Saturday, April 19, 2008

I've been INSEAD wacced

Alright, so its been 2 months since my last post. That is admittedly unacceptable, even though someone had to take time out of their schedule to go tie up Bernanke and lock him in a Princeton shed. My more public excuse is that I was INSEAD wacced. Now those of you familiar with street talk know that normally "whacked" is what happens to you when a local warlord decides to get his revenge on you when you've done something stupid. At INSEAD, the local warlord (Prof. Pierre Hillion) "waccs" you instead. Using the power of complicated words and even more complicated graphs he slowly eeks living brain cells out of your head and forces you to go and drown them in Russian Standard vodka.

Until recently I was not familiar with this fine Russian export, but since I last communicated with you, I have been made familiar with the product by our marketing Prof. Apparently once a startup by an overenthusiastic INSEAD student who jointly launched a bank and a vodka by the same name (INSEADers have a reputation for creativity), it is now one of the Top 5 brands of vodka in the world. The bank, is admittedly marginally less successful, partly due to the incentive structure (US$2 and 2 bottles of Vodka per day).

So there you have it, I have summarised everything I have learnt since we last met. Oh yes and apparently there is a Blue Ocean out there somewhere. It's Blue and full of water, let that be a lesson to you.

I have however, has a discreet beverage or two in 4 countries since we last spoke, which is somewhat poor by the standards of my classmates. I've seen a few F1 cars fly by my face, I've seen Hanoi and beautiful Halong Bay, been on a private island with 29 friends and somehow managed to pass a few exams.

More INSEAD madness has ensued in the form of the Great INSEAD Dash - you MUST watch it on www.alex-lili.blogspot.com . I have to say that although Alex and Lili are podgy, lazy and bottom of the class, they are genuises with techie stuff, full respect to them for producing this video.

We've also had Canadian Week and Holland vs German Week. Both were awesome. Although the Canadians were funnier. The Germans had a nail hammering competition as the highlight of their contribution so the Dutch easily "won" their week, mainly by painting the face of everyone they could find orange. Our strategy prof. cleverly taught the Easyjet case while everyone was walking around in orange so that had maximum impact.

What else? Well, my brain is full, my stomach is fuller and I'm off to Paris in 10 days... Too much too quickly...

(btw I am doing an internship in North America so this MBA is genuinely spread over 3 continents for me !)...

Accipiter, 30-40, but I see this more as a game of Anna Kournikova (Worldly) vs. Amelie Mauresmo (Accipiter), you may win the point, but I'm adding much more to the world, its almost Blue Oceany.

1 comment:

makis said...

Class of D08, we want some more!
More posts....more insight....

We, the poor INSEAD applicants, wait impatiently!

(you can feel me because you were in our position)

Good luck with your internship!

Ciao....