The Chantastic Blog

The job market isn’t looking so hot and the economy’s in the tank. Throw in my school-related debt, and things could be better. As a result, I’ve decided to apply to Google Adsense to throw some ads on here and build my fortune, half a penny at a time. So I’m giving a shout out to the Google Adsense person in charge of my application. Of course, this is based on the assumption that I’ll eventually reach the $100 mark necessary to earn a cheque, so I’m looking at receiving my first blog payment around 2013. The guys at Google clearly don’t go to the Randy Moss school of payments.

Someone in my macroeconomics class actually just asked, “How come there hasn’t been much innovation from Japan?”

Um…Toyota, anyone? Sony? Nintendo?

Today was interview day, and I had a 9-10 AM time slot. Here’s a running diary of the important moments from today:

5:08 AM - Randomly wake up. Not sure why. I know the exact time because I saw it on my oven as I walked by to take a swig of orange juice fronm the jug. I don’t use cups in my house to save the environment from excess water use. Did anyone buy that? I didn’t think so.
6:20 - First alarm clock goes off. I snooze it every five minutes until 6:30.
6:21 - Second alarm clock goes off. I snooze it every five minutes until 6:31.
6:31 - Third alarm goes off. There is no snooze on this clock. Is this sounding familiar?
6:32 - Wake up.
6:50 - Realize that I don’t have any food in my place for breakfast because my apartment’s food situtation works on a perpetual just-in-time delivery model.
6:51 - Wonder if my stomach will start growling in the middle of the interview.
7:45 - Start putting on my suit. Note to self: if you get a second round interview with these guys, DO NOT wear the blue shirt with the yellow tie since you wore that today - go with the pink shirt and red tie. If there’s a third round…let’s hope they don’t remember the blue shirt.
8:00 - Eat half a granola bar.
8:03 - Spend the next minute making sure I don’t have granola bar stuck between my teeth.
8:25 - I have two packs of Deloitte mints that I’ve grabbed from their info sessions this year. It’s pretty fancy - it’s contained in a small clear plastic container so you can see inside (think Tic Tacs). All of the mints are white, except for one which is green. This, of course, is because Deloitte’s logo is a green dot. Again, very fancy. I throw one of these mints into my mouth as I’m about to leave, only to realize…they’re just candy. That won’t do. Fortunately, I have some CIBC “recruitmints” left over from Orientation Week in my locker at school. Mints don’t go bad, right? Only one way to find out…
8:26 - Put on my shoes and walk to the elevator.
8:27 - Return to apartment so that I can take off my regular shoes and put on dress shoes. Seriously, this happened. (more…)

This morning, I had one of those days where my nose becomes stuffed up and I can barely breathe. This was a problem because it didn’t become a full-fledged problem until I got to class, leading to a situation where I had a box of Kleenex next to me like I was a sneezing ad for allergy medicine.

Anyway, I went home after that class. But I couldn’t go to bed because from 3 to 4 PM, I had a scheduled hour with a second year student for consulting case interview prep. You see, after a person gets an interview in consulting, they’re given a magical Excel list of time slots where we can practice with second year students who have gone through the grind of consulting interviews. Naturally, you don’t want to cancel a scheduled appointment on this magical list.

Hence, I went home, ate lunch, took some meds, and had a brief 20 minute nap before going back to school for my interview prep.

When I woke up, I was a bit better but still feeling a bit under the weather. After I started doing the case with the second year MBA, everything was fine.

The moral of the story is that second year MBA students are smart, helpful, and…can magically cure the sniffles.

It was -14 Celsius today. On my way to class, I saw a guy and girl walking towards the subway station on campus. The guy was dressed like a regular student going to class in cold Canadian weather. The girl was wearing a bathrobe. And nothing else (other than footwear, which I’m assuming she was wearing).

I cannot fathom a scenario that can possibly explain what I saw.

While watching TV, an ad for Ellen’s birthday show came up, including footage of her blowing out candles on a huge birthday cake.

And that got me thinking - this tradition of blowing out candles on a birthday cake is disgusting. Who in their right mind wants to eat cake that has someone’s spittle all over it? What do you do if the birthday boy/girl is sick? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a fake cake with the candles on it that you could re-use for any birthday party, and then eat the real cake afterwards?

A couple of subtle tidbits from the inauguration of Barack Obama from watching the CNN feed that you might not have noticed:

After the Obamas escorted the Bushes to the Executive One helicopter and were saying their farewells, you can read Bush’s lips as he tells Michelle Obama, “You’ll have the time of your life. I promise.” I thought that was really interesting.

After Obama signs his first set of papers in office and all the photographers finish taking pictures, he says, “They told me not to swipe the pen.”