The meeting took place at floor 14 in an office building barely 10 minutes away from my home, an I got to see how people from 4 different companies asked for big money (around 1 million $ each) in a round of 20 minutes presentations.
It is a bit weird cause in a 2 hours period you can hear about completely different stories going from one of the many new internet opportunities to a company from the medical sector, and you should be able to recognize a winner horse from a money sink. Actually, before going in, I was a bit intimidated by the whole raising money procedure, yet I realized that although it’s not easy, it’s not that big deal either; and the truth is that in a 20 minutes speech you cannot really go too deep into the topic after all. The impression I had is that at some point the situation is similar to when meeting girls: of course you have to be prepared and know your stuff, but your attitude and self-confidence are a huge part of the deal. If you know what you’re talking about and are confident about it, they are gonna notice that (as girls do ).

I am aware this was another good opportunity to see how the real thing works before finding myself in a similar scenario in the future, and I got to introduce myself in front all of them, though my guess is by now, they have already forgotten about my name or what I do…

Another thing which got my attention is the average profile of the businessman in the room. It was a 50 something year old white man. No young people at all and just a single woman. A single woman out of 30 people! that is only about 3%. Well, being completely fair, there was the secretary too, but I don’t think she counts and by the way, as you can expect, she was indeed young and great looking.

Maybe that’s why I’d like to try something new; shake things up a little bit nothing big, just small steps at a time. This is how I came up with the idea of signing up for new activities. I go regularly to the gym, but all I do is weight lifting and running, and it never crossed my mind to sign up for other classes such as fencing, dodgeball or maybe even aerobic. After taking a look at the classes offered I decided for yoga. It always attracted my attention but I wanted a demanding activity and I didn’t know whether it yoga was too soft.

However, it turns out yoga is much more than a simple physical activity. As we can read in the wikipedia “Yoga is one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, focusing on meditation as a path to self-knowledge and liberation.”

On my first class, I didn’t know what to expect, but as people were arriving I soon realized that there were easily more than 30 girls and only about 3, 4 guys. That’s not my typical scenario: being an engineer, the lectures I attend have the opposite guys-girls ratio; so it was a nice change to begin with .

As I said before, I didn’t know about the physical requirements of the activity, yet it turned out that half way through the class I was already sweating, so it was a nice workout and at the same time it was a very good relaxation technique. Even more, the next day all my muscles (specially the legs) were quite sore.

So far, it has only been two sessions, but I am quite satisfied with the change. From now on, I may try new stuff more often!

And why is all of that relevant? Because, this morning I was fortunate enough to attend the talk he gave at UCI. It was at eight o’clock in the morning a tough time to have an active audience. However, the auditorium was almost full. As soon as he started talking, I realized he was good… and not simply good, outstanding. This is not the first talk given by this type of successful people I’ve heard. I don’t want to go into the details of what he explained, but how he said it

The thing is that this is only relevant up to certain point. You always hear about the same concepts over and over again: innovation, improvement, incrementalism, empowering the employer, the customer is the most important thing, etc. but all of them are introduced in a mixture of fine humour, personal experiences, out loud reflections and interaction with the public. He is giving a speech for a whole audience but it is as if he were talking directly and individually to you; and the thing is he might do so at any time.

Despite the early hours, the whole 80 minutes flew by, and I’m positive this was not just a personal impression. It is not easy at all to do what he did, and as I said, during the first two minutes you can already tell this is gonna be a great talk. The concepts introduced were probably key to achieve success when leading a company, but what amazes me is the way he spoke. He was constantly shifting the focus of attention away from him: although his many successes he was just one more of a team of people. More than that, “anybody can do what I do, you just have to surround yourself with smarter people than you” he said. I think this says it all; after all, humility may be the first key concept.

All of this was part of one of the courses about entrepreneurship which I am taking this quarter. I think I am starting to see the path I’d like to follow; now it is a matter of being able to walk through it, and how long it takes me to get there. You can take your own conclusions, but personally I’d like to think that today I learnt a lot. Finally, if you want to read a little bit more about Mr. Mazzo, here’s a short bio.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a lazy person, I’ll work when I have to and I’ll give it all, but when trying to make a decision this was one of the arguments to go back to college as a graduate student. And that’s what I did . However, this time is a bit different for me, cause being a student in an American university I have to consider the cost of the university (in Spain it is like 500$ per semester). So Far, I have a fellowship which pays for these university fees, but that means at any given time I may be asked to perform tasks for the university so I can partly cover my expenses. The two first quarters in UCI flew by, and then, as we’ve reached the third one, they asked me to be a TA, which means a Teaching Assistant.

Yes, you’ve heard it right: I am gonna be a teacher! It is not just that I have never done this before, but I am not that keen on public speaking either; and obviously the thing gets worse if I can’t speak in my native language. Apparently, here it is not such a big deal and many grad students do it in order to cover their fees, so there I was… All they told me was: “you have to do problems from the book and help students”, so I definitely felt quite lost. Shouldn’t I get more info? Shouldn’t I have more preparation? Apparently not.

Before the actual lecture, I pictured myself in front of an auditorium filled with people, and I didn’t like the vision at all! although reality would not be like that, I still was pretty nervous. The first lecture was on a Wednesday at 8 o’clock in the morning. As I was getting there, I didn’t know what to expect and finally I got to the classroom and nobody was there! Believe it or not, I felt relieved, and thought that maybe I could postpone my first time for a whole week. However, two minutes later my first student arrived, and when I saw his face all my pressure went away. He looked kind of intimidated, so I felt relaxed cause I knew he was probably thinking something like “pfff, I’m alone with the teacher”.

This time relaxed, I started the lecture, everything went smoothly and the rest of my students kept arriving. The content was boring though; but hey there’s not much I can do about that! The 50 minutes went by pretty fast (at least for me) and soon my first lecture was over…

I’m guessing the next step will be to improve my teaching skills and hopefully my students will not get too bored during that process. Sorry guys

Is it really possible to slip in a McDonalds, sue them for millions and win for not having a Wet Floor sign? Whose fault is it really? At what point does common sense stop being common and can be considered other people’s errors. Maybe slipping is just a matter of bad luck: being in the wrong place at the wrong time; yet if this were true all of us should be affected equally, right? From what I’ve seen these problems always tend to occur to the same people (or at least this never happened to me).

I don’t mean to be harsh, but all these reflections came to my mind when I was in UCI and decided to go to a public bathroom. To my surprise I saw the following sign:

Whether it is reclaimed water or not, who the hell drinks water from the toilette!? Are people in America that stupid? Or is UCI just covering its ass?

But at this point why stop there? There are many things that could be said…
Walk with your eyes open, breath every few seconds, etc.
I think there are several differences between our cultures which I’ll never be able to overcome .

That is why when Marcel and I had the chance, we drove up to Santa Barbara to visit the famous wineries. We were invited by Alberto and Isabel, two Spanish (Catalan?) students studying in UCSB.I want to thank them for welcoming us, cause before this trip we didn’t know them that much. They showed us Santa Barbara which turned out to be a small town very cosy and really pretty.

Despite being late November, the weather was really warm during the whole weekend that had we had brought our swimsuits we would have gone to the beach. There, we had the chance to rediscover our roots when visiting the Spanish mission in SB. There are many catholic misiones in California, most of which were founded by the Catalan fray Juníper Serra. The simplicity in which people led their lives in the past always shocks me and how removing a few things we take for granted, life can become extremely harsh.

The visit to the wineries was the last (and main) event of the weekend. It turned out to be very pleasant. I had the impression of being back home. Catalunya is a land famous for its quality wines and being in the middle of all those vineyards was really familiar to me. We had a wine taste in the Firestone wineries. This is the region which was featured in the movie Sideways. I don’t know much about the wine industry by I really enjoyed the experience. However, I felt like wine was the indicative of a fancier lifestyle. One I can assure you I don’t belong to. Maybe in the near future once I start working .

]]> http://vito.es/blog/posts/163/santa-barbara/feed 0 http://vito.es/blog/posts/153/deja-vu http://vito.es/blog/posts/153/deja-vu#comments Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:38:33 +0000 ViTo http://vito.es/blog/?p=153 I guess most of you are familiar with that expression. I would say, it reminds me of one of the Matrix scenes, where a déjà vu is linked to a bug in the system. However, this time I’m not referring to the Matrix; all of this is because the new Denzel Washington movie. After watching it, I would have to say it is the typical thriller; with lots of action and a complicated plot which does not make a lot of sense. Nothing extraordinary. I got the chance to watch it for free though, so I’m not going to complain about it. On the contrary, thanks for inviting me to a pre-premiere screening.

Yes, you heard it right. I got to watch the movie before its official release. How did I manage to do that? It’s not like I have a lot of contacts (I have none) or I am in the show biz or something. It turns out that ASUCI (the UCI students association) organizes private screenings once in a while. Again, needless to say they are completely free for students. This time, Marcel, Pol, Allie, Edith and me (I have the feeling I am forgetting someone) were lucky enough to attend the event.

Independently from the quality of the movie, this is going to be one of the mainstream releases this year. And students in UCI got to watch if for free 5 days before the official premiere. I am shocked. I didn’t know universities had those kinds of privileges. Just so you know, this would never happen in any Spanish university.

It was OK, but the best was yet to come… Walking back home we saw this group of people gathered in the street waiting for something to happen. It immediately caught our attention, but didn’t know what to expect. About 5 minutes later, when we were about to leave a group of black people carrying torches arrived. It was a ritual; a weird one, like a tribal thing. Four men, were the focus of attention, dressed in a kind of military uniform they were dancing and chanting all the time. It was a test, an initiation ritual in to get into the AΦA fraternity.

I was shocked to attend an event like this; I was under the impression that these things only happened in the movies, but it turns out that most of the stereotypes I had about America are true. By the way, if it were up to me, the four newbies should make it into the fraternity cause they showed a complete submission for more than half hour.

]]> http://vito.es/blog/posts/153/deja-vu/feed 1 http://vito.es/blog/posts/149/calilunya http://vito.es/blog/posts/149/calilunya#comments Sun, 31 Dec 2006 20:44:46 +0000 ViTo http://vito.es/blog/?p=149 Recently, I came across a short documentary about the cultural exchange between abroad students. Particularly, it shows the combined experience of catalan students in California and American students in Catalunya; thus, the title. I found it interesting cause it reflects exactly my experience; and these last days I found myself telling my friends the same things about America… “Everything is huge, the cars, the streets, the warm weather, etc.”

Anyway, watch it for yourselves. I hope you like it…

Click here to view the embedded video.

]]> http://vito.es/blog/posts/149/calilunya/feed 0 http://vito.es/blog/posts/148/uci-home-opener http://vito.es/blog/posts/148/uci-home-opener#comments Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:29:55 +0000 ViTo http://vito.es/blog/?p=148 It amazes me how popular sports are in UCI. I get the feeling it’s not just UCI though; this is what goes on in most American universities. As I mentioned in one of my other posts, sport facilities in the campus are endless. I have to admit that with every student paying more than 8000$ of fees each quarter, maybe it’s not that hard to do, but the point is still valid. Besides, I’ve come to know people which are exempt from these fees because they receive sports fellowships. It makes sense to give money to people who deserve it, but with all due respect, I know people back in Barcelona who have been practicing sport for years, they are amazing and they don’t get a single dime from anybody; it’s even worse, they have to pay to play the sport they love.

I started thinking about this, the other day, when I and Marcel attended the Home Opener game of the UCI basketball team in the Bren Events Center. It was a nice game. They played against South Carolina and it was a disputed match with no clear winner until the end. I was really impressed with the whole thing. The price of the event is 15$ which many people pay despite being “only” a university game. For students, the entrance is free though. From what I saw, people really support UCI, and as the speaker said, we were more than 2000 people there. Not only that, but they were also giving away free Completely Insane Anteaters t-shirts for all students.

This was the first game we attended, and we did so, just to see what was going on, but I have to admit that as soon as we arrived, we got linked into the feeling and started supporting out team. Needless to say, we enjoyed it very much. From what I saw people really love UCI. It’s all about the anteaters!

I’ve been playing basketball in Spain for more than 10 years, and never saw anything close to what I saw in the Brent events center. The pavilion was great, they played with 3 referees, there was a band, cheerleaders, a speaker, etc. To me, it looked more like a professional game than a college competition. In Spain, there are professional teams in the top division (known as ACB, which after NBA is probably the best one in the world) which do not have those kind of resources nor support. It made me thing about the differences between both countries…

Click here to view the embedded video.

By the way, in case you were wondering UCI won that match.

With such resources, it is no wonder why people are so fit. As I see it, when you’re at home doing nothing, you can always go hang out in the ARC and play something. At least that’s what I do! Besides that, every quarter several leagues and tournaments are organized in many different sports. This is how we entered the indoor soccer intramural competition. In Spain, Soccer is the main sport; I guess it would be something like football in USA. Since it is the most practiced sport, I would say people are generally not bad at all, especially when compared to people from other countries where soccer isn’t that popular.

So, we joined this internal UCI league. The matches take place once a week during the whole quarter, and then the best teams make it to the playoffs. The game is short but intense. Since our team consisted exclusively of catalan people, we came up with the original name. The Catalan Guys. Yes, I have to admit we are not that bright… The thing is though, that with a name like this, you feel more like a national team representing your country It is a very diverse team though; all of us are UCI (ex)students ranging from 22 years old to more than thirty in some cases. The fact is that despite the diversity, we managed to create a nice team. It turns out, we did quite good throughout the competition. We won every single game during the regular season (you can read short summaries in here –they’re in Spanish though-). Since we already played against all teams during regular season we got the chance to see all of our future rivals, and the truth is we beat all of them.

I have to admit we were probably overconfident and already saw ourselves as champions. I mean, who wouldn’t after a perfect season. But then, when the first serious match came, one of out best players Marc (see video) had finished his master degree in UCI and went back to Barcelona. We should have taken that as a bad sign; we didn’t. And as you can imagine we lost the first playoff game and were out of the competition. It kind of reminded me of what happens to the Spanish national team in every world cup

Click here to view the embedded video.

From my side, despite the loss, I am just happy to be part of a team again. I love sports, and being able to play again after my knee surgery and my back problems is just all I needed. Anyway, the next quarter the championship will be ours, so, watch out for the Catalan Guys!