Diving trip to Palau

So we planned the trip...

A bit outrageous, but the incredible chance to dive off the beautiful islands of Micronesia, in more detail the light blue waters surrounding the island of Palau in the middle of the Pacific.



Wednesday February 6, first I had Macroeconomics and Politics, then I raced to Changi airport to catch my afternoon SQ flight to the Philippines. In Manila I was welcomed by Angela who had booked the morning flight to meet up with our friend Tjerk, who flew in directly from Amsterdam, to join us on yet another diving adventure around the world. After the tiring procedures in Manila, we were joined by classmates Etienne and Christine, and the DIVE Palau team boarded the evening flight to Koror.

The next morning a minivan picked us up for a short drive to the dive school. After the regular admin stuff, forms completion, log checks and stuff, we unpacked our stuff, had a quick breakfast and set of for our first dive. This would pretty much be the daily routine for the trip: up early in the morning, load stuff in boat, sail to dive site, and make 2 or 3 dives interrupted by lunch on an empty small bounty island...

First dive was to the Iro wreck, a sunk Japanese 2nd world war freighter at 29m. Not a bad impression for the first dive with regular air. All the subsequent dives we got free NITROX (thanks to Etienne’s commitment to please Negotiation prof Horacio by turning each and every opportunity of trade into a bloody and tough negotiation exercise)

We dove at sites with promising names like Blue Corner, Clarence Wall, Fantasy, we did a fantastic cave dive in Chandelier Cave, my favourite night dive to Jake’s Seaplane, and got treated to an abundance of sharks at the many drop offs. On my favourite shark dive, we hung to our reef hooks at the cliff of a drop off, and while we were in the middle of one of those large circles of big barracudas, we were treated to a friendly visit from a large patrol of 2m black tip sharks. Sometimes life can be really good!

We did our last dive in the German Channel, famous for it’s cleaning stations where often large Mantas come for a scrub and occasionally huge sharks come to enjoy the spa like massage currents of the channel. Too bad that on this last dive our guide dropped us at the downstream point of the cleaning stations. There was a lot of awesome shark activity, but due to the massive current, we could do little more than hang tight, before being swept away by heavy currents and doing our 3m stop racing past our surroundings before being picked up by our boat.

Great dives, an amazing snorkelling trip to the famous jellyfish lake (where you are literally engulfed by millions of non-stinging jellyfish,) good company and apart from one annoying occasion of food poisoning, good food.

The DIVE Palau team returned happy and satisfied

Privileged

I realized in P3 that we are privileged people.

We did nice things in the past, had good careers, etc.. but we are very fortunate that we can attend a business school of such a reputation and quality as INSEAD. It's great and truly enriching to study amongst great people, and to meet so many inspiring characters.

When do you get the chance to meet Ambassadors, Foreign Policy Secretaries, CEOs of successful companies, serial entrepreneurs, and TV personalities to discuss with them how they do business, how you would have handled some situations they went through, how international relations impact business, how you think about world politics and learn from those successful people who have done it, are living it, or will have to do it in the near future...

Will you do too? And how about myself? And how will we do it then? How will it impact business, society, or just our own lives and those of our families and friends...? And how will others judge what you do and did? Maybe more important to learn is how can you influence all that in a positive way?

Still so much to learn...

P3 Academics

I very much enjoyed P3, with great professors like:

Ilian Mihov, the master of Macro Economics who would in my opinion not have allowed the US economy to tank like it has, had he had any chance to stop it,

Ethan Kapstein who showed us very antagonistic views on international relations and brought a large number of interesting and influential speakers to his International Politics class,

Michael Witt, the German professor with his Singlish phrases, and Japanese and Chinese language skills who managed to stun even the Koreans and Chinese classmates with his vast knowledge of Asia, during the Strategies for Asia course,

Phil Anderson, who ran a very cool entrepreneurship class with fantastic guests and great cases in his Venture Opportunities class, and

Horacio Falcao, who got the stage 3 times a week to perform his Negotiations show for our pleasure and training. Apart from his lectures I just loved the confrontational assignments where you actually negotiate in all kinds of situations with your classmates. It got emotional, it got messy, and we aimed for larger pies than any oven could possibly bake.

It was a great mix of classes for me topped off with the chance to work with my fantastic IDFP group on our successful project for PASI in Malawi. It was a good learning opportunity for us, and a chance to show our resilience after having had to stop with our project in Kenya due to the extreme, and incredible violence that disrupted all life, civilized business and society especially in the Kisumu area where our client was located.

Thanks Begoña, Ceci, Nadia, and Steven for all the good times!

Promises, promises

Dear readers,

I'm aware of the fact that I promised to post sooner than this, but I have unfortunately not managed to keep it up. Seriously wondering whether there are still any readers left, I have nevertheless decided to post some experiences and stories from the past few months. Hence, going forward you will first get some past experiences, travels, what-we've-been-up-to's and only after we finnished catching up will we move on with the more recent events.

As a short update: I graduated with my class on the 3d of July in Fontainebleau (so I'm now officially a proud MBA of the class of July 2008) and we have moved back to Singapore where I am now looking for a job.

I already miss the MBA, my classmates, and life in the bubble... be it on the Fonty campus or on the Sing one. This year was totally crazy, hyperfast paced, dynamic as hell, constantly stimulating, and as fun as can be... man, did I love and enjoy my year at INSEAD!!!

Angela is also back to work in Singapore (with an occasional business trip to Shanghai or Jakarta.)

I got to go now, but will start posting our past journeys soon.

All the best to you all J'08s... and when in Singapore, do let me know, there's a bunch of us out here!