Inside the London MBA

GLAM

What is GLAM you may ask? A new David Bowie album, which would be a fairly decent follow to "Fame." Nope. It is the Global Leadership Assessment for Managers (known as GLAM henceforth). Effectively, it is London Business School's attempt to illustrate our weaknesses and strengths (if we have any). They also contract out to do a personality survey that tells us if we are ambitious or aimless, arrogant or modest, open or closed. Now, I like critical feedback as much as the next guy, but some of it is really harsh. I am apparently aimless, lack all sympathy towards other people, and untrusting. Now I know why all of my ex-girlfriends left me. Has GLAM been a success? It is very difficult to say. Maybe this is the kind of thing that can only be measured in many years when we are either effective or ineffective leaders.

The most fun part of it so far, however, has been a very well structured simulation where we had to run a small specialty motor company against other groups. We had to choose all of the variables from sales to marketing to R & D. It was an all day event, and I always love these strategic games that force people to make difficult high-level decisions. Unfortunately, they did not announce a winner since they said that the purpose was to practice group dynamics and leadership traits. But I am willing to declare my group the clear winner -- highest market share, highest revenue, and best press releases. Okay, so maybe I am not so aimless and closed, but maybe not so modest either.

Poppin' Bottles

To the victors go the spoils. Witness below study group D5, winners of the Stream D Business Statistics Case Competition, enjoying a fine bottle of Veuve Clicquot, provided to us by our stats professor in recognition of our victory.

Pictured from left to right are Rishi from the UK, Athena from Greece, Rohan from India, Hamish from the U.S. and Leo from Brazil. Not pictured is Zaza from Georgia.

The case competition occurred on our last day of Statistics, and involved being given about 4 hours to solve a business case and create a presentation based on our results. The winners were chosen based on the quality of the regression model, analysis of the implications of the model, overall good looks of the group and the presentation itself.

We capped off a marathon session of statistics with dinner at a great little Greek restaurant in Camden (organized by our favorite Greek, Athena). The food and drink allowed us to unwind after a long day, and we left 95% confident that we'll be seeing more champagne in our future. 

Last turn of the warm-up lap

Yep that is it, vacation is almost officially over. September has been the month to start working on soft skills. After the CV workshop, followed by a one to one session with a coach and a half-day networking class, we spent a whole day dedicated to work on presentation skills.

Divided into groups of 6 students, one professional trainer video taped us and delivered a customised feedback. One of the most useful and engaging workshops so far, as we could comment not only on our performance but also on other's. The MBA office did a good job at grouping us differently from our usual study groups. More chances to get to know us, more nationalities to learn from, more professional backgrounds to interact with. I had some pretty useful take aways from that session: I need to be more concise, less wordy! Well after watching the tape, it's clear that I need to work on that. Not sure I should apply the same to my blog posts (I haven't received any feedback yet so I will continue :)

Thursday, Friday and Saturday (yes Saturday, you know that day which with Sunday forms weekends) we'll be wrapping up the month working on our global leadership skills. A global school has to develop global leadership skills, and I am looking forward to that 3 day class!

Then Monday, core courses kick off. The reading required for these is pretty thorough, a good mix of case studies and text books. On top of that the second year MBAs will be all back! Not only the campus is gonna be much busier but the student association activity is gonna take another dimension! Man, I haven't been that busy in months, since I resigned from my previous job...

They're kidding, right?

Contemporary Strategy Analysis: Concepts, Techniques, Applications, With Cases     by Robert M. Grant      (Paperback - 31 Aug 2007) 1 Used & new from £285.24

***FYI***Response from Lecturer***Phew!

Here is the link for the Blackwells copy:

http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/display_product_info.jsp?isbn=9781405163095

And here’s the relevant Amazon copy:

Contemporary Strategy Analysis by R.M. Grant (Paperback - 19 April 2007) Buy new: £29.99 £23.99

Why did you choose London Business School?.....

......the question I heard most during the 'Ambassador Tours' I did this weekend for the Open House Event at the school.

Open House Events

I was asked (very nicely) by someone from the Admissions Committee if I would not mind helping out on a Saturday lunchtime, showing prospective students around the school campus. I deliberated, wondered if I had space in my schedule, then realised that free lunch and beers in the Windsor were the highly prized award - SOLD! On a more serious note, I actually did want to get the chance to take people around MY school, somewhere I am proud of, and have the opportunity to chat in real terms as to why I chose the school over my other choices.

So we toured the campus and I was indeed bombarded by a number of questions from eager students, wanting to discover the 'real deal' about the school, the MBA programme and the reasons of a bona fide student for choosing the 'London Advantage'. I was somewhat surprised at some of the questions and when asked what the school indemnity policy was ("should I fall out of a library window or something"!!) politely pointed I was merely a glorified tour guide, moving on quickly to talk about my own spin on why London Business School is the best 'fit ' for me:

1. I personally believe it is the only top tier school that really does manage to get the right 'work hard/play 
    hard' balance and enables its students to develop a capture on work/life balance from the start.

2. The international diversity really IS a unique selling point over the US equivalent and as a Brit I am
    genuinely an 'ethnic minority' for the first time in my own country! There is not another school in the
    world that can claim to have 91% international diversity in terms of the host country whilst still managing
    to be located in one of the key cities in the world....plenty of European schools obviously have a great
    international mix but very few of these can boast a 2 year program OR major city anywhere nearby.

3. The students, school and staff do not take themselves too seriously and everyone knows exactly what a
    great brand London Business School without needing to 'sell' the school at every opportunity. It is a
    great place to learn, an amazing community to be a part of and an AWESOME place to socialise!

4.   Top MBA + London life + Great People = A Fantastic Experience......enough said I feel

Now before anyone reading this writes to the Admissions Committee asking how much I am being paid to put this stuff in my blog, I want to point out we are given a completely free reign when blogging and all of the above has been extracted from the dark recesses of my brain....I am a pretty honest type of bloke, and certainly not afraid to speak my mind when something does not work (as BT customer services will tell you!) but it just happens that the school has got it right and I am happy to have no gripes at this point.

So if you really want to know why people choose the school just pop along and ask us - the great thing about having such a diverse mix of people is that everyone will have a slightly different spin on it. The only real way to find out the 'weighted average' of opinions is to keep asking as many London MBAs as you can get your hands on and then read the reviews....that is what I did and can happily say it was 100% the right choice for me.

Roll on the 'London Advantage Oktoberfest' next weekend and please remember if you are going to attend an event that I happen to be doing tours at, I know NOTHING about indemnity or insurance!!!!

Enjoy these links and if you feel London is right for you then we hope to see some of around NW1!

FT MBA Rankings

London Business School News

Wikipedia - London Business School 

Sore body and a full stomach

Yesterday, my Spanish flatmate D was singing Manu Chao’s Me Gustas Tu and since our American flatmate hadn’t heard of him, we let him listen to it (from my ipod) and showed him a video from his Mano Negra times. Seeing a young boy dancing on the video reminded me of the girl from Madonna’s Hung Up video. And this in turn had me jumping up and down to the beats, ready for a run – or better yet, for yoga. I was told that Triyoga in Primrose Hill was where Madonna goes for yoga so I looked their schedule up and found a Yoga 1 course at 15:00.

Invited my best friend to come along (she has been battling allergies all week). I ran to campus to pick up my bike and we cycled to the studio – one of my new favorite places in London.

A cute café up front, smells of incense, warm wood floors and furnishing, and racks of super-high-quality yogawear. 20% student discount. Yeah. Mats, polsters and blocks were all provided in each room. The main one had a little stage up front for the instructor, and colorful window panes. Sunshine pouring in cheerfully. I hadn’t done yoga in over 3 months, except for the Kundalini session I went with S to at the International Youth Hostel last week. It was wonderful to feel the down and up dog stretches again – building up the heat through deep breathing and holding simple poses. I’m plenty sore today.

Heavy drinking before and during our Karaoke session at LuckyVoice might’ve added to the pain.

Now though, my stomach is happy – full of a wonderful Chinese lunch-dinner and mooncakes organized by a Singaporean and a Malaysian to celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. The best part was debating over the "right" versions of the holiday legends. Apparently my versions have been Americanized.

Little Hanoi

One of the best things about London that I have discovered is that one can be in this city but at the same time experience a slice of life (and a pint of the local brew) from almost any culture or civilisation in the modern world.

This was a long weekend and that too a badly planned one. The weather was nice, mostly sunny, my Indian bones weren't chilling and would have been the perfect occassion to have planned a trip to the continent or at least to some place outside of London. Since the realisation dawned only about Saturday evening leaving me with not much time to venture out of the city, a fellow foodie and I embarked upon a project to make the most of what remained of the weekend and to try out some unusual cuisine, the choice for the evening being, Vietnamese.

We went to a place called Little Hanoi (about a 15 minute walk from Bank Station), where the main street is lined with Vietnamese restaurants on both sides, offering a wide variety of Vietnamese cuisine at very affordable rates (read student rates). We chose a place called Cafe Vietnam (or thereabouts) and plunged into ordering roast duck, beef noodles, chicken starters (some form of chicken wings) and my favourite part, Bia Hue! Even though my friend seemed to have enjoyed the food greatly, I am afraid I preferred the Bia Hue! It's in these moments that I tell myself, that it is often not the destination (here, liking or not liking the food) but the journey (the experience of trying out new things) that matters. [In case you would like some more follow-on on this line of profundity, do make it a point to read Ithaca by Constantine P. Cavafy.]

We then went on to Oxford circus (or was it Picadilly) and walked around looking for the Haagen Dazs store - what better way than to wrap up a big meal with some Belgian dark chocolate ice cream. We couldn't find the store and I had to come back home, to crash into bed and into deep slumber, dreaming of the cup of belgian...

It was a great evening, despite the chopsticks playing truant (and moi having to use a random, often messy combination of forks and fingers!) and I intend to make a habit of trying out a new cuisine and explore a new part of the city every weekend that I am in London.

Planning ahead

I just bought my ticket home to Houston. Four-hundred and fifty pounds. It’s not so much the money that has me torn inside, but the indecision on what I want to do with those precious 3 weeks over the holidays. There were just too many options.

- Treks with classmates to the Middle East, Africa, or South America, for me to finally make it to those regions of the globe
- Spending time with alumni and contacts in China to get a better foothold there for possible summer internship leads
- Backpacking anywhere with a old friend
- Doing smaller trips in and around Great Britain and Continental Europe
- Getting ready for the milk round (not!)

Okay okay, those were the options because in reality, the most important thing for me over winter holidays is to be home with family. Sometimes I think the reason why I’ve been able to handle being nomadic for the last several years is because I still have home base waiting for me. I know that my thirteen cousins will all reconvene for xmas dinner – whether or not we do it for religious reasons.

So yes, this Christmas season, like every year (except for the year I spent in India), I will be shopping with my younger brother and sister for presents, wrapping them up at the last minute. I will be having a bowl of Vietnamese beef noodle soup (phô) the afternoon I land home. I will be staying up till morning playing uno (house rules) with my cousins. I will be home for just a few weeks of the year, but I’ll be home.

(Perhaps, very indicative to my choice for work-life balance... can I really handle the consulting world?)

Quiet days...

I am in the middle of a 6-day weekend! September is the month when the MBA office spares the new students. Most of us haven't studied in a long long time so the rhythm is not too tough. If on top of that you add a waiver on statistics (that is one full day of class a week that becomes free) and no language requirement/assessment (I am gonna take Mandarin, but no need to assess myself, I just know 3 of the 3000 characters it takes to have a decent conversation) then the schedule tends to be light.
That is a great opportunity to spend some time thinking about what can be done in the associative space. Each nationality group, for instance, tries to put together a trip to their home countries; given that France is next door, we have to do the same at the French Club. I fear we're gonna compete with the dates though.
Time also to come up with a 'career strategy'. It's gonna be another 3 months before the official internship hunt kicks off, but it's never early enough to put one's thoughts together and run them by the career coaches.
Finally also a good time to browse the ocean of info the portal carries: speaker series, clubs meetings, class schedules, career services events, sports tournaments, library databases... A huge amount of information to digest, I wish the speed reading classes had started.
Some are said to have started preparing the class for the autumn term starting next month, but I haven't actually seen them.

Mein Deutsch ist schreklich

There were three types of MBA 2009’s on campus today:

• People stressing the diagnostic language test and feverishly cramming verbs, cases and tenses into their heads
• People who were comfortable in their knowledge / lack thereof in their chosen language, but who were now wondering if they should be studying too
• People who were exempt from the language requirement, solely there to make the rest of us feel bad about ourselves

So, in case you couldn’t tell, we had diagnostic language tests today. Prospective students, take note: you will need to be fluent in at least two languages when you graduate from London Business School. More specifically, you’ll need to pass Level 2 (of 3), which I would assume means you’d be able to write an insipid blog entry like this in another language. I say “assume,” because, clearly, I did not pass Level 2 this morning. I did it for diversity's sake, though -- with so many multilingual people here, I had to represent for those of us who are embarrassingly unilingual.

Not surprisingly, there were a large number of students taking the diagnostics because they are picking up (yet) another language for either business or personal reasons. Mandarin is, of course, the hot language this year, leading to this humorous exchange:

Friend 1: We heard you were asking someone how to say "parents" in Chinese, how can you not know that?
Friend 2: That's not true, I know how to say "mom," and "dad," I just don't know how to say them together.
Friend 1: [Deadpan] So you don't know how to say "parents."
Friend 2: I have to go.

Friend 2 did fine, by the way.

Thankfully, to provide a midday break from thinking about grammar, the Investment Management Club held a “Stockpicking 101” session. This was an introduction on how to write a stock pitch – crucial not only to those who seek jobs in equity research, but also those entering the stock pitch competition next month. I'm planning on entering, so anyone with hot stock tips, feel free to send them my way.

Lunch n’ Learn

I am a woman. And in business. Though currently, not in business but in business school. And these qualifications makes me somewhat of a ‘usual suspect’ as far as membership to the Women in Business club at London Business School is concerned.

The WiB club has started a new initiative called the Lunch and Learn series, in which women students, over lunch with faculty, get to know each other better and take the first steps towards increasing faculty student interactions, outside of class.

At the particular session I attended, six first year female students, together with the President of the WiB club had lunch with Professor Kristine F, who is an assistant professor in Decision Sciences at London Business School. The meeting started with the usual introductions, followed by discussion on the research that Prof F is currently involved in. Through the discussion we realised that faculty partner industry, through research, to help the latter make key decisions; the point being that not all research is arcane and academic but that a lot of the research has some very relevant and critical implications for business. Some of the projects that Prof F is involved are related to developing models for pricing optimisation and revenue management in different industry sectors. One of the ladies present at the lunch had experience in a field that Prof F is currently researching and the two got talking - the first steps towards greater involvement of students in faculty research may just have started at the lunch table!

The discussion then moved towards the challenges related to the multiple hats that women today have to wear. In other words, the multiple roles that women have to assume – that of a professional, a mother, a spouse, a daughter, a sister, a friend. The working woman today may have mastered the art of doing justice to multiple roles largely due to her ability to prioritise and multitask. One of the MBA09’ers at the lunch, who has a 2-month old daughter, laughingly said that she has multiple projects running at any point in time – curriculum related at school and then the baby back home!

We also talked about the multiculturalism that pervades not only school but also all of London and how easy it is for someone to feel welcome in the city. We talked about how London Business School is significantly more diverse as compared to some other business schools, which may have very localised student catchment areas and how this diversity of the class makes the learning experience even more enriching. For those of us at the lunch who were yet to believe in school’s diversity, all we had to do was to look around – Argentinean, Canadian, Icelandic, Indian(s), Israeli and Italian! Absolutely incredible!

I believe the objectives of the meeting were to open channels of communication with faculty to learn from their experiences, to get to know one another better and to form a strong support system for women on campus, to have fun but most importantly, to eat a 'non Bite non cold sandwich' lunch.

I enjoyed myself at the Lunch and Learn session - I ate haddock and chips.

Busy days

Three weeks into our MBA program, I am already filling up my calendar with loads of club and networking events. Life as a London Business School student is great, there are tons of clubs and events to choose from and the classes we have so far are indeed very educating, especially for someone who comes from a non-business background like me. However, I must admit that I am most impressed by career services and their efforts in helping us choose the right career path. We have different career workshops every week, ranging from self assessment, to CV writing and coaching, to one-on-one coaching with our in house experts. It is very reassuring to know that the school takes our career planning very seriously and that there are always people there to help us when we are confused, which I suspect most of us are and will be for a while.

Help....I am trapped in the Windsor Castle!!!

Now I don't want to alarm anyone here, so I will point out straight away that we fortunate few at London Business School have our very own 'Windsor Castle', the spiritual home of the MBA 2009s for the past few weeks and a great asset to the school community. Although not 'officially' part of the campus, the fact that we have our own secret entrance into the pub through the back and have a 'welcome' sign that actually sits on the wall within the courtyard that borders the school, I think technically we could say the pub is on our campus! The Windsor provides a very homely surrounding for us newbies and a place where you can almost guarantee seeing one or more class-mates after a hard day or week, sinking a few cold 'Maisel Weiss' German beers and chatting about the previous few days.....

Friday was our final day of UGM - Understanding General Management, and as a Pass/Fail course we were fortunate enough to be fairly confident that without any real shockers the vast majority of us will have passed comfortably. We had a couple of rather interesting assignments over the week (it is weird to be having homework again having spent the last seven years doing a 'proper' job) including describing our 'dream' job and also writing our own eulogy. The latter assignment might be considered a bit morbid by some and so we were given the option to write our retirement speech instead. It was very interesting to see the correlation between the dream job and eulogy in some cases and the divergence in others. Conceptually some of us are here to find the dream job that will also be part of our life path (myself included in this group) whilst others are fairly sure they wish their 'job' and 'life' to be two separate entities. Either way it was very interesting to see how our minds our working already and even more interesting to find a future potential 'Governor of Mars' in our class!!

So with a slight edge of confidence (we have not found out if we have actually passed yet!) my 'stream' caught up in the Windsor for a few hard earned beers, settled down to watch the rugby, and despite my home team getting a thrashing from South Africa the atmosphere was enough to temper my disappointment and make the evening pass away without so much as a tear....

The fact that the landlord lost a bet on the score and was serving free pints to those of us lucky enough to be in the rugby club did help :o)

So here it is...the mighty, the wonderful, 'Windsor':





     Windsor Castle Pub, Park Road





Next time you fancy a pint on Park Road make sure to come by and if you can find me amongst the throng of MBAs I might even shout you a pint of Maisel Weiss!

Apple's Banana

With regard to working our study groups, 2nd to the Away Day in terms of fun so far was the PeopleExpress computer simulation that was used in our Understanding General Management course yesterday. Task: take an airline start-up and report the quarter with the the lowest stock price in the last year. There were five variables. Simple enough, no?

So picture the six of us in the war room - scrambling through the help notes, scribbling key points on the white board (I'm obsessive with this), naturally dividing out roles and developing a mini-strategy. Through the last 40 minutes we watched our stock price sore to $68 in Q4 of 1989. We held the highest score in the class. Celebration.

Take two involved us developing a strategy then having another go. Piece of cake, right? Just replicate what we did before and be slightly more aggressive. We ended up with a lower stock price than the first time. I was deflated, knowing that the champagne prize and recognition went to a much more successful group. What happened? More than losing, I was disappointed that we didn't learn anything.

Or did we? We were so stuck on our first method, we forgot to expand our minds beyond it. We were framed! And after hearing the strategies from the other groups, we realized we were playing much to conservatively and reacting too quickly to negative numbers in our charts. Our group was majorly risk averse (despite the fact we mostly had no problems leaping off 10 meter high wooden poles and trapezing across steel tightropes).

Now will we be able to overcome it in the next year? We shall see... meanwhile, our 3rd favorite activity together has proven to be writing on a banana with a ballpoint pen. It's all about the texture. Try it. I dare you.

A Mexican in the Middle East

Places: I work in Abu Dhabi from Monday to Thursday evening. The rest of the time I work and enjoy my stay in Dubai. The trip between the two cities takes an average of ninety minutes. Note that the time could be dramatically reduced by those who drive at 160 kph, which is a pretty normal speed in UAE.

People: Mostly passionate Lebanese who travel back home almost every weekend. Lucky them! There are also many others who come from Germany, UK and other interesting Middle Eastern places.

Aaron Deste, former COO at Schlumberger and currently based in London, is my job manager. I am happy and lucky to have him as our shared background makes me feel 'at home'. Aaron is smart, practical and just 'cool' about everything.

My official mentor is Ibrahim El-Hussein, leader of the Energy Practice in Middle East. He is obviously bright and very supportive.

Chady Zein (see picture) is my junior mentor, a gentleman from Lebanon, who with only a year in the firm appears to me incredibly competent. Chady has done a great job getting me up to speed and leading by example. He is the source of my inspiration.

Hotels: I tried a few and decided that the Grosvenor House is the way to go. Rooms and suites are of a high standard, service could not be better and, food and gym are really good.

Running: Steady but limited to a few kilometers per week. I am afraid food and drinks have outpaced burnt calories and will need to get back to normal very soon.

Life: Simply great. Tonight I am meeting Nivi and Neville, two current classmates, for drinks at the Budda Bar, also in the hotel. I am expecting it to be great!

New bloggers, welcome to the best business school in the world!

I am moved by reading the posts of the new bloggers. Welcome to London Business School!

I can't believe time went by so quickly. A tiny Mexican already a second-year MBA. I am looking forward to being back on campus after two 8-week internships. My experience this summer was hilarious but school awaits. I will be there soon to meet all these new 'younger' people who are like me, eager to learn, be and do better.

See you all very soon.

Open Your Mind

Slave to my worldview, I went for the first of my series of back - to - back UGM classes. The first case we read was the Honda (A) case – written by consultants in pin-stripe suits, people like you and me - out of business school and interestingly far removed from the place where the ‘action was’. Throughout the first hour, I kept wondering why we were not using Michael Porter’s competition model to ‘solve’ the case. It’s classical conditioning – if there is a case, it has to be solved; and solved by fitting it, somehow into some arcane framework that someone somewhere has developed. By the time my frustration reached a crescendo, the professor handed us another case, Honda (B) and I attacked the case with hope, ‘this one we will solve’. I am not sure that the discussion fitted into the classical definition* of ‘solve a case’. To belabour the scene and the situation a bit more, in the post lunch session, we dissected the Apple case – again, discussion but no concrete solution (please refer my definition of 'solve a case' below).

We didn’t quite ‘solve’ any of the cases in a traditional sense, but I got some very key insights into not only how general managers work through the interrelation of four key elements - values, frames, commitments and processes. A little bit of thought convinced me that everyday life may also be influenced significantly (if I may be allowed to flaunt my newly acquired business statistics knowledge, at a 5% level of significance or 95% level of confidence) by the interplay of these forces. Without becoming too philosophical or pedantic, I’d like to share my personal experience with frames.

What is a frame? It is our worldview; it is reality as we see it, its reality as we believe it. The frame is a double edged sword – it can facilitate what we make of ourselves, but at the same time it shuts us from absorbing new experiences and prevents us from growing – intellectually and more importantly, as human beings. For example, a couple of days back, I believed that a case that is usually taught in business schools (mostly across the Atlantic) to teach strategy (read how to apply models) cannot be used to understand something quite as subtle as ‘what goes on inside a manager’s head’ – that was my frame, constraining me from new experiences. I believed that cases are meant to be dissected with such rapidity and by fitting them into one of the many available frameworks that the consulting companies would just have to roll out the red carpet (and hopefully the dough) for me.

I am still new around here and haven’t figured out much about how the ‘general manager’s mind’ framework works or even how to approach dissecting a case. But I am now aware that there are processes in my head that are, without my knowing, stymieing my growth. And it has made me question some of the frames within which I operate.

So, if you think that business school is only about textbooks, networking and getting the million dollar job, you should probably take a step back and analyse the frames within which you are operating.

All I’d say is, if you choose to come to business school, just open your mind.

* The classical definition of ‘solve a case’ is to fit it into some framework or model and take full advantage of what is called the 'hindsight bias'.

P.S. Thanks Professor BL for opening my mind.

Study Group Reality (aka I don't belong)

So, you probably know this already, but you will get a Study Group in Business School. Now, I heard all sorts of nightmares about these groups before I started school, but all in all, I have to say that I like my group. We are quite the diverse group of people -- The Russian-American math genius with a heart of gold; The Statistician who has heaps of experience at major credit agencies; The VP of a major bank; The Italian McKinsey consultant who looks (and I assume plays) like Kaka; and the Australian girl who has either been a model, actress, or basketball player in her previous life and also happens to be a great writer. And that brings us to me - No obvious talent. I think they put me there to motivate me (or to make them feel good), or to highlight that I bring nothing tangible to the group except a desire to Blog about them. It is like the quote in that classic film Rounders, "If you cant spot the sucker the first 30 minutes at the table, you are the sucker." In this case, however, replace the term "sucker" with "man with no discernible skills."

Shifting gears though ... speaking of poker... I have now joined the Poker Club, and it might be the best club at school. No, this club won't help you get great jobs like the Private Equity Club, but it sure is a lot of fun. I can't wait to invest more this weekend. I am also angling for a Senior VP role in the club -- gotta find something for my CV. Also, it should be noted that the President of the Poker Club also is a blogger though he has his own which you can find on the links to your left. It is called "Plausible Deniability." Whether the name is a legal defense or a life philosophy, I do not know for sure, but the blog is a must read if you are considering Business School, even if you don't really belong or have any talent like me.

B is for brilliant breaks

B is for best. B is for Barrick. B is for busy busy busy.
Jessica has just sent out the autumn term calendar for Stream B and the first thing I see is that the most of the column under Friday is left white. This means long weekends to travel. Late Thursday nights - be it till 3am dancing salsa or studying french. I'm with Stuart about being baffled about juggling social, career and academic events. After last night's stream pub crawl all I can think about now is bed.

Prelude to Loving London

I cannot even pretend that I am well traveled but I have been a few places and seen a few things. But the excitement has never been quite as palpable as at the time of my move to London. Yes, I am excited about escaping from the corporate jungle (albeit for a few months) into a safe and seemingly carefree student life, but I am more excited about ‘being a student in London’. I have read tomes on ‘The London Experience’ and now it’s my turn to get the proverbial ‘piece of the action’!

I have always wanted to stand at Piccadilly Circus in front of the statue of Eros and experience what it feels like to be standing at the center of civilization! On the quite not so dramatic a note, I am excited about the visiting the usual tourist attractions such as St Paul’s, Madame Tussaud’s, the National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum but at the same time, I also want to explore the quieter side of London, away from the maddening crowds and look forward to long walks at the many London greens. I look forward to attending the ‘Proms’ at the Royal Albert Hall or catching the occasional performance at the Royal Opera House. And while I take in the operatic extravaganzas of London, I look forward to ‘meeting’ the ghosts of Arthur Bourchier and Violet Melnotte at the Garrick and Duke of York theatres! And almost as soon as I reach London, it will be time for the Notting Hill festival and Indian Summers at the Regent’s Street Festival and I am invited! I look forward to losing myself in the Virgin and HMV stores and while I am enjoying my Parmesan ham sandwich and hot chocolate at Café Nero, I hope to catch, if only a fleeting glimpse of some of the iconoclastic music legends of our times. In short, I want to experience the London, which is a unique amalgamation of rich culture and heritage with modernity and cosmopolitanism. Needless to say, I look forward to ‘testing waters’ at the many pubs and watering holes in London and at the end of two years aim to be a quotable authority on the subject!

While I eagerly wait to ‘drink in’ these experiences, I know that it is the company of the friends I will make at School, which will make these experiences richer. I look forward to forging some lifelong friendships and earning membership to a closely-knit network across the globe – a home in every country represented in class, a network that would have started in London.

London, here I come!

San Francisco Exchange

Its been awhile since I last wrote a blog entry, so what have I been doing? Of course there was the internship. But the less said about that the better. Now I'm in San Francisco on exchange at UC Berkeley. I have much more positive things to say about the Bay area, so I think I should focus there.

But first I feel like providing some advice if you are currently thinking about internships for next year. Firstly,  do your homework and research exactly where you are going, what you will be doing and who you will be working with \ for, before you commit. My other top tip is that if you aren't sure exactly what you want to do then do something really different, what do you have to lose?

Berkeley is amazing. I came here 2 days after finishing my internship and classes have been running for nearly 3 weeks. Yes their term starts early! My first purchase was a mountain bike, renting an apartment came third on the list, after getting a phone.

I have been training on the Olympic athletics track, running in the hills behind Berkeley and mountain biking around Mt Diablo. I have a weekend of sailing in the bay this weekend and some golf lined up for next week. If you like the outdoors lifestyle then this is the place to be.

I also met a lot of other students and we have been having a great time exploring the area. Last week we went to San Francisco and checked out the 'summer of love 40th anniversary concert'. See pictures.

I spent the weekend in Mexico for my study group mates wedding. CONGRATULATIONS Poncho! There were lots of LBS students attending. The wedding started at 9pm and the party went on until the next morning. By the end it was only the Bride & Groom, some teenagers, the MBAs and very tired looking sets of the wedding couples parents. The Mexicans certainly know how to party. Hopefully, I will be able to post some pictures when I get them.

   

Transitioning to Student Life

As one of my flatmates and I discuss the merits of buying reduced price sandwiches at Tesco (soon to be expired food items get incrementally marked down as the day wears on), the reality of being a student again sets in. Sure, the stack of binders on my desk, the looming case study, stats homework, language test and business communications presentation might be better clues, but somehow those seem less visceral than devouring 50p sandwiches in a luxury flat in Fitzrovia. Penny-wise, pound-foolish, as the Brits say. Mom would be so proud.

Seemingly in recognition of our newfound plight, preparation for the all-important "Milk round" (recruiting season) has begun. We’ve started the process of overhauling our CVs a full one week into the term, and London Business School has been kind enough to provide us with personal coaches, who will help us hone our one page wonders for our targeted career path. My study group has also chosen to meet and dissect each other’s CVs, tightening up the language and content based on the advice we received. Results so far have been very encouraging. As the balance of this year’s tuition comes due in a few weeks, it’s programs like these, among many, many others (that I’m sure will be expounded upon here), that will make writing that check a little less painful.

Calling all prospective women MBAs...

Women play a vital role in the London Business School community; there may not be quite as many female students as there are men (yet!) but they occupy approximately half the club leadership positions around campus. Here in the office we are constantly looking for new ways to encourage top women to apply for, and join, our MBA, so several years ago we became the first business school outside the US to join Forté Foundation. 

Forté is an organisation dedicated to encouraging women to pursue careers in business leadership by providing access to information, scholarships and networking opportunities. Beginning in mid-September,  Forté is putting on a series of events for prospective women MBA students, mostly in locations throughout the USA, but also here in London.  Women business leaders will be sharing candid advice drawn from their own career experiences, and will be joined by admissions officers from the top MBA schools (including London, of course!) who will be able to answer questions and give advice about the admissions process. 

If you are working or travelling in the USA or London, this year's schedule of Forté events is as follows: Boston, September 17th (register by September 13th) Washington DC, September 18th (register by September 13th) Chicago, September 19th (register by September 13th) New York, September 20th (registration is closed) Atlanta, September 24th (register by September 20th) Houston, September 25th (register by September 20th) San Francisco, September 26th (register by September 20th) Los Angeles, September 27th (register by September 20th) New York, October 1st (register by September 24th) London, October 9th (register by October 1).

To register for any of these events, please visit http://www.fortefoundation.org/forum. And if you are able to attend the events in Boston, LA, NY, San Francisco or Washington DC, look out for the London Business School rep!

Introducing the new bloggers of MBA2009!

As some of our regular readers may have noticed, the new batch of MBA2009 bloggers have now been selected and have already started to impart their experiences of the first few days and weeks at London Business School.

So whilst a little belated, we would like to say welcome to Debasri, Don, Hamish, Jerome, Matthew, Melanie, See-wan and Stuart!  Watch this space for their accounts of the coming year.

And I thought I knew about time management!!!

So here I am, settled in the very nice Seminar Room trying very hard to catch up with my new MBA life....

My previous job was all about time management, balancing a range of different meetings, clinics, treatment sessions and staff work. My new 'job' is much more simple yet 10 times more complex...how on earth do I fit in the million different social opportunities, clubs and sports around the class schedule. It is a challenge and a half and I have never before been quite so reliant on my beloved Mac and iCal to 'sort my life out'. But the fact I am having to 'worry' about how much of the social scene I can squeeze into the day is nothing to complain about and the fact my diary is already full for the week reflects just how amazing this new experience is!

I am now signed up for the Rugby tour to Peru (12 days of socialising, working on local volunteer projects, playing rugby and the odd 'small beer'!) and we have pretty much most of our outlook calendar filled until Christmas. The range of classes include General Management, Statistics, Strategy and Leadership to name but a few. The schedule definitely balances work with a life and despite the many (many many) warnings about not over-stretching ourselves, the opportunities are amazing. This week it has been the Pratham Club (helping education street kids in India), the Responsible Business Club and Rugby Club on my radar. Next week will be the Finance Club, drinks with the new Dean, the ever-popular Sundowners (basically free drinks sponsored by a club) and a whole host of dinners, pub crawls and parties with friends.

Bottom line is that if you want to really learn about time management, you can safely swap that dry workshop offered by your employer and sign up for an MBA at London Business School -  it a way cooler way to learn how to balance that diary!!!

Watch this space.....

And this is how it begins...

7:30 Wake up in the midst of a warm new duvet
8:20 Leave home, bike to school
8:40 Lock up, dart to locker to pick up name plate
8:45 Business Stats lecture
10:30 First break, grab a cup of hot water for my green tea. Chat with stream-mates about Stream B Pub Crawl next night - and how it might clash with drinks with the new Dean. Head back to Stats.
11:45 Lunch break. Look for a fork for my homemade stir-fry noodle lunch. Eat in the quad with classmates in the sun that still lingers.
12:30 Head to stats tutorial sessions.
14:00 To the computer lab for the stat excel workshops. Check emails and invite other stream members to our Pub Crawl. (Informally known as the Pub Crawl Crashers)
15:30 Have a quick "coffee" break in the quad.
15:45 Programme collaboration briefing. Content is a bit dry but G makes it fun.
16:30 Quickly check emails and online errands.
17:30 GLDP Briefing. Room is full. Good to see people from other streams, will miss that. Work on some Chinese character memorization.
18:00 Search from Singaporean restaurant with Chinese-Indian F. Give up search and settle for yin-yang fried rice, which turns out to be quite a good portion to share.
18:55 Rush to Women in Business intro meeting. Impressed with their research initiatives. Chat over the quiche about hiring practices and maternity leave laws between different countries.
20:35 Realize that I've got two missed calls from the same strange number. Turns out to be an old Chinese-Brasilian friend passing through London for an interview.
20:50 Read cases for Understanding General Management.
21:30 Bike home.
21:45 Finally attach the front headlight to the bike. Porter claims I'm hiding from him.
22:00 Home. Laugh with flatmates about youtube videos. (I think I'm the serious one out of the three)
22:45 Blog. On standby for drinks with friend passing through...

R mentioned that if ones schedule isn't like this...  precious time here is being wasted.

It's the Admissions season again...

Well, it's that time of year again, and as we welcome the class of MBA 2009 we are already looking ahead to the upcoming admissions season.  There is always a sense of anticipation in the office as the Admissions team gears up for new trips abroad, heading out on the road to meet with all those prospective candidates excited about becoming part of the class of MBA 2010.  That's one strange thing about this job - as classes are named after the year of graduation, we're almost always thinking two years ahead of ourselves!

If you've checked out our admissions pages over the summer months, you'll see that our essay questions have remained the same, but that there are a couple of changes to the later admissions dates.  However, if you are keen to apply early and get your final decision before the end of this calendar year, don't forget that the first application deadline is 19 October.  This year has gone by so fast, that's coming up a lot sooner than you might think! 

We always encourage people to apply early (after all, if you leave it until Stage 4 you'll miss out on most of our scholarship opportunities) but the main thing to remember is that we want to see a thoughtful and well-prepared application. Two top tips for this posting - firstly, don't leave it until the last minute to source the required documentation as it can take longer than you realise chasing after referees and educational transcripts.  Secondly, leave yourself enough time that you can write your essays, put them away for a bit, and then take a second look another day.  You'll be amazed at how an essay that looks brilliant at 3am one morning can suddenly seem to have turned into an unstructured stream-of-consciousness ramble the next!   Giving yourself enough time to re-assess and, if neccessary, correct what you've written, means that you'll present the very best application you can, and give yourself the best chance of admission.

Anyway, enough of that - we look forward to seeing many of you on the road over the coming months, and to reading all those applications...good luck!

Around the neighborhood

After the first day of real class: Business Stat - I flew home (by bike of course, easily escaping the tube strike that started today) and picked up my dry cleaning (26 pounds for three pieces) and picked out a new orange phone - which they have back order on - I should really just go to another store that has what I want. Orange closes at 6pm. After a quick ramen noodle dinner - with gyoza, organic lettuce and an egg on top (my mouth is becoming parched now) - I walked to argos, which, along with everything else on the swiss cottage high street, closes at 6pm, except for the family owned hardware store, which closes at 7pm. What's left open are relatively cheap HK chinese, thai and indian restaurants for which I've picked up take out menus for - and will probably never use. Taking a loop around the area, I passed by a nice, swanky singaporean place which has a 15 pound minimum for free delivery. It's nestled in between some up market furniture places like ligne roset (which I will forever remember passing everyday I drove home from work in Graz) and bo concept. I kept going and passed a cute little Korean hair salon - Ho hair - 30 pounds a cut and style. I might come here for the sake of supporting local businesses.

Then up a block of row houses and on the corner opposite the waitrose which is under construction are two competing small supermarkets: one korean, open till 9; and one japanese, open till 8; both open on sundays. There are tasty looking eel rice boxes, and individually wrapped nigiri sushi in the fridge. As well as a small selection of medium to high end sake, and a section for green tea and buckwheat soba. Oh, and I finally found that black sesame flavored pocky sticks: 2 pound 58. Maybe I'll save those purchases for a dinner party - when I really want to impress someone with my pan-seared tuna steak and wasabi sauce dish. The fish shop is parallel to St. John's High Street and I haven't checked what time it closes yet.
The internet cafe next to the high end fairfax kitchen store opens and closes, it seems, whenever they feel like it - but they've got a fast connection and it's a five minute walk from home. Only, when I sat down, I realized that I had left my USB stick in the reception room next to the MBA office. Might as well go home and pick up my laptop and go to campus to retrieve it. The ride back and forth is getting easier - I've found a way to go home along regent's park to avoid making a right turn at the weird roundabout at the top of park road.

I like it here when it's quiet and peaceful. It will continue to get busier and busier as the year goes on. At some point, I imagine myself camping here...

It was a bit noisy downstairs...

... as the neighbours were hosting a party in the street all day. That was part of the Notting Hill Carnival of course which I saw the first day only this year, Sunday 26th: children's day. It's actually not that bad as the parade is really professional and the streets a little less crowded, but still the same amount of music and yummy chicken.
Monday was still a bank holiday but also the MBA kick off. Not sure whether that should be considered the first week really as it was more about knowing each other as well as the programme for the upcoming two years. One of the activities I really liked that week was when all nationality groups (we're 58 nationalities this year by the way) had to put together a 2 minute introduction about its culture and anything the others should know about it without probably knowing. The Germans won the contest, they really deserved it as they were pretty imaginative.
The week literally flew by: barbecues, pubs, parties, briefings,... A very good induction before the month of September which should take us one step closer to the actual back to school period and the challenging mix of academics and student associations starting with autumn term!