I want to give a big shout out to Washington University’s PMBA recent recognition of being in the top 10 in the country according to US News & World Report. I am very proud to be an alumni of this program and do recognize my time there as outstanding. I met a tremendous amount of smart people that I think have benefited my life and career. I am glad I made the choice to go there albeit an expensive one. The PMBA program was ranked 20th last year.  The full-time program is ranked 19th this year.

I really have been neglecting my blog and my “fans” have been voicing their displeasure. Thus I am going to attempt to get back to at least posting weekly.

This was my first weekend back with my girlfriend in almost 3 weeks so it was pretty low key. We first went to try out Five Guys. The burgers were big and you could load them up with toppings. It tasted very much like Steak ‘n’ Shake which is ironically across the street. It was expensive in my eyes so I would rather go across the street. We followed that up with some good Chilean wine and a movie. We watched Up in the Air which was horrible. It was so boring. The only thing that kept me entertained was spotting all the St Louis scenes.

Saturday was a jammed pack day. We first went to Matt’s wedding couples shower. It was fun even though it rained the whole day so we couldn’t get in any washers. We followed that up with a friend’s birthday party at the Mack. I thought I had been there before but I guess I have not. Needless to say, it was a pretty cool play with a lot of people so it should make my rotation more.

Sunday was a day of domestication. The day consisted of a trip to Home Depot to buy flowers and then plant them at Becki’s. It was fun and everything turned out good. I also planted my “cat grass” in the planted I finally found. I am hoping that it grows and looks good so I can put it on my center island in my kitchen.

In other news, I approve of the Rams draft. It looks like they got some really good late round picks in the wide receiver from Cincinnati and the super athlete tight end. In hind site, they should have drafted Suh first then Claussen second but how were they to predict that no QBs would be drafted in the first round. I am also extremely disappointed in the Lakers. I was really worried after they had a horrible second half of the season but I never expected them to get blown out in a game by Oklahoma.

I am going to try to keep this short since I was in Chile for 12 days so I could write a dissertation on my trip if I had time. I will sum up some of my activities and things I liked. I went on this trip for work. I was doing product training with several distributors, went to a mine show called MinExpo, and visited several mines to see my products in action.

Wineries

Santiago and Chile is full of wineries and is well known for their wine. I was told that wine is so successful here because of the weather, temperature, soil, and the fact that the valleys are blocked by mountains on all sides so it deters pests. We visited two wineries; Undurraga and Concha y Toro. I was expecting something like were use to in the USA when going to a winery but I was totally wrong. We made a reservation and there was only about 5 people there. At Undurrage, we got a private tour where we walked around the property seeing the vineyards, production areas, and wine cellars. It was pretty cool and lasted like 3 hours. We followed it up with a wine tasting of 4 wines. We then drove an hour to Concha y Toro which is company apparently traded on the US Stock Exchange so its pretty big. This tour was very short and we only tasted two wines but I believe they had some damage during the earthquake so we couldn’t see everything.

The Ocean

I totally had the wrong idea of Chile. I was thinking it was more tropical for some reason. I did not pack well. Santiago is over an hour from the coast so we made a trip to take in the sites. We visited two towns that border each other; Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Valparaiso is an “industrial” town and Vina del Mar is a tourist area with more beaches. The water was super cold since it has an Antarctica current. We took a bunch of pictures, ate some good seafood, laid on the beach, and ate dessert (a lot) to the sunset over the ocean.

San Pedro

We flew into the tiny town of San Pedro the last weekend we were in town to visit a couple mines. San Pedro is an oasis village in the middle of the Atacama desert (which is the driest in the world). It is “centrally” located a couple hours from several tourist attractions. The town itself was very eerie. It was dirt rode, small adobe building (they would collapse if it rained I was told), dogs everywhere (Chile has a big stray dog problem) and people walking the streets. We stayed in one of the two hotels in the city even though there were a ton of hostels. The hotel was nice for the area but not nice for US standards. It had a skeleton key lock but it did have a nice pool.

Valle de la Lune (Moon Valley)

We visited Moon Valley the first day in San Pedro. We did a lot of hiking around the mountains through trails and caves. We saw some interesting rock formations of crystals that were surreal, the Three Mary’s rock formation, and the main reason we went there….to see the Sunset. We hiked up this large sand dune (keep in mind that were we already above 10,ooo ft in elevation) to see the sunset. I about died walking in boots up a deep sand hill but was glad once we got to the top. The thing that sucked was that it was cloudy so we didnt have a good view. The Atacoma dessert is also the best place to star watch in the world too because of its high altitude, no smog, and supposedly no cloud cover.

El Tatio

We woke up at 3:30 on Sunday morning to go an visit El Tatio. El Tatio is a geyser field located 13,750 ft in the Andes Mountains. It was pretty cool but freezing. It was below freezing and I didn’t pack any gloves….lol. There was also a fresh snow cover from the night before. The geysers did not erupt very high but it was pretty cool. I had never seen anything like that before so I was impressed. The water was extremely hot and there were hot water pools people were swimming in downstream of the field.

Swimming

I packed two swimming suits thinking I could swim in the ocean which I was totally wrong about. I passed on swimming at El Tatio since I was so cold and didn’t want to risk getting sick. But I still got my swimming fix in. First we went to a collection of hot spring pools at Puritama. It cost $40 to get in and we were the first since it was only about 50 degrees at 9:30AM. We had to drive down the side of mountain ledge that I was for certain that our 2WD truck could not make it back up. There was like several pool and scene was very surreal. You were in a tiny oasis in the middle of the mountains. It was very relaxing. After we got enough of that (and apparently I got way too much sun), we left around11:30 to go to Laguna Cejar. It is a collection of 40% salt lakes similar to the Dead Sea so you can basically float on the water. The water was freezing but I got in.It was very interesting but weird feeling when you just float on water.

Antofagasta

We rounded out our trip in Antofagasta. It a port city that is very close to some of the biggest copper mines in the world. We worked the couple days were were here so didn’t see much (and I don’t think there was much to see anyway). We did see La Portada de Antofagasta which is a National Monument.

The Earthquake

I did not know what to expect when going there. People kept asking if I was scared (which I wasn’t) and the local guy kept telling me its fine. The first destruction I notices was that a lot of the overpasses collapsed on highways. The area that our distributor’s office had some damage too. The park was only like 5 years old but it was supposedly built on soft ground. Thus the 10 story building shook a lot breaking glass. The biggest damage came from the air conditioner on the top of the roof collapsing and pancaking through all the floors. The AC unit was removed on the building I was in and they said it was safe but there were some pretty big cracks in the walls. There were several earthquakes when I was there and I slept through all of them so did not feel a lone.

Random Thoughts about the Trip

• I could not live their lifestyle of eating. We wouldn’t get to the restaurant for dinner until 10PM and sometimes we wouldn’t even order our entrée till Midnight. Thus eating dinner till 2AM and waking up at 7AM is not for me.
• We did a lot of driving. One weekend we drove 745 miles which is a lot when your talking about a lot of dirt and rock roads in the mountains.
• They had 100 km/hr (60 MPH) speed limits but we had our truck maxed out the whole time at 155 km/hr (96 MPH). I wish I had my car, It was like the Autobahn but it was a straight flat road for miles and miles with no cars anywhere.
• Two weeks is way too long to be gone. Especially after you had a week of Sales meeting in which you did not get much free time.
• Skype is awesome for calling people in the States overseas. I paid a total of $11 to talk probably 15 hours or more.
• Steak from Chile and Argentina are not good no matter how awesome people there think they are. I’m from the Midwest so its hard to compete.
• I love Chilean Sea Bass but I think we get a better cut in the US because it is much more white, flakier, and delicious every time I get it in the US but it also is 3 times more expensive in the US.
• I did eat some good local specialties like Pastel de Choclo, Cazuela, and Chacarero. The first two week good but a ton of green beans on a sandwich turned me off to the Chacarero. I also ate a ton of seafood that I would not normally eat along with something from a cow that was not beef….they would not tell me what it was so I just put a lot of lemon juice on it.
• I went to one Discotheque. It was like most dance clubs….smokey, crowded, and hard to get a drink.

Here are all my pictures.

One of my friends was gracious enough to get us tickets for the regional Sweet 16  games in St Louis last week. Luckily she had a pretty good connection which resulted in amazing seats. As you can see from the pictures, we were in the third row from the press seats. We were surrounded by “celebs.” Most notably Magic Johnson but Steve Maruicci (current Detroit Lions coarch) and Tom Izzo’s wife were all within a couple seats of us in the Michigan St section. We also had all the players families around us. So not bad seats at all.

The games were interesting. I had never been to a tournament game nor a college basketball game that MU was not playing in. A couple things surprised me about the game: (1) the players all looked much bigger than on TV when your at court level (2) the crowd never really gets into the game (3) they didnt serve beer but it is a NCAA game (4) 75% of the fans in the Mich St – Northern Iowa game were wearing purple but the crowd never got loud and intimidating like I was expecting before the game. I expected them to be going crazy when they started on an early run but nothing sustatined to try to rile up the Mich St players. (5) Ohio St does not travel well; or at least didn’t for this game because their section was tiny and I saw little red through the arena (6) not sure if attendance was down but they should of had this game at Scottrade since the attendance was only 13k for Friday’s games. There was a Blues game on Sunday so maybe this was impossible. Also, I would have expected a ton more fans and a better atmosphere if Kansas would have made it like they were expected.

The games themselves were both interesting and close. Ohio St got some bad calls and a cold streak in the 2nd quarter by Turner hurt them. Turner rebounded at the end but couldn’t pull it off. Northern Iowa was clearly over matched and lacked in talent but they were able to hang around because of some timely 3′s and the play of the their big man.