Last week was very hectic and full of activities (read as tests, assignments and parties)....b-school is fun to start with and it gets better and better!
Firstly, the classwork is probably hitting the peak now and concepts and discussions are slowly getting tougher and more complicated but definitely more informative for me, coming from zero economics and finance background. It was interesting to discuss the Fed's interest cuts last week...few weeks ago I wouldn't have cared or understood much about it...but now I do and appreciate the knowledge...and in my 'expert' opinion he cut it 25bp too much! We also submitted our first finance assignment, after long ours of work and an almost-night-out! The NPV and the IRRs, both worked out well and I also learnt many new ways of using excel...thanks to Love(pronounced Loowe), my Swedish group mate and a banker from London.
The leading people course threw a interesting challenge at us too...each group was given a box with some instructions and tools and two eggs. The instructions however, were in a foreign language that only one member of the team could understand...and to our surprise it read that we had to build a 'vehicle' that could carry the egg safely land an egg from second floor! An hour later when we walked back to the class,proud of our invention, I saw that some of the most unusual shapes for a parachute had been developed in less than an hour....and surprisingly 13 out of the 15 worked perfectly fine as the entire class cheered each of them...needless to say that our section beat the other section 13 - 12!
The economics class has started getting more strategic and hence more fun...we have now moved from pricing discussions to markets and strategic thinking...the right amount of strategy can win you wine and champagne in class! I guess Pushan has understood our incentive systems well!
As I said it was not all class and no party at INSEAD, last week's bar of the week was at a karaoke place where most of us made fools of ourselves...I managed a decent Summer of 69 with Hugo but me and Adi,together, killed "stairway to heaven"...sorry LedZep, but I think its your fault for making the song so damn difficult!
Friday night was BBQ time at Heritage, the condo where we stay, and the turn out was huge to celebrate two b'days of our class...food and drink flowed hard and fast till we were thrown out by the security...the party however continued at Zouk, a fancy night club at Spore where we continued to dance and party into the morning....no points for guessing what time i got up on Saturday!
Thursday night was more chilled out and relaxing...we went out with some of the people from our previous promotion for what is called a 'buddy' dinner...it was great to hear the stories of their promotion, their memories and learnings...and the wine and Spanish omlette at the beautiful open air restaurant was just the perfect place to unwind.
Thanks to Adi(and Nitin), we also ended up watching India's last two victories in the twenty20...the desis at INSEAD even put the match ahead of the economics quiz and stayed together to support the young indian team...patriotism eh!
The national weeks have begun in INSEAD, this week being the Korea-Japan-Aussie week...lots of traditional stuff like food, drinks, activities, etc, from these countries are being showcased...i also bought my first INSEAD T-shirt!
And if you are still wondering how to hunt elephants, here's the answer...give the elephants enough incentives and they'll hunt themselves! Don't believe me? Ask an economist if you want!
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1 comment:
Well said.
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