The taxi left us on the wrong end of the Piazza Navona. We would have the decadent 14-course final dinner of the year and we would celebrate the beginning of 2009 at the restaurant “4 Collone”, which was on the south end of the piazza. As we strolled through the magnificent place, my wife and I took the opportunity to reflect upon the ending year and our resolutions for the new one, the highly anticipated 2009.
Here a brief summary on the things I’m planning to accomplish during this starting year:

• blog more
• eat less carbs
• come May, get that perfect job that I would do even without a paycheck
• spend all the time I possibly can with my son
• read much more
• travel more by car
• go to the opera 
• finish a great last semester at Babson
• do more finance-related stuff
• get tickets for the South Africa WorldCup in 2010 

Mondays nights are usually the nights I end up dreaming and speaking in my sleep about numbers and balance sheets after a late class of Entrepreneurial Finance. The takeaway from that class is always very straightforward: Entrepreneurs don’t have to be accountants in order to see financial statements from arms-length and be able to perceive uses, sources and status of capital and hence be able to conclude what’s wrong or right about the business. Our faculty for this course insists on neglecting the use of spreadsheets and calculators, he wants common and rapid sense when looking at numbers in financial statements. Gut-driven entrepreneurial finance. Love it.

So Mondays are always days filled with numbers and today was not the exception: I received 2 emails that had a number in the first sentence and that together give a simple summary of my life these days: 208 days until graduation and 168 days until my wife’s due date (the latter arrived in my inbox from BabyCenter.com). The former was from the Center for Career Development of Babson, sharing with us all the open positions and job-seeking resources that are available to us…and scaring the crap out of the entire Class of 2009 at the same time. The second email, I must say, provided comfort, excitement and joy. I can’t wait until the cold New England winter is over and I can greet my son/daughter into this world.

In case you were wondering, in my own scared-to-death-because-of-the-economic-meltdown job search process, things are progressing. At least I know where my passion is inclining me to apply: Apple, Facebook, Google, Digg, AT&T and Netflix are on my list as of today. Let’s see what happens.

This is literally the first “Hello World” post I’ve written in my life. And it comes to life to start this blogging effort that will let me capture what it is that is happening in this very important phase of my life (and hopefully capture many readers in the process also).

In spite of the fact that my mother tongue is Spanish and I’m a Mexican citizen (quite proudly), I’ll mostly blog in English for three reasons: First, I live in the US right now and the people that are likely to read me don’t necessarily speak Spanish. Second, the Spanish-speakers that are most likely to end up reading this stuff are likely fluent in English and it’ll do them good to read more English. Finally, I need to get up to speed with my written English because the grades of my second year as an MBA will greatly depend on final papers and long deliverables.

Eso no quita que de vez en cuando postee algo en español que tenga interés específico para hispano-parlantes o mexicanos (al grito de guerra). Especialmente sobre asuntos de la “blogosfera” o de la política latinoamericana.

You’ll notice that the headings in this site are in English, Spanish and German. This is to stress the fact that I speak all three languages and that I grew up learning from all three cultures and idiosyncrasies. I’m a proud tri-cultural being that everyday embraces all three languages, weltanschauungs and cultures. It is less likely, however, that I’ll blog in German…sometimes I’ll link to stories in German or throw in a quote like this one:

Man muß einfach reden, aber kompliziert denken - nicht umgekehrt -Franz Josef Strauß

I hope that you will find something of interest in this set of words and online situations. 

Yours in blogging innovation,

B