Aviraj’s Blog on Posterous

You can call me Avi

So I went rock climbing. On real rocks. In the mountains.

And I loved it.

Yeah, it's been a couple weeks since I did this and I had wanted to write about it earlier but, you know, school came in the way. 

It was my *first ever* outdoor activity and for that I think I did fairly well. No, I didn't manage to go all the way up the "beginner-level" (my ass!) climb, but half-way up wasn't bad considering the bike ride up Baseline Rd. killed me before I even got to the Gregory Canyon trail head. And I promise you, I could've gone a lot higher had the drizzle not made the rock as slippery as it was. At the end of the day, if you ask me, I was surprised I could lift my weight at all :)

I want to thank my classmate Ryan Mazer and his friends for organizing this awesome outing for us. I totally need to do this again.

I'm hoping for more Boulder awesomeness as my life here continues. I really couldn't be happier. And I promise I'm going to post more often.

                                     

I just joined the Boulder Photography Club

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I'm so damn excited about this. Photography has long been something I've wanted to take seriously, but never found the time or opportunity for it back in Mumbai. Boulder, to me, is an ideal location for someone with a passion for photography. It's just so freakin beautiful!

So, today I joined the Boulder Photography Club at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU). It's a simple student club on the CU campus that has a whole bunch of undergrads. I don't care, it's still the best opportunity I've got to pursue photography. That too for just 15 bucks for the whole year, haha.

No, I'm not a great photographer, far from it in fact. I'm still going to run around with my trusty point-n-shoot (Canon SD800IS), that I love dearly. The goal is to understand photography from a technical standpoint, get a grip of exposure, ISO, shutter-speed, what have you, and figure out when to use what. I also want to learn some basic post-processing techniques in Photoshop or whatever (yep, I don't know how to use Photoshop). Once I'm down with all that, I'll unquestionably graduate to a dSLR; I just feel the need to be ready for it.

As I've been saying about everything Boulder these days - so psyched!

"Boulder has more 'collaboration per capita' than any other city in the US"

my life’s work is to find the most compelling startups in the Intermountain West and I’m going on record to say that there’s no better place in the region to start one than Boulder, Colorado.
There’s a very unique culture there and I think successful regional entrepreneurs from all over the country should go visit Boulder to see the impact of the culture of caring which exists there.  Successful entrepreneurs, lawyers, VCs and countless others devote a very significant part of their lives to mentoring local startups not because there’s something in it for them, but because they simply care deeply about entrepreneurs and they’ll do anything they can to help them.
via highway12ventures.com

I've written about this before and I guess I'll keep saying it over and over again: Boulder is fantastic for startups. Okay, I haven't got a chance to experience the startup environment as closely as people like the author of this quote have, but it's only a matter of time before I do.

*So* psyched.

I'm in Boulder, Colorado for my MBA :)

So, a lot of you reading this may know it already but, there, I said it.

I've joined the MBA program at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In case that's a mouthful for you, it's commonly called the Boulder MBA. Orientation begins in a couple weeks, but I landed in Colorado 3 weeks back to soak in some of the awesome front-range summer (unlike the one back in Mumbai). And by God, it's been fan-bloody-tastic. Proof is here.

Boulder is a gorgeous little city about 45 minutes north of Denver, Colorado. It's right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains (hence the term 'front-range')  which lends it the most breathtaking views. This city, as with most of Colorado itself, is extremely outdoorsy, with a majority of the population heavily into hiking, biking, skiing and snowboarding. It helps that there are over a dozen ski resorts within a 2 hour drive from here. Honestly, the quality of life here is fantastic. Not just that, Boulder has the most exciting tech and startup scene outside of the Silicon Valley (at least in my opinion). In fact, I had even put up a post some ten days back which explains exactly why this place is perfect for me from a professional standpoint.

Now, I'm an international student here and, even though I've been to this place before, it's still foreign land for me. It's gonna take me some time to get a hang of the American culture (including everything from people, etiquette, accent to the food and even the transportation system). Here's a few things that I think are gonna be an interesting change for me --

1. American English. This one's going to be tricky. For the past three years I've been using a mix of British and American (for clients) English to the point that I can't quite distinguish between the spellings anymore. Practice practice practice.

2. The cold. The consequence of living in a city that's a mile above sea-level. But here's the thing, the winter is something I'm really looking forward to. After the depressing summer and monsoon of Mumbai, extreme cold is something I could definitely use, even if it takes some getting used to. That said, the summer here has been so awesome (well, at least for me) I would hate for the weather to change at all.

3. Coffee. It's served black and without sugar here. Dude, I'm no Jai Vardhan Singh. I need my sugar and cream (which I fortunately do get on the side).

4. Food portions. Anyone who knows me at all can tell you that I eat A LOT. And yet I struggle to finish even the lunch-sized meals here. That's just crazy.

5. Biking. Yes, I do look forward to that. I sure can use the exercise. But I haven't biked in 10 years. And even though I just need to ride from home to the bus and on campus, it's not so fun when it's all on hilly slopes.

6. Toilet Paper. 'nuff said. Ha! Seriously, I'm not gonna elaborate. If you're from India, you'd understand.

Anyway, the other piece of news is that I'm going to be the official first year MBA blogger for Leeds and will also be bringing in the international student perspective. That's something I'm really excited about. Blogging, as you can see, is totally my thing and I'm stoked that I can contribute to the school's marketing and communications efforts. I don't have a link to the blog yet (it should be set up by tomorrow hopefully) but it's going to be on http://www.cuboulderblogs.com. In fact, I've also created a new Posterous blog for this purpose which will Autopost to the official Leeds blog. Check that out at http://mba.aviraj.com.

So, finally this post is done. It's been lying in my drafts for well over 2 months now so it's relieving to get this off my chest.

Uhh, wish me luck? :) Cheers!