lol mbaments

I'm not sure that people who work in MBA Admissions offices are very bright.

Today I got an email from London School of Business that had a typo in the subject. This was something I recall happening frequently last year.

And Fuqua can probably recall my many rants on the things I would get from MBA schools last winter. Like, why would a school from some ugly city in the cold North ranked 49th pay $3 in postage to unsolicitedly send me brochures that probably cost a few dollars, and not include a fee waiver or some sort of potential scholarship incentive? They know my GMAT score, it's in the file when they pull it from GMAT.

Anyway, though I find the process immensely distasteful, a bunch of schools are having recruitment fairs in Buenos Aires in the next week. I frequently have free time in the afternoon, so I figured I'd wander out there. What I find distasteful is that elite schools go out and recruit and lie to people about "yeah, you have a chance to be admitted. We take people every year who are well below our GMAT/GPA means." Of course, most of those admittees do not fit my demographic profile. Seriously, if you need to be recruited to apply to Stanford or Northwestern, you should save your time and money: you aren't getting in.

So basically they spend all this money to go out, basically lie to people so that they can reject them and keep their numbers high for USNews rankings. Awesome; I'm pretty sure this is not a job I could ethically allow myself to do, unless maybe I was starving. Maybe this is why they don't like their jobs and can't ever spell anything right in anything they send me.

The one in which Diego saves my life

So I head out to Olivos (northern suburb) on Saturday night. I was taking the bus instead of the train; not exactly sure why. There's pros and cons to both, and they come out to relatively similar time frames. I've taken the bus out there at least a few times, although I have more frequently taken it back into the city.

Anyway, bus takes a little detour from what I was expecting, but I've read that this sometimes happens, so when the bus driver turned back towards the route I was expecting, I wasn't too worried. Five second later, we were getting on the Pan American Highway. Apparently there is more variability in this route than I thought. Oops.

Since I had just purchased my guide to the bus system 10 minutes before (ironic, no?), I decide to try and see if I can figure out where I'm going. Oh no way, no how. So I just ride the bus for awhile, as we seem to be going down the Autopista Panmericana and I figure maybe I'll see Olivos. Nope. I think maybe I see a sign for a city I know, so I get off. I call Diego, read him a sign where I was. Fortunately for me, he knew where I was, more or less. And he told me it was a really bad area of town and that I needed to get out of it immediately.

So I start running down the side of the Pan American Highway. Good times, jogging down the feeder in khakis and dress shoes. Eventually I find a Walmart, Diego picks me up, and I still have two working kidneys.

Ended up at a birthday party for a girl I don't know, so it was still a successful Saturday night.

Fire Fire Fire

When I got here, the air quality was bad. Observe:




That's El Obelisco in the background. See it? It's right...there. People were walking around with masks on, shirts over their face, etc. During this period, I would wake up in the morning and think that my apartment was on fire.




Impressive, no? At the time, people were speculating that it was part of the Campos' (farmers) strike. I also recently read it was part of some volcano or something. So I don't really know why it was so bad. But it was quite bad.

I kept thinking to myself, "Buenos Aires. Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. I guess that's not meant too literally." But no, there are indeed plenty of blue skies here, even in this seemingly eternal winter. I'm tired of 60 degree weather!


These pictures were saved a long time ago, and I don't remember where from. Fortunately they both appear to have identifiers on them, so I'm going to assume I slip through on fair use.

Picture dump

This is some greenspace in Chacaritas. Chris, this was near y'all's place... it's the park on Cordoba.




I'm standing at a Shell (you can see upper right) on Cordoba Ave, and for some reason I liked the look of this intersection. Girls want boyfriends that have skills. I do not have photography skills.



I don't know if you can see how many people are packed into that subway car, but this isn't even peak time. This picture is only like the Diet Coke of semi-packed.



Apparently that flash don't work so well inside subway stations.




This is inside the Scalabrini Ortiz subte station. I'll take some other pictures, but these little newstands are everywhere in Buenos Aires. Every block or two, sometimes more. [Edit: This probably isn't the case in the poorer barrios, or in the suburbs. In fact, I can't recally seeing many in the suburbs.] They basically have every publication known to man in there, as far as I can tell. The selection is impressive. Plus the big Guia-T, which i still need to buy. [The Guia-T is the map for the colectivos, which is BsAs very impressive bus system.]




So, I ordered a brownie and it came out with a tiny little spoon, which is why we took a picture of me eating a brownie with a spoon. Portenos apparently hate to ever touch their food. A friend tells me that he only touches his food when he's eating empanadas in his house. Otherwise, it's knife and fork. Personally, I refuse to use knife and fork on pizza, even though pizza here is ridiculous and basically requires knife and fork.





A few blocks from me, there is this little place that apparently rents Santa gnomes for parties. I don't really get it, but hey... I took 2 pictures to make sure that you could see the blue one. Who wants a blue Santa lawn gnome? And who uses a lawn gnome without a yard, since not too many people have lawns in Capital.



I guess this is like a mini firestation. When the door is down, I would never know that it is a fire station. This is in Hollywood.

Bleg

For those of you with Wii experience, what games do I need to buy for the Wii?

I don't really care about the Wii so much, I'm mostly just buying it to have friends over here, as the Wii is pretty rare.

Where I live now

Emily always tells me I need more pictures, so I took some late this afternoon of my new place. Since I've been living here almost 2 months, I guess it's not so new.

This is where I spend most of my time, and where I am right now. Note that desktop, courtesy of Mr. Fuqua. Also note those champagne flutes for 2. What what?

This is the view out my window from my computer.

This is the view out my bedroom window from lying down in bed.

Not really sure why I took a picture of this corner.

Apparently late afternoon makes taking pictures tricky. This is upstairs in our living room, looking out towards Avenida Cabildo.

This is our living room looking the other way. To the left you can see the stairs to take you toward the terrace. I'm leaning against the countertop, which you can just barely see in the left bottom corner. Over there is the kitchen, 2nd bathroom, and front door.

I live on the line between Belgrano and Palermo. I'm not exactly sure which it is, but it's more Belgrano. However, this view from out our living room window is all technically Palermo.

I'm not sure why I decided to take a picture of the street from 8 stories up. I'm not exactly known for my photography skills.

I like this view of the Catholic church off in the background. I have a tendency to gaze out the window at this steeple whenever I am in the living room....which isn't that often.

Now, the reason to live here: our third level, the rooftop terrace. Here's our table with parrilla (grill) in the background.

The terrace from another angle. We don't currently have the reclining chairs out, since it's winterish. Even though it's sometimes a little chilly with the wind, I've been coming up here and reading Anna Karenina in the sun recently. Very relaxing.

"You are becoming an Argentine"

I've had a few different Argentine friends tell me I am becoming an Argentine whenever I do something that is a stereotype of Argentines.

Funny that, everytime they've said that, it's just one of my personality traits. Maybe I was naturally born more into the Argentine way of life. Except that I'm a mildly obsessive saver. But otherwise...