Quick note before I leave for Day 2 about the highlights of yesterday.

I met a lot of great people, including my "superiors", a fellow London Business School MBA2006 graduate and two girls who are pioneering the Marketing Rotation Program at Amex like me, including a Wharton MBA graduate who has the same rotation schedule.

Of course, a great part of the day was dedicated to administrative things, starting with getting my laptop, which is nowadays necessary to get started. I have now a brand new Thinkpad - that's cool. My only complain is that I have to use Lotus Notes ;)

Otherwise, much of my day and I guess much of this first week is reading documents to get up to speed with this business I don't know, especially as I have been assigned a new project (small businesses in southern Europe). I am looking forward to the meetings with various people through the service which have been scheduled for me.

I'll let you know.

Update: I forgot to say that we had a pleasant walk in Hyde Park after dinner Raquel and I - London is so lovely in the summertime. While we're in a temporary accomodation in Bayswater the park is on our doorstep, so we have to enjoy it... before we move South to Victoria next week.

I had a wonderful week in Mexico on the Maya Riviera and after Saturday in Paris celebrating my birthday* in advance with my family, I am now back in London - for good.

I'm starting with American Express in like 10 hours. I'll let you know how Day 1 went. Should be all good - I've met part of my Amex team at the start of the month so I'm not too worried.

It's a strange time and hopefully the end of a transition phase: I like "adventure" but I am looking forward to be settled for the next months. For the moment, I'm in a (very nice) temporary studio and I have to focus on my return to a fulltime job.

And I want to split this blog into at least a diary and a marketing-oriented blog.

*: My actual birthday is Friday and I’ll be celebrating at the Volunteer. Readers in London are welcome. It starts at 8pm.

My MBA is officially over. Last week was the last one on our beloved campus in the beautiful Sussex Place terrace and my diploma should follow very soon.

I just posted about this very hot week on the Admission blog, trying to capture the events commemorating the end of the programme and Olivier has had time to write "this is over" on his blog before leaving for a trip to Thailand and leaving the door open on the future: "and then, who knows..."

As for me, I'll always look upon these two amazing years in London, Paris and Los Angeles as some of the best of my life and I am now ready for the next challenge: my 18-month rotation programme at American Express, starting in London later this month before packing for Sydney in January and New York City 6 months later if all goes according to the plan. Because, yes "then, who knows" :)

My wife dearly wants a cat but she’s a bit allergic to cat hair and the little furball would be an issue with our relocations to London, Sydney and New York in the next 18 months.

But I have now found the perfect solution: I’ll adopt the word CAT!

It’s still available on the 1000-Word Page, “a new way to advertise online at the crossroads between online business and artistic experimentation” and which consists of a homepage of 1000 popular words, actually 968 last time I checked since 32 are gone and are now linking to their respective buyers.

My last entry about mySpace ended being quoted on the back of the FT. I just discovered last week from a fellow MBA2006 student. I thought he was kidding but he assured me he wasn't so I checked on Factiva. Needless to say that I then scanned the article from the library for my personal records. My 10 lines of fame :)