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April 28, 2008

What have I been up to?

I've been traveling.

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Posted at 3:09 PM
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December 02, 2007

Santa Claus Pub Crawl 2007

As much fun as I thought the Rugby Pub Golf was, the Santa Claus Pub Crawl blew it out of the water. I'll leave the actual description of the event to all the other London Business School Bloggers out there.

There were a couple of highlights for me, on top of enjoying a night of group debauchery. The very best part was caroling in front of the Eros statue at Piccadilly Circus - My pictures don't do it justice, but the 400+ of us, all standing there belting out the tunes a sight to behold. Our energy, the delight of the crowd. It was pretty amazing.

We were such a spectacle that we actually stopped traffic for a bit. Who could blame people for wanting to stop? After all, some of them had "never seen a Japanese Santa before".

Update: Looks like Morland has his pics up now too.

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Posted at 5:14 PM
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October 05, 2007

A Month in Review

After a looong hiatus, I guess I'm back. It's not even the difficult part of the year yet and time is already at a premium. So many events, so little time to write about them.

Well, let's start with the actual education, much of the reason why I'm here, I guess. The first month of classes introduced us to courses that get us in the right frame of mind for the rest of the program. Business stats taught us how to translate regression analysis into layman English - something that a stats course had never done in undergrad. Strategic Problem Solving (SPS) gave us frames on which to hang our problems as well as logical ordering by which to solve them. Understanding General Management (UGM) introduced me to cases and confirmed my assertion that much of life is predicated on luck.

(Aside - The sciencey side of me coming out, evolution of great companies remind me a bit about theories on mammalian evolution. If you take the development of auditory and olfactory senses for example - I'm oversimplifying so bear with me - early mammals couldn't compete with the more established reptiles of the day during daytime, so there was gradual selection for those more active at night. Well, being active at night requires the ability to interpret your surroundings somehow. Smell and sound. After the dinosaurs died out, mammals emerged to the daylight armed with this new tool that conferred additional benefits in this new environment. Companies have the same type of path as well - Apple was suffering for much of the 90s, their strategy almost turning their bunker into a grave. Well, now times have changed and Jobs looks like even more of a genius. Mammalian evolution. Companies. End of aside.)

We had a surprising amount of fun in Business Communications, where they've shown us how to speak like politicians. I was personally concerned as the class briefing for the course seemed a bit... desperate. It came across as a sales pitch where the salesman knows he's selling you crap and feels terrible about. I didn't think it was warranted at all, the class was great. The facilitator taped us speaking throughout the day and the difference between the beginning and the end was impressive. The end of the day looked much more refined and polished, even though we had even less time to prepare our presentations.

We ended our month with a few days of Global Leadership Assessment for Managers (GLAM). We learned about ourselves and how we function in a team environment. The simulation was the most enjoyable part. Our group has great potential to help each other grow throughout the year. The 360 feedback wasn't surprising for me and the NEO-PI was a good tool to help us standardize the language about our strengths and weaknesses.

Outside of school been punctuated with great events too. (In pointish form as I should start working on my assignments soon)
Alright, that's it for now. I'm sure I'm missing out on things, but business stats calls.

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Posted at 11:37 AM
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September 07, 2007

Another week down

Thanks go out to Mike and Anthony for the pictures that I stole without permission. Another week over at London Business School. Career services introduced us to the Ob-Gyn College next to the school where we learned that Industry encompasses anything that is not Consulting or Finance. Monday was the first real taste of classes with Business Statistics. The quality of the teaching is good, but judging purely on the material covered in the first class, I wish I had done the waiver to test out. The morning started with a lecture followed with an afternoon of group work and the computer lab work. The group work gave a glimpse into the dynamics of my study group.

There are six of us in the study group - a Bolivian Management Consultant, a Nigerian Investment Banker, an American Pension Manager, an Indian IT Consultant, a Portuguese F1 Engineer and myself. The mix of nationalities is really impressive but we're more of a strategy oriented group. It was really telling when we tackled our first statistics question to interpret the statistical distribution of two graphs. We instead ended up debating for 15 minutes about what the best customer spending profile for a business would be. Other classroom activities for the week have been various briefings about what to expect out of the rest of the school - things like how we're assessed, what the library has and what to do with language training.

The activity highlight of the of the week was the away day at the Vision Development & Training compound outside of Redding. We spent the day on a ropes course experiencing "challenge by choice". The team building activities were split into high and low ropes. Low ropes were strategic, alternate thinking and more large team oriented. High ropes had the exhilaration factor with climbing walls - groups of four precariously balancing on top of tiny platforms on telephone poles, groups of two leaping from the tops of poles to a trapeze dangling a few feet away. I wish our group had tackled it, but probably the most strenuous and amusing activity was climbing the "Jacob's ladder". Imagine - if you will - a rope ladder with rungs made out of logs spaced about 7-8 feet apart. Teams of three were tasked with climbing to the top of this ladder, pushing and pulling each other up. It looked like all the teams typically consisted of two taller people and one shorter. The shorter person seemed to be the victim of the most abuse, acting mainly as a step stool for the task. The activities of the day culminated with teaching us all step-by-step how to juggle to the Macarena.

Like I've said in other posts, I've never been in a group of like-minded individuals like this before. Most team building activities I've seen at work have people fall more or less into the roles they're usually in. Managers stay managing, followers follow, people who make snide remarks do the same but with more ammo. Working with people on the away day was completely different than anything I've experienced in that regard. We're all very driven people and it really shows. Everyone wants to lead, everyone wants to do everything. Though I tried to make sure not to take things so seriously, I'm not going to lie - There were moments of frustration. I've never seen the value of team building days in the past, but in this group, I'm really hoping for a few more.

I have to mention that outside of the class has been great as well. The flatmates are still the best people in the year. We're fantastic even. Lots of beer consumed, learning how to play rugby and I have a feeling that the poker club will be vaulted to new and terrifying heights this year. I've seen a lot of very good players - smart, tight and aggressive play.

I could learn a thing or two at business school.

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Posted at 1:11 PM
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June 27, 2007

Only 4 More Weekends Working

The past weekend was action packed. Spent Thursday with pretty good seats for the Jay's game. They were going strong till the relief pitcher came out in the 8th. Then everything went to crap. I left early, which really sums up all the Jay's experiences I've ever had. Friday was a quick jaunt over to Niagara for dinner at the Brazillian Steakhouse - CopaCobana. It was reasonable, but I enjoyed Carnaval more. The food didn't stop as we bid Liam good luck in his trip to San Fran and Google on Saturday night with all-you-can-eat sushi. All this eating was probably not the best thing in the world given my main weekend activity.

Thanks to Andreas's inspiration, the weekend days were spent getting my open water SCUBA certification. We couldn't have asked for better weather, a balmy 30°C. Gulliver's Lake is surprisingly close to Toronto. It was once a limestone quarry that was filled by underground aquifers and seeded with bass. The water was clean and clear - unfortunately the visibility at the bottom was terrible. Surprisingly, all the food didn't make me uncomfortable at all.

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On the MBA front, my Visa app has just been approved. They recieved it yesterday and I just got an e-mail letting me know that I should be expecting my passport back in a few days. For my proof of finances, I had sent in 3 months worth of account statements as well as a sheet detailing my current investment portfolio. I thought I might have needed to submit info around the line of credit I'm taking, but the application went through without it. Absolutely lightning quick. Move logistics then housing are the big items to tackle.

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Posted at 5:34 PM
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May 04, 2007

No Matter What Anyone Else Says...

Wincent <3 Spider-man

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Posted at 8:08 AM
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March 29, 2007

Breathing Underwater Without Gills

First and foremost, congratulations to all the Round 2 London Business School Admits out there! The notification date was last Friday so the tension of uncertainty should have long passed by now.

Sometime in the past couple of weeks, I added labels to many of my posts. I was looking for a simple way to list all my labels in the side navigation using the classic blogger template format. Research has yielded a few complicated ways, none of which I particularly like. Regardless, all the MBA posts have been labeled for anyone interested in my path though the MBA process.

Interestingly, the number of LBS MBA2009 admits on the portal have ballooned from a steady roughly half class after R1 confirmation to over double immediately after R2 notification. I'm sure as the confirmation deadline passes the number will fall, leaving room for R3 and R4 admits. I don't think any applicants should be concerned by not having space at LBS with these numbers.

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As a friend promised, learning to dive was a blast. Another LBS admit and I spent last weekend at a PADI certification course at at Aquarius SCUBA. The classroom sessions were pretty laughable. The facility itself took it reasonably seriously, but there really wasn't much to really learn. The final module in the course book was essentially an extended advertisement for other courses that PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors - Put Another Dollar In - whatever) offers. It wasn't all bad. The safety tips (cardinal rule - never hold your breath, always keep breathing) and the dive table work were useful.

The practical pool skill work was the cool part. The instructor was great, ex-police diver, so he inspired a lot of confidence. One of the first things at the pool he told us was that it's normal at some point to panic underwater during the session. In the event that that happens, our first instincts would be to surface. What he stressed was that whatever you do down there, you're pretty safe. Just calm down and you should be able to think your way out of any problem. It's good advice in general, but me being me, I thought to myself - whatever! As if I'm going to panic. We did our entries into the water and with a quick briefing, we were to deflate our BCDs and descend.

The first breath I took was exhilarating! The sensation of breathing underwater was unreal. By the second breath, I was starting to feel a little less confident in my abilities. My mask started filling with water and, probably by virtue of it being a cheap rental, the regulator didn't fit in my mouth as comfortably as it could have. In fact, with the air pressure on the hose leading up to the regulator, it felt like it was going to be yanked from my mouth at any second. I then accidentally inhaled through my nose, sputtering as the water burned the places where water shouldn't be.

I'm confident enough to admit that, at that point, I was slightly panicked. Just like the instructor said, my first instinct was to want to surface. I fought it though, the rational part of my brain luckily kicking in. I reminded myself that as long as that regulator was in my mouth, I would keep on living. After a few solid deep breaths, I regained some semblance of composure.

Everything else was easy from there on in. The skill that concerned me the most was that of breathing from free flow. Free flow is the state where your regulator fails (or your hose has been cut) and air just streams from the tank. In that case, you are supposed to "sip" the air bubbles coming out and make a controlled ascent. I did not believe this whole sipping air business could be done. Apparently it can though, as my continued existence after breathing from free flow for a minute demonstrates. All without getting any water in my lungs too!

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Posted at 3:24 AM
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March 07, 2007

Still counting down...

Friday was another good outing for some of the Toronto LBS admits. It's great how there's an instant camaraderie, the same one that I found when I visited the school before. I think the positive but ambitious nature of the people that attend is one of the defining characteristics of the school. Not that it wouldn't be different at any other school, but compared to some of the other places that I've checked out I get a different warm and fuzzy from LBS.

Something else exciting that came out of the meeting was that one of the guys and I are going to get PADI certification for SCUBA together. I'm really looking forward to it as it was something that I've always wanted to do, but never really had a chance to.

If you haven't gathered, I'm a huge fan of the school and I'm getting more and more invested by the day. I've never really been in an environment where most everyone had the same ambitions as I do but also had the same demeanor.

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Posted at 2:45 PM
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