Time flies

Wow, it's already end of June and tomorrow I'm gonna have the last exam of my third term.

I feel kind of guilty not to have written anything here during almost two months. There would have been quite a bit to talk about.

However, I was crazy enough to subscribe to 13 credits. Usually the school does not allow students to take on more than 9 credits in order to avoid overload. I got special permission to take an additional course, boosting my credit load to 11. Then I just joined one more course without officially subscribing to it (as I wouldn't have gotten permission anyway ;-).

I have to say - in retrospect - 13 credits is simply too much. There hasn't been much time left for anything else and my social life has been lying fairly low. But somehow I survived. I always do ;-)

On a side note: I'll be in Switzerland from July 1 to July 7, so if anybody wants to see me, that would be the occasion. Then I'll be off to the Philippines for 2 months and after that I'll be staying in London for another 4 months.

Life is good

I feel great! Really, I know, it's a long time since I last said something like this, but I feel truly priviliged and happy to be around. Somehow I spent the past few days reflecting on my life a bit, and the past years have been really great!

I've lived in Paris, Aix-en-Provence and now in Shanghai. I've learned French. I have great friends. A lovely girlfriend. I've truly lived my dream by travelling and doing weird things such as working in a restaurant kitchen. Or playing online role playing games. I've had fantastic experiences in my life! Been to so many places. And now I'm living the student life again, learning new things every day!

Yes I did loose a lot of money in the stock market lately - and no, that's not helping my happyness in any way ;-) But this is just a transient glitch, an annomaly that doesn't really impact the real life. And life is what we should all care about. After all we don't have much more than a hundred years to make the most of it.

Study less, party more!

I hate new year's resolutions. They never last much longer than a few weeks, or, more often than not, days.

So I decided to call this my term two resolution. It only has to work for four months and hence feels more doable and less frightening.

Why study less? Because it will leave me more time and energy for the second part of the resolution.
Why party more? That's not a serious question, right?

Honestly, I feel that I completely missed some of the goals I had set for my MBA experience. I didn't really enjoy Shanghai's nightlife as much as I would have liked. And most of the time I went out with other international students rather than Chinese fellows, mainly because they have a different notion of hanging loose.

While hang loose and relax usually means go to a bar, have a beer or two, and do some talking to a Westerner, the same thing to a Chinese means grab a group of 20 people, go to a Karaoke place, and sing, dance, drink and smoke in a crowded, noisy fashion.

And this is exactly what I'm gonna do this term. Why? I have no freakin' clue. Just part of the mandatory cultural experience, I guess.

P.S. I got 90/100 for the case I wrote in least-effort manner. Another point which proves my new strategy as being highly effecive.

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?