Fais du sport?

National weeks are one of the best things about INSEAD. Period 3 is light on national weeks because so many students from my class are studying at the Singapore campus but they will be back in full force during Period 4. I'll post some national week pictures to give a better sense of it all. A couple of weeks ago, we had the national week for Britain and Ireland. Of course it rained all week and people just drank dark beer the entire time...ok, it did rain. On the Wednesday week, the islanders hosted a soccer tournament where people grouped their fellow students by nation to compete for the cup. I didn't make the invite list to the US / Canada team so we formed what we called the World Team. The mélange of people is fairly representative of what you find on campus. Nationalities from top left: Canadian / French, Nigerian / USA, Trinidad & Tobago, Egypt / Australian, Dutch / American. Bottom row, from left: Brazil / USA, Nigerian, USA. Yes, I have the least interesting background of the lot. What matters is that we won the tournament in a tightly fought match against a Scandinavian team wearing Columbian style wigs. (Final score 2-0) What better prize in France than champagne?


World Team: Champions of British / Irish national week tournament. 

One final word on sport, I've become addicted to the game of squash. To my American friends, start playing soon so we can play in the future.

Ze French Wine

It just so happens that some French wine is meant to smell like cat urine. I learned that in our French wine class, taught by an expert that lives in Fontainebleau. Each week we explore a new region and taste six new wines. We actually sampled a bottle of wine from Cote du Rhone and I truly thought that litter box scent was perfected. The taste was quite good. So far, we've learned to identify scents such as cherry, smoke, rubber boot, dirt, oranges, prunes, and the list goes on really. Rebecca and I find it quite fun to investigate the viscosity, aroma, color, and taste of French wines. The great part is we can go buy quality bottles of wine at the local market for less than 10 euros each. What can I say, I love ze French wine and ze French cheese and ze French bread.....


My expert French wine taster... 

Period 3 Update - La Vie Rapide!

I'm halfway done with Period 3 and halfway done with my MBA at INSEAD and 100% wondering where the time goes. I suppose the myth is that Period 3 is a more manageable semester at INSEAD. If you step back and think about what it means to compress a two-year MBA education into 10 months, then you know it is simply not possible to have a low stress semester. In any case, I'm taking a mix of elective and core / required courses this semester and simply loving the educational experience. If you are curious about innovation and wonder about the approach to management decisions around the strategy of innovation and lifecycle of technology, then my Innovation Strategy and Entrepreneurship course is perfect for you (& me). I'm also taking Strategies for Product & Service Development where my team is working on developing a innovative product for a company in the mobile communications industry. We are trying to address the consumer problem of always having a cell phone in your pocket because wearing it on your waist is just not...cool. My third elective is Managing Media Companies and we are honored every week by senior level industry executives entering our class to discuss the latest issues around the digital world, triple play, and the future of media. This past week, the Director of Strategy at Canal+ (French pay-tv provider) spent a few hours with us.

I'm busy but Rebecca and I are finding time for some fun. Our Grez friends, aka the Village People, continually keep INSEAD life excellent. This past Thursday, we went to Anne and Guillaumes' house to celebrate Guiullaume's birthday. We ate mussels, a typical French / Belgian dish and enjoyed wine, bread, cheese and birthday cake. Tim and Colleen joined us for the fun.


Happy Birthday Guillaume! 

Rebecca and I also signed up for a French wine class, offered on the INSEAD campus on Monday evenings. Each week, we explore a new region of France and we truly have learned how to enjoy wine properly. I'm not sure we will ever be experts but we've found a few vineyards and regions that we really like. I think the smell of wine is something I disregarded before this course. I'll never be a wine snob but I am proud of the fact that I detected the smell of a rubber boot just in from the field and for some reason, our wine teacher agreed this smell was present. C'est vrai!

Our car broke down last week but we took it into the dealership and it is running again. It has something to do with the ignition system but the French word was not in my mental dictionary....thankfully, we are running again. Perhaps one of the reasons the car decided to have a problem was that we drove to the mountains again on the second weekend of classes. We went back to Les Trois Vallees to ski Val Thorens. A few notables from the weekend. First, skiing with people from Scandinavia is humbling and second, raclette is an awesome dish but it ends your taste for cheese for around 2 weeks. It was worth it...


Raclette in Val Thorens.