Roskilde: The Warm Up

My first Roskilde Festival experience is about to commence. If you consider the packing portion then it has already begun. My bags are packed and in an hour I catch the train for a week of music and mayhem. Even though I have known this was coming for quite sometime, I havent really readied myself properly. My mental state has been questionable and I have often thought of backing out of the whole thing. I m working the festival campground J so it puts a different dynamic on the experience compared to if I was simply going for the classic sex, drugs and rock and roll. I generally dont like backing out on commitments so I decided to stick it out. I m glad for that too because I m getting excited to see the massive fields of crazy people from all over the world united together for the glory that is Roskilde Festival. Since I am working the festival I have free entry to the show and special perks like a restricted camping area and access to special employee sections. It somewhat separates me from the common concert goer, but puts me with people who are in the same situation as I. This way I dont have to deal with the few douchebags that you will find in every crowd. Anyways all that aside....Radiohead will be my number 1 must see. Jay Z is number 2 however I will only be able to catch a short portion of his set because I will have to work. Some of the others include a danish band called Veto, who I saw open for Smashing Pumpkins. The Streets are also a must see for me....the first time I heard them I hated them but time has been kind and now I find them quite good. Definitely a change of pace from some of the other music I listen to. I m sure I will also hang with g-mang and see some metal bands along with the Scottish band Mogwai who I have seen once before at the WOW Hall in Eugene.

Well I m ready for the music....so until next time...

Return to Glory

So the second of 2 days in Stockholm was a bit better. The problems that I experienced on day 1 did not repeat. It was still a long day of training and meetings. Nothing made me happier then when the clock hit 5pm and I was released from the grips of the IBM machine. I pack my stuff up and headed straight for a changing room. I shed my corporate attire for my everyday uniform of shorts a T and my ever beloved flip flops. The only thing I was sad to leave was the gorgeous receptionist who I had a couple of friendly conversations with. Besides eating an ever so delicious chicken teriyaki sub from subway, she was definitely the highlight. After leaving the office I hoofed it to the train, trained it to the plane and got the hell out of dodge. Stockholm is a great city but Copenhagen is still where I like to lay my head. I get a huge grin on my face every time I leave and come back. Theres no better feeling than living in the happiest country in the world.

As for today, I went into work for a few hours in the morning and now I m ready to kick it with g-mang and relax for a week of music at the Roskilde Festival.

Exhausted in Stockholm

Day one of two in Sweden. Woke up at 440 so I could catch a 7am flight. Got into Stockholm around 830. I took a train into the city center and checked into my hotel. I made it to IBM around 10 and waited around for a bit until I finally met one of the girls I was training. Once that happened it pretty much turned into a huge disaster. I couldnt get anything to work and access to certain programs was suddenly denied. It was pretty much a huge headache. It really made the second half of the day seem very quick and condensed. I finally got out of there around 6. It was pretty much the longest day I have worked since pulling a triple shift at dixon. Tomorrow isnt going to be nearly as long but its going to be just as difficult. I have to try and explain the hardest processes well enough so that when I leave in the afternoon they have an ideal of what they are doing. Pretty much 2 days of training isnt nearly enough. I have been doing my job for 6 months and still learn new things....so trying to speed train people really isnt possible. The worst part about it all is that I will have to be in the office the rest of this week for at least a few hours so I can have conference calls with my trainees. Ugh. I m wishing I had more time to go around the city. Stockholm is a really nice city especially because there is nice weather. I think I will have to take a trip over here again with a friend.

The Stockholm Syndrome

Well its been set. I am off to Stockholm tomorrow to help train a couple of people. Its amazing how much money that is being wasted on my 1 night 2 day stay. I get to stay at the Radisson right in the middle of the city....cost 250usd per night. I m sure it will be lavish and ridiculous compared to the hostel I stayed in last time I was there. I have also been granted an expense account which is pretty cool. The huge downfall is leaving at 7.20am tomorrow morning. That means that I have to be there at least an hour before. That means I m up probably around 5 at the latest to make sure I can catch the right bus train etc to make it to the airport. Many would say...big deal....but considering I havent been getting up until around 10 pretty much for the last month its definitely going to be a challenge. I will then be required to work all day long. Ugh...no nap...then I ll have to schmooze with some of the other employees/trainers. I mean its going to be fun but I know that when the evening comes my ass we be dragging and my eyes will be falling out of my head. The dollar is still rather strong in Sweden though so maybe I ll be able to do a bit of shopping......mostly though, I m praying for a subway so I can get a sweet onion chicken teryaki sub...mmmmmm. Denmark doesnt have subway.

Paris

So a few weeks ago I had the great privilege to go to Paris with my basketball team and the rest of CBS Sport. In total we were about 60 people or so. The main reason was for a huge sports tournament including many other universities around Europe. The tourney was held at HEC Mercuriales which is the top ranked business school in Europe. The school is actually about 40 mins outside of Paris in the small town of Jouy en Josas. Its situated in the hills of France and is pretty much like something you would see in a movie.

I took a flight on Sunday the 18th of May with one of my teammates Jonas. We arrived in Paris around noon. Once we got our luggage we ate some lunch and caught the train towards Jouy en Josas. The directions we had were a bit unclear and the estimated time of 45 minutes was way off. We ended up having to switch trains a few times and because of all the delays we didnt get to our stop until around 330 in the afternoon. By the time we arrived at the campus we were dead tired. This is probably because of the mountain we had to walk up dragging our luggage. After finally finding the building where we were suppose to check in we located the rest of our team and were ready to get our rooms. We had to share a room so Jonas and I paired up. Our accommodation consisted of a 1 bed dorm room with a sink, shared shower and bathrooms across the hall. Besides the one bed they put an army cot in order to make the room usable for two. The army cot itself however looked like it was used during WWII. It was old and green....despite this I had many good nights of sleep. But lets be honest it was probably because I didnt sleep one sober night on it.

Our team drew the toughest side of the bracket which consisted of 3 other teams. These teams placed 1,2,3 the previous year. We played our first game against the Germans on Monday the 19th. We started off great converting on many shots but the frustration of how absolutely shitty the refs were really took us out of the game mentally. To further our frustration, right before halftime there was a clock malfunction which allowed the Germans to convert on a 3 point half court shot that should have never counted. Although we still held a slight advantage we had already mentally take ourselves out of the game. The second half was much worse than the first as the Germans opened up a double digit lead. The worse part of the game was when I hurt myself intercepting an outlet pass which prevented and easy layup. I went up to grab the ball with one hand but my momentum and the force of the ball propelled me too far back so my feet were not underneath me when I went to land. So in the air I twisted to my left side and put my arm out to brace my fall. I ended up jamming my wrist but played on. After the game my wrist swelled substantially and then turned purple. My cure for this was the dynamic duo of American pain killers and French beer.

The next day was a day off which was nice because it gave my wrist a chance to rest. The color and swelling remained but on Wednesday when it came time for our double header I was ready to go despite the obvious injury. After the two games I went to the nurse to have it checked out. She merely wrapped it with a bandage and told me to come back later to see the doctor. Well the French being French....the doctor never showed. I figured I might as well suck it up for the rest of the week and then get it checked out if it still bothered me when I went back to Denmark. The rest of the week was pretty much nothing but partying. We watched some of the other teams play in various sports and made a trip into Paris one of the days. All in all it was loads of fun and I cant wait until next year to do it all over again.

The Aftermath

So after an exhausting but extremely fun week I returned home to normal life again. That meant catching up on work and ultimately realizing that my wrist needed to be checked out. Eventually I convinced myself to make an doctors appointment which went something like this.

Visit to my personal doctor. Verdict - not broken - fracture not suspected
Referred to the hospital for xrays

Visit to hospital for xrays. Verdict - xrays came back negative. No break but fracture still possible
Referred to the emergency room to speak with a hand surgeon

Visit to the Emergency room. Verdict - possibility of a fracture even though not shown on xrays
Treatment - big frump cast to the elbow for 2 weeks. (I took it off after 5 days)

Visit to the Hospital after 2 weeks for more xrays. Verdict no fracture. Case closed

Next day.

I receive a phone call from the hospital. They say that the rechecked my xrays and believe there may be a fracture.

Visit to the hospital.....again. Talk to my 3rd hand surgeon. He says there is a fracture in my wrist. Looks at the 2 sets of xrays and say....."Wow...how did they miss that?".....my reaction is....you have got to be fucking kidding me.

Needless to say I am now in a cast for the next 6-8 weeks. The icing on the cake was when the doctor left me with the nurse and said "have a nice summer" Seriously! My reaction. Fuck YOU!

I pretty much hate every single minute of the days this cast is on. I have to bag my arm when I shower, refrain from doing any activity that is going to get my arm wet or sweaty (i.e. swimming, running, sweating...etc) I cant wait to go back to the US so I can get this thing off and have the proper treatment from skilled doctors back home.

Work - 6 months of IBM

So I have been working at IBM since January of this year. I wasnt too sure how I would like it when the job was first explained to me, but at the time I was in desperate need of a job and the paycheck that comes along with it. Over the last 6 months I have really started to enjoy my job even though it can be tedious at times. In the last 6 weeks or so my work load has increased substantially. I along with my other American colleague Jenni have been put in charge of the subcontractors in the Nordic countries. These consist of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. We mainly work with other managers in these countries to make sure when a new subcontractor is hired they are given the correct resources in order to perform their job. The amount of responsibilities have begun to pile and at times I feel quite overwhelmed. The job that Jenni and I do at time requires more time than each of us has to give. Trying to balance work and school has sometimes been a challenge. Some good news came a couple weeks ago in form of an email. It turns out that we will be trying to ship our responsibilities to India. This is a blessing and a curse. It will be nice to rid ourselves of the tasks we have been doing however coordinating the training session has been utterly disorganized at times. This is in part due to complications with the lack of knowledge of the subject in regards to the people coordinating the training sessions and organizing a face to face training session with our Indian colleagues. Finally a 2 week training session has been put together in Sweden. I will be headed to Stockholm, as of now, Tuesday to help assist with the training as I have more specific knowledge and 6 months of experience working with the different processes. I am excited to go because it shows that my manager has complete faith in me and because of the great learning experience. I m just not looking forward to the coordination and excess of email that I will be dealing with over the next days, weeks, months.

School - A year reflected

Well school is out and summer has been in full swing for the last few weeks. I made it through my first year of graduate school. The first year has been filled with a mixture of highs and lows.

The first semester went fairly well and started off with meeting many new people from all over. I got involved with some group work with a few friends and wrote a marketing that was epic to say the least. It was a great experience writing with others on such a detailed document (50 pages). I will say it was by far the longest project I have ever had to write and was basically a warm up to my eventual 80 page master thesis. Other than that it was great getting to know many people and building new friendships through various social activities. The semester ended and grade wise turned out fairly well for me as I scored above average on most of my exams.

This last semester has been a bit disappointing considering the expectations that I had after the first semester. The classes that I was enrolled in had an interesting subject but due to poor teaching they lacked all around and I often found myself very unmotivated in every way. I would say that because of this my grades fell slightly compared to the first semester. The grading in Denmark is extremely subjective compared to what I have experienced throughout my entire schooling career. Compared to the multiple choice format that most of my undergrad consisted of, the Danish system of 1 final exam for your grade is pretty crappy. It is my belief that the Danish system tests not your knowledge of a subject, rather the speed in which you can recall the knowledge. I found this to especially be true for the 2 oral exams that I had. The type of questions they ask you are sometimes difficult to understand right away or often require some sort of deeper thinking. However since these exams have such limited time, if you do not fire answers out quickly then the censor and examiner do not think you know what you are talking about. They then precede to ask you extremely easy questions and do not really challenge you. This results in a low grade.

The second semester also brought much frustration in form of a 60 page business project. I worked with the same group from the first semester however due to difference of opinions the group felt much tension. I felt that I spent more energy at times trying to keep the group from fighting or biting my tongue than actually focusing on the task of writing a great project. The longer the project went on the worse is got and by the last week it was practically pure torture for everyone. The end result had very brief flashes of greatness but overall was a flaming piece of shit that our adviser and censor described as "unrealistic" and "in need of a reality check". Needless to say my frustration peaked shortly after my grade was given. I could easily pass blame but really at this point there is no point. I know that working with others cant always be sunshine and rainbows and I just need to move on from this. There is no point in ruining friendships over a project and in the future I will just choose to do more on my own or find a different group.

I guess the importance is passing. As I have always believed that although grades are important in certain aspects, they are not everything. Common sense and life experiences are just as if not more important. Often it seems those who bury themselves in books get top grades but miss out on the rest of life. As I do not think I have ever been in danger of not passing a class and that I have gained knowledge and learned some things throughout the years, I will continue with this belief and personal philosophy. So its safe to say I have not wasted my time or money.

I am looking towards the fall which I think will be much more exciting. I will be taking classes of my choosing which will consist of 3 classes surrounding business sustainability and 1 class that deals with how consumers remember advertising. It is more of a psychology business class. It instantly caught my interest as I wish I would have minored in psych during my undergraduate studies. Anyways the year is over and all I can do is move on and try to better myself and continue to improve and create study habits that will allow me to succeed next year.