Now is as good a time as ever

I am sitting by myself in a fairly small room in Sage Hall.  The building is almost empty.  Thursday is the day we the infamous “Sage Socials” and people tend to leave the building half drunk in order to go out to finish the job.  

Today we had the last Social for the semester, so they brought back the good food (this whole semester, Socials have been mainly chips and salsa since the university is trying to cut back on budget).  There were crab cakes, and shrimp, and cheese that was labeled “imported”.  Since it was the last one A LOT of people came. Now at least half of the school is in something called “Johnson Follies”.  I decided not to go to the Follies, and actually didn’t stay long at the Social because I am working on my final project for the Marketing Immersion.  I decided to work through our data using SPSS, so that I wouldn’t have to do anything tonight or tomorrow and I’d be free to help Uri with his huge catering event (more on that tomorrow or on Sunday or Monday) - Incredibly enough I actually found something that looks like it’s worthwhile.   However, being here alone, the only thing I could really do in my little cathartic moment was change my Facebook status to “Tamar decided that she is SPSS queen”.  Now I’m sitting here waiting for Uri to come pick me up, and then I remembered you guys!  

But as luck would have it, Uri is supposed to be here in around 5 minutes.  It leaves me time to tell you just a small tidbit of something that happened while I wasn’t blogging – John Cleese was here! Apparently he comes to Cornell quite often.  Uri and I (along with some other friends) went to see him lecture.  It was quite funny and thoughtful.  He said some things that really made me think – specifically about the relationship between creativity and stress.  Also about how when people do what they truly want to be doing, life seems to align in a manner that circles come together.  More on those if I ever get back to having enough time to philosophize. That’s it.

Good use of time

Wow, I haven’t written in a long time! I’m actually impressed by how long I did keep up with writing everyday… because let’s face it - we all knew it wouldn’t last. ;)

The problem with not writing everyday is that a lot of things happen, and then I don’t know whether to write about the things I didn’t write about, or the things that are happening now. The thing I most want to tell about is that we got a new couch. This isn’t very new - I think it happened around 2 weeks ago. Uri found it on Craig’s List, and I went to see it. He then brought it we the help of our friend Dani. I love it. It’s so comfortable! It’s wide enough that I can fall asleep in front of the TV and not feel like I fell asleep on the couch. It’s actually so big that we had to get rid of the coffee table, which is now standing sideways between the bed and the wall in the spare bedroom upstairs.

To pepper in something from today – I spend about an hour now trying to figure out how to use a panoramic photo stitching tool called Autopano that was once recommended to me by Lior. Needless to say, I was not successful, and after a while I just decided to cut it off since I do have multiple things to do. I love you guys, but still…

Uri Speaks

From the desk of Uri Hadar:

We celebrated Passover with some friends here at our apartment complex.  It was quite fun but I tend to take a little bit too much responsibility for other people’s happiness. Anyway, the food was good.  We had a bizarre "Hagada" it was nothing like we are used to.  It was at shorter version, with explanations for the English speakers, and they were not very good.  And they didn't have all the songs, but we had a good time.  

:)

Now to elaborate a bit more… The Hagada wasn’t just different from the usual one.. The “translation” was liberal… pun intended.  For the 4 sons, it had the answers as quotes from various modern philosophers and statesmen, and somewhere, I don’t remember the context, there was a section about nuclear proliferation.    

As usual, we couldn’t hold back on making food.  Despite the fact that it was supposed to be pot-luck (i.e. everyone makes one dish) we made: Chicken Soup with Matzo-ball (Knaidalach) – he actually made 3 kinds of matzo-ball: classic, with sumach and with paprika, Chicken wings with caramelized onions, Onion pickles, Apple Chutney (both went well with a lamb entrée someone made), Horseradish (Uri made from scratch),  Haroset (which only after everyone got there we realized we did not have enough so I quickly made it, literally in 5 minutes, and was surprisingly good), and, last but not least – Krembo for dessert. Yum.

When pigs fly

I have a lot to tell, and no time to tell it, but I did have to let you in on one thing:

IT SNOWED TODAY!!!

You can check it out live at this link on the"Quad Cam" .  Engineering Quad is right across from my school.

Apple shmapple

Yes yes... I haven't written in a while - but I had no time!!! Why don't you bug Uri about writing?  So what if he's up at all hours of the night and you actually get to talk to him.  

This week, um... these two weeks have been so busy - the only decent word that comes to mind is "silly".  

This past week my marketing class and I went on a field trip.  We visited companies, and heard interesting things that will be rel event to our jobs in the future: What does a production line look like and what implications do production capabilities have on a Brand Manager's role? What can PR do for a product launch? What are the steps taken to launch a new product? and on and on.  These are all things we learned in class, but it was interesting to see them in action, and hear practitioners speak about them based on recent experience.  

It was interesting, but very tiring.  I would go on about it, but I'm too tired...

Maybe tomorrow.

The trip ended yesterday, but I stayed on in the city for another day since I had my interview with Peeled Snacks.  i think it went well, I really never know about these things... One thing I really liked was that they all (or most) wore jeans and sensible shoes.  They also gave me a bunch of packs to try.. they are really good! I think I really like this company, they have a very well defined positioning statement/ point of differentiation that I think is very smart.  We'll see what happens.

I am now resting for a bit at Marc & Wolly's (new and awesome) apartment, and it about 30 minutes, I'll head out again to Penn Station, where I'll take the train to Philly and meet up with Shai.  He's driving in from DC.  We'll hang out for a few hours and then I'll head back.  It's kinda crazy, but it would be silly for us to be so close, and with time on our hands and not make the effort to see each other.  With that, I will finish, because I have to get ready.  

I just got this in the mail, someone from my class put this together.  It is not representative of the educational portion of the trip: