Spiralling Inside INSEAD with a helicopter view !

The Death Spiral Begins.

The first ever INSEAD test was returned. I have already started trailing behind my peers. The average is 16.3 on 20 (inhuman I call it). I made 14. I am soo proud to be in the midst of these outstandingly smart people who knew not to choose phrases like (as the correct answer)

"It is more less than d(p)".

when I couldn't even interpret in my native language to be able to answer. Anyway, life moves on and I already know I start with an advantage with the course.

Who reads this blog for acads anyways right? So let me move on to stuff I am good at reporting.

The Red Day is here.

Thursday's are social days for our section. Social day means the whole class collectively does something (crazy or not) at school. Today, we were supposed to get dressed in one of the three colors of the lebanese flag. But the color had to be chosen based on whether one was "Single and Purely Single" (Green Color), "Grey Area" (White) or "Married or Totally Committed" (Red). I was so surprised almost everyone (about 80%) was in RED !!! So I did feel like in the middle of very old people (Guess what color I was wearing?)....We were also supposed to say "Istez" before we started any phrase (Prof in arabic) and it was fun. These things really balance out the insanity in the system. Last night I worked 4 hours on my Finance / Accounting assignments for today's class.

The Reason I came to b-school

Four years back I lost about $2000 in a week in the NASDAQ (worth 10 b-school applications, 1 vacation in France, etc etc etc). I then said to myself I wanted to go to B-school. Today, we spoke the subject concerning it (Stock picking) in Finance 1 (At last after all that crap about discounting, NPV etc in which Warren buffet doesn't believe in ;-) we got into Portfolio management. It was a very very interesting class on how variation can be reduced by picking different stocks with different risk-reward equations. Can't wait to learn more about all this.

Quotable Quotes

Question of the Day: "So the ending balance is the beginning balance so why is not the ending balance the beginning balance?"

Girl to Guy: "Is that really a white shirt or is it a red shirt that is so faded I can't see it?"

Guy back: "No no no...this should actually be green, I just didn't find a better green in the wardrobe".

Prof to Student: "You would want to use LIFO or FIFO depending on which shirt is in the inventory....if it is this one (pointing to his own) or that one (pointing to the student's). Mine is a lot more expensive than yours so expense it first."

Prof to Student: "I know thats a lot more interesting than what I am teaching here, but I am paid to teach this".