INSEAD Week 4

As I write I am downloading a powerful antivirus program called Kaspersky. I reviewed a lot AV software to get rid of the worm on my computer. This worm kept infecting my memory sticks (I disinfect them easily now), and blocked my access to the websites of AV program vendors as well as Microsoft. This is an old virus from over a year ago - its called conficker or else follows the conficker model. I learned how to disable part of the worm’s functionality so I could access the antivirus website and download their latest software.
And for the hours I spend doing this, I wonder how much of life I’m missing out on considering the weather is finally turning up, and there is a forest complete with deer, boars, and foxes, *in my backyard*.
I got my new car on Tuesday. And I *love* it! If you ever thought it would be empowering to drive your own car across the European highways, well, it absolutely is. However, France is a police state with respect to motor traffic. Identifying whether it’s legal to park in a given space for a given amount of time is unbelievably stressful in a crowded downtown district. And they make use of automated speeding cameras, one of which caught me last night. It was a 90 kmh zone, and my heavy foot late at night in the deserted rode put me at 105 kmh. To put that in perspective, that’s going 65mph in a 56mph zone. That’s ticket worthy. Not looking forward to sorting out how to find my 140euro ticket (going exchange rate: 1.4 dollars to the euro!) since the car owner address on record is still the previous owner’s. My roommate had the same experience in roughly the same location that same evening.
Doesn’t change the fact that I love my car. It is a stick, 1999 Renault Clio, blue, petite, and absolutely responsive. Last night I took my roommate to Paris, and door to door from my forested hamlet to the cabaret smack in the middle of the Champs-Elysees it was 1 hour. Definitely feeling the empowerment after 2 weeks of bumming rides of people.
So speaking of the car, and deer, turns out we have to be very careful driving on the forest roads. Last night as we were returning after a long but disappointing night in the City of Lights, a fully matured buck carrying a beautiful set of antlers bolted across the road about 20 meters ahead of my car, itself going about 100kph. Not a lot of math tells us that I was less than a second away from becoming an accomplished if perhaps personally maimed deer hunter. By the way there’s a lot of awareness on campus for drunk driving. One of the principal ways in which students have been injured in the past is drunk driving in the forest in their tiny cars - they say that in an accident, the deer and boars running around will usually win. Years ago the Dean had to make an unfortunate phone call to the parents of two students because of that.
Between the student body and the administration, everyone puts in a lot of effort to ensure a lot of camaraderie on campus. How to accomplish this? Lots and lots of socializing! That’s part of what you are accepting in an MBA, not just net present value valuations, double entry bookkeeping, and monopsony buyer theory, but the connections you have with your fellow students after you graduate. After a year, if there’s a great esprit de corps (I always felt a lot of this at my undergrad institution), then that can serve everyone in the future. If instead there was a lot of acrimony over the year, then that damages the network going forward. This opens up a discussion on self selecting groups and elitism, to which my response is, “If I know you and I trust you, I’m going to help you when you need it”, no matter whether you’re associated with a brand of any organization or not. And I wish, but don’t expect, others to treat me the same way. And if I don’t know you? Well I can only hope to have a positive influence anyways through the minute macro effects of the career I will choose.

In the meantime, I’m going to speed on European autoroutes:



Also I wanted to finally post the forest video I owed from last week...

INSEAD, Week 3

Life at INSEAD is starting to settle into the rhythm we can expect for the next few periods. I now have a local bank account, a mobile phone plan, a new Nokia E63 , and very very soon, a car (a 1999 Renault Clio). Looking forward to regional trips, and I’ve already promised some people I’ll help them go clubbing in Paris on weekend nights with it.

Today is Sunday, a day of rest. In France Sunday is a day of rest whether you want it to be or not, and if you’re not careful, Saturday quickly becomes a day of rest as well after a late morning following a night of revelry. Scarce business hours are maintained very strongly. We’re in classes all day every day, so going to school and getting personal administration done are mutually exclusive tasks. Today I cooked three times! I cooked an omelette with fried peppers and onions for breakfast accompanied by tea and rye loaf with brie cheese, a very elegant pasta with white and the rest of the brie for lunch (Provencal spices, salt ad pepper), and steak and rice with more fried onions for dinner. My roommate from China got a few mouthfuls of the steak and didn’t regurgitate, so it passes. A delicious day, and I’m happily full.

INSEAD’s core curriculum for the first period contains these courses; .1 Prices and Markets (another name for the Microeconomics we all know and love), 2. Uncertainty, Data, and Judgement (that’s one course, not three) which captures Probability Statistics, and how not to make an ass of oneself in gambling kinds of situations. 3. Financial Markets and Valuation evidently taught by the runner up for Austin Powers’ Dr. Evil until Mike Myers decided to play the part himself (I’m serious, all our professor needs is a shaved scalp and a white pussycat to stroke and he’s him, accent, attitude and all. If you ever read this, Professor, know that I actually really enjoy your courses and you’re a fantastic instructor. . . ) (phew) Then come the “soft skills” courses, those are Ethics and Leaderships. No, the Leadership classes aren’t all taught on ropes courses, but I wish they were. Ethics is actually really interesting. I like all of the discussions where we’re debating shades of grey – which I usually debate while coming from their dark side.

Speaking of the finance class (because it really is fascinating, Professor) I was noting that the course isn’t teachable without interjecting precepts of good ol’ capitalist thought which, true to form, Professor provides in generous servings. He emphasized above all else the value of "maximizing the size of the pie" (like, as opposed to consideration of that pastry baker's free time), and that maximum economic efficiency was enabled by the combination of price knowledge, private property, and greed. (Greed, you know, like in the academic sense . . . ). That opening class made me imagine what it would have been like for students behind the old iron curtain to take an economics class - I'm sure they got their dose of the party line while they were still absorbing the course syllabus too - must discussion of the prevailing philosophy of economic management precede the rest of a finance course in any society? Does the study of finance exist independent of the values and political philophy containing it, or is it always a colossus with clay feet? Makes me wonder what they're learning right now over at Tsing Hua. "Well, first you hack into foreign companys' servers, harvest whatever intellectual property you couldn't get from earlier joint ventures, and then use that edge to develop the harmonious and yet newly competitive society. Above all keep the nation's currency domestic and undervalued". I'm just kidding, I'm sure our peers over there are learning all of the free market theory we are. But I wonder if they are as surprised as we are when it comes time to apply theories like consumer value and pricing efficiency to the mundane act of buying a cell phone plan and realizing that practically there are only ever two or three cell phone carriers to choose from inside these free markets we're all members of. .

My roommates have each been sick the past two weeks. Last week on Saturday there was a party sponsored by one of the management consultancies (brand name, you’ve heard of them, don’t need mentioning in case their recruiters manage to lurk my blog). For many it went until 4am, and folks didn’t get home until 5. That really screwed up the week that follows for a lot of us – there were a lot of sleepy folks on Monday, and the academic schedule and homework commitments for the first three days were relentlessly unforgiving. Fatigue took its toll on peoples’ immune systems. Wednesday morning saw many people coughing throughout lecture. Amazing that with two sick roommates I’ve remained healthy. Come a short respite Thursday morning , everyone got in what personal and admin activities they could. My teammate got a perm (you look great!), I put a downpayment on my car.

Now let’s see, I need to put up a picture of something. What do I have . . . (browsing through my Flip camera videos) I will try to upload a few videos (and if you watch carefully, I even risk blowing my anonymity – could this be a start of a trend towards full disclosure . . . ? Scary . . . ) The first video is as titled, a snowy entry to campus. The second video is during a trip with Outward Bound (like a ropes course, but very organizational theory oriented). Hmm, Blogger's not letting me put up the second video, (why am I still using this service?) So perhaps I'll add the Outward Bound video to the next post.

Week 2

A week of registration, paperwork, and early socializing
has passed - between the heavy schedule at school, and the
short french work schedule and workweek, it's really
hard to get anything done outside of class.  Remaining
major tasks include getting a car and cell phone plan.
As promised, this post has three images - the first is one
I made showing the relative size of France vs. some states
in the Western US.  I think if you put California and Nevada
together, you have a landmass pretty close to the size of
France.  For some reason I was curious about that.

Second image - the omelette I made with Indian spices
borrowed from my roommate who hails from their source.
He taught me a recipe for a simple Indian sauce oriented
toward vegetarians.  To which I added chicken.

Third image - some of my teammates, among whom by sheer
coincidence, is my second roommate from China.  Here's hoping we
don't kill each other by the end of the semester!  Pictured are teammates
from Greece and Zimbabwe, and missing is my Lebanese teammate.
Top that for diversity Harvard Business School! 

MBA

(changes: edited for spelling) I arrived in Fontainebleau two days ago. The town is located about
one hour south of Paris by train. I'm set up in a house I arranged
with my classmate Bo while I was in Shanghai. This house is awesome.
It's quite big, and there is ample room for the three housemates (plus
a charming girl guest who's been hanging out here since we moved in).
All this means that I've started my year at INSEAD. I was
fortunate enough to get into this excellent program, and equally
fortunate that they took me back in after I deferred my acceptance for
one year to pursue my entrepreneurial aspirations in Shenzhen and
Shanghai.
INSEAD has two campuse. One is here in France, the other is in
Singapore. Students decide whether they want to spend the whole year
in one place or the other, or split the year between the two. There
are two intakes of students, one every January, and one every august.
The January intakes enjoy the opportunity and challenge to find a
summer internship with an investment bank, consulting firm, or in
industry. Those choices are similar to the career choices students
must make upon graduating, along with one more, which is
entrepreneurship.
I remain keen on entrepreneurship, and that is my main reason for
intending to transfer to Singapore later in the year because it is
known to have stronger entrepreneurship electives. However, under the
burden of a student loan, the odds are stacked against my pursuing
that for several years.
With each post I am posting at least one photo, and due to that I
must formally issue an IOU to the reader who I hope will understand as
I have typed this entire post on the torture device known as the
iPhone, and can not send photo attachments for emailed posts. Expect
the next weekly post to have a second replacement photo plus an
additional one due to interest. My early MBA skills calculate this to
be an interest rate of 5200%.