Karaoke Nights

We are now 2 weeks into INSEAD and I'm still getting used to the pace of life. It really hits you. Classes and career activities together account for 8:30am - 8:30pm everyday, and then begins the "play hard" part of INSEAD. A beer to calm the nerves is followed by local cuisine which is followed by Vodka shots poured down your throat by P3s which is followed by a few choice moves on the dance floor with local celebrities at ZOUK, MOS, Attica, Loof, St. James, China One or a host of other Singaporean hotspots and if you are really lucky, you end up, like me, at a Karaoke session at 3am busting out the best of ABBA at the top of your voice till 5am. Of course the next day then begins at 8:30am again and you learn that the probability of the Statistics professor cold-calling you while you have a hangover is 100%.

I've been told my blog is a bit too factual by the select few who know my identity. They claim that they really want to know more about my perspectives and conversations. Also I promised them that I would throw the word "Sex" into every entry in order to boost my Google ratings. So from now on watch out for these two additional features.

Student elections take place in the coming week on a section basis. There will be new social reps, career reps, academic and IT and Operations reps. Now I dont mean to belittle those standing for Academic, IT and Operations reps, but seriously ... come on. The social rep positions sound wicked though. Most importantly they will co-ordinate in-class games such as professor bingo. This game involves every student throwing a certain phrase into their respective dialogue/q&a with a given professor on a given day. For example if the phrase chosen is "nymph" the answer to "What is the discount rate here?" could be "Like a nymph's chances of survival at INSEAD, the WACC here is a horrendous 13%." This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the potential for this and related games. I am especially looking forward to this game with our new Hawaiian Economics Professor. He has a penchant for Beach and Surfer analogies, the words Aloha, Awesome, Quizzie-Poo and Cowabunga Dude. You know the kind of person that did 3 MIT PhDs while working for NASA? Thats him, except at some point he decided enough was enough and moved to Hawaii and tried to find his inner cool. He's great. Oh and then there is our statistics professor. Women everywhere are going weak at their knees at the sight of this fine specimen of man. This of course is potentially a huge benefit for the guys in the class due to the Z-curve relative marking system. The chances of the ladies focusing on the dry statistics over the other thoughts they conjure in this class are indeed slim.

Enough of the embarassing attempts at humour that are trivialising the courses. The courses are actually ridiculously fast moving. Material covered in 1 year in undergraduate studies are covered here within weeks and the amount of reading for each class is ferocious. I am already struggling to keep up with the volume and pace of the content. Maybe I wouldn't if I stopped writing this blog and did some work.