odd todd

if you havent’ seen it, watch the latest installment of oddtodd. there’s a bit in there about doing the MBA that had me in tears.

flatmates n mba

how’s this for a story…

on friday nite i went to a friend’s 30th bday party. i had invited another friend along.

now, i know this friend because she’s friends with a guy i was seeing a couple years ago. he lives in europe (i won’t be more specific because he does move around a bit and it makes it sound more mysterious . so this friend shows up with her boyfriend and we’re chatting. turns out his flatmate is an x mba person who ive been on teams with.

and once again, the boyfriend n the friend are freaked out that i know the guys flatmate. they think it’s weird. small world thing. both of them have lived in melb a lot longer than i have… HOW can they think this small world thing is weird?? it didnt phase me at all.

ok. now, really. off 2 bed.

quick update

hey everyone,

just a very quick update since i havent posted in a while and it’s 230am.

meeting w my thesis supervisor tomorrow. have decided to focus on conflict within virtual teams. not sure if that will be how conflict behaviours are different in virtual than F2F and how you deal with them; or what vt conflict behaviours are; or maybe something with 6 hats being used for resolution; or conflict w/in the tuckman forming storming team development stages. i need to figure that out pretty soon though.

i only have 2-3 wks til class is over. i don’t feel like i’ve had a ton of work to do. really i have a presentation for 1 class, a paper & presentation (team, not indiv) for another and then the continuing work on the thesis. actually a pretty light end of semester load.

but i’m still feeling like a hampster on one of those wheels. work, school, work, school, read, school, work, read. i need a real entire day off.

been getting sick again this week. sore throat n nose thing. could be allergies, could be sick. whatever it is, i’m drinking lots of juice.

ok. that’s enough. i really want to sleep now. nite.

it is 124 in the afternoon

i think i am in a lack of sleep, allergy / hayfever induced, stressed state of ‘daze’. that’s the only way i can really think to describe it.

weighing heavily right now is a presentation due on saturday (as in tomorrow), a paper due on wed that i haven’t really started and my lack of thesis reading & thinking (to redefine or focus my topic).

yesterday i started work at 7a. had break in the afternoon n then worked 2 hrs in the eve. fell asleep pretty early, woke at midnite and worked for a few hours. went to bed about 3a. got up at 6a for work. am repeating the same schedule (i have to work tonite) although i’ll be there much longer tonite than i was last nite. currently i want to lie down and nap but i need to get some work done. i have that deer in the headlights feeling though which means i’m not getting enough work done.

and i havent been to pilates in ages again. which doesnt help my mental or physical state i think. argh.

dangerous

today i was asked a new ’stupid american’ question. by that, i mean questions asked that are stupid that i only have to endure because of where i was born (and have the nerve to interact with people who didn’t grow up there).

today’s was from a 19ish year old girl who’s lived in melbourne all that time. she asked

‘what are the dangerous parts of america?’

damn. wow. that one left me speechless. just how do u even consider answering that one.

i thought about going down the ‘how do u define dangerous? you mean compared to here?’ route. or the ‘america is a big place’ route. or even the ‘why do u ask?’ route but none seemed right.

finally i said

‘what are the dangerous parts of australia?’

and she laughed and stammered and didn’t know how to answer that.

until a few minutes later when she said

‘oh! i know! it’s sydney’

why?

‘because on the tv that’s where there’s always shootings and murders’

well then. settles that.

btw, there was a great article in the paper today (in the ny post equiv).

talked about how that chick in the iraqi pix is from some small town in west virginia. had interviews with people from her town. talked about how it’s such a backwards place that anyone who is different than they are (ie not american, not white, not christian) are considered ’sub-human’ so of course there was nothing wrong with what she did. also a good quote about how they go hunting… for deer or birds or whatever… and now this chick is iraqi hunting. while they didn’t say it, they were really saying that taking the pix of the dead deer strapped to the car hood was the same thing as the pix of these guys with hoods and in chains. showing off your prize.

i tried to find the article online but they must already have it in their (for pay) archives.

air nz – REALLY CHEAP

air nz is having a sale!!! for a very short time in may u can fly from LAX to NZ for U$498 and LAX to AU for U$598. that’s amazing. u have to book by may 12th though.

they’re also having a sale from SFO to NZ for U$748 for august & september travel or U$848 for october n november travel.

i’d like to remind folks that i’ll probably be traveling around AU and Japan in November – January. after that who knows where i’ll be. so your time is running short to come visit.

thesis supervisor

last week i got an email from the project director asking me to call this woman who might be my supervisor. we talked and i got a good feeling from her. she asked some good questions. what did i want from her, what did i expect from our relationship type questions in addition to why i’m doing a thesis and my topic.

we had a really crappy phone line so we didn’t talk long. we decided to meet up this week which we did yesterday.

after the conversation i was thinking about the last time i attempted this thesis thing. in our one phone convo i think i talked more about this and had a more constructive convo than i did in the 6 or so months i attempted the last one.

yesterday i met F f2f. not only did she read my proposal but she had a ton of comments. not the kind of comments scribbled in the margins but the kind where she had thought about the topic and my methodology and had some ideas.

she also confirmed that my proposal is waaay too big. gave me some things to think about in order to narrow it down. surprisingly she also suggested i not approach any firms yet and that i spend more time working on the subject matter.

so far so good. 90min meeting. she even seemed excited about the topic.

gelato

i’m watching this travel tv show as i’m searching for journal articles on keywords like ‘trust measures’ and ‘task motivation’. the bit was on florence italy and of course gelato was talked about.

some place has been around for ages and only uses the freshest ingredients (sorry, i didn’t get the name) but she quoted the owner as saying

the best gelato is made from passion, knowledge and love

i was thinking how that could be applied to so many things. the best work, the most effective teams not to mention things like wine and cheese. somehow i think this is going to work its way into my thesis.