Shitty day today, I can read English but the words don’t seem to make sense: I should get a break but I have so much English grammar to cover that I just haven’t got the time
Verbal part went shitty, critical reasoning 6 wrong out of 16… maybe because I chatted to a near naked Guénola…God she is beautiful… I hate hormones.
Study alone day. A bit boring all by yourself in the Motel6 room. Around 4 I went to StarBucks where they have, next to great coffee, a WIFI internet connection where I can video conference with Guénola. We chatted quite a while and it is silly to experience that you can talk and see but you can’t touch. At least, not without making the lens of your webcam very dirty.
After that, I went to Notre dame de Namur University to buy a sweater and a present for my love. Then I biked around to find a fitness center. In the end, I found a great place called Planet Granite, where you can do fitness and rock climb for “just” $80 a month. I think a see a pattern: everything that is “stuff” is cheap, everything that is service is “extremely expensive”. To top of a relaxed day I ate Thai food and bought some salad for tomorrow’s lunch at Safeway (opened 24 hrs a day: what a invention)
Again loaded with assignments from SB. Most grammar which I don’t resent like a lot of people do and, because I don’t resent it, I’m good at it: I’m such a simple guy!
After the meeting with SB at 17.00 I went to a lovely Indian Restaurant where I was the only customer. I loved these guys and the food was terrific. I will surely come back here
At 7.30 first GMAT class with Shawn Berry’s GMAT Service (SB).
I must have woken him up because it takes a while before he opens the door. But then, there he is: the guy who is going to help me to score a major GMAT score
….
Your 4 is like a nine and your 9 looks like a y or a g. Nobody else was around so he was talking to me and not to some child standing next to me. So I guess I have to change my writing. 
Together we go over the Quantative part of the GMAT and I am embarrassed by the stupid mistakes I made .Part of life, I guess. I’m amazed by the speed by which he solves all the questions…. This guy is brainy!
After a few hours I am outside and my head is spinning. If somebody would have asked me, “what did you learn” I would have said: “Whats-a-huntin’-boy?” What am I hunting? A darn good score, but I saw that I am far from it, still.
Today I have to study on my own in the hotel and i start at 0900 after a small breakfast at Hobees: lovely place, lovely people but a kind of expensive to do on a daily basis. So I decide to get some breakfast shit in the afternoon. Complaining to my favourite gay-friend helps and he suggest driving me to a car rental. I said that since I’m Dutch I would be better of with a bike and he said he would loooooooove to drive to Taaaaaaarget or something. At Target I buy a mountain bike for a mere 70$ and I’m outside before I know it.
Biking back was not so easy since I didn’t have a map and Americans seems to know their country only when one can relate to a major highway…. Sir, I’m on a bike… O, well, then I don’t know, sorry.
2 hours laters, 15 miles of serious uphill (no fun) and downhill (load of fun and a shot of adrenaline) I arrive at my hotel: to study again. Today is also the first time I should take a full GMAT test. Since I lost track of the time it’s not really representative but I score a 660 (out of 800) which is about the same as I did before in The Netherlands.
After doing a full fletched GMAT I go back to the town center of Belmont (The town center of Belmont is more a collection of parking lots with some buildings around it next to train station). I look for something to eat, but I don’t want to bike in the dark without knowing the place very well, so I land at Togo’s: a friendly sandwich shop. I order a sandwich and the guy asks me if I want French of Dutch bread. “How the heck looks does Dutch bread look like then” I ask. He shows me the bread, but I am sure we don’t have that in Holland. I tell this to the guy behind the counter and he sighs ”It is just a name sir, just a name”. So, I guess I am degraded to something that is just a name. That’s cool: I feel like a cool space being or something….just a name… ET phone hoooooome.
Packin’, and being a bit negative about leaving my love for so long. Accepting it as a fact helps and after a lovely evening I fall asleep, dreaming about whats coming. I don’t have to wait long: at 04.00 the buzzer wakes me up. At 06.00 I am at the airport checking in which leaves 3 hours to go to work, do some stuff and return for boarding. So where am I going? Well I am going to San Francisco because it seems that one of the greatest GMAT teachers live there and I just need a higher score on the test.
G-what? Well the GMAT is a standardized test Business Schools (MBA’s) use to compare candidates on Quantative and Verbal skills. In a 4.5 hour test you have to write 2 essays, 3 verbal tests (Critical Reasoning, Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension) and 3 mathematics tests (2* Problem solving and 1 Data Sufficiency test). Well so far so good, I did the test and I scored a 640 (in a range of 200 to 800) which is not bad (85th percentile) but for top schools you just need to do better, and ambitious as I am, I want to go to a top-school (INSEAD, ranked 1st in Europe, 7th in the world), hence I have to do something to improve.
In Belmont, CA, lives the only person in the world who scored twice a perfect 800 on this test and next to being brainy he seems to be a good teacher as well. I respect his unique way of approaching things so I decide to go for it: A 4-week long immersion in Verbal and Quantative skills in order to improve 60 points. I aim at scoring a 700 which is about 10% higher then I did score previously. Previously I half-heartedly prepared with an online Princeton Review course. This obviously did not do it for me (too many distractions in daily life) so I resort to this course.
So, off we go, SFO here I come!
