Catching a breath

This afternoon around 3pm my official meetings ended after which I promptly camped out in a Starbucks here on University Ave and plotted my next move :) Namely, I am going up to Berkeley tonight to have dinner with a friend. And then tomorrow morning (very early in the morning) I will fly to LA to meet up w/Mrs J-Term Johnny and head to a wedding in Los Olivos (remember Sideways?). A nice, relaxed end to what was a productive 2 days here in Silicon Valley.

Although the relaxation isn't going to last for long...I have a paper to write for Tuesday for my Social Enterprise class, then more informationals next week! Also looking at a deal for one of the firms I've been in contact with, and helping out a portco of another. I am gonna need that Puerto Rico trip sooner rather than later...

Blogging hiatus has ended

I feel like I have to apologize to my massive readership (you know who you are) about this blogging hiatus, but alas, it has ended.

I have begun to crank my job hunt into high gear (OK, warp speed). I just booked a ticket out west for a follow up interview with the venture firm I spoke with in January. I will be meeting one of their senior partners, and if that goes well, I'll be meeting other key folks at the firm. I'm going to be out there for about three days, so I'm hoping to get some other meetings scheduled as well.

I've also been doing a ton of networking calls. Tomorrow I am talking to a couple of firms in Boston, and I just set up an in-person meeting for later this month with a firm in South Jersey. I am starting to get what I would call "luke warm" leads, which is nice, but certainly not where I would like to be (multiple offers :)

It's a really good thing that I only have 10.5 credits this semester. This is well below the norm, but because I took extra courses over the last two semesters, I now have some breathing room. And let me tell you it has been very helpful. I still feel like I am swamped - a full five classes would have been positively asphyxiating.

This weekend I'm off to Montreal with some college friends. One of them is getting married in the next couple months, so we are seeing him off in style. Unfortunately the exchange rate is not any where near where it was when I first went to Montreal during college. :) Oh well, I'm sure we'll make the best of it!

Pics from Silicon Valley Trek

One of the guys on the trip took a bunch of pictures.  Here is a link if you want to see us posing with various corporate logos :)

Tech Trek Begins in One Hour

First official event of the tech trek is happening in an hour. It's a welcome reception at the hotel we're all staying at. My flight was on Virgin America, and was generally uneventful (other than the awesome 5 hour nap I took).

Tomorrow (Monday) we are hitting the road with the following schedule:

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM: Google
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Intel
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: LinkedIn
4:30 PM – 7 PM: VMWare

I'll try to send some Twitters from the road for those who care to follow along in semi-real time.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/shifter0.

I have no Twitter followers, so make me proud and follow my feed :)

Jetting out to Silicon Valley in a few hours

Time to catch a quick snooze and then off to JFK at 530am. Should be at SFO by noon. Look forward to some updates from the road!

Rainy Day in Tokyo

It's raining today in Tokyo. That fact, plus the fact that the World Series is on is keeping me inside. I can even get the commentary in English. I think I might pop over to Ginza later for lunch since I haven't seen that area, but right now I am kind of goofing off with email, blogging, etc. Tonight we're going to hit some bars in Roppongi and then off to the airport tommorrow.

This morning I woke up early and did a call with the prof I'm TA'ing for. Myself and the other TA's are going to be grading final exams. Thankfully, there are three TA's and the prof, so we're able to split up the work of grading 200 exams :) I have a 12 hour plane flight ahead of me so that should be a good time to make headway.

As I write this, I am looking at the clock on my computer and see that it is 10PM Eastern. This means that Happy Hour is going on and there are a bunch of crazed MBA students running around Uris in Halloween costumes. Nice...

I'm flying back to the states on Saturday and have yet another friend turning 30 and having his party that night. Next week I am going to be spending alot of time getting my Kauffman Fellowship application in (it's due on Wednesday) and just getting caught up from the vacation. Thursday I'll probably be working at the VC firm and Friday I'll be with one of the startups I'm working with. This semester is flying and I'm so overworked, I'm not neccessarily upset about that. However, next semester I am going to be able to carry a really light load, so I'm paying now to be more relaxed later (if you don't count that I'll be conducting my job search at that time ;)

Off to Japan tomorrow

My flight to Japan is tommorrow morning. I'm hoping this head cold / congestion clears up before I have to fly. The flight is non-stop, which is quite nice. I'm hoping the jet lag doesn't hit me too hard because I'd like to hit the town on Friday night! I plan on posting while over in Japan at least a couple of times, so stay tuned. Also, if you happen to be in Japan (Tokyo, specifically) and are interested in meeting up, let me know via a comment on this post. Cheers!

Relaxing in Maryland

My wife and I are down on the Maryland coast hanging out with her family this weekend. I'm procrastinating on the financial model I was going to work on and instead am watching my beloved Red Sox. We're losing to The Tribe 5-3 so it's definitely winnable, although you never like to be down against a team like them. Big Papi is at the plate now so maybe he'll do something...

The World Business Forum ended off well. On Day 2 I saw Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines), Michael Eisner, and Gary Kasparov speak. Herb was my favorite, with Kasparov a close second. I can see why people love working at Southwest - they have a great, charismatic leader, who seems like a regular person to boot. Definitely inspiring stuff. If you're at CBS next year, and you have a chance, you should volunteer for the event because you'll never get a group of such high caliber speakers in one place at one time.

Couple good things going on

(in no particular order)

1) It would appear I have lined up a part-time internship to help a venture firm do some deal sourcing. It's not a 100% done deal, but it is looking _VERY_ positive. This would be huge.

2) My fall break and schedule (I only have class Mon-Wed) is going to allow me to take a nice 10-day trip to Japan over fall break! My friend moved out there (he works for Goldman in IT) and lives in Tokyo. Even better, I was able to get the trip on American for only 50,000 FF miles! Now if I can only get a deal like that for the Chazen trip I'm taking to SE Asia at the end of the year, I'll be all set.