The king at school

The other day I saw the king of Spain in person for the first time. Nothing has changed in my life, and I did not go to any event as a fan of the kings to shout "JuanCarlos y Sofía, os queremos!!" That was not the case. They came to IESE for the innauguration of the new building and we had the "opportunity" to wait standing up for around half an hour under the sun while everybody else (hundreds of alumni, politicians, professors, and other powerful people I guess) was enjoying a good cocktail. During the waiting time, the waiters were literaly attacked by a crowd of starving MBA students in their way to the cocktail room. Fortunately for the people inside the building, IESE allocated a team of 2 extra-waiters in order to protect the food and the champagne (sorry, cava I mean) from us. After a long waiting time, the kings came, they were 30 seconds in front of the group for the official picture with MBA students that you can see in the king's blog, and they left. Then we decide that it was time to eat real stuff instead of trying to steal more small pieces of food.

Here you can see the students with the king, just in the moment when a spontaneous person was mooning from a window in front of the group. Our king has a great sense of humour.




In the evening news I saw the king having lunch same day in Madrid with some politicians, and at 2pm he was in Barcelona with us, no wonder he left so fast!

For me, the most curious thing from the event, that by the way we students could follow only from a high-technology classroom, was the speech of the Associate Dean of Harvard Business School. He emphasized the reationship between HBS and IESE, and then he said that the year our king studied there was very important for HBS because they graduated two kings that year, the king of spain, and the king of swing: Benny Goodman. I don't know what to think about this sentence. I found it funny at beggining, but sincerely, I think it is not really appropriate, although I have a lot of respect for the king of soul. And now that I think about it, because of that sentence I have been listening a bit of Benny Goodman this week. At least Benny Goodman has some glamour and well, can be used in the sentence I guess, imagine that in 20 years they say to the future king that they were very proud that year because they graduated two kings, the king of spain and the king of pop, Michael jackson. I can't imagine Michael at HBS graduation ceremony. Same for other kings of music.... (sorry I had to include M.Jackson in this post somehow).

Here Benny, the good man. I like this surname. Is there someone called Badman also?

What else, my smoking tendencies are under control. It has been some time since I was a smoker and actually I feel pretty good, very good. I am happy I haven't smoked. However, I have to say that if in 15 or 30 days I have the same sensations when I think about smoking a cigarrete while enjoying a beer at night with friends...I may go back!! Seriously, this 2 or 3 minutes of craving are quite bad. But we will resist!!! The only problm that ceasing tobacco has caused in my life is that nerves are pretty altered in my family lately. My father took the same decision this new years eve, so now, the two of us combined have stooped to consume around 500 cigarretes per week. A direct consequence of that is that at some random time during the day it is better not to even talk at home. When the nicotinic receptors in your brain cells stop receiving the positive input of some mg of that substance every ertain period of time, well, some effect can be noticed, and mine is quite small compared with my father. However, my mother is so happy that we are a healthy non-smoking family now that counteracts all the negative energy that can come from the drug-addict behavior.

The grumpy dwarf is a good example of a recent ex-smoker after having his after-lunch coffee. There is also a personality theory that associates you with one of the seven dwarfs (and you have the same one either you smoke or not). I may be the grumpy dwarf.....or not. Not losing time now to figure it out. I know myself pretty good.