Studying good times

That's what this weekend is about. I'm studying for exams that start on Monday, in 1.5 days. I'm somewhat nervous, though not totally so. There's a funny thing here about grades... the school doesn't release them; they're only for internal evaluation purposes. Exams here are not really about grades -- they're more about confirming that people have learned what they are supposed to learn from the courses, and that's the way I'm treating them. It takes a bit of the stress out of the preparation process, because I'm pretty comfortable in most of my courses, but I'm sure the exams themselves will still be extremely difficult next week.

To give you a sense of the marking schema, there are essentially 4 final grades: the uber-awesome 3-5 people get a "President's circle" designation (oooh la la); the next one-third of the class graduates with "distinction"; two-thirds graduate with plain vanilla standing; no-one gets the fourth grade really. I heard a rumour about two people who failed out in 2004... seriously. As far as I can tell, you would have to work pretty damn hard not to pass.

I have an exam on each afternoon of Monday through Friday next week. First up is Leading People in Organizations, followed by Accounting, Marketing, Finance, and Production & Operations Management. All but Accounting are open-book too, which is nice but also potentially a trap, because it will encourage people to spend too much time referring to class notes and not enough time actually answering the exams. Beware the open-book.

This is a random and disconnected post. Sorry if it reads like a mental purge of nothing interesting. Oh, forgot about the weather. Sunny and 14C. This is what happens when Laura's not here.

Last but not least, I ate cheese fondue last night. It was really really good. If you (and by you, I mean anyone) come to Lausanne, I can point you in the fondue direction now. I had yogurt and Smacks for breakfast this morning, in case you were curious. Is anyone reading this? Seriously. I feel like I can write anything and no one will say "boo". Oh wait, maybe that's because you're not reading it in real-time. Brainiac here.

ian

75

Yes, 75.

Lacoste has a small head office, and the entire rest of the company consists of contractors, partners, and suppliers. This is a considerable departure from when they were a thriving full-service clothing company way back in the day. When you stopped hearing about them for 10 years it was because they pretty much went under, and when they were restarted, it was with this bare-bones setup.

The guesses were:

Matt: 5,000
Laura: 5,001
Laura: 10,000
Inder: <5,000
Morwenna: 3,507
Arieh: 3,322
Brenda: ridicule and derision
Julia: 16,428
Cameron: 7,654
Hyuji Sagara: 1,436 (by my calculations, but you'll have to see the original comment and add it up for yourself if you don't agree)

None of the guesses except Inder's is even remotely in the range of close :( Inder's only works somewhat slightly better because it was a bald-faced cheating attempt. But, that aside, it's also the best we've got. So, here's your lucky winner, looking his best:

Sux, sux, double-sux

Sux. Laura's on a plane right now, somewhere over Ireland most likely. I can feel my Irish (citizenship) bones a-tingling... that's how I know. I walked her to the train station for her 5:39am Lausanne --> Zurich Flughafen (airport) trip. An early start to a rather miserable day... it was so great when she was here, but the leaving part has been rather terrible. So, train left, I walked home, fell asleep, slept through my alarm, woke up at 7:54am, ran to class, got here 10 minutes late, then wished I'd stayed in bed. We have a Career Services day that is all about writing one's 2 minute infomercial. And now I have to run and practice it with peeps! Hoorah.

Here's a fun pic of LB and I. This is back when we were hot shit.


Sux.

"Billy Idol!"

The Eiffel Tower makes it official -- we were in Paris:And it was a lovely holiday! While not exactly "spring" in Paris, we had amazing luck. Consider the following sequence of events and corresponding weather patterns:

Walk to brunch place near Centre Pompidou -- sunshine
Eat decadent brunch and watch world -- hurricane, complete with umbrella casualties of outrageous proportions and small children blown over (moral dilemma for mothers: hang onto umbrella or child?)
Wait in line at Pompidou -- sunshine and woman playing zither
Observe world from within Pompidou -- full force gale, apocalypse

In general, this was our rule: promenade in sun until rain clouds appear, then duck into bar. We remained dry, but only in the most literal sense. It also gave us the opportunity to check out local fashions -- as Sarah discovered, butt crack is in:Pompidou was great, though I might suggest that Louise Bourgeois had a difficult childhood:Misha was particularly inspired:
I liked the rhino (Ian photo credit):Sarah stuck to her eat-a-thon promises and provided amazing hook-ups. Let it be said: the Israeli-run L'As de Falafel knows what it's doing. Happy smiles = Falafel smiles:
We had a night out with her brother's boyfriend Paul, which meant his local Moroccan restaurant (more couscous than humanly consumable and merguez and lamb galore), and a recommendation for what became "oignon soup and duck gluttony" the next night. Perhaps, though, it was our post-duck adventures that were the most memorable...

We stumbled into the very quaint bar "Louise et Georges" (dying red roses, portraits of owner on the wall, old wood beam ceiling -- Sarah suggested you couldn't set-dress a "French bar" better) and ordered a bottle of wine...and then discovered the entire bar of extreme regulars was in the middle of a game, facilitated by Georges and his iPod...

The Game:
1. Georges picks a song on his iPod, which is plugged into stereo system
2. Crowd listens for .001 seconds before shouting out the name of the artist ("Le Clash!" "MC Hamm-air")
3. Much drinking

Wanting to fit in with our new friends, we desperately hoped to shout an answer and have the entire bar cheer us and thereby accept us into their fold. Unfortunately, that plan was ruined by Ian's very raucous guess of "Billy Idol!" for what was obviously a CCR tune. Alas. We regained some of our cred when we told Georges we were okay with smoking, thus allowing him to draw the blinds, lock the doors, turn off the front lights and hide the bar from the smoke police. When Misha lit up (luckily, he'd un-quit only that afternoon), the whole Billy Idol issue was smoothed over.

Now it's back to work...though we have a giant chocolate egg to get through before then...

LB for IB

300 kph, and it hurts

But technology is amazing, by and by(e).

ian of the tgv

observez-vous -- l'oeuf!

from our kindly landlord, emile.

Easter Blog Hunt

Ian and I are heading to Paris today by train. We'll be meeting up with our friends Misha and Sarah, and then commencing the weekend eat-a-thon that will be France.

I promise that no chicks will be dyed in the making of this vacation.

Spring,
LB

False Advertising?

Let it be known that I was lured here with promises of sunny skies and balmy breezes. Hmm...

Lausanne:
Paris:
That's okay. Ian is my sunshine.

(Awww...)

I'm pretty much like a genius

Ian is making a theorem to calculate the value of real estate and I am working on my manuscript, but we both have the same problem.

Laura of the Intractables

Equus (and not the Peter Shaffer kind)

You know how Ian is always blogging about Ye Olde Whitehorse and the large quantities of booze found therein? Replace "Ian" with "Ian and Laura," remember the fact that it always seems to be 2-for-1 happy hour at the Horse, then add to this delightful picture my idea to call Matt and Steffen. Follow this scenario to its logical conclusion.

I hate Ian's Casio "wave ceptor" alarm clock so much, I don't think I can be held responsible for my actions.

In other horse news, I think I should add this to my various money-making schemes:

SEEKING WRITERS NEW TO THE TRACK
Canadian horse racing publication Trot Magazine wants descriptive writers who have never seen a live horse race to take part in a unique writing project. Articles will be observation pieces written by newcomers to the sport, 1000 words max. Locations: Saint John, Truro, Gatineau, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Hamilton, Windsor, Toronto, Peterborough, London, Barrie, Edmonton, and Surrey. Some local travel may be required. Deadline: March 31, 2008. Payment: $300. Apply by email to: email to dkaplan@standardbredcanada.ca.

Trot Magazine as a publication credit? Too perfect.

Laura of the Equine Persuasion

Hugging for money = trouble with the law

Switzerlaura is back, bloggership! Stay tuned throughout the coming week(s)!

As for the subject line...

A group of Ian's colleagues hit the streets at Place St. Francois to kick off their "Hugs for Charity" campaign. They hugged each other (for free), and then proceeded to offer hugs to the public in return for a donation. At 10CHF, these hugs weren't cheap, but the IMD kids must have good technique: within two minutes, they sold three hugs! Then they were approached by a man who, no, did not want to pay to be hugged, but rather wanted to inform the hug ringleader of a few things:
1) said no-hugging man was a plain clothes police officer
2) begging for money is illegal in Lausanne
3) hug ringleader (Roberto) may shortly find himself under arrest, particularly if he can't produce his residency permit.

Crisis was averted and no one was incarcerated, but official police notes were taken and the charity venture was a bust.

The sixties may be gone, but love is still free in Lausanne.

Laura of the Cautionary Tale

Pop quiz

How many employees does Lacoste have, worldwide?

(and no googling or wikipedia-ing).

The winner gets a present, mailed from Switzerland.

Post your answers as comments, by 8am (Switzerland time) on Tuesday March 25th!

Let the game(s) begin.

ian

ps will anyone actually guess? this is like a readership straw poll.... so exciting.

I'm a bad blogger

And this should come as no surprise to anyone who might or might not read this, some time in the future. Sorry. It's been a very busy couple of days... my last post was on Wednesday; on Thursday we started the first Integrative Exercise, which went as follows:

Thursday
1pm: Receive a 30 page case on the Khala, a joint-venture project to launch a "motorized bicycle" in Pakistan, based on the Velosolex that was sold in France from the 1940s until early in the 'aughts':What you're seeing in a somewhat regular bicycle with a motor bolted onto the front wheel. You raise and lower the motor directly onto the wheel using some sort of lever, and there's a clutch and throttle on the handlebar. It's basically the poor man's moped, if you can imagine what that might look like. So, we read the case, in our study group, and we have until noon (12:00) Friday to come up with some sort of plan and present this plan. The challenge of the case is very broad: essentially, they have a product and some spare floor space in a factory, but not much else. The case asks us to construct a plan to market, distribute, sell, and finance the operations, based out of Karachi, Pakistan. We had a bit of learning to do.

The target agenda was to be done for the evening by midnight, and went something like this:
4pm: Analytic brainstorm (economics of the region, industry, and product)
5pm: Analytic content gathering (fill in the blanks from the brainstorm)
6pm: Strategic brainstorm (given the above, what do we want to do with this thing?)
7pm: dinner
8pm: Strategic content gathering (given our strategy, let's fill in the blanks on how to actually do this. e.g., what does the advertising spend look like, how many people do you have to hire to run the factory, what price do you set, how much money do you need to borrow, and when, etc. etc.)
10pm: Review strategic content, and prepare storyboard of presentation.
11pm: Review storyboard.
12pm: Finish for night.

We actually finished at 4:15am, and when we finished, there were still 5 or 6 groups working. We were actually lucky, because we had the latest presentation slot on Friday... many groups had to present at 8am. Things went somewhat smoothly until the 8pm Strategic Content Gathering section, when it fast became apparent that even with the best laid strategic plans, we could not pull together everything required to launch the Khala (the case's working name for the bike) in 2 hours. In retrospect, not much of a surprise. I get quite cranky by 4:15 in the morning, and I was our group's project manager for this... I'm happy to report I still have friends!

So, home at 4:30am (literally... the clock tower beside my house chimed as I was unlocking my door), and up again at 7:30 to be back at work for 8am.

Friday
8am: we actually all made it in on time,

Elvis has left the building

This is Elvis, in Finance class. Jim Ellert apparently taught Bob Brooks about 40 years ago. Bob may have fallen asleep in much the same way as Elvis. Did Bob snore? An interesting question...

Finance class is for losers. Too bad I have 16 hours of it this week. On the brighter side, Elvis gets more cheerful as he gets better rested.

Ian (daily posts) Brooks

Pay vs. performance

There has been some criticism about my lack of e-responsiveness. I confess to being a bit "off the blog" as of late... it's not that I don't like you, faithful readers, but rather that I've been distracted by things variously interesting and not. Irregardless, I will commit to trying to post every day, even if it's a short post.

So, it's just past noon, and we've just finished a 4-hour lecture entitled "Managing Appraisal and Reward". The conclusions: (1) pay-for-performance doesn't work. (2) Financial reward systems are typically demotivating over the longer term. (3) appraisal systems are often badly designed, and even more often, badly implemented. (4) personal biases influence appraisals. (5) doing this right can be a huge competitive advantage, because so many people and companies do it badly.

My favorite thing about this lecture was the discussion on reward systems for a Taiwanese doctor at Taiwan's largest medical tourism hospital:
.
Yes, that's right, there is an optimal number of lawsuits. Ain't that just a bit disturbing!

- i