Where the schell have you been?

Well the blog is finally back up and running. Sorry for the sad showing on my part. Reason for the delay was three fold: 1) second phase of the project was finishing up in end of March and beginning of April so I was busy with work and not much else interesting to write about 2) I was anticipating the big visit to the middle east from Justin, Tim, Slava and Rob and was putting off any blogging until a recap of the trip 3) the big trip came and went and as always there was too much to discuss and I didn't know where to begin.

But now is the time to finally get back to blogging. I will get to the trip after a quick recap. The end of the project was fast and furious but we got the job done and they have us back for phase 3, which shall last until August or so (first week of August for me). Otherwise I have been a bit (or a lot) stressed out trying to figure out what to do and where to live post August. My plans for business school were put into some question by first not getting into Stanford (the bastards) and then not hearing back from Berkeley until just recently getting invited to interview (which I did this past weekend in Istanbul - which is absolutely amazing and the subject of the next blog). Along with that final round submission to Berkeley, I also applied in the last round to UCLA - which I have not heard back from yet. Also considered applying to two schools in Barcelona (IESE and ESADE) but decided I’d go crazy if I went straight from living in the Middle East for nine months to living in Barcelona for two years without any sort of break in between. To add a bit more drama I recently found out that the Global Challenge is likely to get canceled for 2008, which really sucks. It makes things a bit simpler for me by not having it looming overhead and something to plan around, but I would rather be able to make the decision myself. But it also gives the option of putting off business school for a year and attending in Barcelona or somewhere else abroad in 2008!

And in other news, I went to Chicago/Milwaukee for a quick trip for All Hands (DiamondCluster is selling off the Cluster half BTW, which may have a bit of an impact on me out here - we shall see) but more importantly for Richard and Jahna's wedding. I was honored to be an usher and it was an amazing and wonderful wedding. Very happy for them and it was the closest I have been to a bride and groom in quite a while - perhaps ever. Fabulous time.

Okay, back to the trip. Apart from the fact that I was a bit preoccupied with the above and other miscellaneous topics (although I am happy to hear that the "Eric we all love" was back for the RLJ/JP wedding), the trip was a success and I think everyone had quite an adventure. All the pics can be found at Rob’s sweet little wiki website. The trip was basically broken into three parts: 1) dubai/uae 2) oman 3) jordan.

Here are my (cryptic) personal highlights from each part:

Dubai/UAE
- Rob's obsession with cranes
- spotting roadside spies
- Emirati elbows
- eating hummos for 38 straight meals
- Slava sweet talking the guy to get us into trilogy
- the spot we staked out at trilogy rooftop
- chilling the final night outside at 360
- Tim Elms in a foreign country!

Oman
- getting completely lost in the remote mountains of Oman
- watching soccer with the lochals after our 6 hour mountain hiatus
- sketchy Moroccan dancing girls
- Muscat souk explorations and fish 69
- eating Omani on the floor
- Rob getting us lost again
- goat balls!

Jordan
- without a doubt Wadi Rum
- sacrifice point and the monastery in Petra
- meal for four for 7 bucks
- mud baths at the dead sea
- seeing the whole country in one day
- Justin getting mad at Slava!

And now FINALLY some pictures... Here are my favorites from the trip. I will spare you from describing each one, but take a look at the filenames for a bit more info - and of course click to get the big'ens...