Christmas Break

The finals are over and I'm back in Europe. Things went all very smooth.

It seems that the strategy of hanging out in the Philippines for the study week has truly paid off. I was nicely relaxed for the exams and I thing I did quite well.

Right now I'm doing some fine Snowboarding here in Austria... School is far away already, and the only thing that reminds me of China is my daily dose of Mandarin vocabulary learning.

So don't expect to read anything about CEIBS until early January next year.

Merry christmas and a happy new year!

Feverishly awaiting the finals

I got myself a cold when coming back to Shanghai. Nice move. The culprit was probably a freezer-like air conditioned cinema on my last day in the Philippines.

What the HELL is wrong with those people, that they always have to run their A/C on full steam, until one cannot see the movie screen anymore, because ones own breath condensates in midair?!

Anyway,
I had planned to spend all Saturday really studying for Statistics and Financial Accounting. Instead I'm now lying in bed with 38.5 fever, lazily dreaming away - not to say halluzinating ;-)

I'm not complaining, though, as this gives me another great excuse to procrastinate studying a little longer...

This morning we had to give our presentation for Business Writing and Presentation Skills class, which was videotaped, since it represents the final exam for this subject. I hope to catch a glimpse of myself later this week, performing in front of a totally bored must-be-there-audience with feverishly glazy, red eyeballs and a sore nose.

Sad Conversations

Some snippets of my conversations. Might not be the exact wording, but true to the sense of what was said.

First Girl
me: Do you like what you're doing?
her: (thinks, hesitates)... No.
me: Why do you do it then?
her: I need the money.
me: Why's that?
her: I have a kid.
me: what? You mean here?
her: He stays with my parents. I need the money to support him.
me: What about the father?
her: The father is not interested. He doesn't care.
me: He doesn't give you any money?
her: No, he's from Belgium. He won't return any of my emails or phone calls.
me: This is sick! Do you know that Belgium law would require him to pay for his child?
her: No.

Second Girl
me: Do you like your job?
her: (without hesitation) No.
me: How long have you been doing it?
her: For about two years. I ran away from my family.
me: Why's that?
her: They tried to force me to marry a muslim boy. But I didn't like him.
me: And then you ended up here?
her: Yeah, I needed a job.
me: And you go out with guests and sleep with them?
her: Yes.
me: So you didn't like the guy you were supposed to marry and now you sleep with a stranger every night.
her: (remains silent, with a contemplative look on her face)

Third Girl
me: (to a 16 year old looking girl, jokingly) Are you for sale?
her: Yes. (half-jokingly) I'm a virgin. I can come with you.
me: Don't be silly! I could be your father. How old are you?
her: I'm twenty.
me: Don't make me laugh!
(I buy her a fruit juice and we do some small talk)
me: So if I pay the barfine, will you come with me to my room?
her: Sure.
me: And then you'll sleep with me?
her: Yes.
me: And if I want to sleep with you without a condom? Would that be okay for you?
her: If you want me to... yes.
me: This is crazy. You've got all your life before you! You shouldn't throw it away that easily...
her: Most tourists want to use a condom anyway.
me: Why are you doing this?
her: I have to support my family.
me: Do they know what you do?
her: No. I tell them I work as a bar waitress...

Fourth Girl
me: What have you done before you came here?
her: I worked in a Mall. But I can make much more money here. I'm not going to do this forever. I want to study afterwards.
me: Your family doesn't pay for your studies?
her: No, I have to support my family financially. And I support my big sister, too.
me: Do they know that you work here?
her: No... You think I should tell them?
me: What does your family do?
her: My father used to be a painter, but now I gave them money so they can have a small business.
me: What kind of business?
her: They sell sandals on the market.
me: And how is it working out?
her: I don't know... I hope OK... I gave them 40'000 Pesos (note: equals two full months of work) for it. If it doesn't work out I cannot give them any more. I already gave them 20'000 earlier, but my father gambled it on a cockfight and lost it all.
me: Maybe you should call them and check with them monthly on how the business is doing...

I've hit a real Low Point

This Tuesday we went to Sabang (near Puerto Galera) for scuba diving and we stayed there until today.

I really don't know what to say about the place. My mind is completely blank! I'm afraid I might just have hit the low point of my vacation here in the Philippines or maybe of my entire stay in Asia...

Why? The hotel was nice, the food was great, the scuba diving superb...

But the nightlife really makes you wanna throw up. There are about 6 girlie bars in town and we went to check them all out during the first night.

Now I consider myself very open minded and most people would agree that I'm not easily shocked by anything. My office in Zurich was located in the red light district for several years and I was used to look at prostitution merely as a demand/supply function.

But here you go into one of these places, and you're immediately surrounded by children. Most of them will tell you they're 18, 19, 20 years old, and admittedly I'm no expert at judging Asian's women's age. But I'm absolutely convinced that at least some of these girls were underage. Even then, I doubt that 18, 19, 20 is the age where a girl conciously and willingly decides for such a career move and its associated long-term risks and consequences. Especially considering that a considerable proportion of the male guests in these places are 40+, 50+.

The girls are more or less held like slaves. They have no fixed salary. They get locked into the staffhouse after work because they're not supposed to go out and enjoy themselves.

Their job is to convince guests to buy them drinks and then they'll get part of the drinks costs as comission, thereby slowly turning themselves into alcoholics. If a guest likes a girl, he pays the barfine (CHF 60.-) and the girl is his for the rest of the night. Since the girl will get half of this money, this might look like a fair deal at first. However, if a girl does not want to leave with a (30 years older) guest, she will have to pay the bar's share of the barfine herself, thereby making up for the bar's profit loss, essentially losing all her previous day's earnings. Not exactly free choice.

Why it pays to have your own apartment

9.11.07

Subject: heaters in the dorm rooms
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 09:07:36 +0800
From: CEIBS Logistics
To: All MBA Students

Dear All,

Some of you want to know when the heaters will be turned on in the dorm rooms, now the official comment is that the heaters will be turned on when the lowest temperature drops below 10 degrees Celsius. Thanks.

Best Regards,
<Undisclosed>
Logistic Department


little more than an hour later...

---

From: <Undisclosed Exchange Student>
To: CEIBS Logistics

Dear <Undisclosed> and CEIBS Logistics,

Thank you for the email. Can you explain to me the reasoning behind the 10 degrees Celsius benchmark? Why this number and not 15C? Or 17C? I don't want to be rude, but don't you think 10C is a little cold?

From my understanding of basic thermodynamics, if the outside temperature is 10C, via equilibrium, one can expect that the temperature in our rooms will also be approximately 10C. Note: my analysis does not take into account the assumed heat generated from our moving bodies and running computers. However, the internationally accepted room temperature is around 18C to 23C (see below for room temperature definition).

<Email followed by a rather large excerpt from Wikipedia, defining room temperature as being between 18-23 degrees>


three days and a surge in enraged email traffic later...

---

Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2007 15:25:58 +0800
From: Students Committee
To: All MBA Students

Dear fellow students,

I want to thank you all for your trust in the Student Committee and your contribution on the BBS thread.

As you know, under the current policy, heating on campus will be activated when the minimum temperature drops below 10 grades. Thanks to the intervention and great effort of <Undisclosed>, the school is ready to provide additional heating in the dorm between 8PM-8AM when the min. temp drops below 12. Below is the official web site of Shanghai Government, it’s used as the standard measure for our heating application:

http://www.smb.gov.cn/PortalQXJ/ForecastWeather.aspx?cate=159 (this is in Chinese, there’s a link English version but the data in English is not updated)

According to the forecast, the min. temp. might reach 11 grades tomorrow (10/Nov). If that happens we will have the heating turned on during this weekend.

Happy Birthday Som

Today is Som's birthday, as I just found out. Not knowing so beforehand I failed completely to come up with some present.

So I had to rely on my single most valuable asset... my secret weapon... my magic powers...

I taught Som how to make Balsamico salad sauce. No kidding. Those who know me will testify that I'm the, er, unchallanged champion in all kinds of dressings (basically that's the only thing I know how to cook ;-)

Som seemed to like the dressing so much that she asked me to show her how to do it. And I did. And she was a good student.

I love the Philippines (Part 2)

Ok, so we went out tonight. All the nightlife is within comfortable walking distance from Martin's house.

After stumbling around and eating dinner at Greenbelt/Glorietta we invariable ended up in P Burgos to play pool. Well, what can I say...

The three coolest things to do in Manila (revised):
1. Makati Nightlife
2. Makati Nightlife
3. Makati Nightlife

P.S. For all the lads in Shanghai and/or Switzerland:
Air temperature 28 degrees, feels like 32 degrees.
But the really hot stuff happens inside the air-conditioned clubs ;-)

Massage Dreamland

I've just had a one hour foot massage and I must say I'm very happy about it.

I didn't really take advantage of the low massage prices in China because I was always too busy to hang in a massage joint for an hour or so.

But here in the Philippines, it's simply impossible to ignore any longer. I mean at 198 Pesos (CHF 5.70) for a one hour foot massage and 300 Pesos (CHF 8.50) for a one hour oil massage, what can I say... Denial simply no longer works.

I love the Philippines!

I guess I will never be able to fully repay my debt to the OB professor, who made me come to Manila in the first place ;-)

I quick word of advice: If you'll ever live abroad for a few months and get homesick, just visit some Swiss friends who live in a nearby country.

Martin and his lovely wife Som went to great lengths to make me feel right at home.

First thing after arrival was to take me shopping to Säntis Delicatessen, a store that sells whatever a real Swiss person desires: Aromat, Kägi Fret, Hero Rösti, Cervelats, a wide selection of cheese, and of course Muntz "Schoggimüsli".

They then proudly fired up their raclette oven and suddenly their house in the middle of Makati city turned into a home far away from home! And then, the next thing you know, is you being served home-baked "Buurezüpfe" for breakfest. WOW!

The three coolest things to do in Manila:
1. Eating Raclette
2. Surfing the non-chinese (i. e. uncensored, high speed) web
3. Killing time with Xbox games

Fantastic Four

Today we had our second house party to celebrate the last day of first term classes.

Paolo invited a "few" people. Now, everybody expects intercultural misunderstandings in a place like China. But nobody would expect them to happen between yourself and your Italian flatmate...

To make a long story short: We ended up having more than 70 (in words: seventy) people in our flat. In fact, I almost started to worry about the static properties of the building structure.

Once the rush was gone, there just remained the four of us and a bottle of Whiskey. The more the bottle drained, the more philosophical the conversation got (at least judging from Dani, Plato must have been a chronic alcoholic!)

Towards the end of the bottle, we started to vow three things that we would change in the second term. I said I was going to study Chinese language more seriously. Unfortunately, I cannot remember my other two vows... too much Whiskey... But I'm confident that my unconcious self will see to proper fullfillment ;-)

Happy Birthday Matt

Today was my 38th birthday. Gosh... this sounds sooo much older than it feels!

I invited a small crowd to Simply Thai, an excellent Thai restaurant close to the school.

We had a great evening. My biggest birthday present, of course, had already been the definitive end to all financial statement analysis.

This itself would have been enough to make this a memoriable birthday already. But my dear friends couldn't just leave it at that and topped it with a bottle of 15 year old single malt whiskey. THANKS GUYS!!

(editor's note: less than one week after this, "the crowd" came for a visit at my apartment and took full advantage of me having whiskey around. The rest, they say, is history.)

A (better) world without accounting

Whoa, I'm finally done with Financial Accounting! We finished our paper and presentation slides on the financial statement analysis and company valuation today.

I'm really glad to have this time hog off my back! It was such a pain to prepare the slides with all the charts and numbers in an easily comprehensible way. Especially since one of the companies we had chosen was a Chinese one, which publishes its annual reports in Chinese only...

After going out with Heinz on Friday till 4am or so, I was really, really (I mean really) tired during the weekend's OB classes. Which was interesting nonetheless, seeing myself in the OB lab on videotape reacting to situations when I'm actually really worn out.

Visitor #1

Heinz definitely wins the Visitor #1 award for putting his money where his mouth is. He stopped by on a business trip to Asia and we had a great evening together.

Unfortunately the timing was exceptionally bad, as I still had the financial accounting homework to go AND the school had reshuffled the timetable so that I had class all weekend from 9am to 8pm.

But on Friday night we went out nonetheless: First we went to People7, a nice restaurant in the french concession that offers fusion cuisine at chinese prices. Then we did some bar hopping from Manifesto up to Velvet. Along the way we even found a street hawker who sold original Villiger cigars. They were cheaper in the five-pack, so we figured the only responsible way would be to buy the complete pack, which then somehow burned away during the evening...

Thanks Heinz for coming. Hope to see you soon. I'll do some more restaurant and bar research in the meantime.

OB and the work-life balance

I just booked a flight to the Philippines!
What, that's nothing to do with Organisational Behaviour you say? WRONG!

I little background: Those who know me will testify that I'm a really lazy guy when it comes to studying. I basically went through all my undergrad and grad years avoiding homework as much as possible. I always bragged not to have had the best grades but by far the highest efficiency.

Now that I'm older, I thought I might try and act a little more mature, maybe put some study effort into what I've paid a lot of money for. So I decided to really study for OB, as it seemed to be a subject that has great applicability and value in the "real world". I read the whole damn' textbook front to end, something which I haven't done for any other subject (so far I haven't even opened the economics textbook once). I actually was so comitted that I took the OB textbook with me on my vacation trip to Guilin (I know, I'm a sicko, sigh).

I also wrote a 2-3 page summary for each chapter. This is the only time in my entire life, that I've ever summarized a text book in writing. So when the day of midterm exam came, I was soooo in mastery of the subject, that I was done with the exam in little more than half the alotted time (see here). WOW! I'm such a cool guy, I thought ;-)

Time warp: We just got back the grades for the OB midterm. I scored among the lowest 15%.

Now speaking of OB, Skinner's motivational theory, equity theroy, extinction of behaviour, etc. I was quick to assess the damage and draw the appropriate conclusions. STUDYING DOESN'T PAY OFF! I tried it once, and guys, believe me, it simply doesn't.

So I decided not to repeat the same mistake twice. I will use the study week (one week off before the final exams in which we are supposed to refresh all the course contents) to go to the Philippines for scuba diving. Now that's what I call work-life balance!

Trust me. Experience tells me that I'll score much higher this way. And if not, at least I'll claim the record for highest efficiency once again...

Luojié Feidélè

Today we went to see Roger Federer's (Luojié Feidele for our chinese readership) match against Rafael Nadal. We that is Paolo, Nina and me in this case.

What can I say: It was an amazing experience to witness a tennis match firsthand! Initially I thought it would be quite boring. But actually time flew by very fast.

The match itself, however, was quite lame. It's simply no fun to watch an opponent being steamrolled by Roger at its best. Nadal gave up halfway through the game and the rest became history very quickly.

Nevertheless, it certainly wasn't the last tennis match I'll go to see live.

A motivational boost

We just got back the grades for our second group case in Marketing...

After the serious blow on the first one, I spent considerable time analysing and working on the second. So it better be good. I actually vowed to my group, that if we scored below 95, I'd never ever do a marketing case again ;-)

Here's the result: 95/100, the second highest grade among 40 groups! Not bad, ey?

While I still feel, that I know sh*t about marketing, at least this gives me the feeling that I have somehow progressed a bit during the past months.

(This post courtesy of in-classroom wifi networking)

The Silence of the Lambs

You guys haven't heard from me for more than two weeks now... but you guessed right: The workload has yet again increased drastically. Or maybe I just got tired (like everybody else) and so it simply feels heavier now. In any case, time seems to really fly by now, with little to no opportunities to party or whatever other fun activity (this excludes Halloween, of course).

I've been busy writing my resume, which I needed to apply for an internship. I also have increased my weekly Chinese lessons from 3hrs to 7hrs. All this combined with group projects such as financial statement analysis and individual assignments like writing yet another marketing plan - but this time for business writing class - has basically exterminated any free time at my hands.

I'll try to make up for it next weekend and maybe backdate some stories. We'll see...

Hang in there!

CNN Filming

Today was the filming of the CNN series "The boardroom master class". This is the one event that we had been drilled for in last week's business writing class.

The CNN crew shot footage for about 90 minutes, using a lot of (5-6) cameras.

Although it will be broadcast next weekend only, it felt like a live recording. They didn't stage anything nor repeat any shots that might have been not-ideal.

The interview was actually quite interesting, as were the two business ideas presented by CEIBS students.

On a side note: It was an interesting case in organizational behaviour studies, too. At the beginning, the CNN head of filming said that they would announce two short breaks during the filming (to cut in commercials in the final broadcast). She also said that these breaks would last only a couple minutes and that she would like us to remain seated during that time. Sure enough, as soon as the first break was announced, people jumped up from their seats an started to rush out of the auditorium. So much for the half-life of human data retention...

I'm looking forward to seeing the result on TV next weekend.

(This post courtesy of in-classroom wifi networking)

World record in case writing

Could be that I've just set a new (inofficial) world record in case writing efficiency...

Background: We had to write an individual 10 page marketing paper, but this time not for marketing class but for business writing class. The main difference is, that no attention will be paid on the depth of analysis. Instead, grading will focus mainly on the structure and wording.

Since I didn't feel compelled to put much effort into it (I know that I can write stuff, if it really matters), I decided to opt for optimum efficiency.

So I analyzed the case in about 1.5hrs and then wrote the entire 10 page report in about 4.5 hours. Let's see wheter I'll get away with that...

(This post courtesy of in-classroom wifi networking)

Halloween

Some brave folks around here decided to organize a Halloween party.

Great stuff!

Being a European, I've never really experienced Halloween firsthand (although imperialistic US culture exports are slowly reaching good ol' world, too).

We had a real blast with people dressing up in all kinds of costumes. After weighting my options, I decided to become Zorro, defender of the weak.

An crazy experience! You simply wouldn't believe how many girl's eyes lit up, once they saw the whip in my hand.

Don't believe me? Try it out! Go get yourself a whip and plunge into a nightlife experience like never before :-))

WOW!

I just checked in google... Shanghai-Matt is now ranked first, displacing Shanghai MATT Trade Co. Ltd. to 5th place (sorry guys!).

A whole-hearted BIG THANK YOU to my audience!!!
Please keep linking to my site.

I still don't show up in google when searching for "blog CEIBS". And, of course, the ultimate goal would be to have google rank me higher than the official CEIBS homepage ;-)

Nervous breakdown

I just came close to nervous breakdown after having looked at this weeks schedule of assignments. Apparently the school doesn't want us to hang loose and relax after the mid-terms.

What bugs me the most is that we have to turn in a 10 page paper for business writing and presentation skills class. A subject which could be highly valuable, interesting and fun.

Unfortunately, the course in its current setup, has ..um, still some "headroom for further improvement". Frankly, I'd say it really draws its main attraction factor off the mandatory class attendance rule (which, btw is enforced by a TA ticking off every student at the beginning of every lesson).

Last Saturday (YES, the %#*@ class is on WEEKENDS!) we spent half an hour looking at DVD footage of speeches and presentations with focus on the 1-3 second intervals where a shot of the audience had been cut inbetween the speaker shots. As the professor pointed out, if you thouroughly scrutinize the footage of "An inconvientient truth" there's actually one person sleeping in the audience while Al Gore gives his speech. Now that's what I call some serious take home value. I bet none of you guys has ever noticed this while watching the movie, right? You freakin' loosers were too focused on the discussion and main content and completely neglected to look at the really important stuff, the audience, that is...

In case you wonder what the frenzy is all about: CNN is coming to campus this Friday to shoot a discussion with us students sitting in the audience. And apparently, some people seem about to freak out by the thought that we could represent the school in a bad light. Apparently they assume the average CNN watcher to videotape and single-frame-forward the airing, especially the audience shots...

Bastards

Blogger.com seems to have dropped some of my photos. At least they displayed as broken link in the blog and they were gone from my web album.

I uploaded them again now. If you got annoyed by the broken links, make sure to have a look at the photos now.

The mid-terms are over!

Finally, we've finished the last mid-term exam. So it's party time again!

I just had OB today and my hard studying of the subject matter seems to have paid off. At least I was done with the questions after little more than half the allotted time. I wonder how my answers will be evaluated, though, as I just couldn't resist to go WAY further than what the questions asked for.

In any case, I probably gave up most of my competitive advantage anyway, because I supplied some fellow students with the book summary I had written (which had taken me about 30 hours of continous reading and summarizing...) And, boy, material like this spreads fast on a compus.

Internal Affairs

Dear friends,

I know you'd like to read more about what's going on down here. Unfortunately, we've been spammed with group work AND midterm exams, so the whole place has burst into some kind of busy-bee farm.

While I tried to resist peer pressure for as long as possible, spending the full october holiday week vacationing with Ursula finally seems to ask its toll. I really have to focus now, in order not to get left behind.

So please be patient if you don't hear from me until the weekend. We've had to turn in a Marketing paper this morning, and there will be the Statistics midterm on Thursday, the OB midterm on Friday and an Economics quizz Wednesday next week.

To top it all off, MBA office scheduled a compus visit event for this weekend where I'll have to show up and fullfill my ambassador duties. In other words, I'll have to make a happy face, show a big smile, and say that none of us students has a work-life balance problem ;-)

On a high note

We just got feedback on the very first group project that we had handed in.

Quote: Your grade on this paper is 96. One of the best papers on this deliverable. VERY strong paper. (As I grade your paper, I’m almost done with the papers and this is the highest grade so far…)

Let's hope this is a better predictor for future performance than the Marketing papers, where the class was slammed with a 76 point average, that "had been artifically raised in order not to demotivate everyone"...

My Hand is killing me

Hell, does my hand hurt! I'm just no longer used to writing stuff by hand. The reason is, that we have to turn in the &@*% Financial Accounting homework handwritten.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?

I've been using computers since childhood and now they actually expect me to emulate a spreadsheet on paper?! Of course I did the whole thing in Excel, with the effect that I now just spent 5 absolutely unproductive hours copying numbers from my computer screen to 22 doublesided pages of A4. Not exactly what I imagined my learning experience to be...

Bye bye Shanghai

Tonight was the last night before Ursulas return to Switzerland so we went for a drink at Cloud 9, the famous bar on the 88th floor of JinMao Tower. As an extra courtesy, the recent Taifun had washed the air clean of any dust and it was an amazing view. I mean really, we had a view that went beyond anything I had ever seen previously. You could literally see lights up to the horizon. I tell you guys, this city rocks!

Formula-1

This Sunday we went to the Formula-1 race in Shanghai. Turns out the damn' race course is out of town. It took us almost two hours to get there by shuttle bus.

It really was a fun experience. To be honest I had been afraid that it might be rather boring to sit there an watch cars pass, but actually it was great fun and the time passed very quickly.

On a side note: Since it was a rainy day we spend 25 Yuen on an umbrella sold to us by a tout on the street. This is more than two times the regular price. Needless to say that it took less than 5 minutes for the umbrella to fall completely apart, such bad was the quality... I'm consistently amazed by how much waste is produced in this country just by selling the utmost crappy quality!

Bamboo Chicken

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?
We just had the "specialty" of Longshen restaurants: Bamboo chicken. First I was disappointed that the bamboo mouse as listed on the menu was currently unavailable. But once I got my "chicken" I was immediately delighted not to have ordered the mouse.

Basically, the entrepreneurial spirit of Longshen rice farmers has taken their approach to gastronomy to a whole new level.

They kill the chickens and take all the good meat (wings, breasts, etc.) for themselves. The remains, rather than being disposed of, then get shredded, stuffed into bamboo tubes, smoked over unhealthy coal fires and sold to dumb enough foreign tourists as a "specialty" at exorbitant prices! Nice business model.

Got Rice?

After a long bus ride we managed to get from Yangshuo to Longshen. Let me say so much: The place is about as expensive as it is beautiful. The entrepreneurial spirit of Chinese rice farmers seems to be unrivalled. They now charge 50 RMB entry fee into their village, which - judging from the number of tour buses on the parking lot - likely surpasses their income from farming.

How much longer until they realize that they can even have tourists pay to work on the rice paddies for a day? All they'll then have to do is charge some tourists to prepare the rice fields and charge all other tourists to watch them get prepared. What a deal!

River Cruise

We've taken the boat down the river to Yangshuo. Like this we got a chance to really appreciate the karst landscape around Guilin which is really fascinating. We've also encountered countless fishing vessels, water buffalows and bamboo rafts.

Dreamlike LiJiang

We went to see a show called "Dreamlike LiJang". Listen carfully: THIS IS A MUST! If you visited Guilin and haven't gone to this show, you haven't seen Guilin. Period. The show is an excellent mixture of acrobatics, choreography, stage design, light design and it contains many elements I haven't seen anywhere before. And I've been to many shows, believe me.

Dreamlike LiJang is probably best described as a chinese indoor version of Cirque de Soleil, at one-fifth the expense.

Guilin

We've arrived in Guilin and we already fell for a tout who managed to take us to a restaurant which sold us pijiu yu (beerfish) for three times the going rate.

Unfortunately we were dumb enough to order without asking for the prices in advance, as the dishes advertised outside were all moderately priced. Hell, did this get on my nerves! I REALLY should know better by now!

For the more curios of my readership: We paid 200 Yuen (~33 CHF) for a fish, noodles, some beef and a beer. While this would still be moderate for a two-person meal in Switzerland, it still bugs me, as it's vastly overpriced for China...

But let's talk about the more positive things: Guilin is a beautiful place! The lake with the illuminated towers looks really great at night. And we've even found a nice place that serves excellent coffee and small meals.

A skyline like.no.other

To quickly forget about the Lufthansa hassles, I took Ursula downtown to Puxi last night so she could get a first glimpse of the city. Slowly she seems to realise what made me come here in the first place. We had a few drinks in the Capitain's bar before heading back to element fresh where we got my favorite - the teriyaki salmon salad!

Sneak Peek

Urusla finally wanted to know what this Shanghai craze is all about. So she decided to join me for the October holiday. She arrived today at Pudong international airport with both bags missing (thanks Lufthansa!). Now we've had to postpone our scheduled flight to Guilin in the hopes that LH manages to find and ship our bags to Shanghai by tomorrow.

Rusty old man

The Economics quizz went quite well, I guess. Let's see once we get back the results. However, I'm definitely no longer used to this school-like test taking thing. It felt rather otherworldly to me. But I guess I'll get used to it again sooner than I'd like to ;)

Facing the Economics Quizz

Tomorrow we'll have our first quizz in economics. The quizz is some kind of multiple choice short-exam to make sure people reviewed the material up to this point. It will count 10% towards the final grade.

Some people have become rather busy reviewing lecture notes and stuff. I don't really understand what for. It seems all common sense to me. Maybe they're trying to memorize formulas rather than to understand the concepts. But then again maybe I'm the one not getting the point here. I'll let you know tomorrow after the quizz...

October holiday approaching

The October holiday is getting closer with blinding speed! The last hurdle will be an economics quizz on Thursday before I can finally let go and hop on a plane to Guilin. I plan to spend the week with Ursula in this most beautiful region of China. We'll then top off the unspoiled, pure nature experience by going to Shanghai's Formula 1 race on Sunday, Oct 7.

A hairy Sunday

This Sunday the international club organized a road trip to the neighboring town Yangchenghu where we could taste the most hyped local delicacy: Freshwater hairy crabs.

The act of getting there and back was an experience in itself. We spent about 3hrs in traffic for the 60km distance each way. Sunday seemed like China's most popular driving day to me, although I was quickly told that traffic during rushhour was actually much worse.

The crab, however, was really excellent and didn't really care how long we had been on the road. Although mean voices said that the crab was as excellent as the town was ugly, which, in my personal opinion is a gross overstatement - no crab on earth can ever be that excellent...

All in all the excursion was an intense experience (especially with the mud-snail-appetizer beforehand) and it presented a well deserved and longed-for diversion from the daily homework routine.

Thanks International Club!

Ambassador President

I've been elected president of the student ambassadors for section 2. People keep congratulating me, although nobody's got a clue yet what this position is all about. Let's hope it doesn't involve too much work ;-)

The reason I volunteered was basically that I wanted to ensure that the information Wiki I had kickstarted will find its way into the regular information/application process and not die a premature death.

A Really Bad Day(tm)

On one of the first days here we were warned about life in China that initial euphorism would soon evaporate and that our mood would reach an all-time low after two to three months before recovering back to normal.

This alone not being enough, one of the long-time expats at our school said, that even after having lived years in China, he would still feel like killing everybody around him once every few months.

Now guess what, yesterday I found out why: I went to Carrefour to buy a clothes drying rack. Lucky me, it was on sale for only RMB 159 instead of 249! Unfortunately at the cash register, I realized that they had charged me the full price, i.e. 90 RMB too much. As a responsible customer, I complained and asked for the situation to be rectified.

Well, to make a long story short: It took roughly 6 people and 1.5 hours of waiting time to refund me the 90 RMB (15 CHF).

This not enough, some time earlier at the bank: In order to change CHF (which were already sitting on my bank account) to RMB (which would continue to sit on my bank account) it took me 1.25 hours of waiting in line at the local branch.

No wonder I had almost killed the guy at the campus cafeteria when he figured I'd have to wait for 30 minuts until the kitchen would be able to prepare my food...

The math myth (revised)

Last Wednesday I posted a story about the math test results rumour (see here). Turns out it wasn't very far from the truth.

MBA office this week sent out email to the poor bastards who failed the test and will have to take additional math lessons. Those students who passed the test, however, were never informed about their success. People who didn't listen to the grapevine carefully might still be afraid of having failed the test as they were never informed otherwise.

Interesting concept. Maybe once I pick up chinese logic, it'll occur cristal clear to me?!

I've moved

That's right. On Saturday I moved all my stuff to the new apartment and I've been sleeping there ever since. Pics will follow, as will the HORROR STORIES associated with getting it cleaned, repaired and equipped.

Improv star

On Friday there was the welcoming party where I had signed up to do a little improv show. Guess what: WE DID GREAT! Some people even went up to me after the show to tell me how cool they thought the stuff had been.

It wasn't my achievment, though, since I had a great team: Erika and Jordana helped me out. Erika had some acting experience already and Jordana is just a natural! To be honest, they probably did much better on stage than myself...

First we did a Stop-and-Go which went very well. Then we did some puppeteering stuff with puppeteers picked from the audience. [Side note: I could have killed the guy who was controlling me, as he constantly did "funny" things such as sticking my middle finger out or picking my nose, etc]

Pictures will follow as soon as I had a chance to upload them (you know, the workload...)

The heat is on...

Workload has increased dramatically, which is why I will only be able to write once or twice a week, and much less so, edit photos to be published here. I know, you'd like me to publish more infos, but hey, don't complain to me, complain to the guys who give us all the assignments!

Nokia does it again

To those of you who have been making fun of my old Nokia cellphone: Prepare to shut up! I got myself a shiny new cellphone. Nokia has introduced a new model which was finally worth the wait. No need to rush though, it's not yet available in Europe...

At less than 10 mm thick, sporting a camera, bluetooth support and an FM radio, I can hardly find anything to complain. Mine even sports a built-in chinese dictionary ;-)

After years of producing ugly, bulky, feature-laden bricks, Nokia seems to have finally found back to the path of enlightment. Buy some shares, guys, 'cause this phone is guaranteed to become a runaway success!

Improv show approaching rapidly

In a moment of mental incapacity I signed up to do an Improv show at the 07 Welcoming party. Back then the date of Sept 7 seemed far away, but now the deadline is rapidly approaching. I've found two courageous co-students who don't mind to make a fool out of themselves and we've been practicing tonight quite a bit. We're far from perfect, but I guess we'll somehow manage to pull a good show. We'll see...

Home sweet home

This is Paolo, the friendly Italian fellow who will become my flatmate for the next 12 months. Today we finally signed the rental agreement for our new appartment.

We had been visiting loads of places until we finally fell in love with this one. Even though the kitchen looked rather filthy and the refrigerator smelled very bad (the owner had cut power without opening the doors first) we instantly recognized this diamond in the rough.

We should be able to move in this weekend, provided that the cleaning works out as we have demanded. And yeah, we will closely watch the cleaning procedure, you can bet on this one!

I'll post some pictures as soon as we're ready for the house warming party.

The math myth

A few days ago I made a joke to someone that the results of our initial math test had already been announced by email, i.e. those who had passed the test would already have received a notice telling so.

Funny thing is, the joke seems to have turned into a rumour which is spreading like a bush fire. And some OEGs (overly eager guys), who - as everybody else - have not yet received anything, seem to be short of panicking by now ;-)

Chinese jogging

Today I started my own personal workout program. I went jogging for half an hour while listening to a Chinese lesson on my iPod. Generally the whole thing went quite well, except for the fact that I would have been supposed to actually speak after the guy in my headphones. However, being stuck on the running machine in the gym, with several other people working out next to me, I experienced some kind of "speaker's block" and all I achieved was some kind of humble mumbling...

Maybe I should have a few beers before working out next time, just to loosen up a little bit?

Code of conduct

Last Friday, the entire student body of the 2007 intake has formulated its own unique code of conduct.

CEIBS CODE OF CONDUCT

1. Every student is a CEIBS ambassador and has the obligation to proudly represent the CEIBS community.
2. Show initiative and actively participate in CEIBS community by cooperating, helping and sharing.
3. Make learning enriching through healthy and constructive competition.
4. Be ethical and act with integrity at all times.
5. Be socially responsible and contribute to your community.
6. Respect students, teachers and school, accepting differences and promoting mutual understanding.
7. STUDY HARD, PARTY HARDER.

The comittee had actually aimed for eight items, as eight is the lucky number in Asia. However, they somehow got stuck after the seventh and my suggestion 8. Under all conditions always remember item 7 was not received with much enthusiasm...

Easy peasy

Today was the first lecture day.

Some overeagerly hard working students already tried to spread panic by claiming that one would have to prepare homework for certain sessions and they started to solve some exercises listed as homework for the first lecture. What a weird thought though, solving the assignments before the lesson! Makes the professor kind of redundant ;-)

There's not much stress yet, as the first lectures in each course consisted mainly of administrative issues and a short overview of the course. Let's see how the week develops...

Medical check

We had our medical check today. Every foreigner who applies for a residence permit in Shanghai has to go through this procedure...

Let me tell you one thing guys, if you ever thought of China as being an unorganized, underdeveloped place, think again. The four of us arrived at the hospital and within one (1) hour we got administratively registered, photographed, interviewed, measured, x-rayed, ultrasounded, chest-listened-to, palpated, sight-checked, EKG'd, bloodsampled and billed.

Never ever have I encountered a medical factory - oops, I meant facility - which was as highly organized and efficient. Their computer system even fed the customer data from initial registration down the line to the billing place, where a box displayed the customer's name and balance and a synthesized english voice spelled out the amount due.

Critical reflection

Oops... I'm not entirely sure, but I might have overshot a little bit... After one week, everybody on campus seems to know my name... The (all abundant ;-) girls greet me at every walkway corner...

Maybe I should run a low profile for a couply days and let things cool down a bit?

Flowers for Ursula

Before leaving Switzerland, I was strongly encouraged to send bi-weekly flowers...

However, I cannot really do this, since pricing levels of the Swiss flower delivery service would simply double my living costs over here.

But luckily, they got virtual flowers on their website, and they even come for free!!!

I'm feeling guilty

I'm feeling sooo guilty as I'm badly lagging behind with my posts. So much has happened the last few days that I barely had the time to unload photos from my camera, much less to comment on them. But I promise I'll catch up on it this weekend and I'll backdate all the articles, so the blog will appear in order. Hence, make sure to check some of the older posts too or you'll miss out on some seriously cool stuff...

Tomorrows elite

Look at these guys... This is what tomorrows elite looks like, getting prepared for the job at the #11 ranked business school world wide. Who ever said learning couldn't be fun!?

These are by far the smartest, brightest, and most motivated kids I've ever seen. After all they're on a quest to find a hidden treasure, deciphering codes, solving puzzles and negotiating alliance agreements.

Marketing blurb

I just got this from the CEIBS newsletter:

CEIBS Welcomes MBA Class of 2007

August 23, 2007. Shanghai campus -- The CEIBS MBA program, ranked 11th in the world by the Financial Times, held a grand Opening Ceremony on the Shanghai campus today to welcome the incoming Class of 2007. The new students mark CEIBS largest-ever MBA class, with 194 new students. As a group, the new students also represent the most internationally diverse class in CEIBS' 13-year history - hailing from 26 countries -- as well as being top caliber in terms of prior work experience and academic background.

Needless to say that I kind-a like the "top caliber" part ;-)

Source: http://www.ceibs.edu/media/newsletter/21444.shtml

There's something seriously wrong here

I won't comment on this one. Just compare T-shirts with faces and then draw your own conclusions...

BTW I did neither plan, nor support or encourage this...

Like a bridge troubling the water

There goes our team, building a bridge from quite unfitting raw materials, spanning 2.5 meters and supporting at least a 50kg person. Boy, beware of worker bees is all I can say here... I'd gladly trade my project manager role for a more relaxed job description next time!

Smart use of technology

Team building excercise: For one minute juggle three balloons per person. The number of balloons which never touched the ground will be your team score.

Now, arguably, there are different strategies that one can choose to score as high as possible... Standing in a circle, working in a corner, having free workers who catch balloons that went astray...

However, there was one team, that came up with a highly innovative solution: The use of A/C suction airflow...

Building Idunnowhats

This guy's name is Rhett. He works for the imaginatively named company IWNC (aka "I will not complain") which seems to have applied its guiding principle even towards the guy who came up with that name...

Anyway, Rhett took on the great responsibility to mould us into functioning teams. However, participation for this event was in different teams than those we'll work with for the coming semester. So while it was great to get to know new people and do fun stuff such as juggling balloons, throwing thread balls to each other and bulding bridges, one could arguably question the team relevance of the day.

However, IWNC. We definitely had a fun time and many could get a first glimpse at how hard it can be to manage a bunch of highly motivated team mates who all "just wanna help".

The Swiss(tm) Connection

This is Eric from Switzerland. The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy would probably describe him as being "mostly harmless". However, he makes me feel pretty guilty as he's making hell more progress in Chinese languange learning than I do. What can I say...

At least he's told me his secret: chinesepod.com

Creating a better world

Today I kickstarted an initiative to improve information delivery to international students. I've set up a Wiki where everyone can add the information they were desperatly lacking before they came to Shanghai. Hopefully people will contribute. For the time being, it didn't really provoke a huge rush of action... (as in "I'm the only one doing this")

The site is located at ceibs.wetpaint.com

Feels like home...

For those of you guys who are planning to visit me: I found the Swiss corners all around town, where you can feel right at home. I even got myself an original Boursin cheese and a loaf of pain francais!

Out of proportion

I don't mean to criticize, but some things in this Country simply seem to be out of proportion. See for yourself...

Sechuan Cuisine

Not everybody likes it hot. But Jimmy apparently does... The art of eating Sechuan cuisine, by the way, is actually much less related to being resistant against insanely hot peppers, but rather to developing a sixth sense about what not to eat and when not to bite. Turns out even native Chinese people try to avoid the small pepper balls which are known to have a devastating effect on even the most heavily abused tastebuds.

Get the complete picture at picasa

Hard evidence

What else is there to say ??!?

A dance club with a view

Yesterday night we went to Attica, a really cool club at the Bund.

There clearly were two distinct types of CEIBS students hanging out there: Those who wanted to celebrate the completion of their math exam and those who were trying to quickly forget (read "drown") their experience of said exam...

In any case, the club sports an outdoor terrace with a great view on Pudong and can be greatly recommended. The DJ in the R&B room absolutely knows his trade and never ever missed a beat!

Even though initially we had a bit of an argument with the front door person because we were a few minutes late and thus they wanted to charge us extra money, eventually we got to the manager who tried hard (and actually succeeded) in transforming us into happy customers who will certainly return there many times for the weekends to come...

Get the complete picture at picasa

I'm no good at basketball

I've got that much figured out by now...

While it seemed like a great idea to do some sports today, I probably made more friends with the opposite team than with those fellows who invited me to play with them.

Jetlag strikes hard.

I arrived in Shanghai at 2:40 pm today.

As I cannot fall asleep, I figured I might as well set up a blog for my MBA study time at CEIBS.

When I left Switzerland yesterday evening I heard Marques' Vayamos Companeros on the radio and I thought "gee, fate really has a voice of its own". However, soon after came Nelly Furtado's song All good things come to an end which, personally, I figured was fairly inappropriate and just plain mean...

However, after an eleven hours flight and half an hour of desperatly looking for the award-winning-badly signposted Maglev train at Shanghai airport I instantly knew what Nelly had been talking about: The dorm room I'm writing this in.

No, I will not post any pictures of this place. I'm just not the kind of person who likes to publicly humiliate himself. But then again, you get what you pay for, and I might just have been slightly too thightfisted when booking this place, sharing 10m2 with another student.