Welcome to Barcelona

I finally arrived in Barcelona today morning and what greeted me was a hot bright sunny day. It is a incredibly modern city with none of the monotony of Singapore. Each building is extremely unique and interesting to look at. Here are couple of pictures from the first day.

All Set for Barcelona and Spain

With exactly 30 days to Barcelona and having purchased my one way ticket on SIA, I am finally realizing that all my effort over the past two years to get into a world class MBA program and move to a new city is finally coming to fruition.

I will be starting my new life with a two week backpacking trip across Spain before I dive into my MBA. I am finally excited to go on a trip with my backpack, which i bought nearly 2 years ago. I have done all the hostel bookings for my trip. Meticulous planning went into the places I will visit, stay and means of travel. My target is to spend not more than 60Euros per day. Being a student I will no longer have the luxury of whipping out my credit card if i find myself short of cash. Europe generally being expensive to travel, I need to limit the number of paid attractions i can visit and focus more on exploring the beautiful cities that are attractions by themselves.

My itinerary is as follows

21st Aug to 23rd Aug Madrid(Includes a day trip to Toledo)
24th Aug to 26th Aug Valencia(Will visit Bunol for the Fiesta de La Tomatina)
27th Aug to 28th Aug Granada
29th Aug to 30th Aug Jaen
31st Aug Cordoba
1st Sep to 3rd Sep Seville

The last 4 cities are in the beautiful Andalucian region of Spain which is the olive oil producing region of Spain. It is also known for imbibing islamic and christian influences in its architecture and food.I am really looking forward to meeting fellow backpackers, walking around the Plazas and tasting the Tapas and sherry.

Preparing for B-School

As time hurtles towards the start of what will be surely a rollercoaster journey, I find myself overcome with a mixture of joy and sadness. Sadness because I will miss all my great friends I made during my 10 years in Singapore. Through I won't miss Singapore itself, I will definitely miss the local gym I have been attending for the past 4 years. I am also overjoyed because it will be my first trip to Europe and I will be living in one of the greatest cities in Europe. Plus it is first time I will be away from my parents living all alone and managing all my affairs independently. It brings with it a mixture of apprehension and excitement.

Realizing yesterday that it was less than 2 months to my departure I have started planning for it. I am looking around for a shipper to move all my personal effects over to Barcelona. Oh most importantly I have to book my air ticket. Then I also need to shop for lots of personal effects that have to last me through 19 months of my MBA.

Got a laptop for my MBA

I finally got a brand new Fujitsu L1010 laptop for my MBA. It is packed with lots of memory(4GB ram, 1 GB dedicated video memory and 320 GB harddisk) though definitely not top of the line. But it should be more than adequate for two years of powerpoint presentations, excel analysis and word documents.

Time just flies

I thought after my admit to IESE, I have so many months before I start school. But three months of my new year have just whizzed past without myself realizing. I am already getting into the so called MBA networking phase. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with a few IESE alum. It was so refreshing to see a bunch of extremely humble and fun people to hang out with. In this respect, I am proud to be in IESE. American schools tend to much more gung ho about their whole image and do everything in their power to make us believe they are the best. After the current economic crisis and issues over H1B visas, I am so happy that I did not get into any school in US.

Pre-MBA Vacations

Well I have heard the best phase of any MBA is before it begins. I have nearly 8 months before my MBA begins and I started my travelling last week when I was in Hong Kong. Tomorrow I am flying to Mumbai and will be visiting Goa. Next month I will be Chennai and Tirupati to to keep a date with God. Hopefully after that, I will try to travel to various places in S.E Asia before i move to Spain.

MBA Financing Worries

Well the euphoria of getting an admission to a top MBA program has passed and now I am saddled with worries of huge loans, debt and the eventuality of student life bereft of gourmet dinners, expensive holidays and splurging on clothes.

I already lost 5000$ by paying to reserve a seat at ISB after which i got into my dream school IESE. Then recently I paid the 5000EUR deposit for IESE. All this is leading to a hole in my bank account. But i guess this is what I worked hard for the past two years and spent more than 6000$ just to get a admission to a top school(GMAT, application fees, etc).

But at the end of the day all this is an investment that will hopefully lead to good returns in the future and a chance to move to my dream career and role.