A Quick Update

The blog posts have gotten a little infrequent since I started my MBA, and I’d like to take this chance to explain why:

• From the 10th to the 15th of January I was basically in school or going to school from 7:00am until 6:00pm.
• The next week I was catching up on work (really)
• Then I went to my second Dutch lesson, came back, wrote a beautiful piece about the problem in the Netherlands of integrating Muslim immigrants from Turkey, and then when I tried to post it the system crashed and I lost the whole damn thing.
• Then I was so infuriated for having written such a great piece and losing it that I simply couldn’t sit down in front of a keyboard without getting insanely angry.

But I’m much better now. All the doctors say so.

So let me fill you all in on some Brian current events.

Dutch classes are proceeding. I continue to sit mystified in front of the computer for the first hour, listening to Dutch people converse in their unintelligible language, and then punching buttons until I get enough right answers on the quizzes (thank god for multiple choice).

I had my first regular weekend of MBA class. I am in a group of six people and we meet before the class each Friday and Saturday and stare at each other and say, “did YOU do the homework” a lot. The small group structure is really necessary for working stiffs because it allows us to break up the work and use each other as resources. I have a head of a sales department, a product manager, two consultants, and a banker in my group. They have me. Personally, I think they are getting the better deal.

I had a Frisbee tournament today. I actually thought I had this Frisbee tournament NEXT Sunday, but I got a phone call from the captain at 9:45am asking me where I was. “I’m in Dordrecht…” duh. Where do you think I am. “Oh, well are you coming to the tournament?”

Shit.

Jumped into some clothes, bike like crazy to the station, two trains, one cab, and about two hours later I walk into the Sporthal Vlinder in Wageningen just as their second game starts. We had a good time. The standings don’t show it, but we had fun. We lost three and tied one game (they play timed games here, so it is possible to tie, wacky). Yeah, the score says we sucked balls, but two of the games we lost by one point and remember, we tied one…

Now I am listening to the audio of 94WYSP over the internet so I can hear Merrill Reese and Mike Quick call the Conference Championship, where McNabb and the Eagles are handing Atlanta their ass 14-3 so far in the first half.

Tomorrow I am off to NY for a short business trip, then back to Amsterdam, where I travel by train to Heidelberg for a one day meeting on Friday, and then on Saturday I hope to meet up with Nieves, a friend of ours from “the good old au pair days” (as I like to call them) who I haven’t seen in about four years.

All I have to do is make sure I wake up on time.

Keep your fingers crossed sports fans.