Int'l Exposure

Gearing up to MBA

The MBA is starting this next week. From Wednesday the 19th to the 21st I’ll be going to school from 9:00-19:00 in South Kensington. A pain to get too but well worth the classes, first round looks like this:

Not too heavy but the marketing class, I read, requires some quizzes to be taken online after each class, we’ll see how intense those are. Luckily the class is just before the weekend so we’re able to go home and get the work done.

The work-load so far has been ‘heavy’ for people out of school for awhile but for me, I have been able to manage the load. I’m done except for the final quiz in the accounting’ pre-course. I’ll get that done either today or tomorrow and be completely ready for class!

In order to help relax a little before the MBA starts I’m taking Satoko out tonight to a JazzFM event at The Rooftop Gardens. It’s in Kensington High Street (top of a shopping building) and covers 1.5 acres of rooftop gardens from the 1930’s. It looks really pretty you can see pictures on their website here: http://www.roofgardens.virgin.com/

A quick update on the bodybuilding as well, today I weighed in at 80.4kg (my lowest ever) so from next week I’ll bump my carb intake to 200g a day on low days and keep the carb-up days the same as before. Wish me luck!

New Years Weekend

Here I am at the end of the first 3-day ‘long’ weekend of 2011. There aren’t very many weekend holidays in the UK I’m finding and it really strains on your stress-levels to go to work 5 days a week for so many weeks in a row without a break-up. This year won’t be a problem, though, with the MBA on the plate but at least it was tough during the last few months in late fall/early winter.

This weekend brought about quite a few changes to our life-style. The first thing I did on Saturday was re-change up the way we organized our house. We had a second bedroom that we put our desks in and with the puppies here Satoko spends most of her time in the living-room now and I in the bedroom. That wasn’t very fun so I moved the computer table and my PC to the living-room so we can sit together and even watch TV on the 42” screen when I download something interesting (or even Youtube something nice).

With the free room we’ve decided to start testing the market for Satoko’s business idea (Japanese fat-loss massage). Satoko already did a lot of the work to start the business and prepared a lot of materials and ideas but was just lacking the confidence. She got a temp job and then was doing that and this was put on the back-burner, but with that on the end soon she may be able to go back to it. To help her with that I prepared a flyer she could use to advertise in the local community (there are a few bulletin boards she could try). She had even made a website for her business already, so I purchased it’s access and hooked it up to a domain! Check it out:

http://zenzieoriental.com/

Sunday brought a more low-key day with just some gym and hang out time with the family. The puppies were given some gifts from my parents in the US and were quite pleased with that. So naturally I had to take some pictures and even a video to show my parents as a reward for their sending us a gift. The only problem was the darn VAT on the gifts. We got charged to receive the gifts…gifts that my parents had already paid sales tax on to purchase with post-taxed income so technically the gifts were triple-taxed before even making it to our door….damn….

Monday we tried to walk to the park north of our flat, but not even 10 feet out of our building Eddie found and started chewing on a used chicken bone someone had thrown away. Our neighborhood is littered with food wrappers, chicken bones and throw-away JUNK that people carelessly chuck in the street. It was too haphazard for the dogs and we decided to go back to the estate. Much safer there anyway. We found a nice decking area above the gym was pretty secluded in the cold weather and the dogs couldn’t get down the stairs alone so we were able to let them off leash to run around for awhile, while they were doing so I got some good pictures of them being ‘good:’

Lastly I spent a little time on the business preparing a quick progress tracking sheet with branding that Satoko can use to make sure her clients are meeting their weight loss goals. Pretty quick to make in excel but it was a good step in the right direction. Otherwise not much other progress on this point today – though my MBA study’s pre-course in Math is one section from completion, then I just need to get through the last 2 sections of accounting and I’m ready for Jan 19th!

New Years Resolutions – Goals – Objectives

This year was quite busy/hectic and a LOT of things happened, let’s take a moment to reflect:

Moving to London from Tokyo
Starting an MBA in a top University
Getting a puppy and ending up with two!
Deciding to enter competitive bodybuilding
Coping with increasing life responsibilities and goals

This next year there are a number of target goals that I have for myself. The primary of which is to do an excellent job with my MBA this first year. In order to accomplish that I’ll need to get ahead of the curve (the reading has already started for that) so from tomorrow I will begin to endeavor 2 hours of study per day. This is probably a bare minimum to keep with the program and do well. if I can manage it, I would LOVE to graduate ‘with distinction.’

<- Link to the University

Another of my goals is to maintain my budget better. Since my wife is not working in the UK (as opposed to Tokyo) we are on a much stricter budgetary stand-point. To accomplish this I have already begun work on a budget for the last few months in addition to my usual money tracking that I do for my own savings and budget work. Now, though, it’s even more important since I am not just watching my own share but the entire families share (new to me!).

Probably the third item on my list is to compete in a minimum of 2 bodybuilding shows, one with the BNBF and one with the NPA (July 31st and September ??). If those go well I will want to compete in two more, the nationals for each league. Getting to compete in all four shows, as well as manage my MBA and do well with work will be quite a ambitious goal (especially at my age!) but if I can get a grip on everything and balance the family life I’m sure I can do it.

<- These are links to the league websites.

A more minor goal of mine is to update my blog (this one!) more frequently this year with the things I’m doing and pursuing. A lot of the time I am very active in my reading, my study and my activities but I don’t share enough and people don’t really know what is happening. It’s a bit self-conceited but I’ve been reading on a lot of blogs that you need to ‘toot you own horn’ to get recognition so this is part of that process.

What are your goals for this new year?

Life hacks for Work – Knowledge Sharing Dashboard

So today I spent a little bit of time at work thinking about ways to ‘innovate’ or ‘lifehack’ my work experience. Right now my role faces several challenges, the biggest of which I am trying to address is that of information dispersal. Basically there is too much information available in too many places and there is a transaction cost to switch between and maintain. For example: I will receive an email request for an updated piece of software, I deliver it to the client and that is likely that – however! – I think it needs to be recorded in a general knowledge sharing place but the overhead of that transaction is heavy:

I need to go to the knowledge sharing website
Potentially I’ll need to log in to it
I’ll need to navigate to the appropriate client knowledge page
I’ll have to find the section and go into the editor
I’ll then need to add the relevant details from the email requesting including the software name, version and date of delivery.

By the time i”ve gone through steps 1-4 I’ve wasted a few minutes and to do this as often as I need too (I do receive triple digit emails per day now) I would not be able to get through my work day.

So what I’ve devised, is a way to bypass those steps! I made an excel sheet today that basically has links to the most common places I tend to edit. I found our knowledge sharing website (which is just a Wiki) lets you link to the section edit you specify – so if you want to edit just the client contacts page because you’ve met a new person you can just hit the link in my ‘dashboard’ excel sheet and add it super quick – bypassing steps 1-4 (but sometimes you’ll need to do step 2 if you got logged out, unavoidable).

So far I’ve just added client contacts, internal contacts, versions and access sites as well as a work-through for issues lists (it basically takes me to the issue list report generator, opens the formatted issue list and then opens an email template in Outlook for me to deliver the list). These little hacks are helping and as I add more I hope to be able to ensure I always share the knowledge I gain.

Back in the Gym

Today I went back to the gym after the week off for Tignes. The diet is in the toilet, I am eating pretty much whatever comes across my plate today but at least I am recording the weights (to the gram, as best I can). But today I had to go to Nando’s and get some chicken with the wife (which wasn’t a bad thing, entirely). It was a bit overkill on fat, double what I was consuming before the trip but with this lingering lung infection I had better rest up a bit more if I want to keep working out.

Anyway, today I got in at the local gym here in the building centre. The place is awful but it does what I need it to do. Towards the end of the first round of squats I was steaming it’s so cold in there – I went in with a full set of long johns and sweat gear and I was still freezing until the end of that exercise, that’s how bad it is in there. By the end of that I started coughing up a storm, too, so I knew I’d better keep the food intake up so I can recover finally.

Needless to say I overate by a large denominator. My fat was off the charts – nearly 900 calories over in fat!? YIPES! I was eating a TON of cheese and wine in France so this is marginal compared to the damage I did in the Alps. Oh boy…

Tignes Christmas – Day 7 and return

So the last day of Tignes was really bright, so bright in fact that I couldn’t stop the sneeze feeling that I usually have when I look into the bright light (darn crossfires!). Anyway it was also SUPER cold!!! Actually, so cold that my nose hair froze on the way down some of the top slopes! Needless to say, I covered my nose up after that – crazy.l

The day was so beautiful though, we could see the snow falling and reflect the sunlight in such a way that it was like having hit your head and seeing stars it was so shiny and bright. We tried to take a picture of it but it was really difficult to capture on the camera, the sky was just light up with snow it was beautiful.

Here are a few pictures from the top:

And a few pictures from the town as we were going up:

After that we went down for some Raclette at the recommendation of a French friend of mine from work. He suggested it but we couldn’t find the better type on the grill) but we got some anyway and it was delicious (thanks!). We also got some cheese we took home to do it again tonight (28th as I write this).

Dinner was excellent again and then we had to go to bed quickly because we were leaving at 5:30AM the next morning. We couldn’t even check out it was so early so Crystal helped to take care of that for us (still waiting on the bill actually).

So this morning is the 28th and we are off to get the puppies, I’ll take some pictures of their happy return. Smile

Tignes Christmas – Day 6

So on Day 6 it was snowing again, pretty heavily actually (it got so bad at one point that we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front our faces). That was pretty nerve-wracking, to be honest, I was afraid we’d fly off a cliff at the rate we were going, but I followed some French guys in Orange and we got through it all.

Here are some pics from the day:

So after awhile, I was really tired and we stopped in at Folies for some food. Satoko had some tasteless pasta and there were a lot of people drinking outside. When we were leaving there was a weird French guy dancing around on a table with a microphone talking to the DJ and a guy on a saxophone in French. I have no idea what that was about but our batteries died so we didn’t get a chance to take a photo:

We also took a ride on the train that takes you way up to the top of the mountain, it was really cool and quick! It was supposedly drilled out of the face of the mountain (that tiny hole in the first picture) and it goes up a few thousand meters in just a few minutes:

We got stuck in Val d’Isère where we thought we could catch a bus to Tignes but found out that on Saturday’s it doesn’t run and I was exhausted so I just wanted to get back as quickly as possible! And for good reason too! There was some delicious food waiting for us and the usual Cheese board:

Tignes Christmas – Day 5

So here we are on Day 5 of our trip (i.e.. day 4 of the skiing action). You may be asking, where is day 4?, well we did have a day 4 and it blew immensely. The drinking party from the night before really ruined our day and we barely got out on the slopes, we visited the swimming pool and walked around a little but otherwise it was uneventful, here are a few pictures:

So anyway, on to day 5 (the eventful stuff). We woke up this morning at 6:30AM to get ready for breakfast right at 7:30AM so we could be at the front door by 7:55AM to get the bus to ‘ski away day’ where the Crystal ski guys take us to a neighboring resort. Well, they totally failed that one. They had to get some other people at the 2100 (another hotel) who didn’t get out of their room until after 8:00AM. Meaning we had to stand out in the snow waiting for them to arrive (because we couldn’t go into the hotel with our ski boots, Satoko waited in-between the main entrance doors.

More time went by an by 8:30AM we had called the rep a few times and found the driver not only waited, but didn’t put chains on her tires (and apparently couldn’t either, the manager had to go help her) so we decided to cancel and get a refund (which I still need to get). Instead, we decided to hit the slopes in local Tignes and have some fun since it was snowing so heavily:

You can see in those pictures that it was really coming down. We didn’t get a good shot up at the top but it was near white-out but the powder was oh-so-good. But, in typical fashion, Satoko got motion sick and we had to stop pretty early for a coffee which got her perked up nicely:

After this, though, we had some burgers at a place called the Loop Bar in Le Lac. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t near the Michelin star – quality – that we have gotten used too at the hotel here. We couldn’t handle it too well and won’t be going back, but it was interesting none-the-less. After this, though, Satoko went back to the hotel to sleep and I went on to ski for another 3 hours like a mad-man so I could burn some calories.

Tonight is Christmas Eve (Merry Christmas to you all!) and so the hotel had some nice dinner set up for us. Unfortunately we didn’t really dress the part (people were in suits!) so we felt kind of out of place but it was fantastic food, here are some pictures of what we had and a few from before the dinner (while we waited):

That last bottle of wine was really good (from 2004) and was our Christmas present to each other for the night. I will see you all tomorrow for Christmas day reporting! To all a good night. (btw, it hasn’t stopped snowing yet either, so tomorrow will be nice and powdery).

Photo Gallery of Tignes from Facebook

“Our weeklong sojourn to France for Christmas”

From Tignes Christmas 2010, posted by Richard Ring on 12/20/2010 (Showing 12 of 68 items)

: Tunnel between areas

: Big drunk buss

: Meat fondu

: Lounge area at the hotel

: Me at first night dinner

: Satoko at first night dinner

: Empty dining room

: Crazy large hamaki in magazine on airplane

: First night dinner

: Crowded Gatwick air terminal (snow delays)

: Riding the bus to Tignes

: Drunk fun times

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

Tignes Christmas – Day 3

So today was day #2 on the slopes in Tignes. We woke up about 20 minutes later than we did on the second day but we still managed to make it out to the guided tour hosted by Crystal. Today, though, there were a ton of people (yesterday there were 6 of us to two tour guides). There were so many people, in fact, that they decided to split the groups up into two: one for the beginners (i.e.. blue and occasional red runs) and for the more advanced parties (red and the occasional black). Needless to say, Satoko and I decided to stay in the former, not the latter.

It was good, too, because we skied all darn morning!! We went from 10am until 1pm straight, very rarely stopping and we were in a group of 15 originally. One of the guys from the day before hung with us and we met some other cool people but by the end of the day we ended up with 5 (1 host instead of 2). We went VERY far though, here is the approximation of our journey:

It’s not really easy to see from the picture and we went further than that too the left, to the very far edge of Val d’Isère actually.

We ended up taking the bus back to a train that they drilled a small hole directly into the mountain that takes you straight up to the better skiing places (Rocher De Bellevarde in the photo). It was really cool and an experience in and of itself, I must say! It took us right up and we then got the ski lift into the ‘Tranquille’ area under Col De Presse that let us have some nice relaxing runs into the Tignes valley again.

So after this, we met with our Crystal ski rep for the first time after our original drop-off. It was pretty handy and we booked in for the pub crawl and the ski away day. The pub crawl was tonight and it was quite an experience as well. We met up outside of Le Lac at Scotty’s bar then dropped in to Brasero where the atmosphere was really nice. They had a ‘drink faster than the rep’ competition and lots of free shots and drinks but to go it cost 20 Euro so in the end we only saved about 10 Euro but it was nice to go in a group. We met some cool people and I have some silly evidence of our time out below. After those nice places we went to a really scummy place on the other side of Tignes that was really not good (French guys running around in speedo with a lot of ‘fur’ hanging out) it was quite disgusting actually so we headed back to Le Lac.

Oh and one more thing, for dinner we had ‘Meat Fondue’ – - something we’d never heard of but it was basically French Yakiniku – awesomeness: