time. The media department put up a wiki, and I took a bunch of shitty pictures and posted them. The idea is that there will be some discussion or at least a little wrangling as people try to agree on what the various speakers were trying to get across, etc. After the conference, I sat next to Ted Nelson, and got a laptop demo of his 47 year old software project: xanadu, which is pretty interesting. it's still not quite done yet, but is supposed to ship this year, according to Ted. After the conference, Lawrence Aldridge, Cris Cramer, and a couple of MBAs all went out for drinks: lots of fun. Lawrence is hilarious, and instantly started making fun of Dan Adams (good guy who is also on my summer SCP project, more on this below)... this earned him my respect, and we all had a great evening swapping stories and hearing about life at Disney. Chris didn't say too much to me, but did make fun of me for doing "fuck all" at Oxford beyond scholastics.

Jobs?

Everyone from my wife to my mom to friends back home is wondering: when/where will I get a job? I'm wondering too. Here's the deal as far as I can see: I have a bunch of pokers in the fire, but no offers currently on the table. I am sort of working on / thinking about possibilities with: Barclay's Bank, Jambase, Virgin Media, IBM consulting, financial IT jobs in London in general, plus other weird ideas. None of these are really even close to the interview stage, except for one. We'll see. It seems that the "MBA mill" type jobs that a lot of my colleagues are getting are either not my industry (I-banking, management consulting), not my kind of company, or not interested in me. I think that because I'm in IT, and because I'm 37 (old, by MBA standards), I'm going to have to score my next gig via networking or via headhunters. In either case, I can't really make a lot of headway now, because I'm not available for work until Sept 15th at the earliest, and that's really only if I don't take the trips with Reba and mom that I have planned for September and October. So, in reality I'm not going to be much use for work until November at the earliest (barring an amazing offer), and it's hard to say to people, "hi, I'd like a job in 6 months". In this situation, recruiters simply tell you to contact them in 6 months.

The Schedule

I sent this off to Tasha recently, but it's worth repeating...

June 30 : last day of exams

july 2 - 8 : ethan and eban visiting oxford! The town will never be the same!!!

july 9 -13 : working on SCP project in oxford

july 16 - 27 : working on SCP in san francisco

july 27 (evening) - july 30 : visiting seattle!

july 31 - aug 31 : working on SCP in oxford

sept 1 - sept 7 : TBD

sept 8 - sept 15 : final coursework

sept 15 - oct 15 : free

oct 15 - nov 3 : travelling with mom

SCP

What is an SCP? This is the Strategic Consulting Project. This is an 8 week consulting gig that we do for a company. Ours is for a company called Jambase in San Francisco. We have to solve some problem for them, and as you can imagine, SCP's usually have to do with making the company more money. We'll spend two weeks in SF, 6 weeks in Oxford, and at the end we have to write a big paper, due August 31st. So, there will be a couple of fun weeks in SF, a quick trip up to Seattle to see some folks, and then it's back to the OX1 for the summer.

Ok, now I have to prepare some questions for an interview, I still need to cover... mbats, balls, brasenose, exeter, pembroke, st cross, stuff I'm thinking about, Tim Westergrin, AND the AJ Rathbun Tribute Blog Entry.

Powered by Zoundry

unimportant entry...

Just testing things out. will have details on school, jobs interviews, mbats, balls, visiting brothers, the AJ Rathbun Tribute Blog Entry, summer plans, and other neat items soon!

e

Powered by Zoundry

01.05.07 mayday

Magdalen College (pronounced "Maudlin") has a 500 year old tradition called May Morning in which their church choir sing from the top of Magdalen Tower at dawn on May 1st, to crowds on the streets below. Also included in the tradition is jumping off of Magdalen Bridge into the Cherwell river, as well as the optional all-night drinking binge before the ceremony... this is England after all. Skipping the bender, I got up at 5 to make it to the event. The streets were full of people in various garb... some still in formals from last night, some in "may queen" hippie outfits with garlands, others with wacky outfits such as giant sparkly bow ties and union jack hats, etc. Everyone was moving toward Magdalen, and many were clearly drunk.

high street at dawn

magdalen tower

I ran into Pat Butler and some friends of his... they had been rocking the all night fantastic. I got some great footage of Pat's friend going on about how hot Reba is, I think her reaction is based on the show we played at the business school the other day. Pretty funny stuff.

the tower

Apparently the river has been so low recently that a couple of years ago some 50 people were hospitalized because they jumped off the bridge. So, today the cops barricade the bridge and try to keep the students from killing themselves. Not all that unreasonable, really.

cops keeping people off of the bridge

After a stop at the Merton MCR for some brunch, I walked back across the meadow, and got a few snaps of the cows. I like the meadow cows, they are funny and always want to smell you.

Powered by Zoundry

29.04.07 vs cambridge (again)

In another episode of the continuous competition and network building between Oxford and Cambridge, we hosted a day of sports competition between the two business schools. There were a ton of competitions, but most interesting to me were rowing, rugby, and cricket. I had to miss our rowing defeat (Henley all over again), but got to see the other two. The rugby was touch instead of tackle, and was co-ed. We won. The cricket was limited to 20 overs (I think this means it only goes on endlessly for hours instead of going on endlessly for days). We won this as well. Of note here is the fact that there were maybe 2 non-Indians on the Oxford SBS cricket team, and also the emergence of Murtasa, an unassuming guy who turned out to be an amazing batsman. He basically just stood up there knocking it out of the park, over and over again. Everyone was pretty impressed. Cricket is basically impenetrably complicated for those of us who didn't grow up playing it, but that's cool, because a cricket match is more like a picnic than a sporting event. Everyone just brings blankets and snacks and drinks and socializes while the game sort of putters along in the background. Every once in a while something exciting happens, and then everyone oohs an ahhs for a few minutes, then it's back to picnic time. I dig it!

sbs students watching the cricket match

me with cricket in the background

julie and reba at the game

Julie Young was out for the weekend, as she had been on some Starbucks business in Europe, and then came to hang out with us for a few days. It was nice to have a hometowner out to visit. She came along to the party after the sports, and out drinking with the MBAs, etc. The party was pretty cool, another incarnation of the birdbath played, this time with Pat on bass and Prashant on vocals. We did 6 songs: "The Future Is Now" by Pat's old band The Solids, "Adding to the Noise" by Switchfoot, "Fell in Love with a Girl" by The White Stripes, and "Olympia" and "Snocone" by us. We finished off with a semi-improvisational harcore bit where our friend Robin would yell "hey, fuck y'all" in the breaks (ala "Lady" for any old Sicko fans reading this). The drum set sort of fell over at the end, and I left the guitar feeding back for a while after the set. Not particularly innovative from a Seattle hipster perspective, but shocking enough for my b-school colleagues. People certainly seemed to like it well enough. We kept changing our band name throughout the set, and went through "The Va-jay-jays", "The 5 Forces", and "Laser Cats UK". However, I prefer to think of this as Tales From the Birdbath - Version 6.

me and prashant

pat

reebs doing that hair thing she does

Of note is the fact that Prashant (an Indian) picked Switchfoot, which is a Christian rock band. The song is hardly identifiable as such, but the rest of their album is pretty well Jesus-ed up. He's not Christian though, he just liked the song and was a little puzzled about the notion of Christian rock. I have to say that I did too. The night ended up, of course, with us all going out dancing and drinking, and then finally stumbling around inside Merton bar (not in the college) at 3 AM.

a tab, kevin, me, jurgen

We also acquired a Cantabrian (person from Cambridge) who needed a place to stay after the party, since the bus had already gone back to Cambridge. Her name was Svetlana, and she's an investment banker from Moscow. She and Reba rapped about Tolstoy a bunch while Julie and I talked about boob jobs. The next morning, all 4 of us went to breakfast at a cafe before we put Julie onto her bus back home.

svetlana and reba

Powered by Zoundry

22.04.07 exeter college ball

Oxford has balls (no Josh, not that kind), i.e. grand balls ala cinderella, etc. Saturday night was the ball for Exeter College, and about 20 MBAs went and danced the night away. I'll fill in with details later, but for now I think a few photos will give you an idea...

al (finance guy)

katy and reebs

me and my date

I definitly should have done night school...

Powered by Zoundry

15.04.07 santorini!

Julie, Jean and I went to Santorini Island in Greece for the final leg of our vacations. This place is so beautiful, it's somewhat hard to do it justice via description. Technically, Santorini (or Thira in Greek) is a caldera, basically a big volcanic crater filled with water. Roughly, Thira is a big circular ring of rock cliffs surrounding a central lagoon 8 by 4 miles wide. There are a couple waterways entering the lagoon, and a volcano in the center. Some really beautiful and strange towns are built along the cliffs, they were once homes to locals, but now they are hotels and restaurants, etc. Apparently there was an earthquake in the 50s, after which the town we stayed in (Oia) sat empty until the 80s when someone got the idea of fixing them up for tourists. Good idea! We rented a cheap hotel room (not on the cliffs, those are really expensive) and basically chilled out for a few days. Reba and I are definitely coming back here this fall. Basically the only thing we did besides eat, drink, and gawk at the view was rent ATVs and drive around the island one afternoon. We went to a canyon where an old town had been built into caves, and even ended up driving through a square where a greek wedding was going on. Neat! I really liked driving the ATVs, I think I am going to get a scooter or a motorcycle after I get a job again!

Oia and the girls

the lagoon and me

more lagoon

Oai + e

atv-ean!

restaurant at the end of the island that's great for sunset watching, and a good one of julie

atv rental dude, when he found out we were mbas, he was really into talking with us

scooter gang

town in the canyon

Powered by Zoundry