Alive

Hello everyone. I just wanted to let you know that we are alive and things are going well. I know I should keep posting. Actually I should have kept posting. But I'm just too busy and lost the habit.

In any case, if you are thinking about taking and MBA, here is my advice almost three years after graduation from JBS and after giving advice and getting feedback from dozens of MBA from most of the world best business schools:

• Make sure you choose the right school for you: your profile, your personality, your career goals.
• Go to a top school. Top 10 better than top 20. Top 20 better than top 50.
• Take GMAT seriously.
• Take English seriously.
• Don't bullshit in your essays. Be really really yourself. If you are perfect you don't need an MBA. 
• Start your job search day 1 and narrow down your target companies soon.
• Be confident, not arrogant, but confident. If you are in you are good. 
• Work hard. Make the most of every minute. And make friends. 
• Read books. Leave your laptop and cellphone away a few hours a day. 
• Don't take a job if you want to start a company. 

 Let's see if after this I feel like telling you more about us.

Back to the future

I'm back in Seville and hopefully back to the future. I finally took the new job in Seville, my fourth job since last september when I finished the Cambridge MBA. It might sound a bit weird all that changes, but when you know the details I think it all makes sense and in fact I'm very happy with my career progression since then.

The last move was not easy. I was very happy in Madrid in a new and very interesting position and in a great work athmosphere. But at the same time the new offer I received back in Sevilla was a challenging managerial position with lots of international exposure.

So I did what I normally do when I go running at a new place, I took the tougher route. I took the new job, left the flat I recently rented in Madrid, rented a house in Sevilla, and moved, again. That was the 1st of July. I've been quite busy since then. In fact I'm still at the office now, something quite unusual for a friday afternoon in Seville, in summer. But overall I'm very happy with the new job.

Miriam and the kids are also happy with the change. Now we live in a bigger house and near family and friends.

I will tell you more another day.

And from Madrid to?

When I wrote my previous post on my way to Madrid about a month ago I coudn't imagine I would have to take another big decision a few weeks later. On May 16 I was graduating in Cambridge and I was happy to tell all my friends about my new job in Madrid. But a few days later back in Madrid I received a call from Sevilla in what turned to be another job offer, a very interesting job offer 15 minutes walking from my flat.

My head started spinning and in fact is still spinning since then. Both jobs are cool, both jobs are well paid, both jobs involve a challenge and an opportunity, both would allow me to learn and grow my network of contacts, and of course both involve risks and have their downsides.

And the result is a tide. One is near home, but the fact is that I have already rented out my flat in Sevilla and a flat in Madrid, so now I have a home in Madrid but not in Sevilla. One is in a new city and a new administration, but with some old colleagues and bosses. The other one is in my home city, almost same administration but with new bosses and colleagues. One involves working in a team that has been working well and smoothly for years, the other means facing a group that has seen three managers in the last couple of years.

I have to take many things into account: a school for Diego, a nursery for Leo, a University and/or a job for Miriam, my parents and sister, my in laws, expenses, weather, friends, running, entrepreneurship opportunities, mid and long term plans, stability, loyalty, work-life balance, fun, stress, etcetera.

I hope to make the final decision this weekend... and never ever feel I took the wrong path.

Sevilla-Cambridge-Sevilla-Madrid

If you expect an MBA to make your life easier you are mistaken. It will certainly make your life more exciting, dynamic, full of opportunities, but full of challenges too, and challenges have to be difficult to be real challenges. Anyway, we like challeges, don't we? That's why we are MBAs.

Well. All this argument is just to say I've got a new job and and I'm on a train right now moving to Madrid. As you may know or suspect I work in the public sector. I prefer not to give too much details. But basically I'm switching from the regional to the central government. And I'm really happy with the offer (offers) I've got in the last few months, probably none of them possible without the MBA.

Maybe from some of you moving city for the third time in less than two years is not that a big thing, but for me, married with you little kids, it's quite a feat. Moreover because two of these moves have been out of Sevilla, the best place in the world to live.

But I know I can always come back to Sevilla. Actually my plan is going to my parent's place one weekend a month.

What keeps me busy now is finding a flat in Madrid and renting mine in Sevilla. A handicap is that prices are much higher in Madrid and this is not a good season for renting my flat. The advantages are that it's a good moment to rent in Madrid, and I hope to find a nice place in a cool area. Renting gives you the opportunity of living where you can't buy.

We also have to find a school for Diego and a nursery for Leo, and Miriam will apply to Universidad Autónoma de Madrid to be trained to be an English teacher.

So I will have lots of stories to tell to my colleagues in two weeks when we meet for Graduation. I'm really exited about that.

See you next month

I just noticed I'll be in Cambridge for Graduation in just one month. Time flies!

I was in Cambridge in May two years ago for the interview day, was there last year too, of course, enjoying the last month of the MBA and some running success, and will return this year for Graduation. Great.

I bought the plane tickets months ago and have already booked a room with views to Jesus Green in the Arundel House Hotel, just a few meters from my old flat in Chesterton Road.

Jesus Green and the riverside are great places for running and that's one of the the first things I'll do on friday when I get there, going running with my friends Giulio, Giacomo, Alessandro and Ben. I also hope to be able to find a race to do on the weekend, so I have an excuse not to get too drunk during the celebrations.

This is going to be a very special weekend for Miriam and me because we'll leave the kids at home with my parents. It will be the first time we go out by ourselves for such a long time since Diego was born three years ago.

I know some of my friends will miss Diego and Leo, but we are waiting for them in Sevilla whenever they want to come. We still haven't received any visit from MBA friends in Sevilla. Looks like Victor and Daniela from Chile are going to be the first ones.

Anyway, I just wanted to say I'm looking forward to go and see everyone in JBS.

Los libros del GMAT ya están vendidos

Disculpadme por no haber borrado el post anterior. Los libros del GMAT los vendí hace un mes o así. De todas formas lo más sencillo es buscarlos por Amazon y lo más fiable es ir directamente a por las guías oficiales.

Os garantizo que es una buena inversión, y si no tenéis mucho tiempo es bueno que los compréis lo antes posible antes del examen. Mientras más practiquéis mejor.

En internet también se encuentran algunos recursos interesantes.

We are alive

We said we were going to keep this blog alive but obviously we're struggling. Many things have happened in the last few months. Probably the one that is making the harder impact in our lives is the credit crunch, financial crisis, economic slowdown, recession or however you want to call it.

This crisis -that probably some MBA colleagues have contributed to create- has frustrated the expectations of many of my friends, my hopes too, and I guess is worrying some of the readers of this blog, people taking an MBA in Cambridge or somewhere else and MBA candidates around the world.

But the MBA is not the problem, the crisis is the problem, and without an MBA things will probably be even harder. Of course we all should lower our salary expectations, should forget about some companies -expecially about the ones that went bust-, but I believe I am better prepared to do any job after the MBA and if you are humble enough to take a job that you can do better than anyone else you'll be fine, you'll be promoted soon, you'll get a real MBA job soon.

Why do I say this? Well, I'm a live example of this. I had a low GMAT, not a quantitave background, little management experience, but was very much into entrepreneurship, diversity, internationalisation, marketing and communication, and about management. And somehow I managed to be admitted in Cambridge and that changed my life for life. I hope for the better.

I have a new job since the 1st of January. The 1st of September I returned to my previous employer in a sligthly different role, but first the mere fact of having a Cambridge University degree and second that, of course ;-) I'm a better manager, took me to a senior management position within three month and now I'm the youngest guy in that position ever. I'm still working in the same sector, almost the same employer, but in a compleletely different role and with plenty of opportunities ahead.

But I have to warn you about the upsides too. I have a better job, I got a 50% salary increase, but I work longer hours and as a consequence my quality of life is much worse. I like my job, I enjoy what I do, but I have to handle lots of pressure, fire people, say no, work long hours, and that affects your personal life, specially your family life. We are ok. Miriam is happy, I'm happy. I try to make the most of the time I spend with my kids. But to be honest I hardly can see them at all from monday to thursday. This is something to think about.

More news. I had a foot injury -a stress fracture in the second metatarsal head of my right foot- last december. Now I'm back but I'm out of shape and with the new job I hardly can train on weekdays.

Miriam is very well, working part time and spending time with the kids. Diego has switched to Spanish but can speak and understand English too. Leonardo is starting to say his first words.

This weekend Miriam and I went on holiday with friends for the first time without the kids. It's being fun. We are in the hills in Huelva -Sierra de Aracena- eating great food, drinking beer, wine and rhum, playing table games, playstation, karaoke, basketball and football. Tomorrow everyone awake at 9:30 to watch Nadal-Federer in Australia.

Let's keep it alive

We have decided to keep this blog alive. The MBA is over but I still have to graduate and above all the Cambridge MBA is one year that will last you a lifetime.

Also a blog is a great way to keep family and friends up to date and to keep a diary too.

I didn't want to lose the MBA archive, as I have received many messages of MBA candidates who find it useful. That's another motivation to keep posting. Current students and alumni were of much help during my pre-MBA and I'm happy to be useful for new candidates now.

As you can see I have changed the "theme" and title to adapt to our new reality. I always talk about "we" or "our" because I believe my MBA wouldn't have been possible without the support of my wife and the joy provided by my kids.

I still plan to publish a few "retrospective" posts to tell you about the end of the MBA, the IP, our holidays, readapting home, jobs and so on.

Also, and I hope sooner than later, I'll start here a series of posts about the MBAs who come to visit us in Sevilla. Who's going to be the first?

I'm an MBA

A few days ago I received the letter from the new MBA Director Jochen Runde, the statement from the Committee of Examiners and the Official Transcript confirming I'm an MBA.

I also received my grade for the Individual Project, which I wrote with the title "Innovative approaches to increase revenues for football clubs - Can good business sense make football better?". It was fun, and I got a good grade.

I haven't been writing in the blog for a long time. Partly because I was busy, partly because I don't want to accept the MBA is over. In fact I'm telling myself is not over yet, because Graduation is on the 16th of May 2009.

Now I'm back to work in Sevilla, Spain. I returned to my previous employer, in a different department and possition, but with the same boss. I left that door opened during the whole year and I'm happy to be back.

As you may know I funded my MBA with a Talentia Scholarship which requires you to return to Andalucía or to an Andalusian company abroad for 4 years after the program. Otherwise you have to return the scholarship, which in my case is worth €56k.

At some point I considered the possibility of finding a job in the UK and repay the scholarship, but given the current work market circumstances and my family responsibilities, that soon became an utopia, especially if I wanted to keep my pre-MBA standard of living in the short term.

The MBA is a long term investment, and I think there are at least two ways to ripe benefits from it.

If you are young, single, come from a relatively low income country and are ready to work like crazy for a few years it definitely makes sense to take any MBA job in London and build your career from it.

But if you have a family, your pre-MBA job was already about MBA level, and you don't want to start from scratch again, it also makes sense going back home, either to your old company or another, and use the Cambridge MBA to grow within your network.

I chose option two, and honestly I still don't know if I made the right decision.

Sometimes I think I should have been more ambitious and try a different job, a different company, a different industry. I can't really stand still, I'm an entrepreneur.

But it's not only about me, so when I go back home from work (sometimes as soon as 15.00) and I meet my wife and my kids in the playground near my riverside flat, I realise that -at least for now- I'm in the right place.

Vendo libros del GMAT

Business is business. 

Con mi regreso a casa me he dado cuenta de que tengo demasiados libros. Tantos que no tengo donde ponerlos. Y si hay 4 libros que estoy seguro que ya no necesito son los del GMAT. 

Así que he pensado que igual a alguno de los lectores de este blog les pueden interesar. Tengo 4, como podéis ver abajo. La guía oficial completa, los extras "verbal" y "quantitative" y el Cracking the GMAT de The Princeton Review. 

Vendo los 4 por 30 €, y de regalo Your MBA with Distinction, un libro fácil e interesante de leer antes del MBA.  Yo corro con los gastos de envío en España. 

Los libros están bien, prácticamente nuevos. Sólo tienen marcas a lápiz que se pueden borrar. 

En fin, si te interesa déjame un comentario. 

Bye Cambridge

This is Miriam, Diego and Leo at the bus stop about to leave Cambridge.

We'll be back soon. Graduation is in May 2009 but I probably won't wait that long. 

Last day at home

It's weird but for us "home" is not Sevilla anymore, is Cambridge. We are going to miss this city and our little flat. Somebody told me the other day that Cambridge is addictive, and I think it's true. It's a truly nice well-rounded city, especially for families. 

But tomorrow we are leaving for a week of holiday in Brittany (France) and then to our home in Spain, in Sevilla. 

Of course I'm looking forward to see some sun, family, friends, good food, and above all, I need to start working because unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees, not even in rainy Britain. 

Anyway, this is a picture of us at our porche. 

Kedington 5k

One more race in the UK. It's a pity I only found training partners and the right contacts to go to races so late in the year. But the training paid off and today I won the Kedington 5k. 

This is a very amateur race, with only about 100 runners, but in a very demanding course and with a few good runners. I think I did a good race, clocking 16:20 for the very hilly 5k in the outskirts of Kedinton, Haverhill, Suffolk, not too far from Cambridge. 

I went with Giulio, a running partner from Cambrige. Also Alessandro, another Italian, came to the race. Giacomo and Ben, the other running partners I found this summer were both on holiday. 

I don't have the results or pictures from the race, but as I wanted to test myself I wore my GPS-HRM-sport watch and here you can see all the data about my race. Below the graph showing heart rate, speed and elevation. 

The bin guitar player

This is one of the Cambridge legends. The guy playing the guitar inside a bin. And it's real. 

The picture above is mine, taken today. 

The video below is from Youtube. 

Imperial War Museum - Duxford

We received another visit from the Pedrali family, my brother and sister in law and their three daughters from Italy. It was a good opportunity to do something together and we decided to go to the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, very near Cambridge, on the way to Stansted Airport. 

My brother in law had already been there and it was a good idea to go again all together. It's a massive museum full of planes, tanks and other war vehicles. You can learn about the D-Day and Second World War, but also about commercial planes and the history of aviation. 

They also have historic planes still in working condition, and you can actually fly on them if you want. We didn't do it, but there were plenty of visitors and many did. 

The MBA year is almost over, and I'm quite busy finishing my IP, but we are trying to make the most of our time and taking some time off is always nice. 

Too much stuff

The removal company came today to take our stuff back to Sevilla. It was way too much: 16 boxes, some of them as big as to fit my bike.

Here you can see some, not all of them.



It was the only feasible way to take all the kid's toys and all my books back home. I think there were like three or four boxes just of toys. And the same number for books and notes.

I don't know where are we going to put all this, so we'll probably take the opportunity to get rid of some stuff when we get home.

By the way, we are leaving Cambridge on the 11th of August. I can't believe it.

Visita de Fernando y Laura

Estos días hemos recibido la visita de Fernando (Martí) y Laura. Yo llevaba mucho tiempo insistiéndole al Martí que viniesen a vernos y por fin se decidieron.


Nos lo hemos pasado bien. Llegaron el domingo de madrudaga y yo por la mañana me fui al St. Ives 10k. Llegué directamente al pub, al Fort St. George, para un buen Sunday roast y una pinta de Peroni. Le di a probar al Martí una cerveza local y no le gustó. Decía que sabía a café.

Además de ver algunos colleges en Cambridge fuimos a Londres a echar un día. Intenté llevarlos a ver las cosas más típicas y más o menos lo conseguimos. Incluso vimos el reloj de Willy Fog, como llama el hermano de Laura al Big Ben.

Vimos el Tower Bridge y la Torre de Londres, la catedral de St. Paul, Trafalgar Square, Downing Street, el Parlamento y el Big Ben, St. James' Park, Hyde Park, Picadilly, el Palacio de Buckingham, Campden Town, Harrods, el Barrio Chino. No sé si me olvido algo.

También estuvimos en un Garden Party en un college. Basicamente una fiesta-picnic en Magdalene College, que está justo en frente de nuestra casa. Además echamos una pachanguita de fútbol muy apañada. Jugamos descalzos aprovechando el cesped increible que crece en Inglaterra.

Los tres días pasaron rápido. Diego hizo pronto amistad con Laura y Fernando y todavía pregunta por ellos. Leo, que se encargaba de despertarlos cada mañana, también. Los veremos de nuevo pronto en Sevilla.

St Ives 10k

Yesterday I run the St. Ives 10k and I was second!

Last week I met Giacomo, an Italian taxi driver that has been living in Cambridge for 19 years and who took me to the station once a few months ago. He's a runner too and we talked about running. But I never saw him again till last week. Then we talked about running (of course) and we went training together the next day.

He usually trains with Giulio, another Italian, born in Cambridge.

The thing is that we went together to the St. Ives 10k and run. It was not such a massive race as the London 10k, of course, but there were a few good runners. The winner was way better than me and won easily. I had a good fight with three other runners for the second place and had to push really hard for the last two kilometers, but it was good to be runner up and specially running half a minute faster than in London.

I finished in 33:20. You can see the results here.

And a picture of the podium below.

Time for farewells

It's been months since I last made my contribution to this blog, mostly because as soon as the kids go to bed, I follow after! especially since Leo is not a great sleeper, although it seems to be getting better now.

However, I am finally realizing that this year really is coming to an end.

All our meetings with friends lately seem to be farewells: last Wednesday was our last day at toddler group (Bounce-a-Round) and Diego got a little goodbye present (which was terribly sweet of you all!); last night we had a Farewell dinner with the MBA wives (picture below); next Tuesday is the end-of-the-year (=my last) Bible Study Group dinner... and on and on it goes. We are regularly invited to Pub nights and dinners to have a chance to say our goodbyes to people who are already leaving... and it's soooooo sad!

Even though I know that closing a door means opening another one and moving on to more exciting things I still feel I'm desperately trying to make the most of my time left here.

This morning I had a lovely walk with the kids through Trinity's gardens, out to Garret Hostel Lane, over the bridge and back through Clare College an on to the Market where we bought fresh bread and focaccia before walking home for lunch. The kids enjoyed meeting a squirrel, a mummy duck with her seven ducklings, loads of canada geese and the white cows on the fields behind King's.

I know Seville is beautiful, but I'm going to miss Cambridge.

British 10k London Run

Yesterday I run the British 10k London Run and it was good fun. I finished 14th in 33:53, which is much better than I expected. You can see the results here.



People at JBS are quite impressed and some even asked me if I can make it to the Olympics. No way. It might look like if a 4 minutes difference between me and Olympic Champion Stefano Baldini is not that much, but closing that kind of gap is literally impossible.

But anyway, the most important thing is that the fundraising for New Foundations is going well.

You can see more pictures here.