Thank god for credit cards

As a stereotypical American, I decided that even though I can't afford anything it would be a good idea to take a trip to the French Riviera. A trip to be solely funded through copious use of my credit card. The SO who was visiting from LA still works and could help  in paying for stuff but she forgot her credit cards at home and brought about 200 dollars in cash for her two week stay. How convenient. She told me she was gonna pay me back so I shouldn't worry, right?

Anyways, as text bores me and pictures excite me....

The SO arrived on the 19th and we spent the first couple of days hanging out in Barcelona.

Sand-dog at the beach.

Had some healthy tapas at Cerveceria Catalana.

I've been living in Barcelona for about 7 months now and the SO and I visited Barcelona 4 years ago but we've never been to the Boqueria till now.

The weather in Barcelona, as it has been for the past 5 months, has been spotty. It finally cleared up during the afternoon and I got to bust out my artsy shot of the day. 

What's a day of walking without some gelato? Two scoops please.

What's a day of walking without some pintxos? Yes, we had ice cream and then we had some mini tapas. And some beer. Don't judge us. 

To accommodate Easter Sunday into our Spring Break, we actually had a weird schedule. Week 10 or Finals week ended on the 19th and then we had one week of Term 3 classes to be followed by our week off. Odd? Yes. Surprising? No. I've learned to accept the oddities of living and studying in Spain. Like how they have no ham and cheese bocadillos (sandwiches) at our school cafeteria. They only have ham OR cheese sandwiches. When a classmate bought a ham sandwich and a cheese sandwich, took the cheese out, placed said cheese within the ham sandwich, our lunch ladies looked as though they witnessed the second coming of Jesus. It's like it never occurred to them to do that. *facepalm*

Oh yeah, so since I had class to attend the SO went out and re-visited some of her favorite BCN sites. Parc Guell being one of them. 

She also enrolled us in a cooking class at Cook and Taste. Set-up was that the cook would guide volunteers in preparing certain dishes. Our menu for today was pan con tomate, tortillas, chupito de tomate, paella and crema catalana. All prepared over a 5 hour period. 

Observing the ingredients of the chupito de sopa. It's basically a mini gazpacho. 

Ignacio, chef du jour. Oh sorry. It's Ignaaathhhio. Gotta lisp the c's cuz we're in Barttttthhelona. 

Let's just cut to the chase here. I'd show you more pictures of people preparing food but it's just a lot of slicing, dicing, mixing and cooking.

Interesting fact about Paella. It's only called paella because it's made in this dish. The actual iron pan there is called the paella. So whatever you cook in this dish becomes known as paella. If you cooked cats in there it would still be called paella instead of animal rights abuse. Calm down PETA activists I would never eat cats. Not enough meat on them. 

Total time to eat dessert: 10 seconds. 

So after about 6 days in Barcelona hanging out, socializing with ESADE peeps and attending birthdays, we were off to the southern coast of France for about 6 days of eating, drinking and sightseeing. Our priorities for the trip reflected in said order. 

Funny thing, my family and the SO's family happened to share the same ritual of always getting McDonald's breakfast before we head off on a trip. We proudly continued the tradition by eating at the McD's in the Barcelona airport. Nothing beats a Sausage Egg McMuffin and coffee. Too bad they didn't have Hash Browns but I guess we didn't really need the extra fried potato boost in the morning this time. 

....annnnnd we're in Nice.

The fresh flowers market in Vieux Ville (Old Town) Nice. 

Cafes aka tourist zones. 

Plaza Messena 

Our hotel room and view from the hotel room. Not bad for 60 Euros a night. Hotel was called La Malmaison. Room was actually fairly big and we had a small terrace too. Place gets my stamp of approval. 

Our first dinner in Nice at Voyageur Nissart. I believe I had rabbit while the SO had duck.  

Our first full day in Nice was started off by a nice lunch at Le Borghese near the Old Port. 

I can't even remember what I had here.

But the SO had salmon. It was the Plat du Jour. The Plate of the Day. It sounded good so she had that. 

Not everything we did centered around eating and drinking. Remember the last item on our list? Sightseeing? We went to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art to get us some culture. According to the website, 

"The artistic program of the museum finds its main structure in the relation between the New European Realism and the American Tendency towards the Art of Assembling and Pop Art." Uh huh. *nods head*

Are you ready for some culture? 

Boo-ya. That's right. It's reindeers doing it. Ready for some more culture?

Tattooed pigs. We are on a roll here. 

Blue!!! Just blue. 

Toasted bread with a cut-out of a man. Why not. 

One of the cooler things I saw was this bulldozer. Made to also look like the Notre Dame cathedral. It's a stretch I know but just go with it. 

This is an example of why you should never get a tattoo with Japanese or Chinese writing unless you're 186% sure that it's correct. In the above instance, it should actually be 幸せ娘。The tattoo art has an extra わ in it that's unnecessary.  

After getting cultured to the max we headed over to Palais Lascaris. The bottom floor had an actual old pharmacy from the Victoria era exhibited. 

Yes, that is another gelato in her hand. 2 scoops as usual. The beach in Nice is not a sandy beach but a rock and pebble filled beach. Not too great for laying out unless you like acupuncture. 

View of the Mediterranean Sea and Nice. 

Don't do it. You have so much more to live for. And the water is only 3 inches deep.

For dinner we went to Oliviera. Probably our favorite restaurant out of the ones we went to. I had beef tartare. 

She had rabbit. Tasted wonderful and especially fitting with Easter around the corner. My kids are gonna hate me. 

The super nice owner filling up a bottle of olive oil for us to take home. The restaurant specialized in various olive oils and the owner was nice enough to sample a few and to appreciate the subtle differences between the oils from various regions. Could have just been a ploy to get us to buy and eat more stuff. It worked. 

Monaco, Cannes, Grasse and everything in between will be covered next so stay tuned.

PS: To the hater who pressed dislike. Don't hate the playa' hate the game. 

Hurry before she wakes up

Well I survived finals week and the ensuing parties that occurred after that. When you combine birthdays with end of term stress relieving it's a dangerous thing. I would update you all more but the SO is in town since Friday and we've been out and about in Barcelona. Using this time after she's conked out from one too many glasses of wine to update el blogo. 

Updating this blog with new topics is becoming more and more planned in advance so here's the next couple of blog posts that will occur over the next couple of weeks. 

1) Visit of the SO to Barcelona and trip to Nice and Monaco.

2) FC Barcelona vs. Valencia game with classmates

3) Review of the ESADE cafeteria food. 

Last one may not sound that interesting but I've been wanting to do a post about our lunches for about a month now so I'm gonna indulge myself at your expense. 

I think she's waking up. Time to get back to work. Ciao till next week. 

Field Trip

Term 2 final exams are next week. Studying blows so how about another post about our field trip last Saturday. After having done a strategy case study on Robert Mondavi wines, our Strategy professor decided that it was vital for his students to see Spain's greatest export not named Penelope Cruz.

...wine. Another pictorial tour? Why, I thought you'd never ask.

We roll in style at ESADE. Coach bus with the latest in design, technology and safety minus the beheadings.

Ready to submerge yourself in a world....

wait....didn't I already use that joke? Yeah. Turns out our field trip was to the same place I went last Saturday. I debated whether or not to go but I figured my Strategy professor might pull something crazy. That guy has gotten some cool surprise guest speakers for us so I held out on the off chance he wrangled the Freixenet CEO or something. He did get the CEO of Vueling, CEO of Kellog's-Spain, Director of International Business of Starbucks so you never know. That guy is like the Entourage of ESADE. Guest appearances all over the place. 

It's the soil of the cava industry. Soil-soul. Get it? I hate having to explain jokes, yet I still do it. 

When I went two weeks ago all I got was a glass of cava. This time around we got a full spread and 2 glasses of cava. I love strategery. 

The pink cava. Surprisingly masculine. So this tour was a bit different but we didn't get a surprise visit by a CEO. Won't complain though. The whole thing was free and it forced me to get up early on Saturday instead of sleeping in. 

The combination of empty stomach and cava led to an impromptu karaoke session on the bus ride back. It was represent your own country karaoke so we had to sing a song from our respective countries. It was like American Idol but like the first couple of episodes of American Idol. 

Just kidding. Everyone was great. I blame the bad acoustics of the bus.

So I'm not sure how often I'll be posting from now till next Friday. Probably not very much but I'll try to throw in some quick posts here and there. After next week the SO arrives and then its spring break Barcelona style, meaning I'm getting the hell out of here and off to Nice and Monaco for about 5 days. Au revoir!

In case you wondered what I do all day besides sit around and blog.

A day in the life of an ESADE student starring one of my American classmates.

Real time weather update

When you imagine Barcelona what pops into your head? Gaudi? Parc Guell? Tapas? Nightlife? Beaches? Great weather?

Well you can throw that last one out at least for the last couple of months. It's been raining and cold. Today we reached Armageddon. It snowed. How much you say? Well the pictures should speak for themselves. 

This was just the teaser snowfall.

Getting colder...

Colder....

.....

.....

....and it's officially a blizzard. Global warming. 

Japan rant

On Wednesday we had a discussion regarding national identity in our Global Context of Management class. It was very much a relevant topic for me because of my upbringing. I was born and raised in the US but my parents made it a point to remind of me of  my heritage. We only spoke Japanese at home, my mom mostly cooked Japanese food, we celebrate Japanese holidays such as Children's Day, Setsubun, Hina Matsuri, etc. We had Ohinamasa 

and Koinobori's at our home

Growing up I spent almost every summer in Japan with my extended family. I took pride in that I was as Japanese as I was American. Hot dogs and sushi. But, as I got older I realized that no one ever accepted me as being Japanese. I looked the part. I talked the part. Yet, I'd frequently hear "You're so American. Just a tad bit different than us." As a kid looking for acceptance that really bothered me. What more did I need to become Japanese? Back in the US no one ever questioned my American-ness. I was never asked to prove how American I was. In Japan it was different though. You had to know the culture, traditions, language, be born there before you were accepted. Actually, that's not even really the case. Take for example the Korean-Japanese living in Japan. The 2nd generation Korean-Japanese are still considered outsiders because of their last name or ancestry. 

I had a tough name reconciling who I was. Was I more Japanese or more American? I felt Japanese but was never considered welcomed into the society. Could I be Japanese and still be "American" Somehow I felt out of place. By the time I was in high school I completely gave up trying to think of myself as being 50/50 Japanese American. This was also when I started really reading about the Japanese Americans in America and started to truly find my identity. When I was in college I worked at the Japanese American National Museum  as a Curatorial Intern. Talking to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation JAs there who went through racism, internment, WWII and how they held onto their Japanese culture while reveling in the American culture was really when everything clicked. I stopped thinking of my identity as being binary. I wasn't half Japanese or half American but a mixture of both. My life incorporates the best of both worlds and I should be absolutely grateful for that. The second guessing of who I was stopped. 

I still find the lack of acceptance of Japanese culture just so peculiar. Historically, you could relate it to Japan being closed off from the world for so long until Commodore Perry and his Black Ships showed up in 1853 or a myriad of other historical/cultural influences. Whatever. When I read this article japan-its-not-funny-anymore  by a writer living in Japan I totally agreed with so many of the negatives of Japan. Especially the insistence of following the status quo. My own personal anecdote related to following the status quo. 

About 10 years ago I was travelling with my parents in Japan. We were waiting for our next train and stopped into a kissaten aka a small restaurant/cafe inside the train station. My parents and I probably had about 5 bags with us so finding space to put all these bags was difficult due to the small ass tables and chairs surrounding us. The layout of the restaurant was such that there was a row of tables along the side wall of the cafe. Similar to this just not as fancy or red. 

Now most of the tables were taken up where a single guy took up one table and all the dudes were seated with their backs to their wall. All of them were seated in that way. Now, it happened to be that no one was sitting at our table next to us so I placed my belongings on the bench/seat next to me, which happened to be the seat  with the back to the wall. My thinking was that since most likely the person who would sit next to us would be  a lone businessman he would just in the seat that faces the wall. Yeah he'd look at my ugly bags but I really had nowhere else to put them. I couldn't put them in the walkway because it would be a hazard for the waitresses. So this guy walks up to the open table and looks at my bags and then looks at me. I stared at him with a what do you want look. You know what he made me freaking do? He made me move my bags so that he could sit with his back to the wall just like everyone else. WTF. He couldn't be the lone guy who happened to be sitting in a fashion counter to everyone else. I had to move all my bags to the other seat so he could sit there. Now that I think about it I should've just said no. I would take satisfaction in denying him his seat but I think even the principle of him asking me would still tick me off. There are so many examples of stuff like that that I just find so odd about Japan. 

Anyways, end of rant over. I've already lost my American citizenship due to my attendance at Canadian thanksgiving maybe I'll lose my Japanese citizenship next. Ohhhh Canada.....Our home and native land...I hope you got room for one more. 

Support my classmates!

My classmates, Tanvi B Savla, Louise Ralston and Bas van Ulden, Fulltime MBA 2011 students, made it to the second round of Société Générale’s Citizen Act competition. Their “Bank Better” concept received praise from the jury for originality and thoroughness. They now need your help!!!!!!!

The next round is about getting their fellow students involved in their thinking. To accomplish this, they will be maintaining a discussion forum (Blog) for the next three weeks until 12th March, on the topic of “Do people need to be taught how to handle their personal finances?”. The forum (Blog) will feature a different poll each day and the team will be evaluated based on the number of visitors to the blog as well as number of useful comments people make on it. So let’s hear your thoughts here.

Welcome to the family

My dad, sensing how my mom would need a companion after the loss of dear old Duke, decided to surprise my mom with a new addition to the family, Sassi, an English bulldog. She arrived last week and is now settling in. Don't worry Duke you'll always be my #1. Still, gotta welcome her with open arms.