:Nintendo Widow

I am now gainfully employed. I will start my full-time consulting career in July of this year. I accepted the job in late December and I’m so glad to have it taken care of. Now I’m staying busy with my new part-time job: TAing a marketing strategy course for executive MBAs. It is very interesting but it is a lot of work. Despite the late nights and occasional early mornings, it is completely worth it. I get free tuition, a stipend, and I get to learn about marketing strategy.

My other classes this quarter are Problems in Capital Management (Finance), Brand Strategy (Marketing) and Ethics. I’m very excited about all of them although Finance will be my most challenging. I know nothing about finance but I need to get some financial knowledge out of my MBA. I really enjoy finance but I certainly do not have a knack for it.

In other news, Danny and I went back to Texas for Christmas, saw our families, enjoyed the beautiful weather, and ate lots of Tex-Mex and BBQ. Our visit was very busy so I was glad to come home and recover for a few days before classes began on 1/7.

One more confession: I’m addicted to facebook. I don’t know how often I’ll update this blog since facebook let’s me do more. Of course, this blog is only limited by my own creativity and the desire to learn how to upload videos of kittens from cuteoverload.com. Yeah, you heard me. Kitten videos = awesomeness.

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Life, is that you? It’s been so long since we’ve seen one another that I almost forgot what you looked like.

Direct Marketing is over and, even though it totally kicked my butt at times, it was worth it. I loved the class and I recommend it to everyone. The teacher is tough and sometimes the assignments were ridiculously complicated but I learned so so much.

Now that DM is over I can focus on my two other electives and my part-time research project. My classes are going well so far and I’ve been busy finishing up MBA club stuff.

The next few weekends should be fun: wine tasting in Woodinville this weekend, trip to Portland the next, and then tailgating at the husky game for my big three oh.

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I was completely overwhelmed last quarter and networking took a backseat to my academic obligations. This quarter I’m getting back into networking. Last week I attended the Japan-America Society’s annual dinner. It was a little overwhelming since they had over 300 people in attendance and I knew two of them. Still, I had a wonderful time and I began to feel more comfortable as the evening went on.

This past Tuesday, I attended a dinner/networking event called “Doing Business in Japan.” It was hosted by Hitachi Consulting and the World Trade Club of Seattle. The Japan-America society was one of the co-sponsors. Although I didn’t recognize anyone, I felt more comfortable in the smaller, more intimate setting. The dinner was at Wann Izakaya in downtown. The food was fantastic. I’m definitely going back.

Even though I was familiar with the advice the speakers had regarding doing business in Japan, I still have a lot to learn. The bottom line is that I had a really fun time and I made some great contacts as well. I need to just get over my nervousness and go to as many of these events as my schedule will allow. As my friend says, you just need to get your face out there and then these events won’t be so nerve-racking.

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I’m in an internet cafe at the Seoul airport. I am tired. We have a 9 hour flight home and I’m ready to get some sleep. We’re all ready to return home but I’m sad that the trip is ending. I don’t think I could hang on for much more excitement, but the end means I have to go back to school tomorrow.

Speaking of school, I checked my grades and I passed all of my classes. I was genuinely concerned about this so now I can relax a little.

We lived it up on our last night in China: drinking, dancing, and late-night street vendor food.

Oh my God…..so tired.

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I’m on a really slow connection so I’ll keep this short. The best: bike riding in the mud in Guilin. The worst: walking in a downpour to get to the hotel in Guilin.

Now, we’re off to Shanghai. I’m ready for cheap fashions and a high-paced end to a great trip.

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Here’s a quick update from my trip to China. We’re having a great time despite the jet lag and the language barrier. After traveling for about 16 hours, we made it to our hotel in Beijing. We spent the first two days doing company visits and now we’re just enjoying seeing the sites. Today we hit Tiennaman Square (sp?) and the forbidden city. We also took a rickshaw tour of a traditional Chinese market and neighborhood. That was fantastic. As tourists, we’re isolated from the real China and this gave us a small, sanitized taste of it.

The food is fantastic. The guides are taking very good care of us and make sure that we get everything we need. The only drawback is the air pollution. We’re going to Guilin, a more rural area, on Friday so maybe it will be easier to breathe there. I’m sounding a bit dramatic, but imagine one of the worst summertime air quality days in the US and then multiply that by 10. I really don’t know how far the city spreads because the pollution blocks my view.

That’s it for now. I’m at an internet cafe and my hour is almost up. Ciao for now.

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The other day, some poor soul had to lift and carry my backpack. I watched her face contort into a pained cringe and I knew then that I had given her a cruel, cruel task.

“What do you have in here?” she asked. “Oh, books and my laptop” I replied. It didn’t sound like that much, but my backpack is pretty darn heavy.

Here’s what’s in my backpack today.

- laptop (IBM Thinkpad) 4.8 lbs
- Macro book (about 2 lbs)
- pencil bag (pens, white-board markers, HP 10BII calculator) 1 lb
- Strategy coursepack (about 2 lbs)
- umbrella .5 lbs
- gym clothes in a snazzy QFC bag (1 lb)
- water bottle (1.5 lbs)
- binder 4 lbs
- phone .75 lbs (it’s big)
- laptop case 1 lbs
- laptop cable 1 lb
- padlock .5 lbs
- other random crap .5 lbs

Total 20.5 lbs

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We finished our presentation about an hour ago. I’m relieved and tired. We think we did well but I really don’t know if we won. We’re competing against three other teams. Not to go into too much detail, but since there are at least sixteen teams, each team is divided up into sections of four, and then each team presents to a group of four judges. We got 12.5 hours to analyze our case yesterday and turn in our powerpoint slides. This morning, everyone arrived at 8am to find out the order for presenting. We were last in our section. Although it’s good that we had more practice time, it also gave us more time to stress out. I think we did well but man, that was stressful. Talk about jumping in with both feet.

Now we’re killing time before we meet with the judges and find out the results. I want a nap.

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Preface: I get a lot of weird emails. I had a very common maiden name and about once a week I get emails meant for another Sarah. Apparently, she missed out on this gem with nothing but a picture and the word “boo.”

I’m really glad I got this today though. I need some silliness to make me laugh out loud and not stress so much.

The more you know…

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At first, I accidentally wrote “snot for the southerners.” Hee. I’m glad they got snow and not snot. Here are a few blurry pics from the snow we got two weeks ago.

Daniel took these photos on Sunday night before we went out to dinner at 8pm.

By Monday morning, the roads were clear and stayed clear until that night.

Here are the pics I took outside of our apartment on Tuesday morning.

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