Summertime

I noticed that Europe switched to summertime this Sunday. Well, USA does the same thing one week later. So this week I have to cope with 8 hour difference with Estonia/Latvia.

And who decided that USA wants to turn clocks on the first weekend of April and that Europe wants to do it on the last weekend of March. There is 1/7 chance that this happens to be one and the same weekend (if I am not wrong).

Spring

It is springtime. Just now I had the first cricket jumping in my room and this was wild. The cricket jumped in through the door, jumped to the ceiling and down etc. Could you imagine this power! This cricket is not Estonian kind, but rather is about 4 cm long.

I have already showed some pictures of blossoming trees, but voices tell that this is just the start. Most people have some allergy in Atlanta because of this and I am waiting to see, if I have any allergy. So far I have only had problem with consuming too much chocolate :)

New Pictures

I uploaded new pictures. These are made last Friday and I they mainly represent butterflies and flowers in Callaway Gardens, a park south of Atlanta.

I am quite happy with some of them, though depth-of-field could be larger on some of the pictures. But then again, I made them all from hand and I used only macro function on Canon PowerShot G3.

Markko Märtin rulez

He won the Mexico rally and is co-leading overall rally together with Sebastian Loeb. Respect to Markko. Although Mexico seems to be close to Atlanta, it is quite expensive to go there, so I missed this opportunity to see the great rally.

Estonia Discount Flights
Wide selection of Estonian music
Cheap Flights US-Estonia
tallinn
estonia
kristel kama

These are extracts from banner ad that appears over this blog.

Ok. When I watched this kind of blogs in Estonia I undesrstood that they can show ads based on my location. But now it has figured out that I also have to see ads about Estonia although I should be no different than any other American in Atlanta. Does Blogger (or actually Google) check that most viewers are in Estonia and then show related ads all around the world? Probably I miss some trick, for example I have Estonian keyboard.

New pics out there. There is something about Atlanta, Emory campus, snow and spring with real trees blossoming. Ain't it beautiful. Also some pics from movie shooting, Independence day and contradance event I told about before.

Actually, those of you who bother to download 29 megs of data can see this movie we made. Download it here. You might need latest version of QuickTime to view it.

"If I do have sex before I'm married, then the honeymoon won't be all exciting like you see on TV — so romantic and like a big deal."
JASMINE O., a Bronx teenager.

I hear stories that hot.ee server (where I keep my main e-mail) has serious problems and that they want to make this a paid service eventually. Now my mother said that she not been able to connect to mail server recently. When I looked deeper into this problem I found that her e-mail address did not exist anymore and actually also her account did not exist. So I created her new account in hot.ee server with exactly the same username and password and her e-mail works again. Strange. I wonder, when hot.ee will delete my account.

A city of good thoughts
In Riga a person can carry maximum 2 liters of alcohol with him. If a person wants to hold more than 2 liters of alcohol at home, he has to have a proof of purchase. I like stupid ideas.

I went today to dance contradances. This was some fun. It was basically like the folk dance clubs used to be in Tartu, but people there were from all possible ages. The idea is that people are in two lines and then one guy teaches a dance that will lead you dancing with everybody in the line. Sometimes speed gets really high and this is good. This time there was a band playing Celtic music, what added to positive side of the story. I'd say Tartu clubs were better in a sense that we had only young people around. Still, I will probably go to this event, what happens every Friday, some time again, especially that I go a free ticket for next time.

And now I have a spring break for next week. How good can it be to be a student.

Today was extraordinarily hot day. I suppose we had 25 degrees and it will continue this way for few days. I must say it is getting too hot, though Eva would kick me when I say it.

Now something weird happened with my laptop. I grabbed it from two corners and it got a serious crack near keyboard. The frame just could not stand the weight of screen at the other end of base and now computer is a bit flexible. I will contact IBM soon, but I just wait for mid-terms to be over because most probably I will have to send the computer to Texas for couple of days. Based on former experience they will get it fixed fast, but of course I am not happy that such stuff happens.

Silence again for some time. Actually a lot has happened and I am too lazy to throw it out here.

Some time ago managed to win a SunTrust case competition in school with my team and now have a $100 on a card to spend in some of the best restaurants in Atlanta. Hope that this pays at least for a dinner for two. The competition was wild and we had two nights to work on a case, cause days were full of usual school life. The case was not usual valuation or M&A deal, but rather an evaluation of a real company's capital stracture and actually the company representative came to our presentations. Cool.

In order to not have too much free time, I am working on one strategy project for a pharmaceutical in Atlanta. This project will last till mid-April and if successful, will have a nice positive cash flow. Now this would be helpful towards my coming to Latvia and Estonia in spring.

Now talking about weather, we had snow in Atlanta last week. It was probably second day with snow this winter and of course snow disappeared during day. But now weekend was already with temperatures reaching twenties. Spring is good.

Today celebrated national day of Estonia with Estonian community in Atlanta. Amazing, how many people turned out. I met one woman who had graduated Goizueta in '94, met Kerstin, who came for a semester to Emory and actually does her PhD in Law in CEU in Budapest. Met Ott, who was in my parallel class during Miina Härma times.

Today was also Oscar ceremony and I remember that LotR got best movie Oscar. Don't remember much more. I have found that I dont' spend enough time on TV. I have not seen any of the 8 shows of The Apprentice, which is actually a cool reality show. Teams have to solve business problems, each week one person is voted off and and winner will become a manager in a company. Getting to this show is very hard, because people, including MBA students, try all ways to get a job in current tough job market.

That's it. This week is a midterm week with some exams and I need to pump up my knowledge of strategic frameworks. Hail Porter and his friends.

FedEx TV ad

"You don't understand. I have an MBA," says Tom, a new employee who's asked to ship some deliveries using FedEx.com.

"Oh. You have an MBA. In that case, I'll have to show you how to do it," his supervisor replies.

FedEx.com makes shipping so fast and easy even an MBA can do it!