Only about three months have come and gone since my last post about my summer in San Francisco. I think we're reaching a new record here, folks. So I've decided to make this a massive, bandwidth-bustingly pic-heavy post to make up for my disappearance over the last several months.
My summer internship experience was a great one and it ended in mid-August. The second year of school starts on Thursday, 9/27. So what have I been doing the entire time?
Besides much career-focused deliberating, general soul-searching, and Instagramming any and all food items that come my way, I decided to make a trip to the National Association of Asian MBAs (NAAMBA) conference and expo a few weeks ago. I was already in the Bay area so I figured it couldn't hurt to peruse around. There, I ran into one of our Parker Career Center directors, Phil Han:
I also ran into my name (almost-)twin, another MBA student who goes to USC Marshall:
Continue clicking to read more!
I was fortunate enough to listen to some great speakers from industry leaders, and Kimberly-Clark especially showcased a strong presence at the conference.
This was the Kimberly-Clark panel, which consisted of speakers Bill He and Isis Wu.
Of course I needed to sneak a food pic in. While this chocolate mousse dessert looks rather unassuming and uninspired, the outer mousse enveloped a rich creme brulee filling. Amazing.
OK now on to the fun stuff! So I did a...solo trip...to Hawaii. Kauai, to be exact. I was there for exactly seven days and the first half was spent in Poipu and the latter half was spent in Princeville/Hanalei. So some of my readers may remember that I went on a family vacation to Oahu and Maui last year, right before business school. This year, I did another trip to Hawaii, but I wanted less of the city/resorts and more hiking & adventure. I've always wanted to go to Kauai and thought that seven days would be enough time to experience most of what the island has to offer. So I booked my tickets & condos (AA was running a pretty great promotion on non-stop flights, score!) and off I went.
I have to say, Kauai is one gorgeous island. A whole section of the periphery is the Na'Pali coast, where movies such as Jurassic Park were filmed. Much of the island is uninhabited, and thus Kauai is able to preserve its native tropical flora.
I wanted to take advantage of my seven days on the island as much as possible so I booked a helicopter tour of the island right away. Here are some sights:
These pics are totally undoctored, by the way. And they're all taken with my iPhone, no less!
Double rainbows!!
And of course I did a lot of loitering meandering at the amazing beaches:
I was feeling a bit too beach bum-like by day five so I decided to bite the bullet and do the Kalalau Trail by myself. I didn't do the entire 22-mile round trip hike (this will require state park permits and an overnight stay in the middle of the hike!), but I thought that the eight-mile round trip hike to see the Hanakapi'ai Falls was totally doable.
Pile of rocks found at Hanakapi'ai Beach.
This was one of many stream crossings. I totally thought I could cross in my sneakers...then I slipped and fell. Hence having to resort to the following:
"Are you *bleeping* kidding me right now?" Was what was going through my head.
Yes this is the trail. The pile of big rocks IS the trail. Fun stuff. But then it all led to this...
I clearly still had the energy to smile and do a touristy pose while at it. I was completely suffering inside, however. The hike back literally sapped the last ounce of energy/calorie/water/sanity I had in stock but I still made it out in one piece, (relatively) unscathed. The entire event took six hours!!!
Oh, and I also ate in HI. Don't worry, the lack of food pics doesn't mean I starved myself. 50% of my diet, however, consisted of shaved ice. This was one great perk of traveling alone: I was not beholden to my family members' dietary needs and could eat all the shaved ice I desired.
I hope this post made up for the last three months of my cyber-disappearance!
