Iceland, cont.

Here are more pictures from Iceland and beyond:


Can you tell I am half of the "T" on the left side?


I'm like that kid in "A Christmas Story"


This is the Blue Lagoon where we swam in hot geothermic waters while it was freezing cold outside.


See, Iceland is not all ice!


Me and my roommate on our snow mobile.

Back in NYC!

Am back in ny for a little bit and of makes me sad that I ever left.
However, 4 old friends came out last night to welcome me back and it
ended with rice pudding from Rice to Riches, a rice pudding bar!

Kim in Iceland!

Hey everyone!

For those of you who don't know, I am currently in Iceland for the Columbus Day weekend with 31 other Sloanies. We are having the time of our life and here is a pic as a preview of coming attractions! This is me and my friend Alex as we got back from snow mobiling on a glacier. It was awesome and I look like Speed Racer!

Here are some pics I owe you from the past few weeks:


We went to Chris' east coast wedding reception. I went in a sari and it was awesome. Here is my teammate Rimi on the left who lent me the sari and helped me put it on.


Manny and I hosted a dinner party where he made one awesome pot roast. This time I could take pics because it wouldn't be so creepy. We love entertaining!


Our friend Joe brought the ingredients for his famous bananas foster. He nearly put in half that handle of rum!


Manny serves himself some rice.


Afterwards, we forced our guests into slave labor. We didn't even give them sponges to clean so they had to use their bare hands. Just kidding! People were happy to help out with the cleaning duty in return for the yummy food.

And like the good MIT nerds we are, we break out our laptops and do 2
hours of accounting and econ homework. Then we drove to ptown for
dinner and dancing. More pics to come once my friend sends them to me!

Upon arrival, we promptly make some mac n cheese. Way to use the duck
apron!

Cape cod!

It's our friend Jesse's 29th bday and what better to take him than
Ptown?! We rented a car and picked up and went.

Debates!

I am sitting in a private media room watching the debates with
classmates. Thank goodness for hdtv! It's like mst3k of politics.

G.I. Joes and Barbie Hoes

So this weekend I went to a themed party with Sloanies. And because there was no way I was going to dress up like Barbie, I went as a "G.I. Ho" instead.


We sufficiently freaked out the whole train on the subway with a German in drag and sloanies in army gear carrying two bricks of cheap beer. People literally got up and moved to the other side of the train!


Here are the happy little soldiers saluting in front of the flag at the Charles MGH T-stop. USA! USA!


I bought this shirt, dog tags and hat half an hour before the party from an army surplus store. I really like this shirt in particular because the camo is pixilated.... I would also like to point out that the dog tags of my friend Jesse on the right say "Semper Bi-curious" and "Army of Juan." We laughed about this all night.


Our friend Daniel dressed in Drag as a Barbie, and I look like I walked right off the set of "Boys Don't Cry." Talk about gender confused! The best was his thick German accent responding to cat calls on the street. The pair of us couldn't hail a cab to save our lives as our big group went back to Cambridge. It was a very "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" moment here.


Towards the end of the night when I've had one too many Coke Zeros!

I didn't sign up for this

Please give me one freakin' example when I would use this homework's
applications in the business world. PLEASE! I have been going out of
my mind this week on stupid statistics and probability. Curses, MIT,
curses!!!

Dinner party!

So instead of doing dmd homework as I should be doing, Manny and I
decided to throw another dinner party at our place tonight. Here he is
with his family's secret pot roast recipe. It smells so darned good I
wish I could share it with you all through the blog. Also I think he
looks like an advertisment for some ethnic sauce. All he needs is a
pot belly and perhaps a chef's hat. More pics to come throughout the
night!

DMD: The bane of my existence...

It's sad when you are grateful for fresh dry erase markers and a wall sized white board. Welcome to the 3 hour team meeting today for preparing a team paper for our class Data Models and Decisions (DMD). Here is a taste of our 3 hrs of toil (I spent 2 hrs previously preparing on my own). Ummmm, this is just the first week down; the easiest week says a 2nd year...

It was a very proud day indeed to find out that the founders of the company that created Guitar Hero are in fact alumni of MIT and participated in the MIT $100K Business Plan Competition, which I will either enter or help facilitate this year.

Stata center

Here is a pic of the famous Stata Center at MIT, an architectural
oddity. I believe MIT sued the pants off the architect for the faulty
construction. However, it looks super cool and I feel like I'm in a
dr. Seuss book.

Stitches out!

Yesterday I got my stitches taken outa
at the MIT clinic on campus. Looks good, right? It will be another
week before I can put on anti scarring cream.

First day of school

So it's actually more of a half day,but we still have homework due for
the first class. Also, here is a shot of where I wait for the bus. A
real downer for the rest of the day...

Playing pool

Tonight I went with some Sloanies to a local pool hall that just happened to
play 80's music all night. Can you say new favorite hang out? This is
a classmate who we poked fun of all night (in jest)
because of his serious form when playing. I believe the name we gave him tonight was "gecko." :)

Bowling!

I went bowling today with some old friends living in boston from both BU and high school. Despite having stitches I was doing alright, but on our second game they programed our lane to put up bumbers just on my turn. Embarassing- yes; awesome- yes. I kind of like this picture as I am a brown streak except for my leg firmly planted to the ground.

Meet my core team!

So at the start of orientation we were introduced to our "core team" consisting of 6-7 people that we are assigned to work with for the first semester of classes. This Tuesday, we went to a retreat to perform some group bonding exercises. Thankfully, my stitches didn't completely put me out of commission, but let's just say rope climbing was not in the cards. The day's events below:


Here's my team and a bit about their histories:
(left side back to front)
Jun Mo- South Korean journalist
Josh- financial IT
Me- oblivious to cameras
(right side back to front)
Chris- financial consulting in India
Rimi- environmental insurance/yoga instructor
Tatiana- engineer from Costa Rica
Charles- Venture Capital partner with a business in Brazil


The floating hula hoop: This exercise was actually a lot harder than it looks. With a hula hoop on the tips of our fingers, we had to bring it to the ground. Thank goodness Rimi is a yoga instructor on the side as she calmed us all down and guided our fingers to the ground in unison.


This was a strange exercise using verbal and nonverbal communication. Somehow we had to verbally command 3 blindfolded teammates on how to get a ball in a nearby can. ps: they couldn't step off of the purple mat.


ummm, may I just add I haven't sprinted in years?


In a boat building exercise, our teams' raft completely fell apart during the cast off. And like the good business students we are, we took someone else's finished product to the dock and back :)

Get well soon

Thanks, mom, for my get well soon package from Harry & David! Will
make the weekend even better. My stitches should be coming out soon
and it seems as if there will be minimal scarring. Phew!

Home Office

So I finally got around to putting together my new desk in my "office" shipped from Target. I must say that for only $100 it looks super sharp and it matches my dark wood bookcase. With bum hand and all, I was able to put it together in under 20 minutes and voila!- home office. I also brought all my toys and doo-dads from work and have set them up accordingly. It's a good thing I enjoy sitting at this desk as I will be spending many a night here.

Mind you the above diagram does not show the complete picture and may even look a bit pathetic considering how much I am extolling it's praises, but I don't have the heart nor the stamina to fill the bookshelves yet. In the meantime, however, I can drink a continuously warm cup of earl gray and catch up on my emails....

Stitches

Sorry for the ultra gross post, but I cut my palm while white water
rafting this weekend. Actually, it is healing up nicely now unlike
what you see here. No detail of my life unposted!

Pre term

Proof positive I am going to MIT! This is the famous dome outside of
killian court. Coincidence?

And then I put my onions onto a pizza crust and topped it off with
crumbled goat cheese. Watch out bertucci's!!

I'm getting quite domestic with my time off and here is the start of
my attempt at making caramelized onions from scratch.

Cupcake cones

Here is one of my first projects this past weekend. Yum!

So I just out-nerded many of my classmates by proving myself to be the best at Guitar Hero at a get together this weekend. I think my friend Naomi put it best when she said, "Wow, you beat a bunch of MIT kids at a video game?"

test

looks like I can blog on the go using my iPhone! This is a test post
from my phone.

Manny and I hosted a summer bbq for our classmates on Sunday. (We've secretly decided our house name is KiManny- like Brangelina. Poor kid, he's such a good sport to tolerate me!) It went well and we have about 15 people in our place with tons of foods and tons more beer leftover in the fridge. I think we'll bring it to the next Sloanie bbq on Tuesday.


Surprisingly, we had a great set up to accommodate all the people.


The flowers from Whole Foods looked great in my new crystal vase!


OMG! Kim is cooking! Manny said I looked really domestic in my new apron. And ironically, I was talking to classmates about how I would like to go into consulting while wearing it. Sending mixed signals, are we? I am here preparing shrimped wrapped in bacon cooked in bacon grease. It was waaaay awesome and we decided to host a BACON party sometime in the fall.


Here is Manny firing up the grill on our fire escape. This is probably way illegal, but it sure got us through two trays of bbq chicken, hot dogs, sausage, and s'mores! Shortly before this pic, he nearly burned off all his facial hair!

Public service announcement:

Want a free Obama button? MoveOn's giving them away totally free--no strings attached. I just got mine, and wanted to share the opportunity with you.

Click this link to get a free Obama button:

http://pol.moveon.org/obamabuttons/?id=-9746294-2T0Yg_x

Here's the first of many pics to come in of Teresa's wedding! And like a dumb @$$ I forgot my camera that day so I am relying on pics to dribble in on her facebook page :)


My hair is still not recovered from all the hairspray she put into it! Also, this guy looks like he wants nothing to do with me :)


Here we are all lined up.


Dustin looks great in his uniform!


Posing for the real wedding pics.


The happy couple!

So here is like the dorkiest thing I've done since I've left work!

Click here to see the video!

I got an A in my Principles of Microeconomics class, so I'm in at MIT! It was 6 weeks of absurdity, but I got through it and can now kick back... that is unless real class starts!

Good news! I found a place to live in Cambridge! Actually, it's in Inman Square on the border of Cambridge and Somerville. Inman is a great quiet location that has yet to be taken over by chains and big box stores. It's full of Harvard and MIT ppl (students and/or professors) with owner operated coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants and pubs.

I am living with a fellow MIT Sloan student in my class Manny. He is from Guam and is very easy to get along with. I'm living on the second floor so I have TWO rooms, THREE closets, and all for about 1/3 of what I am paying now! One room will be a bedroom and the other I am going to call my den or study. Maybe I'll get some fake antlers to put up. Should be nice to have my own space to get to work!

The place is very clean with a full kitchen and I'm really looking forward to living there. Below are some pics!


This is our dining area by the kitchen. We even have an island seen in the lower right corner. The last tenants left the dining table, chairs, and couch!


Here is our kitchen. I can't wait to use my nice appliances again! Island great for entertaining!