Home Away From Home

Post #100 had to be special. So I saved it for today. I today graduated from Harvard Business School. Not being one of those people that always dreamt or even ever imagined this it was a touching day. In fact, I dont think I landed yet, mainly to the fact that in little more than 72 hours I will be leaving the United States, Harvard, Boston, my mini United Nations group of friends. My house is already barely furnished to remind me of reality, bags are everywere and the movers left a long time ago. There is no turning back, this is it. Today I was conceeded the masters of business administration and the President of Harvard claimed we were now equipped to lead people and organizations. Guests could not hear it but amongst us a laughter came up on this sentence. Not that we think it is funny, I think it is mostly a nervous laughter: "is this it, are you sure I am not the admissions mistake?". Yes, this is it. I graduated from Harvard, I wore the little hat, I got my diploma and...

I am now back to Boston after more than 20 days going around South America. The return was hectic between packing, unpacking, laundry, selling furniture, meeting people, getting logistics ready and finally getting my cute cap and gown. It sounds like this is it. My Mum arrived today and I already dragged her to her first HBS event, a BBQ but the weather was nice and she seemed to have enjoyed it despite the jetlag. Tomorrow should be quiet despite the movers "visit" in the morning but then it picks up during the week, with the calendar up to HBS crazy standards. But it is a special week. I am a pile of emotions between celebrating each piece of furniture that I sell and staring at the empty space that it leaves behind. I cry and I laugh, I am sad and I am happy. It will always be hard to leave, no matter how much I want to go. A piece of my life will always remain in Harvard campus and no 5, 10 or 50 year reunion will make it go back. It is hard to speak so I leave it to ...

It was not easy but I made it. Last night, the Section had planned to go and watch the Red Sox together. I had it booked for months. But the weather was not friendly. It actually poured and after an hour in Fenway hanging out and eating greasy food and not finding any other Section A people, we went back to Christine's and had tea by the fireplace... They said the game was cancelled so I thought my Fenway experience was over. But it seems the game was postponed only a couple of hours so I decided to take an hour out of the schedule and use the ticket (since I was not getting a refund anyway) to go. I convinced Shilpa and Teeba to come along and we ended up being a good group. We only stayed for an hour but it was enough to see home runs and understand what ball, strike and out mean! Oh and to take some pictures to the famouos Ortiz! Even I knew him! We left at the right time, they were winning and it was starting to rain... Go Red Sox!

I don't want to say one last brunch because I am hoping not to starve in the days to come and I don't want to say the last one with Maryam and Niki because even though they are not yet all set in going to London I still like to believe they will. Well, Maryam seems closer even without a job but Niki is in danger of going back to Switzerland... of all places! I will definitely miss her around if that is the case. True that she was in the same building before and we never spoke, but now that we know of each other, I could not imagine London without her chaotic energy! We had a good time, some great filet mignon benedict, some gossip and a lot of life changing conversations even though some people would just call it girl's chat. I am proud to have written 1800 words out of 3000 in just one day for my BBOP paper. It seems that I will be able to write about Mcel (to be read EMEECELEE) after all and it will be a pleasure to bring a Mozambican company to Harvard. Let's just ho...

There are 10 days left till classes are over and I take a last flight to Lisbon from Boston so posts should start being one last time a lot. Yesterday, me Pato and Tevia took one last trip to the outlet. But we super-behaved. We only bought what we wanted and expected to buy. Our first shop was even Brooks Brothers Women where I spent most my budget trying to follow the recommendation in the book that I am reading that you should create your own style but also dress as you want to be paid next year. I decided to make an investment and analyse the NPV in a year. I also ended up copying B. in the Samsonite set he bought last year (though I got a extra discount, haha) and decided to buy myself incentives to keep on going to the gym, now that my trainer says that he can really tell the difference after only 4 sessions. Overall we did some really good shopping and stayed there for 7 hours! Off course Tevia passed out the first quiet minutes in the car and I failed to find a McDonalds until...

L ast night was the second and official celebration for Christine's bday. We seem to have always at least 2 celebrations and I even think there were 3 but I missed the Wednesday one. Since Tevia and Teeba celebrated their birthdays for a week it is hard to keep up. Christine is my Austrian friend with the sweetest Austrian accent from the sweetest Austrian place. Yes, I had actually been there before, Zell am See! I was there during the time I lived in Wien for a skiing weekend organized by the super hectic students' association. She is right from where the Sound of Music was taped but yet she had never seen it until she came to HBS and we offered her the film. Her 20-year-old brother, who is visiting for the weekend, says that they live the Sound of Music in their childhood so they don't need to see it! But I think him and Jaime were impressed with my singing and coreographies... Anyway, the party was at Christine's house and what started quiet ended up being a really ...

I generally have nothing against April Fools, someone plays a prank on me, I play stupid, smile and wave and take the joke as it is, a joke. And laugh at myself for having believed in it in the first place. But this year, April Fools was too much. The joke was uncovered a couple of hours ago and I am still outraged about it. It played with my trust and my friendship and not even when an email saying it was a joke arrived did I understand that it referred to the actual prank. I was too worried and too much into my deep thoughts about the situation. I worried about all I could have done about it, I worried about everything. And it was a joke. I have been cooling down for a couple of hours, and I will sleep on it. But it will be hard to change my mind. It was a bad joke. This year, April Fools was not funny. E ja que me esqueci de ligar, vai ter de ficar para amanha mas por agora Parabens Rosinha!

I am back to Boston. As the title says, it is grey and rainy. Annoyingly grey and annoyingly rainy. I am now in a new concept of student life, with only 2 classes per day and only 2, max 3 days of class per week. I guess this is what they mean when they say the second year is laid back, sadly enough that only started today and I have less than a month to go until classes finish. I have what, 8 days of class left in total? It is Spring everywhere else but here. Even in London it was Spring, but unfortunately before I got there, not while I was there. But it was good to go back, it was kind of one last time before moving back there for good. I even took an extra piece of luggage with winter jackets that I am assuming (probably wrongly) that won't be needed in Boston anymore! Grrrr it is so grey!

Everyone is going everywhere. Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina, Dominican Republic, God knows where. I look outside the sunny window and people line up for taxis to Logan. My flight is later and simpler. I am off to London for the week. Hopefully B. will pick me up from the tube station as I doubled my bags filling them with winter jackets that I hope I won't be needing anymore in Boston. And then there is a far far away chance that Francesco might recognise me. Or maybe not. But I will be so annoying to him the next 5 days that he will HAVE to recognise me before he is off to is outage in Milan! Or at least I hope so! I am sorry in a way that I am not joining the girls in Colombia but at the same time I start wanting to go home more and more. It is sad that after all B. won't be home but I guess that means I will spend some time with myself, which sometimes is a really good idea. I am off now, taking off soon!

Oh no, it has been more than 2 weeks! T-W-O weeks! Where is my new year resolution of writing at least once a week? And to replying to emails within aweek of arrival rather than a month? So maybe I am not keeping up with all my new year resolutions but at least I keep up with some. I don't do job search anymore (not that there is much to look for anyway), I do a lot of NGO CEO work rather than all-in-one person work, I got myself a PT and went to the gym more than once (and more than zero) this week (and the week is not over yet), I re-started my german lessons and I am even playing more the piano. So I do have good reasons for blogging less! But I will still try to be better! The thing that really cheered me up and was not on my new year resolutions was the TAN I got in Turks and Caicos. It could have been the ugliest island (which it was not) but the tan in my face would make up for any cheating taxi drivers charging "government regulated" rates Oh, and off course, th...

I don't think I mentioned before how much I use to suffer from migraine. I did, and I like to brag that I don't suffer from it anymore. But some days, it is really not true! Today is one of those. Last night, I convinced my self it was but need to rest. This morning, I could feel it exploding even before I woke up... Class did not make it better and making end of year accounting for the NGO neither. I hate having migraine, I get slow and stupid if I take medicine, I get nervous and impossible to put up with if I don't. I guess tonight it will have to go away. The girls are in the concert for Teeba's birthday and I am here...

I hate being sick. It gets me even more sick to be sick. I can not stand the running nose and the look of Rudolf the reindeer settling in. And you just can't help it no matter what. To think that in 48 hours I will be lying on the beach somewhere and now here I am eyes burning between cold and hot feelings. It sucks. But it is the general feeling of the day anyway. Me and Teeba even created a "Things that piss me off" group in facebook as therapy to let it all out and at least be able to laugh about it later. We were both in bad moods and both got better while we were laughing about it here but I guess that feeling is gone and I am back to being in a bad mood. And guess what? It is midnight and I am about to start my only case for tomorrow... At least I finally was able to write something decent on my ISR as an excuse for this late start... Oh, and the Iberian dinner, off course. It is snowing again, welcome back New England weather!

And I am left with yesterday. I just hate leaving you, hate that you leave me, hate either of them and can't find a way to deal with it in a way that is grown up, rational and painless. Today was particularly difficult to let you go, especially after you were back "home". I try to read my cases but I am not making much progress. I read about some optical networks in India and still have no idea what those guys produce. And now the title of the next case reminds me of Dutch Disease and I am certain that I could find another 15 things that could be more interesting to read about. And that is only case number 2. Case number 3 will be read at some point in class tomorrow and Case number 4 is still in my mailbox. I really don't want you gone and at any moment I hope you come back through that door.

I can't wait for tomorrow, I really can't. It is hard to imagine what it is to have you here "back home" again. It is not home, but it is our home, at least the only one we ever had. I am so happy you are arriving, I can barely wait, I am not sure how I will keep myself entertained until your plane arrives! Well, being entertained is not difficult here, but tomorrow I really just want time to fly!

My Learning Team finally came for dinner. It took a full semester of postponements and indeed still 2 people dropped last minute for today, but we decided to still go ahead. I prepared Aman and Finny with portuguese specialty codfish with cream, potuguese wine and port, oreo ice cream and sausage roles as starters. I think they liked it. I was happy they could make it as I never get to see them anymore. It is amazing how you spend almost an hour together every morning for an entire year and then people just disconnect. And it sees like it was yesterday that I saw them. I am happy their life is settled and I am happy I could share it with them. I am though finishing the bottle for them, since Finny was on antibiotic and me and Aman had to take care of the Alabastro, but I am sure they will not mind. Dishes are done (surprisingly) and I have 10 things I could do but I guess I will just chill and wait for the weekend to arrive...

This class makes my head spin. There is just so much I want to do that I can not juggle it all when I sit in this class. They talk about how to lead and govern successfull non profit enterprises. And I know I should have done this course last semester so that I would have had time to implement the ideas I have during class. Resources, building capacity, measuring your performance, aligning your goals with your strategy. And my head spins... I do charts, I take notes. Totally unrelated with the case but typically arising from it. Do I build a business plan, ask fundraising to build capacity and then hire people. Or should I hire first, and then fundraise? Can I afford to loose 6 months of my attention with so many urgent projects on the ground needing my attention? When will I find someone that can replicate half my passion, my time and my ideas? My mum is strained on Admin stuff, I am in School, the Nuns are over stretched by life in general and claim there are no good people...

I d on't have a laptop but I have a notepad.  Some moments in life, nothing will keep me away from writing.  As I finally switch on the TV, eager to see Obama's inauguration speech, live celebrations are still going on and no one wants to interrupt them.  It is the start of the Neighborhood Ball and Obama does not miss out a chance of appealing to the spirit of the word neighbor.  Because "what pulls us together is greater than what drives us apart" and "together e can change America".  It is hard not to believe and you realize what the words translate to as you hear "At last" from the heart and voice of Beyonce.  The next song is truly reflective of the feeling "Sky is still the limit".  With Obama, America seems to feel a whole new world of opportunity has been created.  The limit of the sky seems to have shifted upwards.  At last, America has a true chance, nationally and internationally, to be what everyone wanted it to be. Sting, Ste...

It is a funny expression I would say. The first 4 days at HBS are what we call the shopping period. You can basically go around classes, listen to what professors say, to what the cases are, check who is in the class. For the first 2 days, professors won’t even mind if you walk in and out or if you are clueless about the case. That must be the reason why I have not started any of my 2 cases for tomorrow at 11.30pm. I was meant not to be shopping but one of the classes today went so bad that I will be shopping tomorrow. I will join the herd and see how it ends up. The good thing about the shopping period is that the girls came over and we all had coffee (with borrowed milk), tea and a fifth of a brownie discussing classes amidst plans for a thousand trips this semester and a reservation for a table at Rumor next Thursday. So far so good, I like being back. Thursday will bring the lowest temperature that I ever had in Boston, -24C so we will see how I feel about being back after ...

It is weird to say that I am back home when I just landed to Boston but the truth is I missed not living out of bags on the floor. Having my own house and my own space and drawers and kitchen utensils and food in the freezer is different. And it (oddly enough) feels like home here. There is snow outside but not too much, and life seems to have slipped back to normal easy. Teeba picked me up and we ended up discussing courses until now but the jetlag did not let me go on anymore. As Yunus speaks on the back to make sure I know what tomorrow’s class is about it feels weird to think this morning I was talking to the Millennium Promise and brainstorming about international development. The grades are out and were (finally, in a way) average which probably proves the point that I spent way much time on courses last semester and enhances my will of spending ever less. I am happy to be back I guess, it is a nice feeling. It is always better to arrive than to leave…

Yes, something had to happen to keep me away from here for this long. I had been behaving so well blogging more and more and now what? Very simple, Francesco was born! In a day full of emotions, tears of joy and setbacks Francesco greeted me with his wide open eyes and his calm ways (at least for now). Everyone struggles to point Mum and Dad’s features in him but all I care about is himself. He has long been waited for in this world and I was proud to follow closely his first 4 days. Now, I have to limit myself to technology and hope Patricia likes to skype to make sure I see him growing, crying, moving and smiling. It will be a month until I see him again, precisely a month from the 12th of November and I will miss experiencing his first triumphs to win my sister’s heart. He has barely been here and I miss him already!