Lunch with Warren Buffett …. for merely $500,000

Every year the Sage of Omaha gives bidders on Ebay the opportunity to have lunch with him in return for donating the proceeds to a charity aimed at fighting poverty.  As of tonight, a little more than 24 hours before the close of the auction, the bidding is at $500,400.

 

Last November I got to have lunch with Buffett for free when a group of students from Kenan-Flagler were invited to attend a one hour question and answer session with Buffett in his Omaha office and had lunch with him later at his favorite restaurant. All I had to pay was the cost of the hotel room and the plane ticket there.

Tags: MBA experience

Why conservatives love 24

Friday’s Nightline had a story about the huge following the television show 24 has among conservatives. Earlier that day in Washington, the Heritage Foundation held a forum featuring Rush Limbaugh as the moderator. The panelists include 24’s executive producer and creator, along with the actors who play Chloe, Tony Almeda, and Charles Logan. 

 

There was a lot of discussion about where the plot will go next season. The producers revealed that some of it will be filmed in Washington and the storyline will include Charles Logan and Aaron the Secret Service agent. Rush Limbaugh coyly suggested that Tony Almeda may not have been killed, as many viewers were led to believe.

 

I personally think it’s obvious where the story is headed next season. Jack will find a way to break out of his chains, kills the Chinese who have kidnapped him, and commandeer the Shanghai-bound ship. As he tries to simultaneously turn the ship around and call for help, the ship sails into the path of a mysterious magnetic force and ends up shipwrecked on an island. On the island, Jack discovers the survivors of Flight 815. The rest of the season includes Jack’s rescue of the doctor, the cutie, and Sawyer from “the others,” him fighting with Locke over the countdown clock, Jack hooking up with the cutie, and telling Sawyer “the only reason why you are still conscious is because I don’t want to carry you.”

 

The aforementioned event is available on C-SPAN and is archived here.

Tags: 24

Before you call the police ….

I guess I should check in just to let you guys know I am still alive and there is no need to go file a mission person report. It goes to show how busy and hectic everything has been that I have allowed an entire week to go by without blogging.

 

This is shaping up to be one happening summer. Two Friday nights ago I went camping with some folks from church to a camping spot around Jordan Lake. Last weekend I spent Friday night and Saturday near Hyco Lake where I went tubing from a speed boat. And the weeknights after I get off work are just as much fun. Last night I was at a UVA happy hour in Durham where the girl to guy ratio, at least when I walked in, was five to two. But it kind of sucks after you’ve had the chance to sit down, when you look around the room, and realize that all the girls are either engaged, married, or you have already asked out.

New CEO of Krispy Kreme

I blogged last night about the importance of networking and how I wish I had done a better job at networking with some of the folks I have met over the past two years of my journey to and during the MBA program. I found out tonight that the man who spoke at the Kenan-Flagler reception I attended in New York City in October recently became the CEO of Krispy Kreme. At the reception I spoke to Daryl G. Brewster a little bit before his talk but didn’t find him to be all that interesting. It wasn’t later when he was introduced by Dean Steve Jones that I realized we both majored in economics at UVA.

Even before I found out he became the CEO of Krispy Kreme, he was on the list of people I wish I had done a better job at networking with. What I should have done was to look him up on hoosonline, email him to reintroduce myself, mention that I also majored in economics at UVA, ask if he's had the same professors I have had in the economics department, and ask if I could periodically update him about my progress at Kenan-Flagler.

I will chalk this up as a missed networking opportunity.

Tags: MBA experience

Kicking off the 2007 campaign

The more I think about it, the more I think looking for a job is like campaigning for public office. You begin way ahead of time by forming a network of supporters who will help get your name out into the field. You need a trusted group of advisors whom you can talk to when the going gets tough. You then plan out your strategy as to how to position yourself in the arena. You also have to assess whether you have done anything in the past that may require additional explaining, especially anything that hints at an inconsistency. After you everything in place, you figure out what additional accomplishments you can rack up between now and the campaign to further highlight your qualifications.

 

In the two weeks since I have started the internship, I have been thinking more and more about the above topics and how they relate to the eleven months ahead. How the projects at my internship can position me for the types of job and employers I would like to have when I graduate. How I can better explain why I majored in economics but went into the technical field only to leave to go back to business school to train myself for a non technical job.

 

I have also been coming up with a strategy for building my network of potential job contacts. In April, I received an interesting bit of advice about networking; that the best way to network is not to contact someone when you feel he can hook you up with a job but to steadily build up a relationship with him through regularly correspondence. It’s great advice, except that most people I know have no time to do this during the school year. I am going to try to get better at this. Beginning this week, I am going to discipline myself to regularly set aside time to email folks that I have met in the past two years. This includes students at other schools, alums I have met at receptions, and others I have reached out to this past year in search for a job - even those who interviewed me for jobs I didn’t get. For most of them, I will simply send out a short email updating them on the completion of my first year and what I am doing this summer. Networking is an important part of business schooland it’s something that’s done better late than never.

 

Speaking of late, it’s certainly getting late, and I am losing altitude.

A bit of explaining to do

There is a high likelihood that when the new school year begins, I will be invited to a meeting with the director of the MBA program and three faculty members who will ask me a few awkward questions about something which transpired this past Mod IV. The good news, at least in a secular sense, is that I have the rest of the summer to gather my thoughts and prepare my story. Earlier tonight I found out I received an L (low pass) in one of my Mod IV classes.

I don’t have an explanation as to why I did so poorly except that the material was hard and my internship search kept me from spending as much time as I needed to understand it.  I did realize by mid April that my internship search was keeping me from doing well in my classes and decided that getting the internship was more important, even if it meant getting the L.

The school’s academic policy is vague about the consequences of being on academic ineligibility (which is what happens to you when you receive an L in a class that takes up more than 25% of your credit load). But it does mention that a student may appeal the ineligibility and in the event that a reinstatement is issued, the student must abide by all the conditions (if any) of the reinstatement or “may be considered for expulsion.” (emphasis my own)

Another fine example of journalistic excellence

The last time I checked, George Pataki’s term as the Governor of New York does not end until January 1, 2007. What can we say about the current state of journalism when the organization which calls itself "the world’s oldest established news agency" has to rely on amateurs like myself to fact check its stories.

The article can be found here.

Out with the old, in with the new

When I returned to my apartment during lunch today, I saw my neighbors across the hall, a student who recently graduated from Kenan-Flagler and his wife, were packing up and moving out. At that same time, across town at McColl, about sixty members Kenan-Flagler’s Class of 2008 were attending orientation for June’s pre-MBA workshop, which begins tomorrow.

 

After I got off work, I went to Top of the Hill where I hung out with a bunch of these students. They all seem pretty nice and outgoing. No one said anything which either struck me the wrong way or offended me. But I am keenly aware that because they are in a new environment, most of them were probably keeping their cards under the table. I remember my ethics professor once jokingly reminded us in class that when we (my classmates) first came to Kenan-Flagler, we purposely toned down our levels of obnoxiousness for the sake of making friends.

Hong Kong’s “Bus Uncle”

I heard about this for the first time this morning in the Wall Street Journal but it’s been the talk of the town in Hong Kong for quite some time. A 23 year old man riding on the Hong Kong public bus spent six minutes listening to a fellow passenger cursing and berating him when he politely asked the fellow passenger to stop speaking on the phone.

 

"I've got pressure, you've got pressure!" the older man exploded. "Why did you have to provoke me?" A nearby passenger who found the encounter interesting captured most of it on video with his own cellphone, and it was posted on the Web.

 

"Bus Uncle," as the older man is now known, has since become a Hong Kong sensation. The video, including subtitled versions, has been downloaded nearly five million times from YouTube.com, a popular Web site for video clips.

 

Teenagers and adults here sprinkle their conversations with phrases borrowed from Bus Uncle's rant, such as "I've got pressure!" and "It's not over!" (shouted when the young man tried to end the conversation several times by saying, "It's over"). Also, there are several insults involving mothers. Web sites peddle T-shirts with a cartoon of Bus Uncle and the famous phrases. They are also available as mobile-phone ringtones.

 

The six minute video clip is on YouTube and can be accessed here. There is also an article by Hong Kong’s Next Magazine on the identity of the “Bus Uncle” and the eccentricities of his personal life.

 

Listening to the audio portion of the clip kept me smiling throughout the day at the office today.

Regret and regression

I had a bit of excitement at the internship today when I used my notes from Mod I’s analytical tools class to do a linear regression showing the relationship between a particular client’s weekly sales revenue to the number of days its items are posted on an online auction web site. The material covered in that class is actually pretty useful. Only problem is I didn’t pay much attention because I never thought I would use the stuff, especially since I was planning on working in finance.

One really nice perk

My former co-workers and current classmates at Kenan-Flagler will testify that I am addicted to Coca-Cola. I can easily drink five cans of my favorite beverage on any given workday. When I worked at AOL, I developed a system where I kept a supply in my cubicle and each time I went to the kitchen to get one out of the fridge, I would load the next one in there. I had a similar system at Kenan-Flagler where I kept a supply in my car and every morning I would load two in my backpack and place them in the fridge in the break room and drink them for lunch. At one time I even kept the supply in my locker.

So imagine the grin on my face last week when I showed up at my internship, walked into the kitchen to put away my lunch, and saw that the kitchen has a separate fridge (the type you normally see at a deli) with all kinds of carbonated beverages, including Coca-Cola. Before I leave, I am going to tell the HR department that it needs to more aggressively advertise that as a perk.

It's close to midnight, I have to be at work tomorrow and yet I am still not tired yet. I wonder why that is. ;)

Summer social scene

Summertime in Chapel Hill is a lot different than during the school year.  In the two weeks since I have returned, I noticed that while many of the regular students are gone, there were other folks who have started to move into town. Some of these are students getting ready to start their studies while others are here only for a brief time this summer.

 

I was at the Martini Bar last week and met a group of interns for University Directories. University Directories is a summer program that hires college students from around the country to sell advertising on affiliated publications. The internship began with two weeks of training at McColl before the interns are dispatched to their respective geographical districts. In my apartment complex, I have noticed a lot of new faces that have moved in within the past month. Someone who is now living downstairs from me will begin ASW I (summer workshop) at Kenan-Flagler on Monday. There is also someone else I met who started her masters in education program this past week.

 

When I returned to Martini Bar last night, I was shocked to see the place empty. I ended up going to Top Of the Hill where I hung out with a group of students in the executive MBA program, two of whom were on the India trip. There was a cute girl there who just moved into town to start her residency. Apparently some students from the executive MBA program went to China for the Global Immersion Experience and during a five hour layover at the Chicago airport, they met her parents at a bar. The parents jot down a couple of names and email addresses so that their daughter could have some people to hang out with once she moves into the area.

Releasing the bird in hand

Late last night, I got around to emailing the hiring manager of the other place that gave me an internship offer to let him know that I will not be working with him this summer. I told him know that my decision was not based on the money (his offer was unpaid, I emailed him asking for a small stipend and he wrote back signaling his willingness to negotiate) but more on where I want to be career-wise after I graduate. He wrote back thanking me for my professionalism throughout this process by keeping him up to date on what was going on (when I asked for more money, I also asked for a week to decide and told him I was waiting to hear from a couple of other places) from my end. While not getting paid is certainly a major drawback, I think this other internship has its perks such as getting to work from home (more realistically I would probably do work from the library) and getting to work with a couple of my classmates who are there this summer as well.