Winter doesn't want to got away

Two weeks ago we saw some signs that Winter could be on its way out, and the cold weather would go with it.

Well, it just got back this week!
Outside, right now, the temperature is at -8C, but with the wind and humidity it feels like -17C.

My older brother keeps getting older

My brother, Joao, just turned 32 last February 17th.

Diana, him and I had a nice birthday dinner in Union Square.

Tough competition

Today I really felt on my skin what competition really is.

I organized an event for the General Management Association (a club from Columbia Business School where I am an associate vice-president), about careers in General Management and how to recruit for them.
I scheduled this event around TWO MONTHS ago.

Two weeks ago, Professor Stiglitz, who is a Nobel Prize in Economics and Professor at Columbia Business School, decided to hold a debate about the current economic environment exactly on the same day, at the same time and on the same floor at school.

This afternoon I was scared that nobody would show up to my event.
Fortunately, some people here are more "action oriented" and decided to learn how to do better in recruiting instead of hearing more about the current economic crisis.

At the end my room was full, and I was happy!

Rui

PS - Actually, I was very sad I could not attend Stiglitz's debate...

Here is the flyer advertising my event

Go Lions!!!!

Columbia University makes part of the Ivy League.
The Ivy League is a group of 8 universities in the USA that have a great connotation of academic excellence and academic rigor. Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth and Yale, make part of the Ivy League.

The Ivy League has a sports league of its own.

Yesterday, for the first time, I went to see the Columbia basketball team (the Lions) play. The game was against Dartmouth.

The Lions won 65-52.

Tonight the Lions are playing again, this time against Harvard.
Cheerleaders. They do exist!





Ting, Jeff and I
Caption: CBS loves Lions (CBS = Columbia Business School)

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Pus o bacalhau de molho 3 dias, e parece que foi demais...estragou-se!!
Mal empregados os meus 30 dolares...

O queijo da serra emigrou para o frigorifico. Assim evita-se a propagacao do seu perfume pela casa.

Rui

PS - Sorry, but his post only made sense written in Portuguese

The smell

Remeber the Queijo da Serra in the picture of the previous post?

Well, I just opened it the other day and have been keeping it outside the fridge, and its beautiful and active smell has started perfuming the house.
I hope my Turkish roomate doesn't mind some nice Portuguese smell straight from Serra da Estrela.

Newark visit

Newark is a small city in the state of New Jersey, about 30 minutes away from New York City.
Newark has a big Portuguese immigrant community, so it is quite natural to see Portuguese restaurants, supermarkets and all types of services with banners written in Portuguese.

My brother had to go to Ikea, which is in Newark, last Saturday and we couldn't go there without doing some Portuguese food shopping.
Here is a picture of what I bought.


From left to right:
- atum Bom Petisco
- queijo da Serra
- Nestum
- Chocapic ( I like the fact that the box says - Atencao: mais chocolate)
- bacalhau
- chourico

Missing in the picture:
- 12 pasteis de nata, that disappeared in 2 days :D

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!