New York Rats

One of the most unique things about NY is the amount of rats that live in the city.

I have done some research online to try to find estimates on the amount of rats that NY has, and I have found that there is no consensus about this number. That is not surprising, as it is quite hard to find an accurate method to count them.
I found estimates saying that there should be around 6 to 7 rats for each inhabitant of the city (this means more than 44 millions rats only in NY). Other estimates go as far as 12 rats per inhabitant. One thing that I have found is that everyone agrees that there is at least one rat per person, which is already a lot.

Controlling this pest is not easy (although I don't think there is any real effort being done in that direction). Female rats can reproduce up to 285 new rats per year that, in a matter of weeks, are ready to run in the streets. Furthermore, an Israeli professor has recently done some research and found out that the geometric layout of New York is easier for rats to spread out, than the irregular layout of a city like New Orleans (more similar to European cities). It seems that rats learn how to move better and quicker in a grid city layout like NY.

The place where I usually see more rats is definitely in the subway. I stop a lot on the 96th street station, which is a very dirty station that is currently under construction, and I don't think I have ever stopped there without seeing any rat. Other stations are also crowded with these little creatures. I will leave you some pictures taken yesterday on the Penn Station subway.

Orientation Week

After coming back from Canada, I made part of the team that introduced the new January MBA students to Columbia.
It was a great week of fun and meeting people. It is actually very different doing the orientation as a student (like I did in August) or as an Advisor (like I did now). I initially thought it was all about going out, meeting people and cheering, but after being and Advisor I understood that there is a great component there of helping people out and make sure the integrate in the Columbia community as smoothly as possible.





The newest import from Portugal, my friend Tiago Sousa, showing everyone how we do it:

Canada

Hey guys,

sorry for the lack of postings!

Christmas was great, I had a wonderful time in Canada with my family. It was basically a week just for relaxing, eating and spending time with family.
It was also the first time in 5 months that I had bacalhau, so that is also a reason to celebrate.

As you can see by the pictures, the amount of snow there was huge!