The Vernacularist

Japan advice

I going to Japan from March 9 to 18 and need lots of advice. I'm traveling with 120 Stern students (yes, 120), so I have plenty of people with which to run around. However, there is so much I don't know:

1. Where should I visit in Tokyo?
2. What gadets do I need to buy?
3. Any amazing tourist traps I have to check out?

Any and all advice will be handsomely rewarded....

summer internship

It's been hard for me to write about what's on my mind recently.  I really wish my blog was anonymous sometimes. I have a lot to say, but it's not something I want to have on the internet forever. Maybe I will start an anonymous blog at some point too. 

I definitely have updates, though.  I accepted a summer internship with Unilever in their Englewood Cliffs office.  I'll be working in their Foods division, but I don't know which brand yet. 

I'm pretty excited to work in a big, traditional company for the first time in my life. It's not surprising that many at business school want to find smaller organizations to work for, given their experience with the conglomerates and Fortune 1000. It's really the type of experience I need to kick me in the ass and teach me about marketing.  No matter what I choose for a full-time job, working at Unilever will be a tremendous asset.

I probably won't blog about it at all (confidentiality agreements and all), but I know I will be smarter at the marketing subjects I do tackle on this blog.  Heh, like I really ever do that anymore. 

School has been challenging still.  I have many more mathematical courses this semester.  I'm learning about financial investments, operations, marketing research, entertainment & media industries and managing organizations. It's all too much to summarize here, but I'm having a good time in most of the courses...I don't really enjoy operations, but I have to take it to then take a great course in quanitfiable decision models.   

Made up words!

      

This doesn't due for a catch-up post, but I couldn't resist sharing these.  I love frankenstein words that make monstrous meanings out of dead parts:

Here is the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational, which once again asked
readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding,
subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. 

 

The 2006 winners are:

 

1. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

2.  Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an a- hole.

3.  Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize that it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of having sex.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying (or building) a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an

indefinite period of time.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes and it's a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon: (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

18. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in, the fruit you're eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly
contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common
words. And the winners are:

1. Coffee, (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, (adj.) appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-Nilly, (adj.) impotent.

6. Negligent, (adj.) absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, (v.) to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, (n.) emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, (n.) a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, (n.) a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, (n.) the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.