Done!

My last project report was handed in on Friday. My last exam was this morning. We'll have our last Dinner @ Palais Barret tonight. Tomorrow, we leave for our grad trip to Croatia, returning only for the actual graduation ceremony.

Our time at INSEAD really is coming to an end, isn't it?

From the Cabaret - Making the List

We had the traditional cabaret evening on Thursday. There were loads of good performances, unfortunately it's not possible for me to describe their brilliance, as most of them had to do with our shared experiences while at INSEAD.

What I can do is share one of the videos with you. Enjoy!

One more down...

We just finished our final presentation for Realizing Entrepreneurial Potential. It was fun. In normal Fonty style, the meeting room we were supposed to be in was occupied by someone else's meeting, the video conference to Singapore was eventually set up, but to no-ones surprise, the equipment needed to show our slides was not quite there.

Fortunately, we'd sent our slides last night, so they had printed versions.

That leaves a final paper on Family Firms and the exam for Industrial and Competitive Analysis.

We'll finish off the paper today, and the exam is on Wednesday next week.

Scarily close to the end now.

Courses coming to an end...

It's scary how quickly we've gotten to the end of P5. 10 months goes by so quickly!

We had the last class of Family Firms yesterday. The course is very interesting, as it looks at the different aspects of running and being involved in family businesses.

It was especially interesting for me as my dad, my two uncles, two of my cousins and my brother all run their own companies.

There's still the small matter of writing the project report, but we should be done with that by early next week.

Another course will be over by tomorrow. It's the "Your First Hundred Days." The premise of the course is that you, and three of your class mates, constitute a management team which has just taken over a business. It then, over the course of 2 weeks simulates the first hundred days in the company. This, of course, includes a lot of nasty surprises...

It's been loads of fun, with interactions with "actors" playing all kinds of roles...

After that, all that is left is Industrial and Competitive Analysis, which has a very uneven quality. Certain classes and cases are loads of fun, whereas others are, shall we say, less entertaining.

And, of course, the brilliant Power and Politics. Unfortunately, I didn't get in to the course - I bid 1 lousy point too little... But, I've been sitting in on every session so far and have really enjoyed it.

Barcelona Update

Oh yeah, maybe I should do more than just post nude photos from Barcelona.

What did we get up to? Well, we pretty much just relaxed.

I was in Brussels for an interview on Friday, and went straight to CDG for our Friday night flight to Barcelona.

We arrived there around midnight, so there was barely time for some tapas before crashing in bed.

Saturday was very relaxed, with more tapas and red wine, this time on Las Ramblas. We followed it with a stroll along the shopping streets before heading to dinner and a birthday party for one of our classmates.

Sunday was equally relaxed with a late lunch outside Sagrada Familla, followed by a visit to the Picasso museum before heading back to Fonty. All-in-all a very relaxing and nice weekend.

Singapore Starter Party

DomoDomo wasn't the only one to get smashed yesterday.

A couple of people who started with me in Singapore arranged a huge barbecue for all of us exiled Singaporeans. It was great to see so many of us at once - Fonty is so big, that very often you don't see people that you'd see everyday in Singapore.

What did we do? Oh, the usual... Eating, drinking, beer-chugging competitions, water fights...

It didn't help that I'd done more or less the same thing on Monday evening, at our regular Monday Dinner @ Palais Barret session. This one involved some excellent chinese food with, of all things, Swedish vodka and akvavit to round things off.

Barcelona II

IMG_0992, originally uploaded by hallonman.

... on the other hand, they're quite supportive of the environment as you can tell from the turnout for the "World naked bike ride."

Barcelona

IMG_1026, originally uploaded by hallonman.

Just back from a weekend trip to Barcelona, where not all locals are enthusiastic about the huge crowds of foreign visitors as you can tell from this sign.

Why call it tourist season if we can't shoot them?

Building Business in China

Just came across this video from our trip to China during the P3/P4 break...

The Montybal State Reception

One of the big events at INSEAD is the Montmelian Ball, or MontyBal for short.

It's arranged by the people living in Chateau de Montmelian, and is a very extravagant production, as you can see from this video.

Newsreel depicting the current state of affairs in the Republic of Montybal prior to a state reception to welcome the new Swiss ambassador. There are rumours of revolutionaries outside the capital city.

A nice evening

Of course, I did manage to eventually finish my work, and could head home to enjoy the evening. We ended up having some friends over for a simple, Swedish, dinner of pytt-i-panna.

One of my house mates bought a Wii a while back, so we wrapped up with some tennis, bowling and boxing.

To my surprise, it is all very exhausting as you end up putting your whole body and lots of energy into it.

How did I do? Well, I think I need some more practice.

On signaling and credible commitments

P5 is often a breeze, at least academically. Most of us have only 3 or so credits to take, compared to the 6 or so that we had to take in P2.

This is in order to enable us to go to interviews and finalize those job offers that we're all (ahem..) receiving... For instance, this past week saw one of my friends fly from Singapore to Europe for an interview, and another to fly from Europe to Singapore for interviews.

Of course, the course work isn't necessarily spread even across the period. In my case, a new course kicked off last week that's promising to be both fun as well as intense. It's called Your First Hundred Days. The premise of the course is that you, and your team mates, constitute the management team (CEO, CFO, Operations Director, Sales Director) of a newly acquired company. And, as the name implies, the course takes you through your first hundred days.

We've had two in-class sessions so far, which have both been fun. Equally "fun" have been the emergency emails we've received and been forced to deal with at 1 AM.

I'm really enjoying it.

Another course I'm taking is Industrial and Competitive Analysis, and I spent part of today working on a case involving signaling and credible commitments. Through the actions you take, you can send different signals.

As an example, take the weather here in France. My first four weeks or so in Fonty were very light, course-wise. So I had plenty of time to explore the French country side, travel to see friends I haven't seen in a long time, etc.

During this time, the weather was horrible. Really horrible.

Now, my course work is picking up. And what do you know - the weather this weekend was just brilliant. Around 25 degrees, sunshine. Lovely. Of course, I had to spend a fair chunk of the weekend inside, working.

I can't help but think that the weather in Europe is trying to signal me something.