White Spaces

At school, we are repeatedly exhorted to find the "white spaces", "blue oceans", "untapped customers" that are necessary to grow a business. What I wouldn't give for a white space of my own, where I might do some growing too. This period is the most challenging one for me, raising all sorts of questions: to what extent am I happy handing in sub-standard work in order to maintain my social life and catch a couple hours sleep now and then? What have the courses taught me about where my skills and preferences lie? How much of a radical change am I prepared to make in my life, career or otherwise? Rather than achieving any clarity on these issues, I get more confused the more people I speak to. And I just can't seem to find that little space in my schedule, or in my mind, to really sit down and think about it. Resorting to the ostrich method instead, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping something good happens.

It's not all gloom and doom, though. I am really enjoying the social environment at school these days. It's much more relaxed than in the first couple periods, and everyone is focusing their efforts not on ticking off lists of names of people they've met, but on building real, solid friendships. Integration with our friends from Singapore has also been fantastic, and we've even managed to build some bridges to the new December class as well.

In other news, our team is into the semi-finals round for the L'Oreal business game. That means that we now have to put together a business plan outlining our vision for our little company and its promising portfolio of brands. A fake company, and fake brands, of course, but after almost three months it really feels like our baby. Here's hoping our baby impresses the L'Oreal execs.

I feel like I should close this post with an apology. I know I have not done a very good job this period keeping my readership informed of the goings-on in my life. In fact, I've done a similarly poor job maintaining communication with my friends and family. All I can say is, I promise to do better. And to keep looking for those spaces.

Doldrums

The end of September is fast approaching, the weather's getting cold, we've now passed the P1 half-way mark, and the blues have descended on Fontainebleau. Well, sometimes it feels more like Holly Golightly's reds, actually...

So why the gloom and doom? For one, the level and pace of classes has shot up exponentially over the last couple weeks. Falling behind is not an option, it's an inevitability. The whole experience reminds me a bit of a Texan rodeo, where you cling on for dear life, attempting to stay on top of things for as long as possible and hoping that when you do fall off (and you will), sheer dumb luck will intervene to keep you from getting crushed to death. Exams are in less than four weeks, and there are quizzes, group projects, exercises and essays due in the meantime. God help us.

The second cause of the "blah" is the to-be-expected mid-term anticlimax. We all started out a few weeks ago eager to great every new face and immediately love them forever. This kind of attitude is simply not sustainable in the long run. Now, we studiously ignore anyone whose identity, family history, and first pet's name we are not intimately familiar with; there are just too many people, not enough time, and energy levels are running low. This is also the time in the year that we realize that despite the fact that we're all sharing this amazing INSEAD experience together, it hasn't been long enough for us to really be friends yet (I am aware that I may be upsetting a few of my classmates who read this blog. Maybe I should qualify and say that might just be how I'm feeling about it.) Four weeks, even four intensive INSEAD-bubble-quality weeks, is too short for us to really know each other, especially when we've met around 300 people at random parties wearing silly costumes. My networking skills are just not that honed. But this aspect of the blues, I'm convinced, will lift slowly, as time passes and relationships become more real.

So, what to do when the blues hit? Well, some of us have taken to living in the library, in an attempt to stave off exam worries. Others have chosen to take a 12+ hour bus ride to Munich to drown their fears and sorrows in copious amounts of beer. Still others have reunited with friends, partners, families, seeking to reintegrate the real world (this can actually be quite dangerous; kids, don't try this at home).

And then there are the never-ending, pointless but highly entertaining INSEAD events to keep your mind off things. Here's a quick run-through of fun INSEAD life (yes, it's still there!) over the last few days.

Saturday witnessed the crushing victory of Section E4's football team in the inter-section Football Championship. Despite threatening clouds, the orange-clad, crown-wearing boys and girls of this fine athletic formation quickly disposed of their rivals, winning each match 4 to 1 and celebrating with true E4 panache and flair.

On Sunday, I was invited to dinner at Montmelian, served by the finest Dutch chef on campus. Who needs three Michelin star restaurants when you can get delicious cream of broccoli soup, scallops and apple pie in an idyllic chateau setting?!

Then yesterday was the start of Korea-Japan week, the first of many national weeks to come where we are all treated to the finest and funnest of our classmates' cultures. Calligraphy contests (it took me close to an hour just to write "friendship".... badly), Korean and Japanese food, Tug-of-War, lovely national costumes... what's not to love?!

And so the smiles return, at least until the next Econ quiz.

Organ donor wanted

I never thought I'd say this but, there are too many parties in Fontainebleau. Lacking the swimming pools, Indonesian beaches, and cutting edge bar scene of Singapore, our campus makes up for it by having house parties; there are a lot of houses, ergo a lot of parties. One on Thursday, I skipped Friday's, a Paris outing tonight and yet another house party on Sunday. As a consequence, I am severely sleep deprived and on the brink of liver failure. Somehow my body doesn't seem to be recovering like it used to when I was 18 (back in the stone age, as some would say). I cannot fathom how people expect us to actually go to class on top of it all.

In other news, I've now met 5 of my housemates. That's less than a third of the total expected number, but so far so good. No raving psychopaths or heavy metal fans as far as I can tell, so we should get along. Which is a relief as we're all living in rather cramped quarters with annoyingly thin walls.

Now please excuse me while I lapse into coma.

Art for art's sake

The best stories always emerge from circumstances involving an incredibly stupid person, with an incredibly stupid plan, scaring the bejeezus out of lots of other stupid people. Such a happy scenario occurred this week, when an "artist" from NY (and I use that term with a pinch of irony) decided to build himself what was meant to be a replica of an American-Revolution-era submarine (actually an 8ft, egg-shaped buoy made out of moldy plywood), superbly and accurately described by the NY Times as "something out of Jules Verne by way of Huck Finn, manned by the cast members from 'Jackass'." Apparently in his underwear and, one can only imagine, quite uncomfortable, our hero proceeded to creep up to the Queen Mary 2 in New York Harbour (perhaps intending to emerge from his hideout at the last minute with glitter and a feather boa and shout "surprise!"). He and two of his "accomplices" were promptly arrested, for fear that the man and his soggy wooden egg was launching a terrorist attack on the 150,000 ton, 345-meter-long vessel.

Let's take a moment.

To help you recover from this shocking news and once more achieve inner tranquility, I leave you with this view of the Fontainebleau forest:

At last!

Nothing like a nice long run with ipod blaring followed by Sunday brunch with a friend to perk a blogger up. (on the subject of running: I am signed up for the Paris 20k in October, if anyone wants to join me and form an unofficial "INSEAD" team, let me know)

And then, today, I finally got the news I was waiting for: Fontainebleau it is! I am now officially an INSEAD J'08 admitted student. This means I can get started on all the fun admin stuff and finding either a loan or a great wad of cash under the sofa cushions... First step, though, before I end up spending P1 in a tent on the chateau grounds, is sorting accomodation. I have about 5 minutes to decide whether I want to live 20k from school and brave wild boars on winding country roads at 3am every day or if I'm prepared to spend a bit more to live in the town center - decisions, decisions.

Poised and ready, but...

...I still don't know which campus I will be on come August. By some incredible stroke of luck, I've managed to find fantastic (although outrageously over-priced) accomodation in Fontainebleau, but I'm still waiting to hear back from the admissions office. So I'm just keeping my fingers and toes crossed the accomodation will still be there for me by the end of the week, if I start in Fontainebleau; if I start in Singapore, I have the start the whole stressful house-hunt all over again...

So, while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for something INSEAD-related to happen, I figured I'd post a few pics of my Venezuela camping trip, which I know some of my office-bound friends have been clammoring for!

The trip started with a hike up the Roraïma tepuy in the Gran Sabana region of Venezuela. Took us three days to get close to it, and finally up it. The view from the top was well worth it, though, like something from Planet of the Apes or Jurassic Park. We half expected a couple raptors to come charging out at us from behind the massive black rocks. No wonder Conan Doyle got so inspired. As it turned out, the scariest living things we had to deal with were carnivorous plants and black frogs the size of a thumbnail. The 800-meter drop off the edge of the cliff face a few strides from our tents was a whole lot more terrifying!

We then made our way north to the Delta del Orenoco, stopping along the river's bank at Ciudad Bolivar, which felt like a Marquez novel prompting me to immediately fall in love with it (and this despite the fact that I had a bit of a mishap causing some nasty scars I still proudly display on my legs...)

The final part of the trip involved four days on a boat roaming through the delta and sleeping (yeah, right) in hammocks. The delta is famous for its birdlife, which is very impressive, except I'm personally not all that into birds... I was more interested in the contact we managed to have with the local Warao tribes, which explains why my favourite pictures from the Orenoco do not feature feathered and winged creatures in flight, but shrieking children playing in the water.

So, there you have it, my Venezuela escapade in brief. Hopefully there will be some concrete news re: campus to post soon, otherwise I'll just tell you 'bout the time I went to visit my grandmother and - ...