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.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The End of Welcome Week
Welcome week ended for P1s on Saturday and week 2 kicks off on Monday Jan 14th. The first week was characterised (as can be expected) by a lot of admin, club applications and introductory lectures. And a lot of socialising....
It was great to get to know our class better and also to get involved in integration with the previous class through joining the clubs. Also we got an insight into some teaching techniques and working in groups to complete tasks. This included both classroom activities as well as the "team building" session on Thursday at Outward Bound on Ubin Island. This was exhilarating in terms of the physical and mental challenges we had to complete in our 5 person groups (which we retain for 4 months).
The week ended with a massive party on Saturday night sponsored by Bain & Co at km8, a beach/pool party on Singapore's Sentosa Island. The party was absolutely spectacular and the mood was brilliant.
Sunday meant catching up on sleep, but also on doing the huge amount of pre-reading .... I looked at the course schedules and timetables today and it is absolutely scary..... what happened to the year-long chillathalon I was expecting?
It was great to get to know our class better and also to get involved in integration with the previous class through joining the clubs. Also we got an insight into some teaching techniques and working in groups to complete tasks. This included both classroom activities as well as the "team building" session on Thursday at Outward Bound on Ubin Island. This was exhilarating in terms of the physical and mental challenges we had to complete in our 5 person groups (which we retain for 4 months).
The week ended with a massive party on Saturday night sponsored by Bain & Co at km8, a beach/pool party on Singapore's Sentosa Island. The party was absolutely spectacular and the mood was brilliant.
Sunday meant catching up on sleep, but also on doing the huge amount of pre-reading .... I looked at the course schedules and timetables today and it is absolutely scary..... what happened to the year-long chillathalon I was expecting?
Monday, January 7, 2008
INSEAD Kicks Off
INSEAD's December 08 promotion had their opening ceremony today. I slept poorly last night, the excitement really got to me given how long I have planned and looked forward to this.
There was a lot of admin in the morning but all very well organised. In the afternoon the Dean of the MBA Programme gave us an informal welcome session. He was a very good speaker, relaxed and fun loving and yet very precise and knowledgeable. I can see how he would also be a great economics lecturer (his subject). He shared a number of statistics about our class with us and also a very basic overview of the coming 12 months. This included things to be watchful of - such as the completely opposite sins of complacency contrasted with being too focused on grades. In keeping with the spirit of the school he highlighted the need to learn by sharing experiences and learning new things from the extremely diverse faculty and student body. Learning and achievement should be paramount, but grades secondary.
He also highlighted the incredible diversity of our class with statistics such as that we now have 30% women at INSEAD and that the there are more than 20 people in our class from each of the following countries: China, India, France, UK, Germany, USA, Canada.
Later in the day we had an official opening ceremony where other life lessons and wisdom were shared. In short -
1) Use this year to find out what you want to do next
2) Be focused and prepared in the manner in which you try to achieve it
3) Do what you love and you will do best at it.
4) True entrepreneurs are extremely passionate about what they do and are driven by the passion, not the opportunism alone. The passion allows the intensity to work as hard as needed to be successful in the face of adversity, where an opportunist without passion would give up.
5) Enjoy INSEAD, be open to the diversity of experience and perspectives and learn from it, embrace it and have fun.
6) You are not invincible - with reward there is risk, be humble and "good".
It may sound like uninspiring "common sense" stuff but it was clear that the eloquence and sense of occassion were inspiring to the 153 INSEADers and their partners.
Throughout the day I met with people from everywhere - I am struggling to remember even 50% but there were management consultants from each of Bain, BCG & McKinsey and other firms from their offices all over the world; bankers from Citigroup, Deutsche, Morgan Stanley & Macquarie; Accountants/Consultants from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst Young & KPMG; Managers or Engineers from P&G, Shell, Schlumberger, Maersk, T-Mobile, Nokia, Motorola, Singapore Airlines; Lawyers from Cleary and Ashurst; Scientists from the leading scientific research institutions; Civil Servants from India, Japan, UK, USA, World Bank and Singapore - I could go on and on and on and the list remains as awe inspiring. And these are my classmates ! I am looking forward to learning from them - in their experiences and stories lies so much....
Tomorrow is about more admin as classes only begin next week..... but I'm still excited. Thursday is an all-day session at Outward Bound - I think its where we do some good old fashioned "team bonding" in our little groups.... more fun.....
All right - more on Friday or maybe Saturday or something..... who knows.....
There was a lot of admin in the morning but all very well organised. In the afternoon the Dean of the MBA Programme gave us an informal welcome session. He was a very good speaker, relaxed and fun loving and yet very precise and knowledgeable. I can see how he would also be a great economics lecturer (his subject). He shared a number of statistics about our class with us and also a very basic overview of the coming 12 months. This included things to be watchful of - such as the completely opposite sins of complacency contrasted with being too focused on grades. In keeping with the spirit of the school he highlighted the need to learn by sharing experiences and learning new things from the extremely diverse faculty and student body. Learning and achievement should be paramount, but grades secondary.
He also highlighted the incredible diversity of our class with statistics such as that we now have 30% women at INSEAD and that the there are more than 20 people in our class from each of the following countries: China, India, France, UK, Germany, USA, Canada.
Later in the day we had an official opening ceremony where other life lessons and wisdom were shared. In short -
1) Use this year to find out what you want to do next
2) Be focused and prepared in the manner in which you try to achieve it
3) Do what you love and you will do best at it.
4) True entrepreneurs are extremely passionate about what they do and are driven by the passion, not the opportunism alone. The passion allows the intensity to work as hard as needed to be successful in the face of adversity, where an opportunist without passion would give up.
5) Enjoy INSEAD, be open to the diversity of experience and perspectives and learn from it, embrace it and have fun.
6) You are not invincible - with reward there is risk, be humble and "good".
It may sound like uninspiring "common sense" stuff but it was clear that the eloquence and sense of occassion were inspiring to the 153 INSEADers and their partners.
Throughout the day I met with people from everywhere - I am struggling to remember even 50% but there were management consultants from each of Bain, BCG & McKinsey and other firms from their offices all over the world; bankers from Citigroup, Deutsche, Morgan Stanley & Macquarie; Accountants/Consultants from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst Young & KPMG; Managers or Engineers from P&G, Shell, Schlumberger, Maersk, T-Mobile, Nokia, Motorola, Singapore Airlines; Lawyers from Cleary and Ashurst; Scientists from the leading scientific research institutions; Civil Servants from India, Japan, UK, USA, World Bank and Singapore - I could go on and on and on and the list remains as awe inspiring. And these are my classmates ! I am looking forward to learning from them - in their experiences and stories lies so much....
Tomorrow is about more admin as classes only begin next week..... but I'm still excited. Thursday is an all-day session at Outward Bound - I think its where we do some good old fashioned "team bonding" in our little groups.... more fun.....
All right - more on Friday or maybe Saturday or something..... who knows.....
Monday, December 24, 2007
Losing my bloginity
This is my first time.
As I start a new journey to an MBA and get some much needed time away from the 9 to who-knows-when at the office, I thought it was a great time to catalogue my thoughts and experiences. On Jan 7th 2008 I start at INSEAD in Singapore and by May hope to be in Fontainebleau, France.
I hope to share here my travels, my conversations and my thoughts over the next year and hopefully beyond.
My ideas and perspectives will of course be shaped by my experiences thus far and I welcome comments and perspectives through the course of the blog.
A bit about me. I've lived, studied and worked all over Asia, in the UK and North America. I was an investment banker. I love China, especially Shanghai and Hong Kong and also Singapore (not in China). I am an economist by training and viewpoint. Nothing excites me like seeing economic growth and most importantly people helping themselves out of poverty and developing a trajectory for growth. I admire the drive to improve, make money and create new products or ideas. I am also excited by new technologies and try to keep abreast of these.
Now that Ive lost my bloginity, I'll be back when Ive learnt a few new moves....
As I start a new journey to an MBA and get some much needed time away from the 9 to who-knows-when at the office, I thought it was a great time to catalogue my thoughts and experiences. On Jan 7th 2008 I start at INSEAD in Singapore and by May hope to be in Fontainebleau, France.
I hope to share here my travels, my conversations and my thoughts over the next year and hopefully beyond.
My ideas and perspectives will of course be shaped by my experiences thus far and I welcome comments and perspectives through the course of the blog.
A bit about me. I've lived, studied and worked all over Asia, in the UK and North America. I was an investment banker. I love China, especially Shanghai and Hong Kong and also Singapore (not in China). I am an economist by training and viewpoint. Nothing excites me like seeing economic growth and most importantly people helping themselves out of poverty and developing a trajectory for growth. I admire the drive to improve, make money and create new products or ideas. I am also excited by new technologies and try to keep abreast of these.
Now that Ive lost my bloginity, I'll be back when Ive learnt a few new moves....
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