Things I don't understand

Everyone knows that when we move to a different country, specially one that is very different from our own, we can experience some culture shock, and there will be some things that we will find hard to understand. Let me state some of them here.

Size of the coins/bills The 10 cents coin (dime coin) is smaller than the 5 cents coin. That makes counting change a difficult task. Most countries follow the rule that, the bigger the coins, the bigger their value. Well not here...
The same applies for bills. I am used to bills with different sizes and different colors. The bigger the size of the bill, the bigger its value. Well, not here... Here the 1 dollar bill has the same size and shape as the 20 dollar bill, or as the 100 dollar bill.
Although the picture is not very sharp, you can see here the 5 cents coin on the left, and the 10 cents coin on the right. The 5 cents bigger than the 10 cents.




Paying to receive phone calls
When you receive a phone call on your cell phone, you also pay! The caller pays, and the receiver pays.
Even when you receive text messages, you also pay. When you receive a phone call, you can always reject it if you don't want to pay. But with text messages, there is no choice!
I have a friend that has told me that when you receive international phone calls and do not pick-up you also pay, because the roaming service was already activated. I haven't confirmed this yet.

Date format
I am used to write the date in the following format: day/month/year. It has logic, because it goes from the most specific and changing (day) to the the broadest and permanent (year).
Here the format is: month/day/year .... what a mess ...

Bathrooms
Public bathrooms (in restaurants, schools, etc) here have no privacy in the individual toilets. Whenever I go to a bathroom, the doors of the individual toilets have so much space in every side that you can actually see whoever is inside, and whatever that person is doing.

Drinking Olympics

These people here have two national drinking sports that I had never heard about in Portugal.

The first one is Beer Pong.
Like the name suggests, it is related with ping-pong. You play it in a table, on each side you put some cups half full of beer in a triangle. You have two people playing on each side, and the objective is to throw a ping-pong ball, and insert it in one of the cups of your opponent. If you do it, he has to drink the beer in that cup. Of course it is a little bit disgusting, because the ball falls on the floor and goes from cup to cup, however there is one cup with water where you are supposed to wash the ball each time you play (of course, that after a while the water is dirty too). The winner is the person that gets the ball in all the cups of the other player.



The second one is Flip Cup.
Here you have two teams of players, each team on a side of a table, and you start with one person on each team that has to drink his beer. After that, that person has to put his cup standing straight on the border of the table, and throw it with an impulse of fingers, so that it lies upside down on the table. When you reach this goal, the person of your team next to you, drinks his beer and continues the game. The winning team is the one that gets everyone done first.

Orientation Week

Last week was "Orientation Week". The objective of the week is to integrate all the new students in the Columbia Business School community. This is done via activities, classes, happy-hours at bars, dinners, and lots of partying.
It was a tough week, because we started early everyday and it lasted until late. In the meanwhile we had cases to read and assignments to prepare.
I loved every moment of it, specially because I got the chance to meet lots of new people. It will be hard to remember everyone, and their names, but it was a good start.
I find it curious that I was always comparing our orientation with the Portuguese "praxes", but I will write about that in a later post.
As I don't have much time, I will leave you with some pictures from the week.

At one of the Happy Hours


Doing one of our team-challenges


My Cluster's Peer Advisors (2nd year MBA students, responsible for our orientation)

Bowling Party

Our Cluster Classroom (see all the decorations...)

Angel of Harlem Becomes It

Yesterday I decided to walk a little bit uptown from my place. I live on 122nd street and after 125th street, we are already in Harlem.

It may seem strange, but the difference is very visible within just three blocks.
On one place you are around Columbia's own microcosmos of students (and everything related with studies), and then you are suddenly in the Harlem: people are 80% black and 10% hispanic, and all the street services are directed to this community. For instance, there is a shop that sells live chickens and turkeys on the street (I bet that we could also find this in Portugal).
Also by 125th street there is the famous Apollo Theater, a place within the Afro-American community where artists such as James Brown, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey have performed.



I am going to jog at Central Park. Preparation for the half-marathon.

Sweet Caroline ... Pa Pa Pa

Last Friday I was walking downtown from Times Square with Rui Silva, when we passed by Madison Square Garden.

Guess who was in town?

The one and only, Neil Diamond.

Rui said he was a big fan. I know some of his work, and I quite like it. However the tickets seemed expensive (55 dollars plus taxes and service fee). Luckily, there is this site called Ticket Liquidator, which sells cheaper tickets when available, and we ended up getting tickets for $26.

The concert was great.
The venue (Madison Square Garden) is quite impressive on itself: huge and very tall. However, there is always a good sense of proximity with the stage.
Neil is a good "stage animal", we can easily see that he has been around for 30 years. His songs are great and very catchy, and his supporting band was also very lively.
He played most of his hits (at least the ones I know) like: Cherry, Cherry ; Holly, Holly ; I Am ... I Said ; Sweet Caroline ; I'm a Believer ; etc.

I will leave you some pictures (taken with my cell phone) from the concert.

MBA orientation starts today (Sunday) at five o'clock with a welcome dinner. Wish me luck!

The Challenge

Last Thursday when having a Happy Hour with some International Students, I started talking with Gustavo (one of the other Portuguese who came to Columbia) about how great New York is for running/jogging.

What happened?

Well, we ended up toasting to the objective of running New York's Half Marathon next year. Later when Rui Silva (a Portuguese friend who came to NYU) and Luis (another Portuguese who came to Columbia), got the news they decided to also join the challenge.

I already did my first jogging exercise here in the city, and ended up running/walking for 11kms. Which is quite good. However, the 21 kms of the half-marathon still seem a huge challenge.
I can always argue that we agreed on the promise toasting with beer ... which leaves me less responsible for our judgments.

The Palace

Hey everyone!

I just moved to my apartment this afternoon.
I thought I could post some pictures so that you can see how the place looks like.



By the way, yesterday night I went out with my sister, my brother and Diana to a party at Pier 17 (by the East River). It was fun, and we also watched a circus show there (Absinthe), which was an "independent/adult" Cirque du Soleil type of show.
Here is a picture at the pier.

First days in Manhattan

Four days have passed since I have arrived.

They have been quite hectic: signing-up at the University's International office, getting a cell phone, opening a bank account, getting the keys for my house, buying some first need stuff, etc.

I have been staying these first days at my sister's place (while she is still here, she is going back for good to Portugal next Monday) and tomorrow I will move to my place. I have already visited it and it is good enough. My room is quite small, but it will make it comfortable.

Monday I will start with the first MBA activity, the MBA Boot Camp (some sessions on culture, foreign adaptation, language, etc).

I will leave you with a picture from my sister's bedroom (it has an amazing view over the east river and New York).
PS - I have been asked by some non-Portuguese friends to write the blog in English so that they could read it. From now on it will be in English.