That said, here are my FAVORITE comments made by people throughout the entire ordeal:

“If Michael Jackson dies, I can’t imagine what TV, the internet and life will be like over the next few days/weeks…Seriously, if he dies, Facebook will collapse with the over-updating.” – Jason Mulgrew, shortly before the confirmed news broke. Unbelievable just how accurate he was.

Still dead – Chris the East Village Idiot’s excellent observation from the media coverage earlier this week

“In 1991 who would have thought Magic Johnson would be attending Michael Jackson’s funeral, and not the other way around” – Pretty fucking insightful thought from Jason G

and finally my absolute favorite:

“Lisa it’s your birthday. Can we please hear this one?” – Bunda’s amazing, well-timed Simpsons reference during the karaoke memorial service

Today, while looking up some more info on the app for a friend, I stumbled across another Taco Bell related app, the “Taco Bell Finder,” which claims to grab your location and direct you toward the nearest Taco Bell. Exciting, till I realized it cost 1.99 and I already had an app that could handle such a task.

My brain.

(or google maps + search)

Step 2:

Long time readers of this blog will remember that I once lived in New York with my best friend Sachin, and at some point during that time he started dating a girl named Anushka. Some 3 or so years later, they were married. A month after that, I am finally blogging about it.

It’s hard to recap a weekend that was quite simply one of the highlights of my year. For starters, the wedding took place only a few weeks after the 5th anniversary of our college graduation. In the last five years, our close group of friends has managed to do good things for themselves. We have doctors, MBAs, authors (one guy is actually all three), lawyers, and whatever it is Jigar does. It’s near impossible to get all of us in one place together – it literally takes a marriage for it to happen – but getting back together this time just seemed more momentous than any of our reunions in the past.

Obviously we celebrated. Hard. Between the Friday night ‘last hurrah’ with Sachin, the post-rehearsal happy hour on Saturday, the Sangeet Saturday evening, the morning champagne toast(s) before the wedding ceremony on Sunday, the post-wedding happy hour, and the reception itself, its safe to say that our weekend was rather…liquid.

The Sangeet (basically a pre-wedding reception) on Saturday was a blast. Anushka’s parents hosted it at their home in Maryland, and after a brief ride from the hotel on a school bus, we partied the night away in a huge tent in her backyard. Niya (Sachin’s sister) and Rishi (close friend) performed a dance to the song Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire and halfway through the song were joined by about 8 other friends in a choreographed surprise of greatness. And then I gave a speech.

Oh, did I give a speech.

A speech that earned me a handshake from what seems like every single one of the 250-300 guests in attendance that weekend. A speech that had women telling me they were ‘angry’ at me. Because I’d made them both cry and laugh so hard they ruined their makeup. Now I’m not one to usually brag (ha!), but I’ve never felt so awesome in my life.

(Since I know you’re wondering, I’m hoping I’ll get my hands on a copy of it soon.)

The wedding the next day was beautiful. It was held at The Galleria in Washington DC, a beautiful venue with a high glass arched ceiling that made it seem like an outdoor ceremony. The ceremony, like all Indian ceremonies, was extensive, made ever more awkward/hilarious by the priest forgetting Sachin’s name for a few minutes.

After the ceremony, the Michigan crew – including Sachin – went out for beers and debated whether the priest’s gaff meant Sachin was married or not. After a few rounds, we got ready for the reception, took a few pictures, and hit the open bar hard.

Sometime after that, I was challenged to a dance-off and, as seen above, completely destroyed the competition by yanking off my jacket and sliding across the dance floor on my knees. In the first round. Again, I have never felt so awesome in my life.

All in all, it was an incredible weekend that left me exhausted and voiceless, but immensely happy for the newlyweds.

Congrats Sachin and Anushka!

My absence here over the past eight weeks is partially explained by my participation in our school’s business plan competition. I’ve spent the entirety of Spring Quarter working with my team to develop, edit, refine, tweak, and manipulate every aspect of our plan (in short, a platform for outsourcing errands and household tasks to college students). While it’s certainly been one of the most valuable experiences I’ll gain out of business school, it has also been one of the most challenging. Weeks of anxiety and fear.. the constant worry that our work was just never done, never quite good enough.

The culmination of our efforts was to take place Monday evening. We’d be presenting our final plan in front of a panel of judges consisting of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, lawyers, and professors. The quality of our 15-minute presentation and 15-minute Q&A would determine whether or not we would advance to the finals and have a shot at seed money to help our business get started.

We spent all of Monday (and all weekend really) preparing and compiling 8 weeks of work into the presentation that we’d be giving that evening. Anxiety was at an all time high. When the time finally came, our presentation went fairly smoothly, but the Q&A… oh, the Q&A… She was a bloodbath. The judges ripped us to shreds, attacking every aspect of our plan with incredible intensity. Whereas we’d received split decisions of support in the past, no words of encouragement came on Monday. Crushed, deflated, and soured, we grasped for reasons we’d advance to the finals, but found little to give us hope. Would this be the end of the line for the business we’d poured our sweat and tears into? It seemed so.

The contemplation of failure still troubled me as I was dropped off at home. Having not yet eaten, I sought comfort from food. I hopped into my car, hoping to clear my mind and get the one meal that would remotely have a chance of making me feel better. Taco Bell, of course.

As I approached the drive-thru, as I have dozens of times in the past, something seemed different. Good different. I couldn’t quite place it, but it was there. I rounded the bend, and there stood the sign in its backlit glory, proclamations of spiciness emitting forth like a beacon of hope.

The Volcano Taco was back!

And just like that, all was right in the world.

Golden Gargoyles – Davis Cohort Video
My cohort – group of students I took our leadership class with – had to make a video as part of the finale party of the class. Restricted by a time limit, our planned parody of Zoolander came out a little choppy but was still amusing.

Follies – One Day More
Inspired by this video of Obama campaign staffers singing along to ‘One Day More’ from Les Miserables, we made our own version set at school.

Business students can be such dorks at times pretty much always.

Dude picked Clemson over Michigan.

Mr. President, you deserve to lose whatever non-cash, avoiding-all-conflicts-of-interest, “fun-only” crappy little White House pool you’re entering in. Jerkface.

A few weeks ago, however, my school held its annual winter formal. One of my classmates Elena served as the photographer of the evening and set up a simple but effective red backdrop that led to some stunning pics. While browsing through the hundreds of pictures that were taken that night, I came across this one. Apparently, at a point of the evening that I don’t quite remember, I snagged a free moment in front of the camera and managed to have this picture taken.

While the whole power-pose thing I’ve got going on is a little questionable, everything else about the picture – from the sweet black on red composition to the fact that my gut isn’t hanging out – has made me a full-blown narcissist. As soon as I saw this picture, I spent $12 buying a copy for myself, partly because I’m not quite sure when this will ever happen again, and partly because anyone who manages to make me look this good deserves to be compensated. $12 was a steal.

Mad props to Elena, my classmate and hands-down one of my favorite photographers. Check out some of her work and maybe buy a thing or two. You know you want one of these for yourself!

Today, however, I discovered that I am not that alone. While attending an event for the Epicurean Club – of which I am a newly appointed co-chair! – I chatted with a second-year who I’d just met. At some point, Florida came up and she mentioned she was from Melbourne. And as if that wasn’t enough, during a later discussion about the neighborhood we were in, we discovered that not only are we from the same hometown, but we actually live in the same building. I guess I’m not that far removed from home after all.

Well there’s the whole job thing… its internship-hunting season at business schools right now, and I’ve certainly had my hands full with that. January and early February were particularly bad, but things have slowed down a little now. I’m not completely finished with the process; I’m close to the end, but am still trying to weigh my options and determine when I’ll finally wrap things up.

I’ve still been having fun, too. I’ve strengthened a lot of the friendships I made last quarter, and have made a ton of new friends as well. Perhaps to a fault, I spend too much time with them, with many weekends becoming entirely unproductive due to excessive celebration of something or other. Valentine’s Day, for example, included an out-of-town guest, champagne, handcuffs (party-related, not criminal), and FAR too many of Chicago’s Best Bloody Mary the day after. (As someone who had six of them in one sitting, I can attest to their quality. Seriously, they put a shot of Guinness in the bloody mary and give you a sampler sized glass of Magic Hat to wash it all down).

I guess the point is that life is good but busy, but I do need to do a better job documenting just what’s been going on. I sincerely hope to get back into the swing of things here, but if you’re interested in following the minutiae of my day-to-day life, check out my more-frequently-updated Twitter.

For now though, I’m off. Its time for me to start getting ready for our Winter Formal (yes, we have b-school Prom).