Dans le noir

Have had a rather good start to seeing things with new eyes. Classes have helped a bit, particularly our course on successfully managing our professional and personal development that has just started this week and will ultimately result in us writing a development plan for our lives. My dad already makes fun of me as this will not be the only life and development plan I'll have written during my time at IESE, to which I respond: you can never have enough of those. But I digress.

My seeing with new eyes got a new impulse over the last two days with the return of IESE's Doing Good and Doing Well Conference on responsible business - two days full of inspiring guest speakers, participants from all over the world and a lot of food for thought. And it took an interesting turn last night with a new kind of experience - seeing with no eyes. My friend Patricia and I went for dinner at a restaurant called Dans le Noir where you eat and drink in the dark. Complete dark. Blind waiters guide you into the dining room where you suddenly lose your sense of place and time. You feel the table, you learn how to pour yourself a drink without spilling it, you listen differently, your taste buds become more sensitive and your sense of smell seems to weaken. Contrarily to what you would think time seems to fly and dinner is over in the blink of an eye. Funny experience, even though I wonder what it must be like to spend your entire life in the dark...