My Lucky Portuguese Rooster

My lucky Portuguese rooster sits atop a Euro pedestal on my desk. Legend has it that the inhabitants of the town arrested a Galician they suspected of a serious crime and condemned him to death by hanging. The prisoner emphatically declared his innocence and to the amazement of his accusers he pointed to the roasted cockerel on the table and said that his innocence would be proved by the crying of the bird should they attempt to kill him. At the very moment he was about to be hanged the roasted cockerel stood up and began crying. He was immediately set free. Ever since I brought one of those back from Portugal, it's like I entered a new era in life: an era where once when things used to be at a standstill, now are moving...

My internship search is still going, but I've got final rounds at Novartis and an interview at Charity Bank.

Today we had the selection of the Salsa Club for MBA Olympics. Although there were enough guys, there were too many girls. Our choreographer Pedro made the selection & then told us we would be performing a Casino Rueda routine to a salsa version of "Grease." I was soooo excited to hear that! Creativity, originality, lots of flirtiness. It sounded more than perfect. It seemed that we picked the right guy to choreograph.



While in class, everything started to come together somehow. All the classes seemed easy to me now, I was not lost in any, and doing cases became second nature to me. Probably because the only quantitative class yet was Corporate Finance, and I could do that in my sleep... I finally felt comfortable speaking in class. I felt I finally "got it." All those cases finally are paying off.

And our classes seem to have mellowed to my liking. Section A is devising classic schemes to mess with the professors like quoting Beatles & Queen songs during a comment, or having the entire section A class simultaneously call the entire section B class at a predetermined time. Or random challenges:

The first:

10 points to anyone who executes a 360 degree spin in their desk chair.
Venga!

The next:

Tomorrow, enter class at 11:14 and elevate your desk chair to its highest level.
Then, at *exactly* 11:20, Ching Hsiang will yawn, stretch both arms into the air, lean back and lower his seat to its lowest level. Everyone surrounding him will follow and lower their seat, and a wave will radiate out from Ching Hsiang around the classroom, ending on the far side. **This will occur no matter what else is happening at the time**.

Please synchronize your watches with the classroom clock.

My favorite:

Equipo Gigante,

OK, we've done chairs and songs. Now for something that takes a bit more courage. The challenge during leadership is to raise your hand, get called on, begin talking, and then get up, *without asking for permisssion*, and draw a diagram on the board to illustrate your point.

Extra points if the diagram has no resemblance to what you are talking about. Example:
you: "I love leadership as you can clearly see from this square I've just drawn." Actually, you've just drawn a triangle.

Follow the leader!

And our Team A8 dinner last night got me starting to think about life & this MBA. 3 members of our old A8 had moved to Section C, and in exchange, 3 new members from the Spanish section came to our group. We had dinner at a Chilean restaurant (2 were from Chile). And I thought... I will always remember our old team A8 because we have been through the trenches together. We suffered... alot. And seeing them still makes me feel like family, even if they are now in the Spanish section. But on the other hand, I am starting to feel the same for our new members. I love them all. They have brought a new ambiance to the group, and a new personality. Everyone at IESE is just so talented, and so genuine. The Admissions Staff really do a great job selecting. But sometimes you need to relax the constraints to let this out. And as we learned in Leadership, it is only when you go through the trenches that you learn to appreciate the actual gift -- what we actually came here for. It's like I said before: Nothing in life worth having ever comes easy.