China trip

The P3 break!

My Chinese group mate Yuxin had invited us to come and experience China over the break. With a mixture of a few Brazilians, an American, a Brit, Yuxin and myself, we took a 7 o’clock flight to China for a packed, intense, and fantastic 8-day trip to Shanghai, Xi’an, and Beijing.

The main format of the trip was perfectly in line with INSEAD tradition “culture, action, friends, food, party, no sleep.” Fresh out of the plane we discovered that China in early March did not have the same temperature as Singapore… it was freezing! In Shanghai we went sightseeing, got to know this hypermodern city, joined Yuxin’s wife Ming for dinners at famous and typical Shanghai restaurants, had drinks at trendy places on the Bund, and cool bars in the Concessions, and went to some great tourist sights around Shanghai.

And we had food…

I won’t keep on writing how great the food was (just this paragraph) but every meal in China was completely awesome, and I could write stories about every meal. Each lunch or dinner was completely different to the others, which added to the appreciation of the size and diversity of this country! Whether Mongolian, Shanghainese, Muslim, or very local and typical from whatever region, we loved the variety of food, smells, spices, colours, and tastes. Don’t get me wrong, Chinese food in Holland tastes good, but after having been to China I know that it’s not close to what you can get over here. Apart from that: every Chinese meal is a social event with loads of Pijiu's and Chinese wine - which truly has nothing to do with wine but everything with spirits like vodka, tequila or jenever… Gan bei!

After Shanghai we went to breathtaking Xi’an… terracotta warriors, impressive tomb sites, old city walls, serene Buddhist temples, a missile launch site, a hotel complex fit for presidents and kings, and many late drinks with friends. Everywhere we ended up haggling, negotiating, eating, drinking and enjoying what this beautiful country has to offer.

We were quickly accustomed to do our sleeping in the minibuses, during the small stretches between sights, cities, villages, bars, clubs and restaurants. From Xi’an we flew to Beijing for more food, good clubs, Tiān'ānmén square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, cheap Prada and Louis Vuitton, the birds'nest, the CCTV tower, karaoke at massive KTVs, dinners at 8 story restaurants, taxi rides without any means of communication, being lost, being the only foreigners in some places, being moviestars on pictures with teenagers, and constantly marveling at so much cultural richness...

Our China trip... Thanks again Yuxin and Ming, for what was truly the best possible introduction to China I can imagine, shie-shie!

P3 Final Exams

Just back from Palau, I faced a week full of P3 projects coming to an end, busy negotiations building up to the Nego exam, visits to the Chinese embassy to arrange my visa and exam preparations.

End of Feb meant the end of core class exams, so apart from the elective finals; on the 25th I also had an exam for Macro from 0900 to 1200, and one for Politics from 1400 to 1700. It was a long day of writing about theories, volatility, realists, war rhetorics, monetary policy, and all wrapped in essays around what would I do, how do I think the world problems should be solved, what theory do I use to explain my thought process, and what makes me think it will work, etc...

After that we had the customary end of party drinks, saying goodbye’s to our friends who went back for P4 in Fonty, and packing my bags for a very early morning flight to China the next morning.

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!