Halloween: It's a big deal in the states

From what I can recall when I was a kid, Halloween was a bit of a fizzer in Australia. Trick or treating never really took off, and the whole privacy/child protection/litigation culture stuff really killed that off. Which was good for me, because I was never active enough to bother dressing up and walking around the neighbourhood in a costume, and I always forgot to buy sweets the day of Halloween anyway ...

... Not so in the states. Here it is a BIG DEAL. In San Fran alone, they have this massive street party with around half a million people dressed up in costumes. Not necessarily scary costumes, just costumes of ... well ... anything ...

For us MBAs, the Halloween party is a big one. It begins earlier in the day with the "human costume" competition, where all the guys competed with how they managed to style their facial hair after not shaving for 30 days. Here's the judging panel in the courtyard of our apartment block ...



Then at night, about 80% of the business school (in total, from 2 years, 600+ people) pack into a club ... [insert weird aerial shot here]



All dressed up as various things. We have Harlem Globetrotters, people dressed as famous staff members, lots of doctors and nurses - some people really put HEAPS of effort in.

As for me, I found a big brown hooded thing for $2.50 and a mask for $2 which I managed to put over myself to pass as "the executioner" ... [pictured here with some other people in my year]



This was complete with my weapon (I couldn't find an axe-looking thing, so I just had a wok with "AXE" written on it. It was lame so I kind of ditched it ...)

Happy November!

Blessings
john