1st Schoolday

I haven't been writing for two weeks now. I know, I feel at least as bad about not writing as you feel about not having fresh news.

The past two weeks have been crazy, both crammed with classes - I did the Business Foundations course, which I definitely recommend for anybody who has no experience with accounting, finance or math, so far it has definitely made a difference for me - and social events. The first week was classes + homework for approx. 12 hours a day, then dinner or drinks, which means at most 7 hours of sleep a night, but most probably only about 6.

The second week was more interesting. All the new students came on campus and it started to feel more like INSEAD. Questions like "So, you're coming here directly from India?" sometimes led to replies like "Well, I was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Australia, but then went to study in the States; the past five years I have worked in both the US and Japan..." leaving me quite at awe with the "luggage" people bring along to this school. The next time I felt curious I tried to pay more attention to political correctness, so asking an Asian-looking guy with a very strong French accent, I reformulated: "So, what is your background?" - "Well, I'm French (he looks as if he's from around though, so my question is still strongly imprinted on my face)... My grandparents were Chinese... and they moved to France, where I was born. but for the last 4 years I've been living in Singapore..." So nobody IS really what they SEEM to be.

Today, after a heavy weekend of physical work in the team building on the Outward Bound Island, the Bain pool party thereafter, strategic neuronal activity in the General Management Course the day after all that, and a "relaxed" Sunday of reading for the three classes we have on our first day, there came CLASS # 1: Finance. Slides crammed with concepts that I thanked God I knew from Business Foundations - otherwise I would have most probably not get anything, and a strict professor that's been teaching here for 20 years - Gabriel Hawawini, whose book is basically studied around the world. Having in class one of the people who establish what is to be taught in programs all over the globe gives you quite a strong impression on the dimension and quality of the study at INSEAD.

Then the math class came - a.k.a. Uncertainty, Data and Statistics - where I was among the three losers who made a bet with professor Tsetlin and lost 50 bucks. No more dinners for me this week.