diànnǎo yīyuàn

Careful analysis had finally revealed that it wasn't the memory that was faulty, but the connector that the memory was plugged into.

So today I went to the diànnǎo yīyuàn, the "computer hospital", which is about an hour away at the other side of town. After some unsuccessful trials I finally found myself talking to a yellow-shirted guy who spoke about three standard deviations (99.7%) Chinese and 0.03% English. "Memory hen hao, kashe zhege donxi bu hao", etc, etc.

After a few interactions I finally decided that this was leading nowhere and I called a Chinese classmate for remote translation assistance. What then followed was the ususal humiliation by an IT service desk that doesn't distinguish between computer professionals and stupid users.

NO, it's NOT a VIRUS, it's the CONNECTOR that's faulty. What do you mean, how can I know? It also hangs in the boot menu. NO, the MEMORY is FINE! I swapped it with another laptop and it works perfectly there, I SAID IT'S THE CONNECTOR! NO it's NOT the wrong type of memory, it has been working fine for more than a year! IT'S THE CONNECTOR! YES, I know that viruses cause sudden crashes, but THIS IS NOT A VIRUS, goddammit!

The whole thing then culminated in the guy trying to pull out the memory of my laptop while still in sleep mode (i.e. the memory fully powered on). Reluctantly I finally left my treasured device at the place for further analysis, sincerely hoping that the actual engineers would know what they were doing as much as the front office guy didn't.

My laptop is dying

SHIT!

My laptop started randomly crashing a few days ago. It seems that the memory DIMM is broken. I promptly took it out of the machine, and now I'm writing this from a system that runs on Windows XP and has only 128MB of RAM.

If you think you know the meaning of slow, think again. It has just been redefined!

Let's hope I get this sorted out ASAP.

Strategy is breathing down my neck

We just had Strategic Management course. The professor is new to CEIBS. He got his PhD from MIT Sloan and taught at INSEAD before coming to China.

He kicked off his course by giving us a written case study assignment to be done over this first weekend and another one to be done during our precious spring vacation. He also supplied us with 4 course books of reading material, this is about the same volume as all other subjects combined.

HEY! WAKE UP! This is laidback China. This ain't no Wharton or INSEAD. If I wanted to work all freakin' weekend I would have applied there directly!

Jeez' I'll really have to think of some strategic evasion techniques, cuz' otherwise I can trash my Term-2 resolution right here, right now...

That's a joke, right?

From: MBA Office
To: All MBA Students

Very understanding that many of you are early expecting the grades of Term-1 courses. The hard copy of your individual transcript will be distributed by the end of Feburary. Before that, please DO NOT check the grades with the TAs individually. After the release of Term-1 grades, MBA Office will arrange the Final Exam Paper Review for Term-1. Should you have any doubts or inquries on your final grades after the review, then you can check the break-down grades of each course with me.

Two months to calculate the average of two exams and one participation grade per course? You must be kidding me!
And no way to learn about how we did on the final exam before receiving written transcripts? That's a joke, right?

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...

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...

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...