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)