ALERT: B. School is NOT a joke...seriously, i'm not joking

Well, the day has finally happened. My 80-day weekend finally ended. This actually happened on Monday, but the first week of school has actually been extremely busy. Orientation starts at 8am every day, and we basically have lectures or other "leadership" exercises nonstop til 6pm. After that it's a combination of mandatory nighttime events at school, reading case studies (WTF? I thought I didn't get into HBS???), working out (MUCH easier to do thanks to the UCLA co-ed's...can't wait til the undergrad classes start), and drinking/socializing with my new classmates. I haven't seen my "non-Anderson friends", as they will now be referred to for the next two years, since Sunday, which is quite a change from the previous few weeks when I was seeing them every day. I gotta say, I don't miss them all that much. My new classmates are (generally) pretty cool - outgoing, funny, social, smart, etc. I am dissapointed by the ratio though - my class is 72% male. I feel like I'm going to an Indian party where there's literally three guys for every girl, and about half the girls are already spoken for. Only difference is that at the Indian parties, the single girls are generally bitches who think they're far better looking than they really are (ladies, just cuz you happen to have one Friendster pic that makes you look average to slightly above average, doesn't mean you really are average to slightly above average).

This week, which is the first of two weeks of orientation, has been a weeklong course called "Leadership Foundations", which basically consists of a series of lectures and activities designed to teach us the theories and best practices of leadership. It's been four days, and as far as I can tell, they've pretty much just taught us that good leadership = good teamwork. B-School is all teamwork. We're even assigned study groups. It's still early, but so far I'm VERY happy with my study group - the two international students actually speak proper English (which sadly is all too often NOT the case), and everyone mutually agreed that we won't meet on the weekends except when absolutely necessary. You know what that means my LA friends - Vegas 2-3 times a month (starting with the wknd of September 29th).

More to come later. Right now I suppose I should be working on my "Leadership Map" which is due tomorrow. What the f*ck is a "Leadership Map", you ask? Well, I haven't really done mine yet, so I'm not quite sure. But I think it's supposed to be some self-reflective essay about my leadership goals, experiences, strengths, weaknesses, blah, blah, blah. Then Saturday we have mandatory volunteer day - yeah, that sounds pretty oxymoronic to me too. And speaking of morons, it's Atur's engagement party on Saturday night. Congrats buddy!

United 93

Intense. Powerful. Unbelievable.

I FINALLY saw United 93. I had wanted to see this since it first came out in the theatres, but struggled to convince anyone to see it with me, for pretty obvious reasons. I had heard all the standard rejections - "too depressing", "too soon", etc. But I've always felt that the civilian victims that died in Pennsylvania (and the Pentagon for that matter) we're always somewhat "overshadowed", for lack of a better term, by the victims who died in and around the WTC. For that reason as much as any other, I wanted to get a sense for what really happened on United Flight 93. And while we'll obviously never know exactly what REALLY happened on that or any of the other hijacked flights that day, I just got a good feeling when I read/heard way back in the day that before making the movie, the producer or director or whoever got signoff from EVERY family.

I was admittedly surprised by how much emotion I was overcome with while watching the movie (yes, I cried, on several occasions). As many of you know, I was in NYC on 9/11. While it was obviously quite a long time ago, I still remember the day pretty vividly - calling my parents in LA to tell them I was OK, only to realize they were still sleeping and hadn't a clue what was going on until I called; running into my then-roommate Ramesh while walking from my Midtown office to my Gramercy apartment; wondering for hours about the whereabouts of my sister and my other then-roommate, Vinay (cellphones were obviously not working very well that day, but both were eventually accounted for safely). But I was one of the lucky ones. Not only was I nowhere near the WTC that morning, but I also don't know anyone who was directly injured or killed in the attacks. So, while I recognize the day as the biggest national tragedy in my lifetime (well, 3rd biggest, behind a certain court ruling in January 2001, and a certain election in November 2004), the memories have never hit me that hard.

As usual, I digress. Back to the movie. So many aspects surprised me. How the ten or so passengers and crew who planned the now-famous "Let's Roll" attacks had the nerves, sense, and composure to do what they did absolutely amazes me. While we all recognize I'm no thrill-seeking cowboy, I think most people I know would be sitting there shitting bricks, crying their asses off, and understandably so. Absolutely heroic what these people did, and in my opinion the media hasn't done enough to honor them. In my opinion, that's reason enough to see the movie...as difficult as it will be to watch. I was also surprised about my reaction to the ending - when the plane went down in the Pennsylvanian field. A part of me felt that, at that moment, "we" had won, since the terrorist bastards' target, the White House, wasn't hit. Of course I know, however, that "we" didn't win. Yes, the brave actions of the passengers and crew probably saved hundreds of civilian lives in DC, but 45 innocent people died in that field, along with the 5 SOB's.

Immediately after watching the movie, I fell into Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld mode and was like "Let's kill any Muslim mother*ucker out there. F*ck this cut and run bullshit. Let's just clean house." But now that I've had the chance to come to my senses a bit, I realize the exact opposite is what we should be doing. Almost 3,000 innocent civilians died on that day a little over 5 years ago. And since then, c. 2,500 American soldiers have died in Iraq, many others in Afghanistan (can't find a count on Google, and it's 1:22 a.m. so I'm feeling a bit lazy), and of course, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Middle Eastern civilians. And it simply isn't stopping. Suicide bombers. Execution-style killings of Iraqi civilians and security personnel. Every f*cking day it keeps happening. And for what? Is America/the West REALLY much safer from terrorist attacks? We - Americans - have been lucky. But there's been the London and Madrid train bombings. And of course the recently foiled trans-Atlantic hair gel/toothpaste attacks. Call it what you want red-staters - "stay the course", "support our troops", etc. At the end of the day, it's just more and more Americans (and innocent foreign civilians) dying for no clear reason.

WATCH THE MOVIE. THEN, GET OUT AND VOTE IN NOVEMBER - LET'S TAKE THE SENATE BACK!!! (and get Arnold out while we're at it)

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news...

...but I am indeed alive. Maybe next time all you not-so-well-wishers. Anyways, I know it SEEMS I have no valid excuse for the minimal postings in recent weeks, given I am at the tail end of my 80-day weekend. But believe it or not, I have been extremely busy. Between a depressing weekend spent in Knoxville, Tennessee (Southern Hospitality is legit), another weekend spent camping in the Sierras with some fellow Anderson classmates (business school students are MUCH cooler than med school students), and getting settled into my p.i.m.p. new pad in Santa Monica, I haven't had a chance to sit down and catch my breath in quite some time.

I guess there's no real point to this posting outside of wanting to update the blog. So, I'll use this opportunity, as T and Brian have already done, to say RIP 2Pac (I hope you're proud of the fact that I haven't listened to anything but your music today). Oh, and also to mention that my niece Mia's first trip is coming up. Where's she going? Vegas baby, Vegas. Looks like she takes after her uncle just a little bit.