Re-Branding Myself

I've hit the reset button on life. I'm leaving my job this week and I'm going back to school to exchange my life savings (and then some) for 3 letters 5 letters - MBA/MA. That's right! An MBA/MA joint degree. I'm super excited about the MA part of it - I'm one of the first students going through the Hindi track at Wharton/Lauder... EVER! Now only if my trusty Hindi can carry me through it...

Okay, so enough jibber jabber about degrees. I'm re-invigorating this blog because I have a few friends that are genuinely interested in what my life will be like at b-school. And perhaps along the way I'll pick up a few more readers but this one is really for all of my friends! So thanks to everyone for encouraging me throughout my undergrad, my career, the MBA application process and well, just being there for me! I'm going to try to stick to interesting stories (travels, adventures, business, technology and other random silliness) but we'll see what happens when things get going. And no guarantees on how often I'll post! I hear b-school doesn't offer up a whole lot of free time so I'll try to make the best of it. If you haven't already caught up with me I can be found on twitter (@RoopakMaj), Facebook and LinkedIn.

Upcoming Milestones:
Apr 8 - Last Day of Work
May 9 - Classes Start

Day 0 - The Day Before Surgery

This is the first in a series of posts that will describe my post-op experiences from orthognathic surgery. I'm currently at Day 9 but I'll recall what I was going through as best as I can.

Before I get started, I've got to credit Rebecca for the idea. I always intended to show a progression of photos but her blog inspired me to do the day by day commentary.


-- Flashback to Day 0 - The Day Before Surgery --

Surprisingly I'm not very nervous and even somewhat excited to have surgery. I've known for the best part of 10 years I would need surgery to fix my open bite and this is the last big hurdle before the home stretch. Can't wait to have my jaw broken to bits, reconstructed and be back to normal in 8 weeks! And hopefully the braces will come off 2-4 months after that.

So what did I eat before regressing to a liquid and soft food diet?
- A Schezwan Chicken Sandwich for lunch
- Leftover pasta and a potato curry for dinner

What a waste of normal chewing force!

I'm back!

Wow... I can't believe I took a 3 month break from blogging!

I can't promise I'll keep posting regularly but it's worth a shot. So, what's happened in the last 3 months?

• I went on my vacation to India. I wrote a blog post while I was there but wasn't connected at the time so it's going to have to be added at a later point in time. I had an awesome time while I was gone but it was way too short.

• Work's been crazy and I find I usually have very little left in the tank when I get home. I don't regret my move to Project Management though. I'm having the time of my life (or something like that...)!

• I upped a level in Seikido (it's the type of Martial Arts I'm learning). I'm all the way up to a lowly green belt now. Woohoo!

• While I'm talking about Seikido, I competed in a tournament a few weeks ago and took away 2nd for my pattern and tied 3rd for sparring (it was only with 4 people so not that impressive!).

• I was on the organizing team for this year's PMI - South Western Ontario Chapter Annual Symposium and it went off great on May 3rd. We made a wad of cash to make up for the massive hole from last year! I couldn't be happier for our success.

That's all folks!

Blogging Bullies

Most people would probably agree that bullies are only a problem in high school but it would appear sometimes you just can't get rid of them!

I came to my little corner of the Internet, made my own little personal blog where I could post to a few times a month to create my little collection of favourite articles. It appears the world of blogging is ruled by the bullies though - "Blog or have your blog be taken over by comments!!".

And just like dealing with the classic school bullies, I only have 2 options:

1. Take the abuse and pretend like the problem doesn't exist
2. Prove my worth by beating the bullies at their own game

Considering option 2 would require me to post 8 times a day, I'll stick to option 1 thank you!

My 3rd post of the day... REALLY!

I just checked my blog and interestingly my 12 Days of Christmas post got dated to "Saturday, December 16, 2006". I've had my Firefox open and logged into the Blogger interface for 5 days now so it used the original date.

But for Kimota94 aka Matt's benefit I really have posted 3 times today!

Backlog Item #3 Completed

Just to satisfy Kimota94 aka Matt I thought I would splurge and write a whole 2 posts today!

Some time ago I added a couple of lists on the side of my page (and for all the Agilists, yes they are prioritized backlogs) to demonstrate how abysmal I am when it comes to watching movies. My intention was to cross off the movies as I watch them but last weekend I was disheartened to find out that the Blogger interface doesn't let me use HTML when managing those lists. So here's backlog item #3 getting crossed off:

Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Biz Vision

The purpose of this blog is to collect interesting information relating to business, the cable industry and technology.