To celebrate the end of our MBAs we planned a bunch of activities to unwind, enjoy the moment and farewell many of our friends. It was a mirror image of the Orientation Week activities organized for us two years earlier, so it was aptly named Disorientation Week.
OCEAN BEACH BONFIRE: This was a repeat of a great event we had at the end of first year. Sure enough the weather was identical to the previous bonfire: clear skies, bitterly cold and windy.
SF GIANTS vs. CHICAGO CUBS BASEBALL @ SBC PARK: I’d never been to a baseball match and this was a perfect introduction. SBC Park in South Beach is a beautiful stadium with views over the bay, and we got some great weather for the day.
END OF YEAR PARTY: We enjoyed a great end-of-year party with the first-years at Dolce nightclub in North Beach. Dave Good (VP Social) organized a cool U2 cover band, and between sets John Osvald and Niko Vuori DJ’d some groovy dance tunes.
LAS VEGAS WEEKEND: One of the highlights! Somehow I’d missed out on even getting to Vegas in my two years in the USA, and this was the perfect introduction. About 80 of us flew down on Saturday and we met up at the Mandalay Bay hotel at the south end of the Strip. We relaxed by the swimming pools that afternoon and then got changed for the evening. After dinner we met up in a hotel suite that we’d got for the night with a fully stocked bar and the party ensued. Around midnight we headed downstairs to the Rum Jungle night club and we danced and gambled until dawn. After a few hours on the couch back up at the suite (I didn’t bother to get a room) I went back down to the swimming pool for a few more hours before flying back to SF.
The view from the hotel suite. The four blondes: Megan, Jenna,
Alexis & Tara
AFTERNOON IN GOLDEN GATE PARK: I had my last exam on Tuesday morning and then met up with my sister Marnie in Berkeley to show her around campus. We met up with Adriana at the station and headed back across to San Francisco to Golden Gate Park, where a group of classmates had organized a relaxing picnic in one of the meadows. It was a great afternoon to unwind and enjoy being done.
HAAS IDOL (KAREOKE NIGHT): Kareoke was always a favourite amongst some of my classmates and it was no surprise to see a kareoke night scheduled. It was held at Silver Cloud in the Marina, a favourite haunt. I swore I wouldn’t get up to sing anything but sure enough I was peer-pressured into signing none other than Men At Work’s "Down Under". Needless to say I didn’t win…
END OF YEAR BANQUET: At the end of first year we held a banquet at International House near school, and the evening was such a success that we planned to do it again. This year it was held in the Italian Athletics Club ballroom in North Beach, just a few blocks from my place. It was attended by just about everyone in the class which was fantastic, and I was fortunate enough to have Adriana and Marnie there with me. The slideshows of photos and stories from the past year were a highlight.
Marnie & Margaret. Karti & Duncan.
BERKELEY PUB CRAWL: We planned a last tour of Berkeley’s favourite student bars on Thursday evening. We began at Raleigh’s on Telegraph Ave before moving to the Bear’s Lair nearby. We then headed downtown to Beckett’s, the site of many a night of trivia, before ending at Jupiter.
LAST CONSUMPTION FUNCTION: On Friday evening we had one last Consumption Function at Haas. Mum and Dad arrived from Australia earlier in the day and powered on through to attend the event. It was great fun to meet classmate’s parents and families.
Mum, Marnie & Dad at the Campanile after the Consumption Function.
This blog is still under construction and I’m slowly bringing my entries up-to-date. Please come back again soon, when I should have the following pages up and running:
- More Swiss Alps: mountaineering, hiking, snowboarding
- Rugby: Rugby Club Zurich, Swiss Rugby, Berkeley RFC
- Trip summaries (text with a few select photos) from my travels around Europe before the digital camera era including:
- Scotland: Edinburgh for the Military Tattoo, Scottish Highlands
- Spain: Sevilla, Jerez de la Frontera, Gibraltar, Family Christmas in Competa
- Turkey: Istanbul, Gallipoli for Anzac Day ’99, Sailing the Aegean Coast, Cappadocia
I always wanted to go to this tournament hosted by Duke University each year in North Carolina. Even before I began business school I’d heard about it, but since coming to Berkeley I haven’t been able to get a Haas team together because we’re a small business school and there just isn’t the interest in rugby (sadly!). Instead, I contacted the Stanford GSB team and arranged to go with them.
I took the red-eye and flew into Raleigh-Durham early on Friday morning. I had the intent to explore the Duke campus that day, but it turned out that I’d need to rent a car to get anywhere at all so I just bummed around the hotel. I met up with some of the Stanford guys as they rolled in, and we went for a few beers that evening. The next morning, we all (just 13 of us! – you need 15 for a rugby team…) had breakfast together and then drove over one hour to get to the playing fields in Danville, Virginia. Apparently Duke University doesn’t like the rugby team enough to let them host the tournament on their own fields!
I had no idea that the tournament was as big as it was! There were (I think) 16 men’s teams and 12 women’s touch teams. It’s definitely a small business school world as well and I kept bumping into people I knew, including Tanya Wilkins (who I know from Monash University in Melbourne) who is currently at HBS and who was playing in their touch team.
We had a moderately successful tournament, especially for such a ragamuffin group that had never played together. We defeated the Wharton A team, lost to a strong Harvard A team (both Harvard and Wharton brought two full squads along) and then defeated a good Kellogg team by a decent margin. Even with that good result, we were ranked 9th overall and thus narrowly missed the eight-team playoffs for the championship.
