Friday, May 2, 2008

Friday Afternoon

I haven't posted too much personal stuff lately so here is a quick update live, from the Starbucks at Jervis and Robson.

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If you know me, then you will find this quite odd because I am not a big fan of Starbucks. But, I am sitting at a counter that allows me to see everything the staff are doing behind the scenes. Here is what I am looking at right now



I have learned a few things:

They generate A LOT of waste. These people are going through dishes and milk cartons like crazy and I'm not entirely sure things are getting recycled because I notice that waste just goes into this big grey garbage with a clear bag in it.

Making double-non-fat-lattes-with-such-and-such is a messy ordeal. To the customer, it may look clean in here but behind that counter is war zone. However they do spend their free time cleaning it... which brings me to my next point.

The kids work hard. From a distance it might seem like an easy job... making coffee but I am noticing that it is so much more. They need to aware of how long things have been sitting around for and there are all kinds of timers and temperature gauges to read. It's like a airplane cockpit back there. For the first time in the last hour there isn't a line of people ordering things so they are cleaning and stacking everything.

So what else is new?


My friend from Ottawa is in town and we're going out tonight for dinner. Last night, we met up with some other friends and went for a few drinks. Because university just ended, the bars were packed with students going nuts.

Life has been really busy lately so I have to admit I haven't done anything fun in my personal life worth talking about. School is busy, as always and then my spare time has been reading and researching various topics. I have upwards of 4 books on the go right now and I'm really enjoying them. I am reading the Art of War, a book on mobile technology for the second time in one week, a book great book on networking and a book on sales. On the table next to me right now is a case on Home Depot.

I took a dining etiquette class the other night. It was super fun but I was totally wiped because I was up at 6am and downtown for about 7am to attend the Global Business Risk Management Forum I helped promote for a local company. Totally interesting stuff... except taxation. The guy from KPMG was super interesting but I am just not into the subject of taxation. To each his, or her, own though. I guess I am going to put those dining skills to use tonight at Lift.

I am really looking forward to the spring. I am planning a trip to Kelowna for a few days after this term ends because I need a few days where I don't think about anything but relaxation. Most of my days start at about 7 and finish at about midnight with the majority of that time being spent sucking up information. I learned recently that if you eat gold, you will be gold. This means that if you focus on ingesting the best info on subjects, then you truly learn valuable information really quickly and you start to see patterns in effective thinking and presentation.

I have so many projects going on this month that I can't even find time to organize group meetings. I have one on Saturday morning, then I have to research organic food pricing for a paper I am doing (who writes papers in mba classes anyway) and then on Sunday I have another group meeting all afternoon. Then, on Monday, it's back to the grind, lather, rinse and repeat until about May 26th.

Our final weekend is going to be the Capstone program, which I am totally looking forward to. I feel this program has really helped me lift my game and I am looking forward to show what I have learned. The problem is that it starts the Saturday morning after our exam week. We have to hand in an individual case write up. Saturday afternoon, we are briefed on a project that we present answers to on Sunday. Monday is going to be panel discussions.... then we're done.

Good news though - it is worth 1.5 credits so I can take one less course in the fall.

Anyways, that's it for now. Take care. Sorry if there are any typos or anything, it's been a long week.

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