Day Zero: Packing

Day Zero
Today I'm in:  Ann Arbor, Michigan

So business school is over.  Two years went by very quickly, although it didn't always feel that way during recruiting or some of the nastier parts of the core curriculum.  Graduation was last weekend (see below for me with my poorly-fitting hat) and the movers are coming the day after tomorrow to pick up my stuff.

I've taken a job with PwC in Chicago, where I'll be working as a senior consultant in the People & Change group of their advisory practice.  It's somewhat of a homecoming for me - PwC acquired my former employer (Diamond Management & Technology Consultants) in 2010 right after I left the company to move to Michigan.  Things have changed a lot since then - Diamond had about 500 employees whereas PwC is several orders of magnitude larger - but all the same, it'll be nice to see a couple of familiar faces around the office.

But enough about work.  I have the rest of my life to work.  With that in mind, I have spent the last five months planning a "last hurrah" trip around the world.  I'll (of course) have vacation at PwC - and finally a little bit of money in my pocket, too! - but it's not likely I'll have this much time off for quite awhile.  Maybe not even until retirement.  So I really wanted to make it count and visit some of the places that have been on my 'must see' list for a few years.

Several hundred hours of researching, Lonely Planet-buying, visa-applying, passport-renewing, ticket-booking and hotel-emailing later, I have what amounts to a 74-day finished product.  Many of my classmates are going on similar trips, but they aren't planning much more than outbound and return plane tickets and a rough sketch of the places they want to go.  I wish I could have done that, but I'm a planner, and basically not brave enough to step off a plane somewhere and figure out hotel accommodations and sightseeing on the fly.  Instead, in true MBA fashion, I have a massive color-coded spreadsheet with all hotels, flights and budget calculators built in (although I'll still probably run out of money halfway through the trip.)

So where am I going?  Here's the rundown:

- Hong Kong
- Taiwan (Taipei & Kaohsiung)
- Singapore
- Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur & Langkawi)
- Thailand (Bangkok & Chiang Mai)
- Laos (Luang Prabang)
- Indonesia (Jakarta, Yogyakarta & Bali)
- South Africa (Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kruger National Park & the Garden Route)
- Zambia and Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls)
- Namibia (Windhoek & Sossusvlei)
- Brazil (Sao Paulo, Rio, Salvador, Recife, Fernando de Noronha & Fortaleza)
- Chile (Santiago, Valparaiso & the Atacama Desert)
- Colombia (Bogota, Cartagena & the Caribbean coast)

I won't be alone on this trip either.  Those of you who know me well know that I don't mind traveling alone, but I definitely could never handle 11 weeks by myself in a bunch of foreign countries.  A series of friends - from business school, from previous jobs, from undergrad, from Chicago - will be meeting up with me in selected spots along the way.  The longest I'll be traveling alone is for two weeks, and the longest someone will be traveling with me is for 11 days.  It's a good balance.

I take off bright and early next Sunday (May 6)... like 6am early.  I've been working on this trip for so long that it's hard to believe it's about to start.  In the meantime, though, I'm working on packing up my apartment (see the photo) and making pretty decent headway.  I'll be checking in again before I leave, so keep an eye out for more here.  Looking forward to getting started!