Spiralling Inside INSEAD with a helicopter view !

Offline Blog comes live


I have arrived at INSEAD and am finally connected. Am currently in the middle of meeting a lot of people and being introverted is not helping too much. It has been great so far. All my room-mates have made a positive impression so far. My house is in a adorable location. I am paranoid about hitting a deer or a boar (yes you heard that absolutely right) on my drive home.

Lot of interesting introductions. Very well organized orientation program (a lot of it could have been done online though instead of doing the paperbased French way). Well I shouldn't be saying it because I prefer scribbling on paper. Already have a bank account (finalement is more like it). Am undecided on the mobile plan. Yet to meet my group (but it is all assigned). So more soon. Meanwhile enjoy my offline blogs from the last 5 weeks.


Scene 1: 5:15 Pm, Home

“Where did you go, you have half hour to get to the airport now?” my father protested. He was right if I had to be at the airport 3 hours prior to the flight (as my agent wanted me to). I did tell him the truth – “I was shopping”. He was obviously not too happy about it but then he couldn’t show it to a son who was leaving for a year. He just smiled and said “ok, lets get going”. After a few hugs and kisses, (so we could save some public display later ;-)), we left for the airport. Got there a good half hour before the check-in process started.

Scene 2: Check-in Queue.

“Eeeks They are manually writing down seat numbers in a bunch of boarding cards” I said to a fellow passenger waiting in the queue. Apparently due to bad weather, all airport systems were down and they were going to do everything manually. It was scary and everyone who could afford did not want to check-in any bags. I was standing there with about 46 Kgs (thanks to the last minute shopping) to check-in and stealthily take in some unknown quantity. My conversation with my fellow passenger grew and he was also connecting later to Paris. But lady luck started smiling on me when this very kind person told me he was not checking in any bags and seeing my bags sympathetically said “we can check-in together if you want so you will not be billed excess baggage”. I obviously grabbed the offer. As we checked in the check-in clerk actually said I couldn’t carry the “heavy looking” cabin-suitcase (which ended up being 14.5 kgs when measured) and I had to check that in as well. So a total of 60.5 Kgs went to Paris FREE !!!! How lucky can I get. I thanked the fellow who helped me so many times, he chose to change his seat in the second leg of the travel. Lol. Actually, he changed his seat because he wanted to be in a window seat for the 12 hour flight or so he claimed. He was traveling to France for 15 days to attend a wedding and have a brief vacation. Lucky me. I was not all that Jetlagged at the end of the flight thanks to the sleep on the flight. My German neighbor was silent for the most part. I was reading about 150 pages of Thomas Friedman’s “The world is Flat” for about 2-3 hours. Book is a 3 Star so far. I browsed through the rest of the book, if at all I change the rating it would only go down.


Scene 3: Europcar.

Arrived in Paris in beautiful weather (some websites said it would be raining - have they ever got it right?). The sun was out, most convertibles had their tops down. 25 Degree C is all I would give. I saw the Kangoo and I got even more worried. Lol. I had only 2 large suitcases and one small one + the laptop and the small backpack. I said I could do with a smaller car and Europcar gave me a Clio. I also rented a mobile for merely Euro 8 / day (I think they make up the margins in the call rates) in the same place and started driving south of CDG.


Scene 4: Driving in France.

It was a beautiful day and my windshield wiper switched on by itself. It took me 15 minutes and some 2000 knob turnings before I could figure out how to switch it off. By now, the front windshield already had marks on it. Sigh, I miss my Toyota already. It was about 12:30 Pm on a Friday and the Peripherique (excuse spelling) was full of cars. I was moving at an average of about 15 Kms / hour for about an hour. All Stereotypes about French working hours are true. They seem to all be out of work early (yes, noon) on Fridays with their boats, motorcycles, bicycles, and a few weird equipments I didn’t really recognize. It was fun browsing the FM channels (there were atleast 20 of them). Once I got off the peripherique, I moved like breeze. The roads are all green and the transformation from a “City highway” to a “Grassland” to a “Forest” is all way too sudden to take in. That was another 50 Kms of driving before I got to Fontainebleau. Its green all around, the drivers are disciplined and the roads are clear. Sorry, before I passed Fontainebleau. There was a sign called “Fontainebleau” and I said “Right, I am home” and then in another 85 seconds there was a sign that said “Avon” which meant I had crossed Fontainebleau. No INSEAD, no Chateau and I had crossed the town. Before I could pull over I was at the edge of Avon getting into some other village. The towns here are super-duper tiny. Its cute.

Scene 5: Going around Fonty.

“You are refused, too powerful a car for a first time driver” she said in fluent French and for some odd reason, I knew exactly what she was saying. I said “Well, three countries have given me drivers licenses and I have been driving for about 10 years now”. That did not help. She however gave me a competitors name, number, and a map of the location to contact. That was kind. Am I so unsafe that they want to doom a competitor? I wasn’t sure. I got to AXA and they were more than happy to insure me nevertheless at a huge premium. An interesting conversation.

Agent: Euro 493 s’il vous plait?
Me: 493?
Agent: Oui.
Me: But the earlier owner paid much lesser.
Agent: Women pay lesser for insurance.

Can you believe that ??????????????? Should it not be the other way round?

A French speaking person from my undergrad college, works at INSEAD in the IT department. I knew him through a common friend of a common friend of a common friend. He also was taking care of my car until I arrived. He helped me out with seeing this tiny town and get around. We had some beer and dinner together and I crashed a good 10 hours.

Expenses so far:

Rental Car: Euro 78.
Acco in Fonty (B&B) Euro 120.
Dinner Euro 33
Insurance Euro 493
Rental mobile Euro 40 (approx considering all the calls I have been making)


Scene 6: Drive to Tours

First, I need to complain about the Toll. I had to pay about Euro 20 for a 250 Km drive. But in a way it was worth it because I could test my old Bimmer’s limits. I hit 180 Kms / Hour and phew, my gas pedal had not hit the bottom. But then I didn’t have the courage to do any further testing, thanks to the Euro 1500 penalty for breaking speed rules by > 50 Kms. (the fine for > 10 to <50 is about Euro 135)

Scene 7: Dinner with Host Family

Wow, Seven people in the dinner table, five speak fluent French and nothing else and one more speaks Fluent French but then after thinking a couple of minutes. There is one soul who seems to have no clue what is going on. Yours truly is overwhelmed by the 2 hour welcome dinner that lasted about 2 hours that felt like eternity. Things noticed: Very empathetic and nice host lady. Generally nice family


Day 25. Wow, Blogging at all time low.

Looking back at the 25 days I have spent here, they were easily the most eventful 25 days in 2005 (so far). Yet I have blogged the least. Now to make it up I have to write. This is offline again. So once in INSEAD after getting this computer on the network you are going to read all of this (Something tells me it is less than a week away and all I need to do is manage some time). I am broadly dividing my blog into two categories per week. The week and the weekend.


Week 1: Aug 1 to Aug 5

Life is great. I love the host family and have started making my first conversation in Francais. I am actually connected to the internet but then changing languages in these French computers seem to be an irritating affair. By no means am I learning why the French put the Q key where the A Key belongs. Lets assume the English (more likely the Americans) put the keys in the wrong place. The French had no right to correct it.

The week was rather eventful. I feel “proudest” about my own capabilities of grasping a language at 28. I have started speaking a few lines “Pazzez d’eau s’il vous plait” kind of stuff. It is fun. The family again is extremely helpful. The lady consistently goes out of the way to feed me the kind of food I can eat (restrictive diet).

Class mates (there are 6 more with me). There are 2 people in my class who have already been here for about a month and they are way better than I am. But to my aid there are a couple of students who are at my level and the teacher seems determined to make us speak the language. The week passes seamlessly. I went on a little “walk around” tour.


Weekend : Begins Friday 12:45 Pm

Being the hopeless romantic, I decide to drive about 16 hours this weekend to meet Ms. Love. Everything is well planned. I leave school at 12:45 and am on the highway at 12:50. Talk about efficiency. The drive is about 850 Kms and I take the village roads (Exagerration of course: these are national highways but pass through the villages) to save the toll. That lasted like 100 Kms and then I took the tollway as much as possible. The drive was beautiful. The weather was fabulous and I saw more of French Country side than I ever did in my life. As if to “get me off the scenary”, I got stuck in terrible traffic (at about 15 Km/h) for about 2 hours in Bordeaux. After a little search at the city of my destination, I managed to reach at 12:00 Midnight. Ms. Fiancee and her friends had plans to party until 4 in the morning (Surprise !!!). But I had a lot of fun with these people who made me feel ooold.

Saturday, there were plans from 8 in the morning. But no complaints because I got quality 1 on 1 time. We spent time catching up on “all the long distance things you never do on messenger and phone”. We didn’t see any places in particular. It was more hanging out together and doing the same things you would do everyday if you were in the same town. Sunday wasn’t very different but I had to leave at like 12:00 noon so I could reach back by 8 pm. After all the mushiness, I managed to leave at 2:00 Pm. Drive back was much easier.


Week 2: Aug 8 to Aug 12

Second week of French begins. The learning curve has reached its maturity, I have already started “forgetting” the devoir (homework). That should be normality restored. There is a lot of enthusiasm in the week partly because there is a long weekend coming and this time the lady is coming down to France. Life is paradise. Life goes on. I make a couple of good friends in class. The English lady and I get bonded totally thanks to our hopeless French. I do some accounting and find out I do not have enough money to pay my rent for next month. I don’t think my bank will be efficient enough to open my bank account in a mere 3 weeks (that’s expecting too much from the system). The week flows by without trouble. Rather uneventful and awaiting the weekend.

Weekend 2: Aug 13 to Aug 15 and later extended upto 12:00 Midnight on Aug 18.

I sleep all Aug 12 afternoon and night to conserve energy to wake up at 4 am on a Saturday (yes you absolutely heard that right). The train pulled into the station exactly on time (thankfully) at 4:58 Am and the lady appeared very sleepy but happy. After searching for Gas for about an hour (for all those planning to come to this beau country, it’s a bad idea to search for a gas station at 5 in the morning without a French Credit or Debit card, meaning for 3 months after you arrive), we drove down to Ile de Re (a nice Island on the Atlantic about 3 hours from Tours). We stopped at Marais Poitivan (I still haven’t understood how to say it to the French right) for a beautiful hour and half. Trekked a little. Its like a forest area with a lot of little rivers coming together. Then drove on to Ile De re. Spent a quality couple of hours on a very nice beach. Both of us were freezing. But the rest of France was in Bikinis (a couple of them topless too eeeeek) and shorts enjoying their freezing long weekend.
On our way back we stopped at Poitiers to see a chapel that someone had recommended. By the time we got to the hotel, we had already apologized 20 times for being late to the receptionist who was supposed to close at 10.

Sunday, we pretty much spent hanging around in the wonderful neighborhoods of Tours. Tours has an amazing Gothic Church and a ton of historic places besides being a beautiful little town. The best way to describe it is that after 5 days of life here, when I left for a town last weekend, I had actually started missing Tours. In the afternoon we visited two Chateaus (my guess is there are about a million of them around here) Langeis and Villandary. Reviews / comments if I see requests. Nice places. Tiring day. We meet up with the couple who will be in Fontainebleau later this year. I already know these people a little and like them. Knowing my girl, I knew this meeting would click and it does. Everyone has fun. The world is wonderful.

Monday – Take it easy day, One Chateau, a very popular one. Loved the IPOD tour. Chennonceau is the name. The lady had extended her stay in Tours by a couple of days and guess who is the happiest man in the world. We are invited for dinner at my host family. She has her first “French Family” dinner. Very nice experience. We are reinvited for dinner Tuesday J.

Tuesday – I have French classes in the afternoon. I seek permission to have an extra attendant in the class. The professor is nice. At break the Fiancee is intolerant of all the French and excuses herself. I get home in a couple of hours. Life is paradise.

Wednesday – I am supposed to have all day classes, but I excuse myself as the girl has a train to catch at 3. When I return, I hear “I have lost my ticket from Irun and guess what? The train is fully booked”. I am partying inside but then I can’t say it to the poor girl. I drive her back to the station and we put her on a 12:00 midnight train with seats available on all connections. We suddenly have another 9 hours extra together. I could actually go back to class. French or Fiancee, what would you pick? Right.

The afternoon and evening is spent in Tranquility. The holiday is coming to an end. And we don’t have a next meeting date. She is however going to spend a week in Fontainebleau (when you most certainly can expect me to push blogging to Priority 2, but atleast it will be ahead of the MBA which will be priority 3) (now I have the date) in the 3rd week of September.


Week 3: 18 Aug & 19 Aug

Gloominess sets in. I realize so many things. I have 3 Pre-reading books to finish. I am broke and I need to figure out what I am going to do with the French (it has already been 3 weeks). Back to French speaking, French dinner, French everything. (its bad only by comparison).

Week end 3: 20 Aug & 21 Aug

Life is fabulous. I really make up for all the partying by reading a ton (3 chapters of microeconomics and 3 lessons of accounting workbook).



Week 4:

Panic strikes again, I need to get back on track with French to make it in the test next week. Need a lot of luck for it.