Back to School

This blog is not dead (yet)

I know I haven't written on my blog in months, but seeing as Omar finally got his act together and put his winter 07 video blogs up, I felt compelled to write. I'll be updating most of you all on Turkey/Dubai, Kentucky Derby, and exploring Chicago fairly soon (this weekend for all you New Yorkers), but for now, I'm just going to steal Omar's video blog on our Muslim artist friends.. link

I'm off.. well, almost!

A few more hours and I'm off on my highly anticipated trip to Turkey and Dubai!  I have to say the last day has been the toughest: fitting in laundry and packing in between final exams, trying to study for an exam tomorrow morning after which I'll have to make a mad dash straight to the airport with 40 or so of my classmates from Kellogg!  On top of that, we lost an hour tonight due to daylight savings, but I like to think that I wouldn't have gotten much studying done in that hour anyways. 

Well, the good news is that we'll be leaving behind this (view of frozen Lake Michigan from campus a couple weeks ago)..

..for this (Reina, Istanbul.. my b-day venue!)

Interviews, Art, Music and Spring Break

So, interviews are finally over (at least for summer internships)!  Looks like I’ll be sticking around Chicago for the summer working in strategic planning within a Leadership Development Program.  My project sounds really cool and will have me traveling to China and possibly Latin America for a few days during my internship, so I’m very very excited!

                                                                                                   

The past few weeks, or more like the last 3 months, have been pretty hellish as I and my friends at Kellogg have been going through the demoralizing roller-coaster of recruiting.  I sincerely hope that full-time recruiting won’t be nearly as tough, but at least we won’t have to worry about it again for a few more months.         

                                                                                               

The plus side of recruiting was that I was able to head back to NYC a couple of times in the last month.  In between interviews, I had the opportunity to check out my friend Mo Shah’s artwork which was being exhibited at the Abrons Art Center as part of the exhibition:  Changing Climate, Changing Colors: 24 Contemporary Muslim Artists.  I have to say that Mo and his sister Seher’s pieces were some of the best being exhibited. 

Of course, Omar Haneef and I had basically spent two hours walking across town through the Village, Soho, and Chinatown to get to the exhibit so we had already experienced quite a bit of NYC’s “multiculturalness” before meeting Mehreen at the show! Mo’s artwork is now being exhibited at the newly opened show:  “A Reflection of Contemporary Pakistani Art” at Diva gallery in Soho.

                                                       

Last night, a few friends and I went to see Salman Ahmad of Junoon perform at Northwestern University.  Salman was performing with tabla player Pundit Samir Chatterjee, and the show was pretty good.  Although Ali Azmat definitely has a better voice, Salman was excellent with the guitar and he played a lot of old school Junoon, which kept the small and intimate crowd pretty excited.  Speaking of excited crowds, what is up with desi concerts bringing out the worst dancers?  Last year, it was the two synchronized dancing guys at the Strings concert.  This time, it was the undergrads and random Chicagoans (and one self-proclaimed DJ from Kalamazoo, Michigan) who got up on stage during the opening act and were perfoming some random dance moves that looked more like jumping jacks while the shady 50 year old electro-synthesized Persian guy was singing.  No wonder Salman Ahmad went back to his hotel to chill out to wait for his turn on stage!   In any case, it was a fun night and it was great to hear some old Junoon classics in a small venue with just tabla beats and an acoustic guitar.      

                                                                                                 

After finals end this week, I’ll finally be heading off on my trip to Turkey and Dubai for the next two weeks.  I am one of the student leaders organizing a trip with 40 of my classmates as part of Kellogg’s Global Immersion in Management program.  It’s been a lot of work trying to organize meetings with business leaders, politicians, journalists, etc. in country, but hopefully all the work over the last six months will finally pay off!  I’m excited to visit Turkey again.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find myself on the front page of the tabloids again like the last time I was in Istanbul..

                                          

                                                                                                          

Our second week, we’ll be traveling to Dubai. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard so much about all the ridiculous development going on there, I can’t wait to check it out!  I’ll also have the chance to see my friends Hamza and Sinisa who both recently moved there and are living it up.  And yes, I do plan to get the scoop on Hamza’s upcoming wedding plans in Lahore (I hear we should expect to make a trip to Lahore in December)! 

Frostbite Update

We have a windchill warning in effect with windchill factors expected to range from -20 to -30 F and potential Lake Effect snow to come!  I am seriously considering taking a cab to school tomorrow!  Yes I know, I live less than half a mile away, but the university's "frostbite shuttle" doesn't stop anywhere near my apartment and it is literally unbearable to stand/walk outside for more than a few minutes.  Remind me again why I decided to move here??!

This statement was posted on weather.com's weather alert page:

WIND CHILL TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO DROP INTO THE 15 TO 20 BELOW ZERO RANGE TONIGHT INTO MONDAY MORNING.

A WIND CHILL ADVISORY MEANS THAT VERY COLD AIR AND WINDS WILL COMBINE TO GENERATE LOW WIND CHILLS. THIS COULD RESULT IN FROST BITE AND LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. IF YOU MUST VENTURE OUTDOORS... MAKE SURE YOU WEAR A HAT AND GLOVES. BE SURE TO CHECK ON OUTDOOR PETS AS WELL.

THE WEATHER TONIGHT AND MONDAY WILL BE SOME OF THE COLDEST SEEN IN YEARS. BE AWARE THIS IS NOT JUST ANOTHER WINTER COLD SPELL.

A Hanging

A few weeks ago, in response to Saddam Hussein's hanging, I was sent this short essay by George Orwell about "A Hanging".  I have a lot of friends who have strong personal opinions about Saddam Hussein's hanging in December.  My Iraqi-American friend Jeffrey' and his family felt a great sense of peace, as he had lost some close family members under Hussein's regime.  Some of my UN friends were torn between their objections to capital punishment and their belief in justice.  And so, there seems to be little objection to the hanging of Hussein, but George Orwell suggests a different perspective on the issue, one seldom heard.   It's well worth reading.  I've always been told to question the popular view, even if it is one you share..

A Hanging

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.

Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. 'For God's sake hurry up, Francis,' he said irritably. 'The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?'

Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold spectacles, waved his black hand. 'Yes sir, yes sir,' he bubbled. 'All iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed.'

'Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can't get their breakfast till this job's over.'

We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened - a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.

'Who let that bloody brute in here?' said the superintendent angrily. 'Catch it, someone!'

A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.

It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less.

The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the prisoner's neck.

We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of 'Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!', not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner's face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: 'Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!'

The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, 'Ram! Ram! Ram!' never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number - fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries - each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!

Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. 'Chalo!' he shouted almost fiercely.

There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner's body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.

The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it oscillated, slightly. 'He's all right,' said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch. 'Eight minutes past eight. Well, that's all for this morning, thank God.'

The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.

The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile: 'Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. - Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight annas. Classy European style.'

Several people laughed - at what, nobody seemed certain.

Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. 'Well, sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all finished - flick! like that. It iss not always so - oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner's legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!'

'Wriggling about, eh? That's bad,' said the superintendent.

'Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. "My dear fellow," we said, "think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!" But no, he would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!'

I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. 'You'd better all come out and have a drink,' he said quite genially. 'I've got a bottle of whisky in the car. We could do with it.'

We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. 'Pulling at his legs!' exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis's anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.

August, 1931

Frostbite Alert

Winter has officially arrived.  Mind you, according to most people’s standards, it’s been winter for a while. It practically snows here just about every other day and I’ve gotten used to 1-2” accumulations here and there.  In fact, I actually prefer it when it snows because the temperature tends to creep up a few degrees when it’s snowing.  But the last few days, it has gotten significantly colder.  So much so that when my friends and I were walking to school in 20 degree weather, it actually felt quite warm outside!  I can't believe that this time last year I had just started this blog when I was new to Singapore and my friends and I were complaining about how it was so hot that it only took the time between leaving my apartment and going down the elevator to the lobby before we'd be drenched in sweat!                                                                                                                                                          

But little did I know that the cold spells of the last few days were only the beginning.  This weekend is supposed to be one of the coldest of the year.  The temperature has dropped to 10 below (excluding the excruciating wind chill factor, 29 MPH, magnified because of the lake effect).  The kind of cold where if you are walking down the street and stop talking, you literally have to work to keep your face muscles from going numb.  Last night, some friends and I went to dinner in Evanston and one guy was actually wearing his ski goggles out!  I think he might have started a new trend at Kellogg. 

                                                                                                                     

We received an e-mail today telling us that the Northwestern “Frostbite Shuttle” is now in service.  It shuttles students around campus only when temperatures drop to -10F or below.  Luckily, I have no plans to leave the warmth of my apartment all day.  I have the lovely task of preparing for two midterms in classes I have pretty much neglected since interviews started.  As for my recruiting status, I’m about half way done and, thankfully, it’ll all be over in another two weeks.  Unfortunately, that also means that I’ll be wearing a suit just about every day for an additional two weeks.  But, on the plus side, I’ll get to be in NYC for the next two weekends. 

Interview Hell

I’ve thus far avoided writing about work/career stuff since coming to Kellogg, mostly because I was in denial that I’d have to start looking for a job almost as soon as I quit my job to come to school.  Alas, the reality of the situation has kicked in.  After a brief period of time at the beginning of last quarter where I “discovered” how much I really liked finance, I quickly realized the error of my ways (actually, my friends from Wharton undergrad slapped me around a bit to make me snap out of it).  I ended up deciding to recruit for strategy consulting firms and some general management jobs. Most of last quarter consisted of a ton of schmoozing to all the big companies. I think I went about 10 weeks without having to spend a single dime on a meal, given the daily lunch presentations and dinner receptions.  It was as if we were royalty and the firms were trying to convince us to come and work for them, or better yet, they were happy to hear if we would even consider applying for a summer internship with them.  It was great.. at first. 

Then, as the quarter drew on, things got more serious.  Firms were quickly picking their “top candidates.”  Most of the day was spent just in remembering every person you met at the reception/dinner the night before and making sure to write them all e-mails that were sufficiently personalized so they would remember who you were out of the other 200 students they met that night.  Additionally, within all the firms, you could be contacted by several different offices who all wanted to talk to you and “answer any questions” you might have.  I mean, I was getting phone calls while I was on the ski slope in Vail from people in the Pittsburgh or Cleveland offices!  Finally, there were the “coffee chats” – those “non-evaluative” one-on-one meetings, usually held in a coffee shop/café in downtown Evanston, with some Kellogg alum who was there to answer any questions you had on the firm. Aaagh..  I think we were all completely in recruiting overload before we even submitted our applications! 

So, winter break wasn’t really a break at all either.  You had to maintain contact with people even after you submitted your resume because you want to get on the elusive “closed list” which came out the day we came back to school in January.  Getting on a company’s closed list means that they selected you for an interview and you do not need to bid any of your measly 800 points that you get for the entire recruiting period on securing an interview spot.  Not only does it save you points, but it also means that the company will help you with your interview preparations and continue some of the royal treatment.  Usually, people selected are invited to events at the firms’ offices downtown to help prepare for case interviews.  For example, this past Friday, one firm picked a group of us up in limos and drove us down to their offices for a full breakfast spread and a day of “non-evaluative” mock interview sessions.  Although I doubt any of these sessions are truly “non-evaluative,” they are extremely helpful in getting a good feel for what the real interview will be like. 

These days, I basically spend a good 4-6 hours a day on interview preparation, where my friends and I will give each other mock cases.  It’s a brutal time.  Luckily, I have my last interview in New York in three weeks, so by mid February, I should have a good idea of where I will be for the summer (most likely NYC).  Wish me luck!   

Stolen!

After a week of family time, I was ready to spend a couple of days with my friends in New York again.  We started the night out with dinner at some obscure thai/Japanese/all-things-asian restaurant in the Village (my new neighborhood, btw) and then went all the way uptown to meet Shoaib and his friends at Hookah Café.  It’s no Le Souk, but the sheesha was smooth and delicious and the atmosphere was really chill and authentic, which made up for its annoying location under the Queensboro Bridge. 

But since it was Tuesday night, we decided the night could not end there and headed to Marquee (ask any New Yorker and they’ll tell you it’s the “it” party on a Tuesday night).  Mehreen, Omar Haneef and I met up with Mo Shah, Kavita, Shami and some random friends.  The music was awesome, plenty of celebs and celeb-wannabe’s and overall, an awesome night.  For all the details, check out Omar’s upcoming video blog later this week at http://www.myspace.com/myomarspace 

So the night was going really well until disaster struck around 4am.  Our group had moved down to the lower level and were hanging out around a table.  Mo Shah put his jacket down on the couch behind the table and, thinking that we weren’t going anywhere, I put my purse down under Mo’s jacket.  About 10 minutes later, Mo picked up his jacket and my purse was gone!  We spent the next hour tearing apart the couches and scouring the entire table area.  But no luck.  It was gone!  And in it was all of my worldly belongings, including my cell phone, wallet with credit cards, all photo identification, keys to Derya’s apartment where I was staying, and God knows what else was inside that is now missing.  I was devastated and couldn’t believe how stupid I was to leave my bag there for even 10 minutes. We didn’t even move away from that area at all in the time that the purse was taken!  So, we all hung around until the lights came on at around 4:30am and looked some more. But my purse was nowhere to be seen.  I know I should have been more careful since Ali Haider had his wallet stolen at Marquee just last Tuesday night! 

Mehreen and I headed back to her place where I stayed up until about 5:30am cancelling my credit cards.  It was then that I realized that without photo ID I wouldn’t be able to get on a plane on Friday!!  So, I basically stayed awake until 9AM when I called the office of my State Congressman who is a family friend. I asked them to look into how I could possibly expedite getting a new license within 24 hours.  They think they’ll be able to manage it, but said that I would need to be back in Pennsylvania Thursday first thing in the morning to have any chance of getting a license. Great, there goes my fun break in NYC. So, I spent the rest of the day buying a new cell phone and sorting out all my random bank stuff so I could have some money available for my trip to Vegas this weekend and hopped on a bus back to PA.  What a crazy 24 hours!! 

Apparently, if I can’t get my license tomorrow, then I’ve been told I might have to drive to the state capital in Harrisburg and get it done there.. it’s a 2hr drive each way!!  Wish me luck!

Christmas in Philly

I’ve been hanging out in Pennsylvania since returning from Vail last week.  I have to say it’s been the longest vacation time I’ve spent out in Wayne/KoP in a really long time, and the first time since college that I’ve been home for Christmas.  The first few days kind of sucked because I was pretty much bed-ridden, having come down with what has been coined the “Vail Virus”.  I think it’s amazing how you’re guaranteed to have some sort of flu epidemic break out each time you have a bunch of Kellogg people spending an intense period of time together, consisting of partying and sleepless nights.  Who knew business school would be such a breeding ground for germs??

This winter break has allowed me to spend the holidays with my high school friends for the first time in quite a few years.  Our core group of seven from Upper Merion has expanded over the years to include everyone’s significant others, which makes for some fun times when we all get together. As of last month, just about all of those couples have tied the knot, leaving just a couple of us to fight to be the next holders of the infamous “wedding trophy.”  About three years ago, our friend Wes found this atrociously huge wrestling trophy and gave it to Renee and Todd, the first couple in our group to get married, as a wedding present. Renee and Todd then passed it on to Melissa and Todd on their wedding day, who then passed it on to Josh and Marsha, then to Erin and Patrick, and finally, last month to Dana and Bill..

Anyways, I think I was well on my way to post-ski trip recovery until I made the decision to attend my friends Melissa and Todd’s annual Christmas party last Saturday. Not only was I still more than a little tired from the ski trip, but on top of that, it was there that I was challenged with becoming the next holder of the wedding trophy before it is converted into the “baby trophy”.  Sheesh! That’s always my cue to head up to NYC and find comfort from all my perpetually single New Yorker friends!  But it’s all in good fun and it was great to see all my old friends again.  Christmas Eve was my friend Erin’s parents’ annual “open house” which we all attended.  The Reilly’s house was ground zero for all of us growing up, so we have a ton of memories hanging out there.  Of course, the vicious Puerto Rican eggnog and Mrs. Reilly’s kahlua-infused trifle were welcome additions that made the Christmas caroling so much more interesting this year than when we were younger!

I’m on the last week of my winter break and will be in New York the next couple of days before heading to Las Vegas for New Years Eve this weekend where I’ll be hanging out with my friends from Singapore!  It’ll be my first time ever in Vegas and it looks like a few other friends from California and New York will also be coming in for the weekend, so it should make for a fun trip.  Of course, I made these plans well before I knew that Eid will be on Saturday.  I think I might just have enough time to catch morning prayers during my stopover in Evanston! 

Erin, Pat, Me, Todd H, Renee, Bill, Dana, Todd S., Melissa, Marsha and Josh @ Bill & Dana's wedding last month (MIA: Kyvo who is somewhere in Cyprus)

Ski Trip to Vail

The last few weeks have been a blur.  Studying for finals had me locked up in a study room in Kellogg for literally, almost 72 hours straight (this was also because the heating in my apartment was on the fritz amidst our first major snowstorm and frigid weather). 

However, I somehow survived my first round of finals and set off last week with 700 Kellogg first and second years to Vail, Colorado for our annual ski trip.  There were 11 of us staying in a condo originally meant for 9, so we knew we were in for some fun times.  The KWEST Panama girls (Me, Eleanor, Sonya, Christie, Yelena, and Liz) and the Moose guys (Tom, Trevor, Hector, Ryan and Wei Han) all took over good ol’ suite 503 aka D10.  The first night’s activities included the much-anticipated Counting Crows concert.  Given that most of us had been out the night before celebrating the end of finals at Nevin’s, and had suffered the all day plane/bus ride to reach Vail, it was a bit of struggle to navigate ourselves around Vail to get to the concert which was basically in the middle of some field OUTDOORS.  Yes, we had heat lamps, but it was a bit surreal standing outside listening to poor Adam sing his heart out while he surely was freezing!

Nevertheless, the concert was a great start to what had been hyped up to all of us first years as the best experience at Kellogg.  Basically, the agenda for the week was as follows:

8:00AM Wake up and hit the slopes
3:30-6PM       Meet everyone at the base of the mountain for corporate sponsored Apres-ski at some random bar.
6PM-7PM       Hit the hot tub
7PM-8PM       Nap time
8PM- 9PM      Dinner/Pre-party with 2nd Years
9PM- 3AM-ish   Party at whatever costume or themed event was planned.. some nights the parties lasted well past 3am.

The main event was probably the Wild Wild West themed costume party at 8150 in Vail.  Now, my condo group had decided to coordinate our outfits for the occasion.  Needless to say, the girls did not realize that our “saloon girl” outfits we had ordered online would be quite so scandalous…  (yes, those are indeed shot glasses and test tubes hanging off of our holsters!).  Christie, the accomplished cowgirl, spent much of the evening using the lasso to tie up every guy in her path.  Meanwhile, the 503 boys were loving all the attention that their girls were getting all night. 

Another memorable event was the annual Wig Walk.  This annual ski trip tradition consists of a very simple idea: a pub crawl where everyone is wearing crazy wigs.  As soon as the bullhorn sounded, all 700 of us started making our way through Vail Village to the next stop.  Our condo guys all wore “rock star” wigs which were supposed to resemble an Elvis wig but really looked more like an afro with thick sideburns.  In the Kellogg spirit, all of us girls all dawned purple wigs.  I don’t have any pictures from that night, but will have to upload them later.

Considering that this was also a “ski trip” I guess I should also comment on the amazing time we all had on the slopes.  We were lucky to get some fresh powder around our second day which made for some amazing snowboarding. Considering that it’s been about 1.5 years since I’ve ridden, I think I picked it back up pretty well.  I’ll probably take a trip out to see Deb in Jackson Hole later this winter and hopefully will be able to master those darn heel-side turns! 

We also had some casualties during the trip.  On Tuesday morning, we had to make an emergency hospital run when Christie collapsed in the hotel bathroom from dehydration!  If you’ve never seen anyone go through it, she was shaking and unconscious and basically looked like she was a heroin addict OD-ing!  We were all pretty freaked out and rushed her to the hospital where we soon discovered half of Kellogg had been through there for something or another.  I guess high altitude and alcohol hadn’t sat well with quite a few folks and the doctors weren’t surprised to see her in that condition.  There were so many injured Kellogg folks, that I felt like I saw someone I recognized everywhere I looked!  I don’t know the exact injury count, but I think there were something like 5-6 torn ACL/MCL’s, 1 broken collarbone, and countless sprains and minor injuries.  I myself had to get to the hospital on the last day when a corneal abrasion that I had in my eye from childhood opened back up again due to the dry, cold weather.  The worst part was that it basically ended my snowboarding for the rest of the trip.  Instead, I spent the last day snowshoeing with some friends which turned out to be amazing! 

When I signed up to go, I had no idea that a) I was going with a triathlete, a marathon runner and a professional snow-shower and b) they had planned to actually CLIMB the freaking mountain (whereas I had though we would just take the lift up the mountain and putz around for a bit).  The climb was extremely challenging and involved everything from climbing cliffs to creating our own trail through 3+ feet of snow.  But it was an amazing experience and I felt such a sense of accomplishment having completed it. The best part was hiking through the aspens and having the opportunity to really appreciate the natural beauty on the mountain; something you don’t really get riding down the groomed slopes.  I would highly recommend it, but would caution anyone who has issues breathing in high altitude. 

I’ve included some pictures from the trip, but will have to add more as I get them from friends.. since my camera was sadly stolen from Jacobs :(