01.24-01.30 - My courses

I have to tell you something about my classes.
I take the following four courses in this semester.
Financial Analysis:
     This will be a hard class to pass it well. There is so much thing to do for it. I have already got my finance book, it costs 250$. Don't try to count it in HUF, i know this is a lot of money, i can live for one and a half month in Budapest at this price. Anyway, i checked out the book, it has 1010 pages...hard cover, corporate finance, jaffe and three other authers wrote this pearl for us, 9th edition. I also had to buy a financial calculator to make difficult calculations:) This is a BA II Calculator made by Texas Instruments. There is a discussion board to take part and write smart comments on different topics, this is online. We are working in teams, we have to handle a summary about a financial asset for every week. We have to take online quizzes and have two midterms to take. (I guess that is the only class with that professor where students have to take two midterms and then a final:)

Managing People and Organizations:
    We have a hot teacher on this class, I say hot because she looks pretty at her age. Her best field is the entrepreneurship, i like her, i want to learn a lot about entrepreneurship from her. She learnt my name first on the first class. The book for this class is more than 150$. I hope it will worth its price. We work in teams too. My mate is Alex, we were in the same group on the strategy class. We will take quizzes every class from the next readings. So you have to learn a lot in advance. We will make a presentation and write a capstone case about an organization. As I heard she is a tough grader, but i dont care, i want to learn.

Transportation Management:
    That class is part of the supply chain track. So many people ask me: "Are u gonna take a supply chain track?" I say "No, but i know shit about this topic, so i wanna learn how it works, what it is at all. And I am getting really interested in retail and it fits for this. That is it." Here the book is 190$. We have to buy a Harvard Case study package too. (I do not write down the costs because i want to complain, the only thing i want to point out is the price that you can compare to the hungarian ones.) Here my groupmate will be a german girl, she was a pro tennis player. We will wrie cases and capstone on our desired topic that we also have to presenent in 30 minutes. I want to learn about export/import stuff too.

Managing Marketing Channels:
    I still do not know what we learn about, but i know this is also a supply chain course. On the introduction class we talked a bit about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzqMoOk9NWc This is an interesting topic, i would highly recommend for lawyers too. I almost fell asleep on this class, so i know it was boring a little bit. Here i bought the book for 100$, but officially it would have been 200$.

While I am writing this post, i am not in a good mood. Yesterday when i came back from Jeffrey, my cooler system just went gone. The stream came out from the upper hose that goes to the engine. I was scared that my entire engine will stop down. Finally i arrived home and checked what happened, there was no coolant in its reservoir and there was a hole on the upper hose where the stream came from. Now my car is at the mechanic shop. One of my friend offered me a good place where to fix my car. I like the way how their service goes, there is no advertisement just the word-of-mouth for 50 years. It is such a great service!
But having a used car is just pain in the ass. I must to have it be fixed until Wednesday because i must to go to Brookfield to take my drugtest and meet with my next boss.
I am so happy that i will work at Photronics Ltd. We have to finalize the details of my job, but i will do my first internship there at the supply chain department. People! At the supply chain department! The only one thing i could have a concern about is the distance, they are 50 miles away, so i will drive 160 km-s every day when i work. But i dont complain at all! I am glad to go there!

Keep your fingers cross to my car!

:)

01.09-01.23 - second semester starts

I apologize not to write my blogspots on time. I lag behind updating my blog two weeks. While I am writing this spot, i sit on my old good american bed. I left my home country, Hungary, my friends, my family and my girlfriend again for five months. My last two weeks at home were spent similarly to other times at home: running my entrepreneur club with my friends, meeting friends, drinking alcohol, going out with my gf, being at home with my family, eating good homemade food. These key words are represent just the surface of the meanings of these actions. Doing these social acts makes me infinitely happy. I do not want to bore you with telling the places I have been during these two weeks. Rather I want to tell you the way i came back:)

The first thing you have to know is the departing time of my flight, it was 7:35 AM (UTC+1), Alitalia flight from Budapest to Milan. To reach my plane i had to be at the airport two hours before it starts. It means 5:35AM. My mother wanted to say goodbye at the airport, but from Tarcal to the airport the way takes around 3 hours, so we should have started at 2:00AM, go to my dormitory, pick up Anita and go to the airport. Hmm, it doesn't work. We had to be in hurry, the weather would have been a big lottery and everybody would have been nervous. So i figured out what if we could go up to Budapest on Saturday morning, spend a calm lunch together and say good bye pleasantly. It has happened. I went home on Friday night after finishing some stuff at Budapest, watched a hungarian-french handball match with my brother with some beers (btw we won), then we talked a lot about our future plans how we will change the world (the usual stuff). In the morning after the last family breakfast i put my package together in one hour and went to my grandparents to say goodbye. 10:17 AM (UTC+1) we started to go to Budapest. We had a great lunch in the Green Pub, Gödöllő. I ate smoked cheese soup in bread and the place's special second meal. It was awesome time! In the dormitory we took down my luggage in Anita's room and said goodbye to everyone, Mom, Dad and my Brother. See them in the summer!
After five minutes they left Anita came from squash. We made a cake (actually she did, i was the silent partner:) to the last Saturday house party. It was great, great, cool! We went home at 3AM and I got up at 8AM, because i had to meet with a friend of mine about serious business opportunity (probably i will have another hostel, dont tell anybody!!!!). We will see. Then i said goodbye to everyone in the dormitory and finalize my packages at night.
And the travelling day!! I and Anita got up at 3:50AM (UTC+1) our taxi came at 4:20 AM and we went to the Hungarian national airport. We arrived at 5:00AM, we said goodbye at 5:40 (it was hard again to leave Anita) and started to check-in. I boarded at 7:10 and left Budapest, Hungary at 7:35AM with a Malev Boeing 767 plane to Milan, Italy.
I landed at 9:25AM in Milan and started to check-in again to my second flight Milan-New York. It was my simplest check-in ever. Italians didn't give a shit who I was and what i have, there was no security check, nothing. Our big Alitalia (operated by Delta) plane took off at 10:35AM (UTC+1). I got a good seat in the middle section, exactly at the wings. The toilet was close, and i didn't have neighbors. It means i had place to lay down and try to sleep. It saved my life:) The first two hours were easy. Then you lose your time sense, fall in like a coma. (Bence, it calls jet lag. Fuck that, it is a trauma, a shock for your entire body and brain, not just a jet lag. Jet lag when you flight over two time zones not 6...!) So as it happened last time, it happened again. This feeling is similar the affect of an alcohol, you don't know where you are exactly, in which dimension, first you start to fly and then you start to get pain:D Not very cool, trust me:)
At 2:03 PM (UTC-5) (local time of departing zone 8:03 PM (UTC+1) i just landed. Huhh, land was under my legs again! Check-out process took more than one hour, custom checking, homeland security checking, fingerprints, baggage claim, etc. (I was nervous about my custom clearing, because i put a traditional garlic "bubble" into my pack, and to carry fruits, vegetables, other plants, soil, etc. stuff is strictly prohibited!!!! You gotta get kick in your ass! I checked the NO box at this question and prayed not to be caught by the law. I was lucky, there was no problem at all. I swear that I will never ever put plant or animal product into my package!
At 3:35 PM I called my reserved shuttle bus. 3:53 PM the driver came. His back was hurt and i had to put my luggage into the van (no tip for this jerk!). Since I came out from the airport I was in contact with Jeffrey. He drove down to Southport and left my car there. I will never travel by shuttle. This service is just a big sucks. My travelguests were 4 Indians, one Chinese, an Afro-American couple and a Caucasian man (for those who don't know why i wrote Caucasian, this is the official terminology of white looking people, i hope it was correct in any way). Of course i was almost the last guest who was served. We arrived to the Grand Central at 5:35 PM (11:25 PM Hungarian local time), i took out my luggage, said goodbye the driver, no tip, of course (it was a lucky situation that the driver's back was hurt, it was a good reason not to give a tip, but i couldn't give any tips because i didn't have $ in cash:)). In the Grand Central i bought my train ticket, one way peak-time ticket to Southport is 15$. I got on to the train New Haven, departure time 5:48 PM. I found place for my luggage. And traveled more than one hour, got off at 6:55 PM (00:55 AM Hungarian time). My finance class started at 6:30 PM in the School of Business (SOB121 room). OK, i was in Southport and I had to find my car, i folloed Jeffrey's itinerary and found my little Honda Civic. I was a little bit shocked when its door was open. But nothing was missed, the muffler was still on the back seat and my GPS in the glove compartment. I dropped my two luggage into the trunk and switched the ignition. I looked around, i was in the middle of nowhere, it was raining like crazy, 30 centimeters snow was everywhere, i didn't see much because of the fog and my windshield was covered immediately by breath. OMG! How did I feel? I was thirsty (i drunk 4 hours ago), hungry, exhausted and a little bit smelly. It was not an ideal situation to take a ride home, but i turned on the volume of my radio so loudly (KC101 station) and started. I followed the instruction of my GPS, sometimes I almost missed the exits, just because i didn't see them. On the highway my average speed was around 50 MPH and sometimes 30 MPH. But i made it!!!!
And arrived to my first class in the spring semester 2012, SOB121 - Finance class at 7:46 PM. The class usually takes until 9:10 but yesterday it finished at 8:00 PM, so i spent 14 minutes on it:). It was 2 AM in Hungary and when i finally arrived home (Whitney Village), it was almost 3 AM in Hungarian local time.
I finished my long trip, it took 23 hours from door to door!
It is time to start my second semester! Welcome back!

01.02-01.08 - Winter break

One more week has just gone. I am still in Tarcal and go back to Budapest tomorrow afternoon. I only have two more weeks in Hungary. My Hungarian friends always ask me about whether i am missing my country and them. Of course, i am! My American friends ask me the same too, whether i miss the US and them. Of course, i do. One hand this is a strange feeling, other hand this is my honor because it says there are some people to whom i am important. And this is a great feeling!
I start this post at the New Year's party. Finally with Anita we decided to go our friends' apartment to celebrate New Year. It was an excellent party. We were some 20 there, most of them i knew previously, but i met some new friends. I carried some hurka (hungarian sausage specialty with liver or blood) and some kolbász (hungarian sausage) and we fried them. In Hungary at New Year's time, mustn't eat fish or chicken just pork! Fish swims away with your luck and chicken scratches it, so the only one lucky animal is the pig. It dig out your luck for the next year. Of course, we drank some champagne but because it is a must we drank pálinka (hungarian spirit), wine and beer as well. We had fun, danced, laughed and had everything which comes with fun. Our way back home was exciting we had to travel by tram and other public transportation. At four in the morning Budapest looked like Napoli (Italy) after a drug-cartel war, everywhere was covered with rubbish, drunk people were all around you, policemen were marching on the street, some drunk yuppies threw them with bottles of champagne. It was a mess.
(On 30th of December we went to ice-skating to the biggest renewed ice-skate park in Budapest. After the first round i was totally upset and almost gave up it at all, but finally we had great time, i didn't break my legs and arms, so it was fine. Then we drank some hot wine and ate some pizza.)
I organized our entrepreneur club again, first time in 2012 on 3th of January. We were eight and spent seven and half hours together from 9pm to 4:30am. It was a long-long (longest ever) session, but we talked about very interesting things. We agreed on that we meet again same time next week.
4th of January was a big day. Two years anniversary together with Anita. Two-roses, bence-made anniversary food, wine, and theater. I gotta tell you the performance was far the worst i have ever seen in my life. But Anita told me we will never forget this time. :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gL9D3TdmE

National Theater (beautiful, breathtaking building)

I am home with my family again. It is snowing. 

I dont know where my camera-cable is, so more pictures will come later!

:)