A weekend of finalities

My global supply chain management class met for an entire day on Friday and on Saturday. Going to class for two days in a row was rough, I now have a new found respect for students who attend executive MBA programs. On Friday we had a guest speaker who spoke to us via telephone from Bangalore. His name is Vivek Kulkarni and he is the CEO of Brickwork, a business process outsourcing firm that we visited in May when as part of the India global immersion experience. He is a well known businessman within India and was mentioned in Tom Friedman's The World Is Flat. Saturday was grueling and toward the end, I had trouble keeping my eyes opens. And for some strange reason, after the class ended, I got the urge to run out to the nearest Wal Mart.

The good news is that, with the exception of one multiple choice final exam and a group paper, the global supply chain management is pretty much over for the Mod. On Sunday there was a finality of a different sort. I was at House Undergraduate Library working on my assignment for acquiring proprietary technology when I ran into a friend of mine and together we went over to the Frank Porter Graham Student Union to watch the UNC Georgetown basketball game. We had a pretty good lead well into the second half only to see it evaporate in the last two minutes of the game. In the last five minutes the crowd at the union just got bigger and bigger and we were all sitting on the edge of our seats. During the overtime round that followed, the atmosphere in the room began to feel like that of a wake as we witnessed Georgetown scored 14 unchallenged points during the round and realization began to set in that our team would not be going into the Final Four.

One final (unfortunate pun) bit of sad news to report. In church yesterday, we took time out to pray for Jason Ray, an undergrad at Kenan-Flagler who was in critical condition after getting an accident on Friday. Ray worked for the past three years as the UNC mascot Ramses and performed at many football and basketball games. He was in New Jersey getting ready for Friday’s game against USC when the accident occurred. I don’t think I have ever seen Ray at McColl but he seems to have been a well known and well liked member of UNC’s undergraduate Christian community. The Lord called him home this morning.

Photo courtesy of Tim Cupery via Facebook