Road Trips: European Style

One of the greatest things about living in Milano is the location. Within one hour I can be on the beach, in the mountains, or basically anywhere in Europe (if I fly). So the past couple weekends I have taken advantage of that benefit and traveled. First was Gorgonzola for the gorgonzola cheese festival, then Parma for the prosciuto and parmeggiano, then I went to Munich for Oktoberfest. All three were great trips, but some were better than others.
Gorgonzola is a sleepy town about 45 minutesnorth east of Milano by train. If Gorgonzola was not invented there, I would probably never have gone. There is not much there, basically one church and a couple houses and basta. During the sagre (festival), it is supposed to liven up a bit, but as you can see in the picture there were still only a couple people. The cheese was great and I had tons of gorgonzola themed dishes like gorgonzola lasagne and risotto. Even though the town is lack-luster, it was a great experience.

Next up on the Euro road trip is Parma!! Parma is a beautiful classical

Italian town. It is the town where parmiggiano reggiano and prosciutto di parma come from. Ther

e are a couple really cool churches, but besides them, I think you only go there to eat and enjoy the atmosphere. Everyone rides around on bikes and looks like they love life. I hear they have a very high standard of living, and it is visible when you walk the streets. In Par

ma, Nick and I ate a 24 month aged parmiggian and some delicious prosciutto crudo. Man that stuff is good!

Finally on the trip was Munich. I went to Munich four years ago in a drinking binge that was Oktoberfest. We were literally there for no more than 12 hours, so I didn't really get to see the city. This time I planned better and spent 4 days there. I drove up with a fellow MBA student who is origina

lly from Munich. We drove up through the snow capped Alps of Switzerland and Austria. It was such a beautiful ride that I decided I have to go back there with my Girlfriend when she visits... Anyway, On Friday morning I received a tour of the city from my friend, and man, that is one beautiful city! Everything about is so clean, organized, and beautiful. The buildings are of a classic German architecture (or what I imagine to be classic German style). I really enjoy the culture that they have worked to maintain, for example, drindls (the dresses women wear), beer, Oktober

fest, and public gathering locations. After the tour, the remainder of my time was spent at the fest. In the fewest words possible (as not to incriminate myself) it was FANTASTIC. I had a blast.

I love living here in Milano and I cannot wait to travel more. I have a feeling I will be exploring the alps quite a bit this winter. I found out today our MBA ski cup will be held in st. Moritz and there will be about 400 MBA students from around the world taking over the town to ski and meet eachother.

Until next time!

Networking and its importance...

Networking. It's a funny thing. Everyone knows what it is. Everyone knows that it is an important thing, but I think many are confused on exactly how to obtain a network and how to use it.

Many people get an MBA for the network it opens you up to. An international MBA takes your network to the next level. I have been in Milano for about 1 month and I have already made friends from all around the world. I added people from Argentina, Israel, Columbia, Italy, Poland, Germany, the US, and Nigeria to my network.

Now people ask "Justin, how will you use these people in your network?" I would say, I already have. Just talking to them and understanding the world from their point of view has given me much more insight to the world, or international market, than I would have gotten by staying at Deloitte. I am also sure that in the future there may be business opportunities to share in.

But all in all, I think the activity of extending my network has been the most fun so far. We have done dozens of aperativos, gone to a couple clubs, and planned fun events all over Milano. So, enjoy the pictures, they represent networking in action!

Looking to the future

I just got done talking about how excited I am to start school. Well, in response to those feelings, I have been doing a lot of research on potential industries I would like to work in. So as of today, I am extremely interested in the green tech, agribusiness, and Ferrari industries.

The green tech industry is really just starting to grow up. Even just a few years ago it was a very young and immature industry. Today it is still developing itself. The term "green tech" is very fluid. Although it can be loosely defined today as environmental technology, there is still unlimited possibility for its final direction. It is amazing to see how companies have developed ways to be profitable and to care about the social responsibilities we have as inhabitants of earth at the same time. Yes, I can see me incorporating the green industry into my future career, even if I go into my second career interest, agribusiness.

Agribusiness is awesome because I love making great food. It is simple, we

need food to live and food is delicious. Making food from scratch is an incredible feeling. Lately I started brewing my own beer, and it was really good. Creating a finished product from raw natural ingredients is a very cool feeling. By making food from scratch, you know what is in your food. Its good to know what is in your food for obvious reasons, but by knowing exactly what is in your beer, for example, you can also tweak things very subtlety to create big changes in taste. There is also a bigger picture element to agribusiness as well. The population is growing. With the growth in population more and more farmland will be converted into suburban living. The industry needs to figure out a safe, sustainable, and efficient way to grow mass quantities of good natural food. This is an issue that will arise in the next few years, and it would be cool to be a part of it.

My third industry is Ferrari. I know it is not exactly and industry, but I think I would have an extraordinarily hard time refusing any offer that Ferrari would make me. Working there would be an awesome opportunity to fulfill some childhood fantasies, and who knows, they might even offer me a discount on a car. I think something like 95% off would put it in my price range.

Ok folks, until next time. Ciao.

Spelling sucks and other things of that nature.

I would like to start off this post by publicly acknowledging my lack of proper spelling. I hope you are not too offendedby it, but spelling is for suckers. But thanks for bearing through the terrible grammar and spelling to at least read a bit of what I have to say.

In other events, schoolstarts tomorrow. It's kind of funny, because I am really, really, really excited. As hard as it is to believe, I am getting very bored. When you go from working 1,000 hours a week to not having one single responsibility on your plate you go through three very distinct emotional reactions.

1) Supper Happy Stage- the first week you go through this emotional overload of happiness. You are excited that you left DT andare getting on with your life. You sleep in the first Monday of no work and wake up with ahuge smile. Words do not do this stage justice, so you can watch this clip to really get an understanding of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI

2) Lazy Stage - enough said. You overload on happiness and begin to be a bum. Your days consist of eating ice cream and laying around ingym shorts. This stage lasts about a month, it is no double rainbow (see above link) but it beats working.

3) Over retirement stage- the third and final stage is where I am. I am so over my "retirement" that I just want to get back to doing stuff. School should fill this need to do something quite nicely.

To close, here are a couple pics of the first couple times meeting the 36ers.

to loan or not to loan

Oh man, so today I had a meeting with a loan coordinator that SDA Bocconi helped to arrange. I am seriously thinking about taking out a small loan, but OMG is it a pain in the ass. First, I have to pay a 3% deposit, which is not much by itself, then every three months I have to pay about a 9euro fee, then on top of all that I have to pay interest in December. I don't really know what I expected, but man it made me nervous. Because after all this, I started thinking that I don't have a job and who knows if I will find one when I graduate. Then when I graduate, I have to change the loan into a personal loan and pick how long I want to pay it over (2 - 8 years)!! Interest and other things start piling up pretty quickly. Well, long story short, I am now extremely hesitant to get a loan. If I get it, I will live much more comfortably here, if not then I will penny pinch a bit. Either way I guess it will work out.

On better news, off to the vineria to buy a nice bottle of wine for the afternoon picnic I will be having with some fellow 36ers (mba 36th edition). Next post will probably be on the topic of my heart attack about the loan or why people think SDA Bocconi is full of snobs (like Stanford).

Ciao.