Back to Beantown

Edit: Whoops sorry for the monster post, it's been a long month, LOL....

Back in Boston after a whirlwind 3 weeks all over the map. Hoping the Jonuts family is doing well. Congrats to Ratana on the upcoming little one.

Great Christmas with the folks. Hit Tahoe Heavenly with some old friends, made some new friends, had a rockin' cabin party including standard NYE fare and some not so-standard fare including an very fun NYE hat making extravaganza.

Then it was on to the treks. First up, Silicon Valley to visit startups, venture capitalists, hot IPO VMWare and even Google. Nearly a quarter of the entire first year MBA class was on this trek, so there it was good company day and night, including a fairly crazy party at the hotel one night.

We looked like a bunch of mobsters the whole time - it was a little strange walking into a short-and-tshirt-laden startup dressed up like wiseguys, but's that's how we roll. This was supposed to say "MIT" but only the guy on the right read the memo.


The bay area portion of the trek was capped off well. One of our fine classmates rented the Mexican party bus and we got on that bad boy and partied across four bars, across the Golden Gate Bridge, next to trolleys, you name it. Pictures from that have been sworn to strict secrecy to protect the innocent.

Next up, Los Angeles. This was the start of the more "fun" portion of the trek. We started by switching over to nice business casual as opposed to all out gangster suits. We visited some amazing entertainment companies, visited the Dodgers (got a nice pep talk from Tommy Lasorda himself), had a meeting with the NHL Champion Ducks and their GM, had a networking event with UCLA Anderson and Columbia MBAs, went to Disney Corporate and even got a behind the scenes look at Disneyland operations. Of course there was the mandatory In-n-Out burger stop, where one of our more accomplished eaters managed to pound an animal style 4x4 before we headed over to Honda Center and the Ducks.

We got the MIT thing right this time:


At the Dodgers Press Box:


After Tommy Lasorda's impressive talk:


Honda Center hours before the Mighty Ducks took the ice:


Disneyland!


LOL, during the LA trek somehow someone jupped us into going to karaoke. Apparently, this place, the Brass Monkey, was one of Manny Pacquio's favorite chilling spots when he was training in LA. These two chicks kept asking us to do a duet with them, and after some eeniee meenie miney moe, here is the line-up. Yah, we sorta got into it, LOL...


After all this, it was off to.... Vegas baby! Here we had visits with several entertainment and media companies. This was pretty cool, particularly when meeting with the brass and talking about overseas expansion strategies, implications of online gaming, the new CityCenter development on the strip etc. We got to see the high-rollers suites at the Venetian and the Wynn and even the villa at the Caesars, which was... jawdropping. The poker tables were softer than ever and a few victories paid for the trip in full. One flirtatious classmate, who was watching me play, was chatting to some dudes at the table. At some point, she told him where we were from, and from there on, I couldn't get no action at that table no more and had to move, lol. One of our more hooked up classmates managed full VIP table, Dom and whatnot at the Wynn club one evening which was fun. Obv what happens in Vegas...

Here we are in front of the Phantom theater doing the ol' MIT:


Not too many other Vegas pics, since there were no pictures in the suites, villas, etc.

Obv after that, it was back to Boston for interviews and of course, mad Patriots football frenzy. Boston v NYC in the Superbowl, who woulda thunk? Gonna be a fun one.