Holidays

A picture made in front of my house few days ago. Beautiful. But now the amazing red and yellow leaves are falling extremely fast and it is starting to freeze at night. Seems like christmas.



Seems like holidays are here. On Thursday had a turduckin' (turkey-duck-chicken) for Thanksgiving, together cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie and other traditionals like a football game. Just a holiday. Saw also Kenny Rogers (I still remember his CD I heard some 9 years ago) and Jesse McCartney opening Christmas tree in the center of Atlanta. Did not go shopping on this Black Friday, when shops open already at 6 AM (while Europe has shopping free day). Need to do some Christmas shopping after I finish everything with school.

But tonight had a wonderful night with lasagna made by Ilva and some German cinnamon cookies and some Glühwein - mmm. I'm lovin' it (do you know, what company this represents?).

Anybody who has experience with lawn-mowers is my friend. Let me know. Must become specialist in this business in a week. Got my first lawn-mower-garden-tractor model in my life on Tuesday. What else can make a boy happy.

Almost forgot. I took some pictures during a talent show in our business school, called Coffee House. Of course no me on pictures. Blame me on not finding a fourth guy for quartet. He is currently in Ukraine.

Winning streak

Time passes. Semester passes. 2 days this week, 2 days next week (Thanksgiving break - it's turkey time) and 3 days a week after that, followed by 2 exams. Ah yes, will have one exam this Friday and couple of assignments to finish.

I mentioned some case competitions in my last post. Well, now have finished these and actually my teams won these both. No real prize yet, but this means that we will compete in two weeks in Durham, North Carolina (Duke University) on Product Strategy Case Competition, and in the beginning of February in Nashville "Music City", Tennesee (Vanderbilt University) on Venture Capital Investment Competition. Have to kick Harvard's ass in the first one. Hold your thumbs.

Some nice ads are in TVs over here from HP.

And here is a snapshot from downtown Atlanta.

Title

Life is pretty busy over here. Another competition finished and results to be seen next week. And then will have a venture capital competition, where have to judge 4 real businesses and present decision to local VCs. Cannot work on campus to earn money, so I have enough time for these fun competitions. Occasionally make some money too.

Winter is arriving to Atlanta. Cannot rely on only t-shirt in the morning and night any more (was there any such day during summer in Estonia?). Even though I like it this way, I like more the four seasons of the north.

Went to concert the other day to see Thomas Hampson, a grammy winning bariton singer. Good that I did not have to pay $48 but as student could see him for $5. I actually enjoyed this concert, though usually I don't consider a classical singer and piano combination too intriguing. Emory Arts provides us with enough free or cheap entertainment and I really try to make more out of it this year than last year.

Meanwhile I also managed to see a band called The Roots, which is actually pretty good hip-hop band in the top league and somehow they were brought here to campus for students for free. And loads of pizza on that event did not hurt. And most rainy day, except for the hurricane rains, was even bearable.

By now have bought tickets to come to London on Dec 30 (new year, any good plans from locals?) and enter study period again on Jan 23. See my sister after some 1.5 years of break and her wonderful kids (one of them for first time). Meanwhile will visit Tadas in Rotterdam. And most importantly, cannot wait to see my Evuce.

Currently, I am enjoying Kalev candies that I received from my parents through my father's friend who had a conference in Atlanta. Sweet.

25-pound mistake

Today I bought tickets on Easyjet to travel to Amsterdam and see Tadas in January. Bought tickets for two. Due to some reason, I used Google toolbar automatic form fill-in function to speed up process. But only later I found, that I had bought all tickets from myself, as if I need two seats or something. And later found out that changing name on tickets costs £25 on the web - nice. Just before making this payment I decided to make a call to Easyjet and luckily, they understood me and made this change for free. Huh. Last stupid mistake for me was $150 for missing flight and before that $80 for parking car in 'for customers only' space. This time had more luck.

And a note on US voting system.
Georgia Voters' Bill of rights: 2. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE EVEN IF YOU DO NOT HAVE IDENTIFICATION with you on Election Day. If you do not have any form of identification, you must sign a form under oath swearing or affirming that you are the person identified on your voter certificate. Id. § 21-2-418.

So if I could get hand on voter certificate I could just put a hand on bible and use it. Now, at least in Estonia these pieces of paper are put in simple mailboxes, so it could be really easy to steal them. Wonder, if this method is used in some places like Florida.

By the way. Election Day is a working day, so I'd think some people with long commute will not even manage to make it to the election before work or after.