To hold you over till I finish writing my ESADE graduation post

http://www.foddy.net/GIRP.html

Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun

After the awesome song posted in my previous post, here's one to absolutely kill all faith in current mainstream music.

"Ohhhh. Ching chong ling long ting tong"

My undergraduate alma mater has been in the news lately thanks to a video that was uploaded by a UCLA student. She complains about the hordes of Asians in the library who talk loudly on their cellphones in their mysterious ching chong dialogue. As expected it sparked a multitude of angry responses and the pitchforks and torches were brought out to crucify this girl. I'm not gonna get into a debate about racism so I'll keep my thoughts to a minimum.

Personally, I feel that what the girl said was idiotic and represents the problems of having gross generalizations of other races. But seriously, everyone does that. As noted by a friend of mine (paraphrasing here) "If youtube and video uploading were given to our parents, people would be appalled as to what Asians think about other races." Admit it. Deep down inside we're all a bit racist. We say stuff about other races. We've probably done similar gross generalizations of races that this girl did. We just weren't dumb enough to post it on youtube.

I like this guy's response to the whole thing. Instead of writing a lengthy diatribe about the evils of white society and the perils of racism, why not just write a funny song. 

A Taste of Tennessee

So my job search has taken me to some interesting places in the US. Two weeks ago I found myself in Nashville, Tennessee for an interview with a multinational CPG company.

I was put up in the ALoft in Franklin, Tennesee.

Really nice place. The guest profile did not match the demographic that they were trying to cater to. The place just seems appropriate for some fist pumping doucheness but it was full of middle aged men who think Ed Hardy is one-third of a crime fighting sibling unit. 

My room. I question the interior designer who thought cowhide would be a cool headboard. 

I chatted up the person at the rental car counter and got her recommendation as to where to get some good ole Tennessee BBQ. 

Her recommendation was Bar-B-Cutie. Go to the link and click "Locations". Notice anything strange? Seemingly normal geographic distribution of restaurants. Smyrna, Tennesee. Actworth, Georgia. Allen, Texas.Valencia, Spain. Uh....what? How do you go from the mid-Atlantic and South to Spain? There's 2 locations! I swear the owner's kid must have studied abroad in Valencia for a semester and the owner decided, hell let's find a franchisee there. 

The food was good. I managed to get over the Spain thing and enjoy my copious amounts of meat. It's all meat. I swear the potatoes and beans were made from some meat by-product. 

Manners and decency go out the door when you're eating BBQ. Hands and large paper towels. That's all you really need. 

After my interviews I had some time before my flight so I decided to check out Music City aka Nashville.

Large selection of cowboy boots. Perfect for some honky tonk line dancing. Yee-haw!

Plenty of record shops and music bars to delight any country music fan. All 10 of them.

Another place I was recommended was Jack's BBQ.

The man at the counter was gruff to say the least. Whatever happened to Southern hospitality? It's funny because it's one of the complaints on Yelp.

The menu. A minimalist BBQ menu. I love BBQ joints' definition of vegetable sides. 

From Jack's menu:

Potato Chips

Cole Slaw

Baked Beans

Potato Salad

Vegetable and Salad Du Jour

Mac & Cheese, Corn

Green Beans, Apples. 

Growing up I would've never had a problem eating my vegetables if those were considered vegetables. I'd also be disgustingly obese but that's another matter. 

 I got the Texas Beef Brisket sandwich with green beans and mac and corn. The brisket was amazing. So soft and tender. Everything else was just okay. The corn looked like someone ate corn and then threw it up. 

Me living in Tennesee. When pigs fly! Damn.

The eclectic interior decor of Jack's. It's doing that inside/outside thing that has become a staple in so many kitschy restaurants. 

On my flight over I was reading the American Airlines magazine and it did this profile of a cool print shop called Hatch Show Print. Started in 1875, the company has been making posters for movies, circuses and most notably, concerts. 

Everything is hand-pressed and rolled off these gigantic wooden printing presses. 

Some of the posters on the wall. 

A Hatch Show poster. This style has become iconic and can also be pointed to as the basis for the Obama poster. 

Hope is not what I have for this couple's fashion sense. 

Where Vince Young pouts and tries to live up his hype and expectations. About as successful as Kim Kardashian's music career or the Nintendo Virtual Boy. 

The Nashville skyline. It's kinda skyline-y. It has tall buildings here and there. Sort of. 

So this recruiting trip actually took place during my spring break in LA. On the way back from LA to Detroit I made the disastrous decision to fly with Spirit Airlines. I will never ever fly them again. Spirit was exactly the opposite of what I had when flying on on their planes. I wanted to shoot myself. I will go over my list of complaints. 

1) No airport kiosks. You had to actually wait in line, see an attendant, get your passes and check your bags. Who does that? A company that gives you an option to print out your boarding pass online if you pay an annual fee to become a Spirit member. I'd rather donate money to Osama Bin Laden's campaign to wipe America off the planet. 

2) Their "terminal" at LAX. 

It's depressing. It's small. 

And the absolute kicker. 

What the fuck is this? I'm 5'7. My knees should not be touching the back of the seat in front of me. I couldn't even open my laptop because the tray wouldn't flatten because my legs were in the way. I'm short and this was bothering me. What happens if you're medium hit and medium build? Do you just squeeze yourself into the seat and pray deep vein thrombosis doesn't kill you before you land? God, I hate this airline. I honestly hope it declares bankruptcy and the people who run this shit airline are forced to sit in their planes and fly back and forth from LA to Sydney. 

Okay I think I feel a bit better now. Yeah so that was my Tennessee trip. This week I'm off to Chicago for my last interviews and then it's B-A-R-C-E-L-O-N-A for graduation. 

A little humor

This is so spectacularly awesome I honestly have no words to describe it's awesomeness.

Some highlights

"I'm not afraid to get sand in my tuxedo if you don't mind let the wind mess your hair up a bit when I take the top down" 
"No fatties"
"I'm a 25 year subscriber to Playboy and the New Yorker"
"My favorite food is pizza...and sugar and spice and everything nice."
"I will cry at a commercial"
"I am interested in all phases of data processing"

Video of tsunami

Some of the shots look like it came from the movie 2012

The power of communications.

You don't want to be waken up to messages asking about whether your family is okay or not. Early morning EST a 8.9 magnitude earthquake shook Japan. Since pretty much my entire family lives in Japan this is really not fun news to wake up to. 

Call my mom in NYC and she is already hitting the phone lines making sure everyone is okay. Tells me that my dad isn't picking up his phone and not answering his emails. He was on business in Tokyo/Nagoyoa. Awesome. 

Get a call a couple minutes later from my mom that my mom's side has all been accounted for. No injuries. Helped that they weren't near a coast but since they live 2 hours from Tokyo the earthquake did shake them quite a bit. 

Text at 7:30 stating that my dad finally checked in and my grandparents in Tokyo are fine. They were actually vacationing at a seaside resort called Izu but weren't affected by the tsunami. 

Thank god. Watching the news and video footage it's amazing that more people weren't injured or killed. My thoughts are with everyone in Japan who is still trying to find out news about loved ones. 日本の皆さんお大事に。

 

I'm BAACCKKK

After a lengthy delay thanks to my 1.5 year old Dell laptop refusing to boot, I am back with posts to provide you with visual and textual delight. That's TEXTual delight you sick freaks.

The past 2.5 weeks saw me in Mammoth Lakes, Los Angeles, Nashville, LA again and now back in Ann Arbor. Throw in two take home finals during that time too and I was somewhat busy. Only somewhat though. I'm a 2nd year MBA. We're in coast mode. 

Anyways, after an uneventful trip back to LA, my first weekend was spent in beautiful Mammoth Lakes, CA. Our friends booked a wonderful cabin about 10 minutes from the slopes. 4 bedrooms, 3 bath with an outdoor hot tub. The place was ridiculous. The only thing it lacked was heat. More about that later. 

The dining room area, which we actually used to eat dinner. Aren't we civilized?

The living room. I'd say the decor could be characterized as cabin-chic? Or rustic luxury? I should write for  Log Cabins and Mountain Homes Magazine. 

Where the magic doesn't happen. 

When we first arrived on Friday night, the first order of business was to turn the heat on so that the cabin could be warmed up. With the introduction of centralized heating, this would've been an easy task. Flip the switch and Voila! heat. Unfortunately, the Voila resulted in just cold blasts of air. Numerous calls and emails to the owner went unanswered so we resorted to warming ourselves up the old fashioned way. Fire. Lots of it. Needless to say, this only warmed up the living room area so the bedrooms were mini refrigerators. The maintenance people came to fix the furnace on Saturday so it was fine afterwards but it was a fun way to start the trip. 

In any case, on Friday night we gave up on trying to warm ourselves up and headed to dinner with some friends who were also in town. 

We figured we'd keep with the fire motif and order some flambe for dessert.   

So Saturday on the slopes was a bit rough. Snow and wind limited visibility and it was pretty damn cold. I didn't even bother taking pictures because my concentration was on staying warm and not getting frostbite. How I stay alive in Michigan I have no idea. 

Sunday was a different story. Blue skies and minimal wind. A truly epic day of snowboarding. As the cool kids say it, it was a day to shred the gnar. 

Looking up from Eagle Express. 

Check out how much snow there is. The eagle is NOT life sized. 

The SO in full gear. I definitely need a helmet for next year. I've concussed myself at least twice while snowboarding and I don't think I have many brain cells left.

Wide open runs. It's what I love about Mammoth. The mountain is so damn big that it distributes everyone to a point where you're not slamming into people left and right. Allows me to catch an edge and eat it at my own leisure. SHRED THE GNAR!!! I don't even know what that means. 

After a day of snowboarding I treated myself to some glorious Bud Light. Not to be mistaken with urine although it looks similar and *supposedly* tastes similar. I don't get it when people announce that things taste like piss or crap. Have they eaten/drank it before and thus can use the experience as a worthy barometer to the beverage/food? Why would they admit such thing? I know it's not literal but at some point someone has to wonder why that phrase even originated. 

They had flags. Lots of flags. Colorful flags. 

The Mammoth Mountain mascot. As you probably guessed, it's a mammoth. 

Well that was post 1 after my long break. I agree that it was definitely not a very funny or witty post. Hopefully, the next one lives up to your expectations. My suggestion is that you don't expect much and imagine a trained monkey bashing keys together to magically come up with words and sentences. 

Broken

My hard drive went kaput so I'm without my laptop. On a loaner one so posting will have to be temporarily interrupted until I get a new laptop. Lo siento folks. I am now accepting paypal donations for a new laptop.