My Blog has Moved

I've been planning for awhile to move my blog to a more professional looking site such as typepad.com or wordpress.com and now I've finally done it. I know that it is a pain to bookmark a new URL or start a new RSS feed but I hope the new site will provide an improved experience for my readership. Everything from this blog has been imported to the new site so all posts, comments, tags, etc. will still be there.

Apologies but please setup your bookmarks and RSS feeds for:

http://teavu.typepad.com/

See you on the new site!

Credit Crunch

I know the banking industry and the economy as a whole has been crumbling around me but in general my job and financial position are fairly secure. Therefore, I have yet to feel the effects of the recession/depression and most of the establishments that I frequent are still busy and buzzing with customers.

However, Monday the 16th of March marks the opening of this year's London Restaurant Week. From what I can gather, my friends and I have been spending sometime over the last couple of days perusing the restaurant list and trying to book tables. So now the credit crunch has finally hit home as my foodie friends and I have to take advantage of these promotions to dine at Michelin-star restaurants.

Yes rough life, I know.

Bad B-School Decision

Today I realized that I chose the wrong business school not once but twice over. I chose London Business School for its excellent standing, diversity, and global perspective. I found out today just how wrong I was though.

First of all, due to the schedule of the program I was too distracted to make reservations at El Bulli and now the 2009 season has filled completely. Secondly, when Ferran Adria chose a business school to speak at he chose Harvard Business School. LBS had better come through for me in other ways.

Simple Joys in Life

Since moving to London I haven't bought very many kitchen gadgets and forget about counter top appliances. I have very little space and I always worry that I'm wasting money buying electrics that only take 240V. But last week I decided that I needed to replace a few kitchen items that are buried away in storage somewhere in San Jose. While searching for kitchenware stores online I discovered the Japanese Knife Company. I stopped by in the afternoon to this very basic shop in the corner of a warehouse. The shop was the size of closet but filled with rows and rows of pristine steel layered in carbon tempered to 60:62 Rockwell. The man who greeted me at the door holding a 12" knife handed me one knife after another starting with 35 layers of steel to 120 layers of laser cut steel. I must have cut up a dozen tomatoes trying to see which one felt right. I ended up choosing a hand-hammered 3-layer knife made of blue steel. It is a beautiful thing to behold indeed and today I was so excited to come home and cook dinner just so I could cut a few things with my new weapon. I would have been happy to come home and just cut a lemon.

It's nice that there are still some very simple joys in life.

Snow Day

I was born in a tropical country and lived nearly all of my life in Northern California so snow was always something that you had to travel to see. However on the night of Superbowl Sunday this is what it looked like outside of my window.

Between last night and today nearly 1 foot of snow has fallen in some parts of London making it the most snow the city has seen in 18 years. I got emails and texts all day from people saying they were taking a snow day as the buses and most of the tubes and trains weren't running. And forget about driving. When even a dusting of snow falls on the ground the whole of the UK comes to a grinding halt.

Aside from the snow what's been going on with me? I had a small Superbowl Sunday pre-game get together last night to my all-American pride. Why was it only a pre-game celebration? You must realize that the game didn't start until 11:30pm GMT. I was able to catch a bit of it and saw "The Boss" perform at half-time. Lately it's just been a busy mixture of work (prepping for the big launch) and school.

How has school been? The first week was very exhausting and overwhelming. Then came the first weekend and now I've just finished my second weekend. I must say I was still on the fence after the first week but school has improved by leaps and bounds since then. Perhaps the dissatisfaction with week 1 was mostly down to the fact that we were required to stay in a gritty hotel for an entire week. Everyday we would spend 8-10 hours in class together and then would be required to attend social events afterwards together. It was great for the first few days to all be in one place and get to know each other but by Wednesday we were all ready to go home, especially those of use who live locally (10 minutes away for me) and had just come back from traveling for Christmas holidays. Since then the professors have improved (most but not all) and I've come to a point where I really fee like I'm learning. Not that I know everything there is to know about my job, but I don't have many of those "ah-ha" moments at work anymore.

It's been a lot of work so far and there is still much more work to come but I have to say I'm enjoying it and I'm glad to not be sitting in the office all day long.

First Day of School

Today I completed my first grueling day of the executive MBA program. It was tough particularly after a restless night due to the sub-zero weather outside and the faulty heating in my hotel room. We started with breakfast at 7:30am where I made a great first impression by falling over in my chair. That will definitely be part of the EMBA experience that I will never forget. From there it was just like starting kindergarten all over again. We got dressed in our uniforms (business suits required) and were lead down the street in single file to the school by one of the administrators. Orientation and classes went from 9am to 7:30pm which is how our schedule will be for the rest of the program.

I do have to credit my friends for all of the encouragement and support. I received ~10 emails/texts/facebook posts today wishing me well on my first day of school and it sincerely helped me get through the day. The most notable was from The Divine Miss N and Grant who both previously graduated from the full-time MBA program:

We're so proud of you. We're sending our little one to school! Don't forget your lunch box or your apple for the teacher, and don't trade the contents of your lunch box with anyone else. Play nice with the other kids and make friends. Don't steal anyone else's toys and don't do anything we wouldn't do. Good luck!

I think I got the friends part down but not so sure about the toys.

By the way, apologies now for the infrequency of the blog postings. The EMBA is going to take nearly all of my free time for the next 18 months.

Where Did 2008 Go?

Another year has passed by so quickly I hardly recall what happened to it. 2008 was a great year full of activity, work travel, personal travel, old friends, new friends, new discoveries, losing a boss, turning 30, applying to b-school, rejecting b-school, finally deciding to go to b-school, and a ton of overzealous consumption of amazing and exotic food. I was also able to cap off the year in style in a city that I love (San Francisco) with some of my closest friends doing what we do best (overzealous consumption of food and making fools of ourselves for our own amusement).

2009 will likely be no less chaotic. Today is the first day of b-school, when I return to the office next week I will have a new boss, I will have one day in the office before I start a week and half of traveling, I will have two visitors from the US, and that's just January. I'm sure it will be crazy and there will be moments of desperation but I'm looking forward to another year in London with whatever else may come my way.

Here's wishing prosperity, health, and happiness to all of you in 2009.

Here are pictures of NYE 2008.