Life as an MBA in Lausanne

This week in school...

2007-08-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

Another picture of our camping in Namibia...

Before I get too behind in what I am doing, trying to catch up from my summer break, a little bit on what I am doing now.
It has been really nice to be back and see everyone after summer break. We don't all look so exhausted, and we've had time to go out after class and visit, because we haven't had too much homework.
The week started with crisis management. It was a simulated exercise where we pretended we were working for a chemical factor that had potential leaked chemicals (cyanide) in the river. The program was run by BBC reporters, complete with video cameras and protesters. It was really interesting to find out how reporters work, and even more so to learn how we react on camera.
The rest of the week was negotiation, a workshop run by CMPartners. We learned how to negotiate, using skills we already know, but in a more organised fashion. We also learned how to influence people and their thoughts through rational reasoning. It was a really good 2.5 days. Hopefully this will come in handy not only in work situations, but in salary discussions as well.

Yesterday night the Africans in our class held a party, with Ethiopian food and a West African band.
Today I went to Evian with some friends on the ferry. It is a cute little town, with lots of nice cafes on Lake Geneva (Leman).

That's it for now...

1 week in Namibia

2007-08-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

After the South Africa trip I and 6 other friends from school rented Land Rovers and drove up the South African coast into Namibia. On the way up we stayed mainly on dirt roads and drove as close to the beach as possible. It was an amazing trip. The Land Rovers came fully equipped with everything you need for camping, dishes, pots, pans, silverware, sleeping bags, pillows, mini-fridge, utensils... complete with 2 tents on top of each truck. The tents folded out pretty easily and had a ladder that slid down so we could crawl up.
The first day we made it as far as Lambert's Bay from Cape Town. Originally we had planned to stay at a hotel, but when we arrived the one hotel was full, so it became our first night of camping. We found a beautiful spot, it was right above the beach. That night we found a restaurant to eat at, and then made a campfire and drank wine until midnight or so... Jonathan woke up first in the morning and made our first 'camp' meal on the propane stove; toast and instant coffee. There was a bathroom with a shower that came with the site, but it was entirely too cold to shower, so we skipped it for the day.
We left around 11 am and began our way to Namibia. We stopped in Springbok for lunch, were we managed to check our email for the last time that week (little did we know... yes we are a bit addicted to electronic connections to the outside world, we discovered). We also went grocery shopping, because this night we planned on camping out. We made reservations at Ai-Ais, near Fish River Canyon.

Around 6pm, just after sunset, we crossed the border into Namibia with little trouble. We drove into the evening, maybe 10pm... It was an amazing drive, mostly on dirt roads. Every night in Namibia we could see the Milky Way and millions of stars. The drive to the campsite was impressive, we could see little other than the dust kicked up from the 2 trucks. In either direction we could see stars, and the shadow of land that seemed to be desert. As we made are way to the campsite we saw a gate and then beyond the campsite, with what seemed to be a least 200 other camp vehicles... I wasn't surprised because online, it seemed that this was a pretty popular spot, but it was a large congregation of people for the middle of the desert.

We couldn't see too much around us, but settled in to set up camp and make dinner. Jonathan became the chef, while Tom, OJ and I sent up tents. Everyone else helped start dinner. We didn't have too much wood, so Gloria, Jeroen and I went searching for wood.... We managed to find a branch close to the entrance of the camp and were quite proud of it, as we carried it back. The truck came equipped with an axe, and OJ promptly got to work trying to chop it, in his blazer I might add (I of course have a picture of this). He had little success... so Jeroen tried, in his scarf (another good picture). In the end the thing proved un-choppable, we just put it in the fire, it turned a little black, and then tried to gather some smaller things that would burn.

The next morning we woke up to discover the desert. Ai-Ais also has hot mineral springs that also supplied water to the pool. So a few of us went swimming after breakfast. Then we did our laundry, it was a funny sight, with socks hanging off windshield wipers and clothes hanging up everywhere. But everything in the desert dries quickly, even my jeans were dry in less than a half an hour. We took off around 11am. On the way out we managed to see some baboons playing in the mountains. It was about an hour's drive, and maybe 30km to the Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world.

Fish River Canyon was quite impressive. It is hard to imagine what it is like here when it does rain. The ground throughout Namibia is quite sandy and rocky, so the entire area must flood, but the majority of the time everywhere looks completely parched.

We drove a bit further to go to eat lunch at the Fish River Canyon lodge, and then made our way to Seeheim. I think it was here, were the torturing of random insects began, at lunch that is. A bee was attracted to the soda OJ was drinking and became quite bothersome... Serena is very against the hurting of insects... At this point we weren't too bad, and just shut the bee off in a cup and poured some more coke inside... later on we were a bit meaner (in Keetmanshoop) and mustard was poured on him...

So Seeheim... we arrived in Seeheim in time to watch the sunset, something Tom had been trying to do the entire trip. Seeheim makes the map in Namibia, but it is little more than the hotel we stayed at (5? buildings), and a train station across from the buildings. The hotel was basic but nice, and in the middle of nowhere. While we were waiting for them to make us dinner, we hung out outside, OJ started to teach me how to waltz, and at one point we tried to start a band and make music with the bottles and containers we had... not so nice sounding, but fun none the less. The veggie meal was okay, but the meat has remained unidentified. The hotel had a bar which was decorated with all sorts of animals, mounted of course. There was a zebra, a springbok, and antelope... and a bunch of others. There was a stuffed baboon drinking a bear in the corner. The women said her husband hunted near there and shot all of them. Most interesting was the beer that could be on tap; there were two taps, the outlet for the beer... I am not sure how to say this nicely... were the two hind ends of two antelope... male and female. It was funny.

The next morning we left as usual around 11 and headed towards the red sand dunes. The farm (Farm Namtib) we decided to stay at the edge of the dunes was amazing. It had the nicest bathroom we had seen since we had left Cape Town. The people running it raised sheep and goats, and supplemented their income with the hotel and campsite. The picture is dusk at this farm. We camped out here for the night, and made our best campfire meal. I made a veggie stew, and there were baked potatoes and meat and chicken of course.

Unfortunately as we arrived that evening the brakes went on one of the trucks, so our next day's trip was to Keetmanshoop to get them fixed, instead of going further into the red dunes (so now I have a reason to go back). We got the break line fixed and bled (2x) for 18 euro!!! while we ate lunch. Then we started to head back to toward the South African border.

We made it to the border and camped out about 10km at campsite that night. Gloria had been wanting to sleep in the truck since we started out, so this night she did... She used the alarm on the keys to lock the door... and the alarm went off twice, once for about 5 minutes while she searched for them. The other campers hated us I am sure. So at 6am they blew their horns.

The next day we finished the trip off, driving straight through to Cape Town. We stayed the next 2 nights in a nice little boutique hotel on the water in Camps Bay. Tom spoke to the owner and managed to get us the suite, which had a huge balcony and a jacuzzi outside. Tom, Jeroen and I stayed until Monday, while the others went home on Sunday morning. We went out that night for my birthday dinner, which was really cool. It was nice to spend my 29th birthday in Cape Town. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited.

The next day Tom, Jeroen and I woke up to do so some sightseeing. As it was my birthday Tom said we would do whatever I wanted. So to complete the desert safari, we went to the Cape of Good Hope, and stopped on the way back to see some penguins on the coast. That night we met up with Sophie, Joelle and Mark to here up their road trip through South Africa, and eat dinner at a seafood restaurant by the docks of Cape Town.

Monday morning we woke up at 3:30/4 to get in the taxi for our flight back to Switzerland... we were delayed taking off, as the incoming flight was late, and they tried to fix the entertainment system (which they ended up fixing while we were in the air). Because of the delay however, we stayed the night in Frankfurt, and got home on Tuesday morning.

Wednesday I was in Lausanne. Thursday I left for a week in Bulgaria, with a day in Greece. The following Saturday I went to Egypt (Sharm El Sheik). I will write more of this later...

3.5 weeks in : South Africa

2007-07-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

I have wanted to go to Africa for a while now, and finally got my chance this summer! As part of the IMD program, the Discovery Expedition, our class traveled to South Africa. The class, minus 3 members, left on the 22nd of June. 3 members of our class, Stephen's, Stephane's, and Alistair's wives were all scheduled to delivery their babies this week (talk about unplanned coordination!).

The picture is of the Soweto shanty town.

As a quick overview, because I will not be able to write about everything, we visited WITS business school, an AIDS hospice, an investment bank, various local businesses, Soweto, vineyards, local charity organisations, a museum commemorating the 1976 children protests and were visited by various figures of government and players in the transition, a film producer, current business students... The IMD MBA diary describes all events in great detail, if you would like to read more.

In South Africa we were hosted by WITS business and studied the post-Apartheid situation in the country. We visited both Johannesburg and Cape Town and were able to have amazing guest speakers explain their role in the economy, from the leader of the then current worker's strike to a discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Board we
had view points from many sides of the current economic situation.
Some of the key issues facing the country include a massive skills shortage and poverty. During Apartheid non-whites had a limited and challenging educational situation, which has resulted in the majority of the population, more than 70% with very few skills. The current challenge, in addition to overcoming racism, is to help educate this portion of the population. This combined with the fact nearly 1 in 5 South Africans are HIV positive presents enormous challenges.
South Africa is an absolutely stunningly beautiful place. The contrast however, between rich and poor is striking. In one section of town you may see beautiful buildings, decadent houses, vast amounts of wealth... while in Soweto, or the "Ring of Fire" that surrounds Cape Town, you will see shanty towns that seem to stretch on forever in the distance, reflecting the enormous poverty in the country. This has the unfortunate outcome of rampant crime (it is common for most residents to be robbed at gunpoint at least once a year if not more), and lack of hope, as is the case in many emerging economies.
We were fortunate to meet and speak with Musi Manyamalala, a 21 year old film student who produced a real life documentary on train surfing, a past time of many disadvantaged youth in South Africa. In his film he learns to train surf to be able to film the teenagers who perform this stunt. To train surf is to ride on the roofs of the train cars carefully dancing around the high voltage wires, or hanging beneath the cars. If you have a chance to view this short piece, it is incredibly powerful, but I must warn you, incredibly sad.
We also had the opportunity to visit a children's AIDS hospice, where approximately 70% of the children were infected with the virus.
There is hope and tremendous opportunity in the country however. Many programs are being put in place to help educate the public, both in classical subjects (reading, writing, math, etc) as well as in Health education, to help minimize the spread of AIDS. South Africa has entered into agreements with major drug companies so ARVs (anti-retroviral) drugs are available at discount prices, and is working to make these drugs affordable to all. Companies are putting in place health treatment programs, as well as minority promotion programs. As the cost of labor and living is less than most western countries, South Africa holds great opportunities for investment.
Overall the trip was amazing and informative. It was a huge contrast to life in Switzerland, and shared some of the challenges I had seen while living in Bulgaria.

The trip was a great ending to the intensive 6 months at IMD, and a way to get to know all of our classmates better, outside the pressure environment.
At the end of the trip, myself and 6 other classmates had decided to take a road trip to Namibia in Land Rovers. So my next entry will describe our trip...

Life in Switzerland and a vist to Ukraine,

2007-07-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

First, I am sorry I haven't written in so long, apparently since March 17th...
IMD
After that week we had our first round of exams a brief break and then started our second building block. More accounting and finance, some organizational behaviour, political economy, strategy, innovation and product design and a few others.
Admittedly the second semester was more relaxed than the first, but still very busy. We learned a lot in our courses - but we also continued to learn a lot about ourselves and group dynamics. This building block's study groups were way more relaxed. It could have been that we were all really tired, or maybe we learned how to manage group dynamics a bit better - to look beneath the surface and see "what's really going on" as one professor might say. I have to admit sometimes it felt like we were dual majoring in psychology.
The good news is that the entire class passed our exams in the final building block in June.

Ukraine
We had a 4 day Friday to Monday (2nd weekend in April I believe) break in between the two building blocks, and I, a friend from class, Paul, and his friend Sne, decided to visit the Ukraine, and Chernoble. I have a friend from the PC, Sarah, that was living there at that time, so she helped us organise the trip. Kiev was beautiful, lots of beautiful buildings, shops, restaurants and clubs. However overall, the country faces a lot of the same problems Bulgaria is facing now - poverty, lack of infrastructure, corruption, lack of opportunity for youth - outside the capital.
Another friend, Rebecca, from the PC was also visiting Sarah at the same time, so it worked out nicely. All 5 of us took a 3 hour drive to Chernoble Saturday. It was a really powerful and sad place to visit. There are several memorials to the people who died during the explosion and to those who were involved in the clean up. Even eerier was the wall of names commemorating those who died, with space still left for those still there and will die soon. Immediately following the disaster people were paid several 1000 dollars a day to be involved in the clean up effort - a death sentence - but because of the economic situation, people took on and still take on this work - because it will allow their families a chance at a better life. Immediately following the explosion workers generally only lived for a week, now the time is somewhat longer, but people still get sick.
1 of the reactors was still functioning, but due to be shut down soon.
The town were all the workers lived was an upper class city built to be a model city, complete with an indoor swimming pool, is now a ghost town. That evening, all the inhabitants were cleared out, forced to leave everything behind as it was contaminated. The architecture, as in all former communist blok countries, is the same - identical to Bulgaria, which gave me a strange feeling. It could have been any of the towns I had visited previously, only here there were no people.
We were not allowed to walk on the grass, because it was contaminated. All the moss in the area had turned red from exposure.
We passed by a town which had to be buried because of the contimanation level. Everywhere we went, we had a radiation meter, measuring the alpha and gamma levels - so we would know how long we could stay at a particular place.
The disaster occurred in April. In May was to be the town's holiday, as each town in Eastern Europe celebrates a day for the town, and the residents were preparing for this celebration. The reminants of this are still in place - a bumper car area and a a brand new ferris wheel.
The 3 hour drive back to Kiev was pretty quiet, all of us tired, and also contemplating what we had just seen.

That evening we went out - and I had the unfortunate incident of leaving my wallet in the taxi on the way home - loosing all of my documents. So- Sunday was spent in another Eastern European police station. It is almost good I always had to register in Bulgaria, because now I am very familar with how these places work. I also learned that I can understand about 60% of Russian.

This weekend...

2007-03-17T04:44:00.000-07:00

I have tons of work and things I should be doing right now - like possibly going to the grocery store because if I miss its narrow operating hours today, I will have no food at home all week. I debate how much this matters sometimes, because I am so rarely there and eat most of my meals here, but I like the whole "shopping" experience.
This week, Thursday, we had a course from an actor from London, about body language, public speaking, etc. He was absolutely amazing. He selected a few students to go to the front of the classroom, and within 5 minutes had them improved 100%. It was truly amazing. For one student, who tended to over use the umms, uhs, the actor set up two chairs about 10 feet apart. As he walked between the two chairs he was to think about what he was going to say - and when he arrived at the chair, he was to say one sentence. After this excercise he regave the speach. It was a complete difference, from the removal of the ums, and uhs, to the tone of voice.
Today was a pit stop meeting with a VC (venture capitalist). IMD organised a meeting with him to review our start-up projects, to make sure we are on the right track, and to get some guidance and input from an expert on how to improve our value offering. It was really interesting, and he had some very good ideas on how we can improve bringing our disposable syringe to the market.
This evening I will be going running. As there is little time to find a gym - as the IMD gym is nice, but doesn't have as much equipment I would like, I have started running everyday. It is actually quite nice, it gives us a break from the inside of the building, and breaks up the day between class and study group. My friend Paul and I go everyday, but more and more people are starting to join us to varying degrees and a few different running groups have started. We generally run along the lake and it is beautiful, especially on clear days; the Alps and Evian are right across from us, and the tops of the mountains are snow covered. Generally, because we go around 6 we also get to watch the sunset as well, which for the past few days has been all sorts of yellow, reds and oranges in a pink and blue sky.
IMD actually took it easy on us this week, with very little homework - but we have a few papers and projects due the next two weeks leading up to exams, so I should really not be thinking of this as 'free' time. Exams start next (two weeks from yesterday) Friday and run all the through the following week. The longest will be Finance - for 5.5 hours!!!! Then it is vacation :)
Well 2 hours until my personal development coach session so I should get going... The personal development is a stream/course/elective that we are offered, with a psychoanalyst to develop ourselves and how we interact with people. I have gone to one session so far, which was interesting, we have a total of 20.
Have a good week :)

I haven't written in a while...

2007-03-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a run, and started thinking that I haven't written in a while... apparently 11 Feb... We have been really busy, I am not sure where to start. We have had a ton of cases to read, projects and papers. The first was an economics project about the pharmaceutical industry.
The most, I guess you could say intensive, project was the Integrative Project. The project was assigned on a Thursday afternoon - XFM bicycles. The case was about a Chinese company hoping to convert their bicycle factory into a motor bicycle factory. Our assignment was to prepare and present a marketing strategy for the company, including segmenting the market, financials, everything. We had to be prepared to present our preliminary plan Friday morning and the final on Saturday morning. Every group was assigned times to present between 8am and 12pm - my group was assigned 8am...
So we after reviewing the case about an hour, we started. Over the next 60 hours I think we may have slept a combined total of 5 hours, mostly done on the floor of our study roooms. I actually managed on only 1 can of red bull as well. As tired as we were and as stressful as it could be at times, especially on very little sleep and trying to be rational and think logically - it was a lot of fun. When we finally reached Saturday morning and did our presentation, we were relieved and happy it was over and went out for a group breakfast.
That night we went out to Red Club, but it was a pretty quiet evening, and no one drank too much.
Last week, we had an exam on Friday, and 2 projects (Economics and Marketing) with papers due on Friday as well. So it was a long week... but we managed to get everything done and submitted on time.
This week has been calm, not too much to do, so it has be strange not to function under pressure - for me at least. Now I am lazy, and don't feel like reading - but I have about 50 pages or so for tomorrow. I also have to rewrite the leadership paper from February... new and improved with more metaphors and graphs... somehow I think I will come out short on the metaphors - but I think I can make some graphs for them.
In other news & social life... Sadly there isn't much time for that lately. I spend my walks home at night day dreaming about last year, the long, rattling train and bus rides to Sofia and around Bulgaria... going out almost every weekend and spending long afternoons at cafes. I have found I miss Bulgaria a lot, and that my Bulgarian speaking is starting to get a little worse. My friend Eva was here (from BG, but now living in Paris) this weekend, and she will only speak to me in Bulgarian.
Saturday night we went to dinner at another student's house which was a lot of fun. There were about 7 other students, some of her friends from the Netherlands, and Eva and her boyfriend. Sunday I studied.. but managed to find time to go out to Malaysian food :).
My newest travel news: For Easter I will be going to Kiev! So I will be able to add another country to my list :). We will also visit Chernoble. I will go with 2 friends from class, Brant and Paul, and Paul's friend from NY. It should be fun, and a good break from school and studying.
Well I must get going... I have no time to proofread tonight, so I am sorry if it is disorganised. Hope all is going well with everyone!

Picture Update

2007-02-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

I added some more pictures to the yahoo photos page of Lausanne that a friend took. The same website as before http://photos.yahoo.com/jah_8

Sunday night is here - This morning I got up, started my laundry, went running at the gym with my friend Brant, went grocery shopping for the next few days at school, and then sat down for an afternoon of accounting and case studies... I can't believe its after 10. I am going to go home now, start reading my 4 chapters of "Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies" and have a glass of red wine.
This week we have a ton of reading today, and tomorrow we have to dress up, and go to visit city hall at night. Then its more accounting fun. Tuesday have the class all day.
We have started planning our trip to Africa - after the school trip. Right now it is looking like Zanzibar for a little while, maybe Mt Kilimanjaro and then Eastern Europe, Turkey... true we only have a few weeks... but we can try :)
Next week I am helping Carolina and the Brazilians have a party for Carnivale. It should be a lot of fun. We will have Samba dancers and a band... we are going to try to get people to dress up.
Have a good week!

A day off...

2007-02-10T14:22:00.000-08:00

A day off... or kind of. It is strange here. 1 day here seem like 2... at least. This week we had a project (report and presentation) due Friday. This means I did not sleep Thursday putting together the report with my group. All-in-all, I think it was okay, but I can't claim that I really could write correctly or understand much when we were putting the final touches on the report Friday evening. I wanted to try to go skiing tomorrow - but I don't think it will happen. Today I am still feeling the affects of a day of no sleep - kind of the equivalent feeling of what I think it would be to be run over by a mack truck.
But all is well aside from that. Today we had class in the morning, economics. Our economics teacher is great. He teaches really well and he is hilarious. Lately he has started to pick on the sleeping people in class. Luckily I have not fallen asleep in class yet - but I have been up to 3 red bull in a day at times.
Tonight I was home trying to read - but was falling asleep, so I decided to come to school to catch up on some emails and call my parents. I don't think I have spoken to them since the beginning of last month. I have been here for a month, actually. In some ways it seems it has gone by really quickly, but in other ways it feels like I have known people here for a lot longer than that.
Right now I am sitting in a study room in the dungeon with 2 of my classmates, Mikhail (Russia) and OJ (Norway). Mikhail is doing work on his start-up project and OJ is doing accounting. I am feeling guilty for not working more tonight. OJ would like me to add he says hello to everyone :) .
Steve - "Survivor Lake Geneva" - Is great... It kinda feels like that, only sometimes we wish we could vote out a study group member... :) joking of course.
Our study groups... we are in groups of 7 or 8 who we do all our projects with. The idea is not to be democratic, but come to a consensus in our decisions. It is really interesting working with a group and we learn a lot from each other. That said, group work can be really painful sometimes... what could take you an hour by yourself can take 10 hours in the group. It might be 2am and you still don't agree and class starts at 8am, and you can never add anymore hours to the day... as much as we may wish.
Well now its late - and I was going to go to be early.

I loaded some pictures online, just of the club last week, and the people I am in school with. So they are at http://photos.yahoo.com/jah_8, in a folder called '2007-01 IMD in Jan' or something the like.
Also, if you would like to know what I am doing on a day by day basis, there are 2 students tasked with maintaining the IMD blog, Kudzi (who lives in my building) and Robert. The link is: http://www.imd.ch/programs/mba/programstructure/mba_diary.cfm

Thats all for now,
ttyl

Another night in the dungeon...

2007-02-05T12:52:00.000-08:00

So we are working on slides for a presentation due Wednesday... we still aren't quite close to being finished, but had done a lot of research towards it - and were redirected today by the professor. I managed to finish my leadership paper this weekend :), 4500 words. But for tomorrow I still need to read a case study and 2 chapters in one book and one chapter in another... I am behind, but so is the whole class or most of us anyway. Today looks like it will be another sleepless night.
Accounting... I have never taken a subject that I just didn't understand, until we started accounting. And when I understand one concept, it quickly changes to another topic... For accounting you must erase your mind of everything you know and all logic you have ever accepted (if you are an engineer at least), and start over. The frustration is compounded because you know what the answer is - but you have to do it in T- tables.... But thankfully we won't have another class until sometime next week.
Finance is much better... lots of numbers and formulas - I am happy.
This weekend we did manage to go out one night - to the best club we have found in Lausanne so far, Club Red. It was fun, I finished my Leadership paper at about 10:30pm on Saturday night and then went to the club at around midnight. We all stayed until the kicked us out at 5am. It was great to get out and do something else. There are pictures, so at some point - when I have a break, I will get organised and load them online.
I woke up at 10:30am, went running, and then started on the presentation that is do on Wednesday and polishing up my Leadership paper. I wish I could say I was behind because I wasn't organising my time well - but I think all I do is school work at all times, except for a few hours Saturday night. Even lunch today was spent discussing my start up company...
We are learning a lot, but we constantly feel behind - I don't think we will realise exactly how much we are learning until later.
There is talk of trying to leave this Saturday night and going to Verbier, to relax Saturday night and possibly ski Sunday... I guess we will see...
We get a 4 day weekend in March after exams... so soon a break will come, although I may sleep through the entire thing :)
Gotta run to read :)

another sunday afternoon

2007-01-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

So this week like all others has been busy, but not so bad. We met on Wednesday with our start-up companies that we will be working with to help them formulate a business plan and develop their business. Because we went late, IMD provided us with a cocktail hour. Its cool because we get wine, beer and dinner. The waiter is cool, because he gives us the left over alcohol to take down to our study rooms. So I think we have drank (but not too much) every night this week. So college life part II now...
I can see the work starting to build up though. We have our start up projects, which will last until the end of May. In addition we have a market research project to do, due next Monday, which is about the disease management industry, and I have to write a 5000 word leadership essay. In addition we have a ton of reading this week, and case studies to evaluate... oh I forgot there is also a marketing project on cross border retail we have to do. So that is work life.
This weekend my friend Eva from Bulgaria was in town. Her boyfriend lives here and works for Philip Morris. So I went out with her Friday and Saturday night which was fun - and good as well because she wouldn't speak English to me, so I got to practice my Bulgarian, which has gone down somewhat - although I still understand everything. Friday night we went to the Whitehorse, which is a local pub near school, and from there went to a kind of dive bar named Jaggers. A few friends from IMD met up with us there and then we went to another club. We didn't get home until 5am. Thankfully this past Saturday we had no classes (the last time for a long time) so I got to sleep in some.
I went home Friday night to change, at about 10pm. I left a light on in my apartment. When I came home at 5am, the light was off and someone had put a vacuum cleaner nozzle/crevice tool in my sink drain. Really weird.
Last night was an early night, I got home at 1am. Eva and Martin (Eva's bf) and I just went to a pub and had a drink and then went home. I was planning on getting up early - but my body (after a week of 4 hours of sleep or so) declared otherwise. So I woke up at 11am, and then went over to Eva's and she made Martin, a Spanish friend of theirs and me breakfast :).
And now - as always - I am at school studying... Soon I will be going to the gym to run though.
That's about it for this week - I am off to write my leadership paper - I have no idea what I will write.

A good book

2007-01-23T13:48:00.000-08:00

I can't remember what day it is right now... but judging from homework I think it is Tuesday? Only Tuesday... I am really tired, I think I might be getting a bit sick, but no matter, we still have class and seemingly endless homework. I like this though. I am happy to be so busy, and I think next year I will look back on this time with good memories.
One of the first things they told us when we started was that the competition was getting into the school, now that that is over, we are all on equal ground and should help eachother. So the environment here is really friendly. It is strange that we are all only 90, but it is also nice. We spend our time in the basement of our lecture hall, affectionately or maybe masochistically called the dungeon. Each study group is assigned a study room, and study groups are 7 to 8 people. We all have lockers down here too. So this is basically where we all live.
So I just finished one of our reading assignments - a really good book, actually, "The Monk and the Riddle" by Randy Komisar. So I will give you two quotes from the book, that I really liked.

"With four to five months away from the habits and routines that I had chained myself to at home, this was a precious time. What was the sense of rushing down a beaten path with a map I had cribbed from others? This was my trip, my life, and I needed my own journey. I decided to throw away the itinerary and see where this might lead."
" Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset - time- to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of your life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say you've been doing what you truly care about today? What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do that right now?"

I really liked both of these. During my time in Bulgaria I learned to focus less on my plan on more on my journey - to enjoy each day for what happened, the unexpected things - like my kids doing funny things in class or whatever may happen.... and take short unexpected trips to different places, not worrying so much. I was spontaneous somewhat before I left, but now more so. I am also way more relaxed. Time/deadlines don't bother me so much anymore.

While I used to stress about them, now I am calm as they approach.
As for what I am doing - I am happy. Although living in Bulgaria was difficult at times, although going to school here is a lot of work and little sleep, I like it, and I wouldn't change it. I think in Bulgaria I had the chance to do a lot of things, meet a lot of people that I would never have otherwise, and I think or at least hope I had a positive effect on them.

The book is about someone who is kind of a venture capitalist, and his life. It makes you think or evaluate where you are in life and what you are doing, so it was a kinda cool revalation to discover I really am where I want to be... although a little more sleep would be nice.

I am still bringing my camera with me... maybe tomorrow? I think I will just take pictures of inside IMD... lol
have a good night.

first year at IMD

2007-01-21T04:02:00.000-08:00

So I can't believe I have only been in school for a week and a half. We all agree that it really seems a lot longer... maybe just in hours spent together. This week we have had so many readings, case studies.... My classes this past week started at 8 am, and sometimes lasted until 8pm, or assigned group work until 11:30... It has been good fun, but I am exhausted.
IMD has a different approach to business school. We take leadership classes, which is similar to organisational behaviour. This really translates as our teacher is a psychologist. So it has made for an interesting week.
First I will introduce my group though. I am in a study group of 8, including myself. We are 5 guys and 3 women. Tom(Germany), Tomo(Japan), Pablo(Pablo), Alex (England) and Ivica (Croatia). The 2 other women are from Kate (China) and Carol(Brazil). IMD assigns a study group, and we work together for all of our assignments for all of our classes. So we review our case studies together, our reading and participate in all events together... It makes for interesting conversation, and even more interesting disagreements. But really, I think I am very lucky with our group. We are disfunctional, like the rest of the groups, but we do really get along well, and even after homework hang out with eachother voluntarily at dinner or at the bar. So we are together a lot. We will have another group for our start-up project (we help a start up business fix their problems or launch into the market) and in March we will be assigned into a different study group.
So this week we had a lot of leadership courses. We were assigned a 'group therapist/consultatnt', she isn't quite a psychologist, but she is something similar. She would talk to us about how we interact with eachother, and how we interact with ourselves. It was really interesting to get an outside view on this though.
On Thursday we had an outdoor activity in which she was the facilitator. We went to a retreat type place and spent all day outside doing group challenges. An example... they created a square, with some plastic tape, maybe 10 ft by 10ft. they placed a large jug... with maybe 20 litres of water in it. They gave us 2 planks, 2 metal poles, 2 long sticks of bamboo, and some rope. We had to figure out how to get the water out of the center of the area, without walking in the square, dragging the water. So we had to work together to figure out how to do this. We were video taped throughout all the exercises and then we had to evaluate later on how we interacted together.
So really all this week we have been learning about the psychological aspect of group dynamics.
Lunches at IMD... ARE AMAZING!!! The food is really good. Everyday we have a regular main dish with meat and vegetarian, tons of salads and sides, cheeses, bread... and the desert table is amazing. I think everyday we have 10 different deserts. I will have to take a picture...
Well I best get going... I guess I will be updating on Sundays. I will try to take my camera with me to take pictures this week and load them up.

Holidays in Europe...

2007-01-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

Holidays in Europe sounds a lot more romantic than it actually was, but the month of December flew by, and I can't believe it is half way through January already. Leaving the Peace Corps and finishing up all the paper work and medical stuff was way more than I thought it would be. My last official Peace Corps day was the 21st, but my last teaching day was the week before. I had intended to teach up until Christmas, but at the last minute the PC changed their minds and told me Wednesday to stop teaching Thursday. The next week was spent going back and forth to Sofia for appointments, packing and moving my stuff to Sofia. My friend Maria offered to let me use her apartment that was currently unoccupied - she rents it, so I started consolidating everything there.
The marines, that guard the US Embassy, had an aparment that they very graciously offered to let me use that was slightly bigger, so I ended up staying there for my last days in Bulgaria. I also spent Christmas with them at diplomats' houses. It was all really nice and I even had American food, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, collard greens.... it was really nice. It was like going home for a few hours...
I ended up shipping most of my stuff cargo instead of paying excess baggage fees. When traveling within Europe you are limited to 20kg. I ended up having at least 70kg. So it was cheaper to ship through a cargo company that flew my bags on Austrian Airlines, and have them arrive before me. I couldn't get them until the 3rd of January, but I will get to why in a minute.
The night before I left I spent with Eva and Maria, two of my good Bulgarian friends. Eva's boyfriend actually lives in Lausanne, so they were giving me tips on the city, and letting me know what to expect. They did tell me everything is closed on Sunday's and holidays, so when I arrived, nothing would be open. This means no grocery stores or anything. There would be one store near the train station. This was good advice :).
I left Bulgaria on the 31st at 6:30am. The Bulgarian metal detector people are difficult. I arrived early to make sure everything went smoothly. In Sofia there is a new terminal, and the airlines are slowly moving over to that one so I wanted to make sure I would make the flight. The metal detector people did not open until 6. This is not because they weren't there however. The group of customs and metal detector people were smoking coffee for an hour. Finally they opened. I had forgotton my key chain swiss army knife in my purse on my keys. So they asked me to talk out my keys and told me I couldn't have it. This is not a problem. However they started talking in Bulgarian deciding how much they could sell it for, thinking I didn't understand them. This annoyed me, so they found out I understood them quickly. So they gave me back my knife, and I went back to the Alitalia counter. They couldn't put it in my bags, but I could leave it at the counter and someday, when I go back to Sofia I can get it, or someone can pick it up for me. So when I went back through I asked if I should take off my boots or anything -they said no - and told them I left the knife with Alitalia. This made them angry. So I went through again, my boots beeped again, and so they started yelling at me. Where is the knife, take off your boots, take out the computer, no, don't touch your bags, wanding me and whatever. Then they went through everything I had. It took me saying loud enough for everyone to hear that the knife was at Alitalia to make the guy stop. I think they are just bored there.
So with that behind me I borded the plane to Switzerland. What Eva told me proved true, and everything was closed. I took a cab from the train station, with my bags, to IMD to pick up my keys and then went on to the apartment. This cost (and it was not very far) 26 Swiss Francs (CHF). The swapped my apartment with another students, so I ended up in apartment 17 instead of 3, and the stuff I had bought from the previous tenant was not there. This didn't matter so much because I had no food anyway. That night I decided to go to the IMD gathering at the Movenpick hotel. We had a lot of fun, and it was good to meet some of my future classmates. Unfortunately I forgot my camera. I will try to start taking some pictures soon though. Dinner was great though, and the conversation was really interesting. It is really cool to sit at a table with people from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Argentina, Scotland, Japan, France...
I was really tired though, after not having slept much in the past 3 days, so shortly after midnight I went home to sleep.
The next day was also a holiday (the 1st, as was the 2nd) so everything was closed. On the second however the grocery stores did open for a few hours so I was finally able to buy some food. The 31st I found a small sandwich shop open and bought a few sandwiches and had some Cliff bars left over from the stock Sean (US Marine in Sofia) gave me.
On the 3rd we rented a car. It was me, Pablo (Argentina) and George (Zimbabwe) and their families. We went to IKEA and to the airport to pick up my bags. So that evening I finally felt like I was at home after getting my apartment properly set up. We also found out from Pablo that we could sit outside IMD and get wireless internet. So that night we all met up and sat outside in the cold, dark and rain - checking our email. Addiction maybe...? but it was nice to finally be able to read emails after being disconnected for so long.
Saturday we had a group party at a local bar and met even more people from our class. On Monday the administrative stuff for school began, and so my week started at 8am Monday.
It is getting late though now... so I will go for now. I will write more later about my first week of school and my new classmates.