Happy holidays!  I’m busy traveling around so I won’t be posting much.  Took a 25-hour trip from LA to Portland to Tokyo to Beijing and then the next day, a 5-hour train ride brought me to Shenyang.  My poor feet have been sitting around too much and I’ve napped so much I don’t know when to be tired.  It’s all good though, I get to see quite a bit of family in the next couple of days and hopefully get some relaxation too. 

Oh what a marvelous thing has happened!  It has been years since I started developing and talking about my business philosophy, one of the key components of which is a business partner.  Finally, I have stumbled across the first viable lead and I am thrilled!  I’ll call him Maven, since that’s what he is as per Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point.  Maven and I both have a strong interest in business and our conversation recently led us to budding partnership.  He has a fantastic idea for a business and I have all the eagerness and complementary skills that he could ask for.

I feel like it’s been a long time coming, so it’s really rewarding to find someone who has a vast number of skills that I don’t, and who needs the very skills that I do have.  At the same time, we share many values and both believe in the synergy that can be created to make a partnership more than just 1 +1.  It’s just enough overlap to agree on the important things, and plenty of complementary abilities to pack a powerful punch.  I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect scenario!  If nothing else, 2011 will go down in history as the year I met Maven.  A very fortunate experience indeed!

Whether or not we are able to get this idea off the ground (and I am confident that we can and will), I have a great feeling about just knowing Maven.  There’s a lot to learn from him and he is a fantastic conversationalist!  I’d been craving the kinds of discussions we’ve been having – about business, personal philosophies, psychology, and so many other topics.  We’re both very curious, inquisitive folks who think a lot, ask a lot, wonder a lot.  I’ve never had someone ask me so many “whys” about my beliefs and it really helps me understand myself better.

In addition, I got a kick out of the fascination we both seem to have with personality tests and what can be gleaned from them.  I love reading personality profiles!  I feel like I learned a lot about him when I read the description of his “type,” whether or not all of it was accurate.  At least it gave me a good basis for understanding the type of person he is.  The more I get to know, the better it all seems.  With our work ethics, determination, and combined efforts, I wouldn’t put anything past us.  You just wait!

So many of my friends have a group from college, or even high school, that they still keep in touch with and hang out with.  A good portion of them also have some friends stemming from childhood as well.  I wonder what that’s like and if I’ll ever have lifelong friends.  The landscape of my life is so variable that dozens of friends have come and gone.  The people I spend much of my time with are only friends I’ve met in the past three years or so.  I’m so used to moving around and making new friends that it’s hard to imagine knowing someone for that long.

I’ve always hoped that each friendship would be one that would last forever, but as our lives changed, we would grow apart.  It also didn’t help that I moved a lot, so many friendships dwindled after not being able to hang out for a long period.  The internet has definitely helped to slow down the process of losing touch, but it still happens.  At this point, the only person in my life right now who I know will be around for decades is Panda.  He’s the best friend I’ve got and anyone else could very well be out of the picture in a few years.

I haven’t given up hope that I can maintain some long-lasting friendships though!  I think that business school will offer me a great chance to meet people who I can consider friends forever.  In addition, any and all future business partners will probably be great friends and a common interest in our business should keep us in contact for a long time to come.  I wish I had a group of close friends who all hung out with each other, but that’s just not the way my life developed.  Instead, I will continue to be a connector, bringing together my different sets of friends for gatherings and potentially facilitating some wonderful new bonds.

I used to experience a phenomenon I called “afternoon fevers” in high school.  Every afternoon around 4 o’clock, I’d get a bit flushed, my temperature would rise, and I’d have the chills.  It felt like the onset of a fever that would result in me shivering until I could climb into bed to sweat it out.  Yet, if I kept about my day, I found that it would burn off before it ever became anything.  It was a strange thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was partly mental too.

I had kind of learned to dread swim practice, which started right around that time.  I was a sprinter, so all the distance swimming we had to do in practice wore me down.  So, as school was ending and it was time to head over to the pool for practice, my body would react.  Most of the time I’d suck it up and go through practice, which was probably what both made me sick and cured from it.  After all, being wet on a brisk afternoon made it easy to feel sick, but then the intensity of a practice session would heat me right up and burn off any illness.

It was an interesting period that was all but forgotten until I started to feel it again.  Perhaps my immune system is weakest in the mid to late afternoon, so I start to feel the effects of stress more vividly.  Last week, I began to feel sick a couple of afternoons in a row and I learned to suppress it just like I had back in high school.  It’s been awhile since I felt that way, so I bundled up and have been staying warm to stave off any virus that might be trying to bring me down.  I can’t be too weak to prepare my applications!

I was writing an email recently and wanted to indicate the possessive of Charles.  I vaguely remember being taught that it should be Charles’ with no extra “s” but since then I had read styling guides that said technically it should be Charles’s, though really either is acceptable.  To some people, Charles’s may seem wrong, but it is not.  For the sake of not confusing people, I tend to use Charles’ since I know that was commonly taught in schools across the nation.  However, I much prefer using Charles’s; if it weren’t for the fact that some people were never taught that was correct, I’d use it more often.  After all, who wants to go into a grammar/punctuation lesson in the middle of an email exchange?

I actually did do that in this case, but only because the thread included very bright people who probably knew exactly what I was talking about and maybe even experienced the same hesitation using Charles’s vs. Charles’.  I was happy to have that feeling validated when one of the girls replied confirming my statement and offering a source that explains the use of apostrophes: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe (This site is also a great source for other interesting, entertaining, and information infographic cartoons.

This incident gave me confidence to go forth using Charles’s from now on.  Who cares if other people think I’m wrong and don’t know the rules of English?  Those who really know what they’re talking about will know the truth.  ;-P

I finally got my GMAT over with!  That’s the first big hurdle in the process and I did alright with a 710.  It’s not as good as I had hoped I could do, but right on par with how I had been performing on practice tests.  It’s also a good enough score that it won’t hurt me in my application, though I was shocked to find I only scored in the 76th percentile on the quantitative section, even with a scaled score of 47 (which I thought was decently high).  In the verbal section I got a scaled score of 41 and that put me in the 92nd percentile, which was also the overall percentile I ended up in with my 710.  Curious – do many people do that well in math but poorly in English?  Am I competing against a lot of foreign test-takers or something?

With that off my back, tomorrow I’m heading off on a site visit to check out both Berkeley and Stanford’s MBA programs.  I’m hoping to make some friends with my fellow travelers, all of whom either took a class with my GMAT teacher or know someone who did.  Hopefully we’ll all end up at our dream schools!  I’m looking forward to seeing the Stanford campus again and maybe even learning something I didn’t know that will help me with my application.  Once I get back from that, it’ll be time to buckle down with my application essays!  At least I’ve gotten the recommendations underway, with all of my recommenders aware of the questions and deadlines.

I have just over a month to complete my applications and I’m really hoping I can put together a strong profile that will get me in.  I don’t have as much work experience as most of the other applicants, but my experience has been a super-condensed rollercoaster ride that has taught me a lot.  That should make up for a lack of years worked.  That’s the great thing for working for a small company!  You end up learning and growing so much more than you might have at a large corporation, espeically with all the hats you have to wear.  I’ve even been adopted into the engineering team more recently, since I’ve been working with our CTO on some things that he used to take care of.

It feels good to have time to dedicate to my applications now, but those essays are daunting.  I really want to present myself in such a way that they can’t help but take me.  That will be the hard part!

Today’s my mom’s birthday!  I can’t believe a year has come and gone.  I remember this time last year she wasn’t here, so we didn’t really celebrate.  This year I’ll be going back to see her later in the week and hopefully we can get a nice dinner in before resting up for an early flight that she’ll need to catch.  Soon, I’ll have my birthday too.  My how it all flashes by!

I feel like there hasn’t been that much to pace my life by, since a work day is pretty predictable.  I’m nearing two years of employment at my company and so much has changed, yet the pattern of each day makes things blend a lot more than during my school years.  Within the next year or two I’ll be changing all of that though – it’s about time for a shift in my life.  Going back to school will offer me a change in scenery and pace of life.  I always enjoy shaking things up a bit!

For now I’ll just prepare for that next stage and marvel that in 2012, my parents will be twice my age!  Has it really taken that long to get to this point?  Sometimes I feel older than I am, but of course there is still so much more to grow.

I spent the entire day watching episodes of Charmed and boy have I learned my lesson!  It’s no good to sit/lay in front of a screen for that long, especially not when you’re watching the screen at all different angles.  I’m sure it would have been better if I was sitting properly, but I would lay on my side, my belly, even my back to watch.  Now I’ve got this terrible headache so it’s time to stop viewing any screen and rest my eyes.

This harkens back to the days when I would binge on episodes of Princess Pearl, a popular Chinese drama from over a decade ago.  At least I watched those on a TV screen, so wasn’t so close and didn’t lay on the floor.  Still, I would wrap myself up in a blanket and surround myself with food much as I did yesterday.  It’s not the best way to pass a day and I’m looking forward to spending some time outside tomorrow, breathing fresh air and enjoying natural light.

I did it!  I finally scheduled my GMAT exam, which brings me one step closer to getting my applications ready for b-school.  It’s in just under two weeks, so I’ll definitely need to do some final prep work over the long weekend.  After that, I will transfer all my energy towards applications and pump them out in a month.  It all sounds daunting, but a little bit of pressure usually gives me the motivation I need to take care of business!

I’m optimistic that I can put together a profile making me a strong candidate, but the reality is that only 5-10% of applicants get in and I’m definitely on the lower end of the scale when it comes to work experience.  Hopefully I can make up for that and state a good case for my qualifications.  The good thing is, it wouldn’t kill me to get another year under my belt and I’m not in a huge rush to get an MBA right away, so even if I don’t get in to Harvard or Stanford (the only two I’m applying to this year), I’ll just try again next year.

Of course I’m definitely hoping I do get in for the entering class of 2012, but at least I have the luxury of more time if I need it.  There is definitely a lot of experience I can still accrue with an additional year.  However, I feel there are a lot of opportunities at work out of my reach without an MBA to back me up.  Getting that degree would really help me over a hump in my career that otherwise may take two or three times as long to overcome.

I’m looking forward to getting the test out of the way so I can focus all my energy on my applications.  If I can, I’ll definitely want to make a classroom visit too!

I attended the Oppenheim lecture tonight, about green chemistry.  It’s a growing sector that is coming up with innovations that are not only environmentally safe and sustainable for the long term, they work better and make more sense for the bottom line as well.  While there are definitely plenty of “green” products that cost a premium, it doesn’t have to be that way.  As our economy and society demand better, companies will respond with great new solutions to consumer needs.

Many of the solutions that Dr. Paul Anastas, the main speaker, pointed out were rooted in bio-mimicry.  It’s a topic I’m fascinated with, since most (if not all) of the solutions we search for are already present in nature.  For example, he told us of the pain of trying to redo a bathroom because of all the hardened glue you have to scrape away.  It’s tedious and can be quite toxic too.  Instead, we can learn from mussels, which very strongly adhere themselves to rocks and other things just as well, but need no dangerous chemicals to do so.  By learning from the multitude of creatures in the world around us, we can find brilliant, simple, yet effective ways of solving many of our issues.

In addition, Dr. Anastas pointed out that we really have to allow disruptive inventions to come along.  It’s not good enough to just improve some of the products we have now; we have to be willing to adopt a method that could completely upheave the way we’re used to doing things.  Once upon a time any city would have telephone wires running overhead all over the place.  Nowadays that becomes more and more unnecessary as we shift towards wireless signal towers.  In the case of detergents, it is becoming a very real possibility that we could have self-cleaning clothes, which would wipe out the need for detergents!  Or, when creating clothes, rather than using dyes that could be harmful, they are now experimenting with growing cotton that in itself already has color.  It’s a willingness to completely rethink our approach to common issues that can lead to wonderfully disruptive changes to our lives and our way of life.

He also made sure to emphasize the fact that a company’s bottom line does not have to suffer for the sake of these new methods.  In fact, these can be built into very lucrative businesses.  What he said rang so true to what I’ve been learning from Opportunity Green as well: sustainability and environmental responsibility and very much in line with profitability, and not just because you’d have a green image.  In fact, if you don’t even consider the environmental impact, so many of these solutions are just plain superior as is.  Why wouldn’t you go with them?  I think a lot of sustainability and the green movement has been misunderstood.  People still think that to be eco-friendly is to be pricier.  We need more companies out there to show people that this isn’t the case so that the general population can start adopting products that are better for us all – people, the environment, the world.

I’m hoping that part of my impact in the future will be along these lines.  To break people away from the prejudices and misguided opinions of what it takes to be good to our environment.  To show them that they can save money, save the environment, and make our world a better place all at the same time.  It’s about time more light be shed on the beauty of green choices!