Switzian

Lost but not forgotten

2008-09-04T16:56:00.003+02:00

You, my (un)faithful readers, that is.

Consider this a social experiment. A dismal failure of a social experiment. I stopped posting to this blog in June, and through July and August I received one (1) email from someone telling me they missed my blog.

The email was from my mother:I did not feel very "missed".

Three (3) things have pushed me back to Switzian. Firstly, my nephew was born, and he's adorable.

Second, I'm off to South Africa at the end of September and hopefully going to Canada in between, and since I've last blogged I've also been to Kenya, Tanzania, and Lyon (France) and I thought it might be good to post some pictures of that stuff. They will come in the next short while.... if I get three (3) comments from different people on this post, verifying that I am at least assured a mild readership.

Thirdly, I got a comment from Jules guessing on the MENA literacy test. I realized I have no idea if she's right or wrong anymore. Oh how things have changed from my heyday as a global literati.

Another angle on butter

2008-06-17T00:07:00.001+02:00

Back by popular demand:

In this land of dairy, can there be any finer?

Butter and popcorn

2008-06-15T19:32:00.007+02:00

Yes, butter and popcorn. First, the butter:

This is at the Beau Rivage Palace, the swankiest hotel in town. It is so swank that there are actual treaties that divided up Africa signed at this hotel. I'm not kidding. My parents (Bob and Brenda, fyi) visited me on the weekend before exams (May 31-ish) and took me out to fancy restaurants so we could discuss my lack of an achievable career plan in finer surroundings. Anyways, back to the butter.... This is what they do to your butter at the Beau Rivage; note how much Bob doesn't care. Brenda, however, was highly amused by the butter, as was I. The food was quite tasty (I had the rabbit) but it was no match for L'Ermitage des Ravet. L'Ermitage was actually ranked the best restaurant in Switzerland recently, and it has amassed three Michelin stars for those of you who care about the restaurant rankings of a tire company. In terms of butter, their presentation was somewhat haphazard (it was in a small pot) but the butter came in different flavours depending on the course and the bread you chose. This was quite a meal. Really, to call it a meal would be to denigrate the hosts... this was an Experience! It took us almost five hours to complete the meal marathon, and I was afraid my palate would be ruined forever, but I'm ok now. Phew.

In other news, I'm done with pretty much all the "academic" stuff here. The second round of exams came and went; they were miserable to study for and terrifying to write, but somehow my grades actually didn't suffer that much, almost in spite of myself I think. The most amazing result was in Finance, where I actually thought I'd failed the exam, only to discover that somehow my overall mark went up! I'm waiting for the exam to be returned so I can see just how this manna from heaven event transpired. Apparently there are no bell curves at IMD.... we'll see about that.

The plan for the next month is rather absurd: We're off to Kenya here on the 20th of June for a ten-day school trip. Highlights of the trip include cocktails with the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, and a trip to a baby elephant sanctuary! They certainly seem to be doing it up right. A large number of my classmates were also particularly pleased to see three blocks in the schedule reserved for watching the semis and finals of the Euro Cup (soccer/football, depending on which continent you're on). Priorities, priorities. On the 30th, the school trip ends and Laura arrives in Nairobi. LB and I, along with about 10 other IMD people, are going on a 6-day safari in Masai Mara and another (forget the name) park in Kenya, and then we're going to Zanzibar in Tanzania. We'll stay in the town of Zanzibar for 2 nights, and then on the beach at Sazani beach for four days! The flight home to Toronto will take the better part of 2 days, and will involve five airplanes (2 shared, 1 for laura, and 2 more for myself), but this whole thing should be a hell of a trip!

So, enough about butter. Here is popcorn for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.maniacworld.com/making-popcorn-with-cell-phones.html

--
Update: more on the popcorn, but don't read this till you've watched the above:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/12/cellphone-popcorn-ho.html

It's like a montage, but without the singing

2008-05-25T22:05:00.011+02:00

I would much rather just leave this to the picture, but I think it took me too long to actually get the camera out, and as such, obviously, the picture suffered somewhat. What you're seeing is a woman on a folding tricycle being pushed up a hill by her friend (?), while her other friend and one of their daughters looks on. The kid was a terror on the little scooter thing she had, and the old woman was a freaking disaster. Not once did I see them smile in any way, shape, or form. It was a beautiful day out, a national holiday. Everyone else was all smiles. These women were clearly having an absolutely miserable time with that godforsaken tricycle they never should have brought all this damn way in the first place!

And now, slightly forwards in time to the MBATs, the MBA Tournament, aka the MBA Olympics. This was a weekend event in Paris a few weeks ago, and although the sporting events were generally rather lame, the event itself was quite fun. About 70 people from school went (out of a class of 90), and lots of girlfriends and boyfriends too (including Laura). Each day was filled with badly run and overcompetitive sporting events, and each night had a dance. Yes, it does sound like a highschool track meet. On the Friday Laura and I championed our Ultimate Frisbee team, and we went 1-1. The first game we won because the other team didn't show up. Laura was so keen to play (she had really come a long way for that game) that she convinced another team that had already played that they would play us for fun. We won against them, but really, it was all about the fun... then. The second game, in the semi-finals, we got crushed. 14-0. When the score got to 6-0 Laura and I both opened beers on the sidelines. There had been a general promise to the team that Ultimate would be about fun, and not about winning/losing. We felt obligated to lead by example.

So that was Friday. On Saturday Laura and I went into Paris and spent about 3 hours with our feet up in the Jardins de Luxembourg watching the world go by. It was amazingly difficult for me to wind down (it's pretty much always go-go-go here) but I think I finally relaxed towards the end. It was really really nice just to sit and relax. Then we got back on the train and went back to HEC, where the MBATs were, in time for the Saturday night dance.

The best way to describe this dance is that it was like the season-ending dance on Dirty Dancing. Except without the pageantry. There were plenty of dirty, dirty dancers though. I think there is something to the rumours that MBA stands for "Married But Available"! Seriously though, the party was actually quite fun. LB and I were very restrained, but had a good time with the stage props beforehand, and the dancing afterwards:

When they first met, the snake and Laura seemed to get on just fine.
Then Laura got snake bitten. She's never been the same.

And finally in this series, Matt saving Petra from the snake's maw.

And this is general dance-mania at the MBATs. I'm pretty sure Laura's in there somewhere, but I can't tell from the picture unfortunately. This was the closing night party. It was very bizarre, but quite fun.

And now, out of MBAT land and back to Lausanne and IMD. This is a terrible video we watched in Accounting class last week about how an auditing firm screwed up. The word "terrible" is woefully inadequate to describe this video. Perhaps I will use "appalling" in future.

This is the side panel of some "ride" at the country fair right beside IMD right now. This fair has a bunch of "third-string rides" in the words of Dongao (whose nametag is featured in the previous photograph), three bumper car arenas, and at least two rifle-based shooting ranges that we found. Why is Switzerland so weird?
And this, this is as good as it gets in Lausanne-town. That's right folks. The name of her tour is "Taking Chances". Don't all pack your bags at once.I saw this on the side of a grocery store today. I turned around and walked back to get a picture. Someone watched me do this. I felt embarrassed until I remembered the woman on the folding tricycle.

Hero worship never had it so good

2008-05-21T13:14:00.004+02:00

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There was actually someone from the class who was so excited that he didn't sleep the entire night before. And, to top it all off, he never got to ask a question. The picture is also not very good unfortunately, but this one is a bit better:

For all you non-capitalists out there, the older man in the middle of the picture is not one of the 2008 MBA class, he's Warren Buffett. Getting to listen to and ask questions of the richest person in the world, the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of Capitalism, is pretty close to a religious experience for a class of 90 corporate acolytes. It's like meeting the Pope. To hear the Pope talk about how he figures selling a family business to a private equity buyer is a bit like selling the painting you've been working on your whole life to a porn shop: "they buy it, make the boobs a little bigger and the lips a little redder, and then put it in the window for sale again. Another porn shop comes along, buys it, makes the boobs even bigger, and bam, it's back in the window for sale again in a couple years." Or, my other person favourite: "I don't need due diligence to tell me if a company is worth buying. You talk with someone and within 5 minutes I can usually tell if there's a deal to be made. It's like a 350 pound man walking through the door: I don't know if he's 350 pounds or only 300, but I certainly know he's fat."

I heard the words "folksy" and "down-home" used later on to describe him...

But really, I found it extremely interesting. He was very up-front in his comments, willing to discuss anything, and extremely articulate. Charming. We were all thoroughly charmed.

I will blog more now. I didn't like blogging in the month of May for some reason. I think I was burned out. I'm less burnt now... the char is wearing off.

- i

MENA literacy test

2008-05-01T16:37:00.001+02:00

Middle
East and
North
Africa

in case you're as ignorant as I was.

Here's another in the series of regional literacy tests:

1. There are over 2 million refugees from Iraq. In which two countries are they mainly?
2. The Al Yamamah Deal featured in recent newspaper headlines. What does it refer to? (Incidentally what does the word [اليمامة] mean in Arabic)?
3. What caused the Arla Dairy Company to lose tonnes of money?
4. Where did the “Cedar Revolution” recently occur and what triggered it?
5. Who was Gamal Abdel Nasser?
6. In 1977 which Arab head of government addressed the Knesset?
7. Which two Middle East countries were at war with each other between 1980 and 1988?
8. Which Maghreb country had a brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002?
9. What are the three main communities comprising the Iraqi population?
10. Who is the longest serving head of state in the MENA?
11. Who was Maimonides?
12. Who was Naguib Mahfouz?

- i

I'm back and I'm bad

2008-05-01T16:32:00.002+02:00

Well that's not technically true. I am back, but probably only temporarily. We have another Integrative Exercise this weekend, starting tomorrow (Friday) evening and ending on Monday at 5pm. I'm somewhat concerned about what it will entail, beyond the obvious (i.e., my entire weekend.) In other news, I heard an interesting factoid just now:

- in the first quarter of 2008, China's foreign reserves accumulated at a rate of $1 million per minute. That is, in 3 months, they accumulated $136 billion (US) of other peoples' money.

I am left wondering how much of it was mine.

Oh, one other factoid: one member of my class is a communist party member in China. Another used to be, but quit. Not sure why that's significant (after all, I know plenty of NDP & Liberal members in Canada, and I suspect Alison probably considered PC membership at some point in her Hugh Segal days!)

Inder: your present is still coming. It's sitting in my living room, mooing.

Ian

There's a one-man oompah band outside my window

2008-04-26T15:52:00.003+02:00

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I didn't think it was possible. I never thought it could happen to me. Then I moved to Switzerland, and ended up living in an apartment that overlooks the Ouchy marina. It's very beautiful, very touristy, and very, very strange sometimes:

I cut off the video just before he said "Thank you!" into the mike. And in case you were wondering what happened next, he's still rocking outside my window.

You don't know from ASEAN

2008-04-22T23:41:00.002+02:00

So we've started in a class called International Political Economy, taught by an interesting guy named Jean-Pierre Lehman. He's giving us "literacy" tests on areas of the world at the start of each class, and we're generally failing quite badly. I thought it might be interesting for people if I posted a few of them over the next few days, in case you're curious as to how uninformed you are! To give you a sense, most people in my class get 3-5 of these right, unless they come from the region (or have worked there). I'll try and scratch together the answers in a bit if people want them...

ian

---

Globalisation/Regionalisation Literacy Test

Southeast Asia

1. Name the member states of ASEAN. (There are ten, you need to get a minimum of 8 to get a point for this question!)
2. What is Temasek Holdings?
3. Who is Mahathir?
4. Who was Pol Pot?
5. Who defeated who at the battle of Dien Bien Phu?
6. Where is Aceh located?
7. Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?
8. Who is Bhumibol?
9. Where did the People Power Revolution (also known as the EDSA revolution) occur?
10. What is meant by ASEAN + 3?
11. What did Lee Kuan Yew say was the greatest invention of the 20th century?
12. What is Wayang?

Rational pigs

2008-04-20T21:32:00.002+02:00

This is an assignment I have to do for Friday. I'm serious. My favorite parts are the Orson Wellsian assumption that pigs can reason like human beings, and the final question about similarities to business situations. Any submissions are welcome, btw!
--
Two pigs, one dominant and the other subordinate, are put in a box. There is a lever at one end of the box which, when pressed, dispenses food at the other end. Thus the pig that presses the lever must run to the other end; by the time it gets there, the other pig has eaten most, but not all of the food. The dominant pig is able to prevent the subordinate pig from getting any of the food when both pigs are at the food. Assuming the pigs can reason like rational human beings, which pig will press the lever?

Suppose 6 units of grain are delivered whenever the lever is pushed. If the subordinate pig presses the lever, the dominant pig eats all 6 units; but if the dominant pig pushes the lever, the subordinate pig eats 5 of the 6 units of grain before the dominant pig pushes it away. In the unlikely event that both press simultaneously, suppose they both have to run to another spot equidistant from their starting points. Suppose that the subordinate pig can run faster (after all, the dominant pig is probably fat!), it gets two units of grain before the domant pig arrives. Finally, suppose pressing the lever and running to the grain uses up 0.5 units of food for both pigs.

Show the matrix, and explain who will press the lever.

Are there any business situations that are similar to this?

The job market is changing, or so I've been told

2008-04-20T15:33:00.004+02:00

I've been delinquent. I'm sorry. Here is some humour in an attempt to patch things up.

They're giving us a seminar on how to succeed in THIS job market next week.

Why is it so much bigger in Switzerland?

2008-04-06T22:33:00.002+02:00

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Yes, the fondue pot aisle at the local department store, that is! I couldn't even really fit it all in the frame, and I felt like a total loser taking this picture so I didn't stick around for a second or third attempt. Instead, I surreptitiously snapped it on my cell phone while pretending to text message or some other dumb thing.

Today I'm totally low-key. Finished exams on Friday, and they all went well enough I think, though I won't actually know the results for a while I guess. Friday was also a beautiful day, so I went out for a patio beer or three afterwards, and there was an IMD-sponsored post-exam dance party at a discotheque (yes, people really love their discotheques around here), which was also quite fun. I got vocal with the bartender for the ridiculousness of CHF16 single-ounce mixed drinks (I kid you not) and I guess he agreed because he started to be a lot more generous afterwards, and although the party raged until 4 at least, I was home exhausted from a serious week of exams by about 2. Saturday was spent almost entirely on the couch, and Sunday has been all about eating and drinking copious amounts of espresso in various coffee shops in town with various people, and now I'm done with blogging too!

Oh, and a special hurrah to Inder and Morwenna, who decided to get engaged yesterday, in case anyone reading this knows them but hasn't heard the news yet!

Oh, hello, I was just reading a book in a big Masterpiece Theatre armchair in a faked-up library, and I thought I'd share some weird advice...

2008-04-04T20:39:00.007+02:00

Why is Ian in business school at all? His alter ego, Dr. Ian, New Zealand's leading business author, has the answer to some very fundamental questions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaovIt_MEvU

Note: I, Laura, once accidentally sent Dr. Ian my flight information. We had a semi-confusing email exchange.

Ian, fresh from exams, will be back tomorrow.

LB

Will the real Ian please stand up?

2008-04-03T23:24:00.008+02:00

A guest blog by Laura, who is filling in for Ian as he writes exams...

Laura's version of Ian:

Adie's (Laura's sister's) version of Ian:
Yes, Adie's Ian has a more normal-sized head (I am still working on body proportions), but I think my hair is much better. Her ears are pretty good, though. Pretty good, indeed. She has also gone for a corporate look, whereas I was inspired by the epic motion picture Grease.

Ian v. John Travolta? I feel a comic strip coming on...

Laura of the Doodle Pad

(To make your own avatar and comic strips, go to bitstrips.com)

(Laura by Adie)

110 minutes to account for

2008-04-01T11:10:00.006+02:00

.
Until my Accounting exam. I'm spending at least five of these precious minutes on the interweb, blogging my little heart out.

Four topics today:

1. Smacks
This is what a box of Smacks look like. It's almost as though they cut this box cover out of my French textbook from when I was in grade 6. Zip, Zap, Zop, and Zoup may well be on the back of the box, for all we know.

2. Leading People In Organizations

I wrote an exam on that yesterday. It included these pictures:

Yes, I drew that during an exam. What kind of life is this, that I get credit for pictures of concentric circles?????? Then again, who says I'm going to get credit for it?

3. Sailing past my window

People do it. Even if there's very little wind. I have proof:

4. Accounting exam

I'm not ready, but I'll probably never be. I've decided to go have a shower instead of studying anymore. The binder I have for Accounting is four to five inches thick. I don't even know what's in it.

Studying good times

2008-03-29T16:08:00.002+01:00

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

2008-03-26T13:10:00.005+01:00

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

2008-03-25T10:59:00.003+01:00

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!"

2008-03-23T16:13:00.010+01:00

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

2008-03-20T22:40:00.001+01:00

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

ian of the tgv

observez-vous -- l'oeuf!

2008-03-20T17:12:00.001+01:00

from our kindly landlord, emile.

Easter Blog Hunt

2008-03-20T09:47:00.004+01:00

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?

2008-03-19T10:19:00.005+01:00

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

2008-03-17T23:00:00.004+01:00

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)

2008-03-17T08:13:00.003+01:00

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

2008-03-15T21:35:00.002+01:00

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

2008-03-13T00:09:00.004+01:00

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

2008-03-10T11:12:00.004+01:00

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

2008-03-05T00:30:00.004+01:00

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

2008-03-03T12:06:00.003+01:00

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

Pictures pictures pictures

2008-02-24T22:02:00.011+01:00

Hooray for pictures.

Matt, Ricky, Steffen and John (L to R)
Matt and a girl from New Zealand whose name I don't think I ever caught. Matt is quite possibly the worst karaoke singer I've ever heard.
I don't really know what to say about these cows. That's why I took pictures of them. I think (and really hope) that they are ironic.

These aliens were in the display case beside the cows.

This one's for Inder. I have no idea why it's in blue, underlined font. I can't seem to get it to stop. Chin chin, inder.There is a lot of ping-pong playing at lunch. Much hilarity typically ensues, as you can see from the smiles and laughter, I suspect. The tables are stone, all-weather, and it turns out you can actually play ping-pong in a light rain or below zero as long as you're desperate enough.
Lastly, I felt in my last pictures that I didn't go the dessert table justice, so here it is near the start of a meal rather than at its picked-over end. They will refill / replace most of these dishes at least once during the meal. More disturbing is that there is another dessert table at the other, non-MBA student, buffet station, where alternate and additional desserts may be had.
And finally, the cheese table. It's the smallest table, but by my count, they've managed to put 12 cheeses on it, which is more than respectable. Actually, it's disturbing. There's a 12-cheese cheese plate at my disposal at lunch 5 days a week. Bring it on.

Eight hours of Finance

2008-02-24T14:28:00.003+01:00

Re-start your heart, dear reader, and then think about it again... eight hours of Finance. This is what it must be like to work in a bank. Oh wait, I DID work in a bank, for four years. It was nothing like that.

Yesterday we had eight hours of Finance with a professor named Arturo Bris. Arturo actually stood around the front of an auditorium and succeeded in making financial valuation interesting, for almost eight hours in a row. He is quite an amazing teacher actually, very funny in a completely unexpected way, and I think if this course had a different teacher it might be a whole lot less valuable. Hmm, actually, it does have a different teacher too. His name is Jim Ellert, and he sat at the back of the class for eight hours of Finance. I'm not sure why he chose to spend his Saturday in the back of the auditorium listening to his colleague and co-lecturer teach when it wasn't his time to speak... the chair he slept on for part of the time didn't seem that comfortable, but I'm sure he had his reasons.

Laura told me that in the official IMD blog they link professors' names to their bios, and I thought that was a cool idea, so I'm doing it as well. I'm also attaching here a cool picture of the Chateau D'Ouchy that I took the other night. It looked really menacing at the time, with the moon poking through the clouds just so, and tower rising up into the darkening sky. But, all I had was my cell phone camera, which clearly sucks. Then, an SUV decided to park where I was standing, and literally ran me off the sidewalk. How rude. So, this is the best photo I got, highly messed up in Photoshop. I think it looks more like a pen-and-ink drawing that anything else at this point, but I quite like it.

I'm supposed to be working on various readings, papers etc right now, and this is a fun procrastination tool, but I'm going to go be a good boy shortly. If you're curious, one of the students here, Paul Holmes, put together a short montage of the first few weeks at IMD, and posted it to Youtube here. I don't love his choice of music, but it paints a fairly realistic picture of life at IMD, and I think it's well done.

A bientot.

ps not the correct Paul Holmes.

Technology, to the rescue!

2008-02-20T23:03:00.011+01:00

Hooray for the miracles of modern technology. I've succeeded in extracting some pictures from my cellphone... I never knew it could be so difficult to make my toys play nicely together. While I love this new Mac laptop (yes, I bought a Mac, in case you didn't know that and it shakes your world view), I should have researched mobile phones a bit better so that I didn't buy pretty much the only one that doesn't work with a Mac. Oops. Not like I'm going to have to live with this particular frustration for at least a few years.

But, the salient point here is that I did successfully get the pictures off. And they are dandy pictures:

First, a Lausanne sunset:

Now, some pictures of the disturbingly luxurious IMD lunch buffet:

And for comparison's sake, the burger and fries I had for dinner at the Whitehorse pub last Friday night, at 10pm, when I could barely stand from the hunger:
And, last but not least, one of these:
Because really, we ARE the people.

Horns and heads

2008-02-17T17:33:00.004+01:00

I'm not the quickest bunny in the woods today. This is mostly related to having been one of the least smart rabbits last night. If someone offers you a shot of Pisco, strongly consider your tomorrow before you say yes. If someone (such as yourself, for instance) then decides to have four more shots of Pisco, Scotch, and some Slovakian liquor that I can't recall the name of, you may feel like me today.

When I decided to come to IMD I was concerned that I was trading away all the fun of Insead for a too-serious workaholic school. I was mostly right, but there is certainly more fun than I thought there might be.

Unfortunately for you, dear readers, I will have to leave it at that for now, because I have to present an article abstract on Valuing Private Companies to my study group in a little over an hour, and I haven't actually read the article yet.

Oh, and as for the horns, if someone has any idea why the Swiss national past-time today is honking car horns, they should let me know. It sounds like Dundas & Ossington after Portugal beat England around here.

--
nb: yes, www.steveknight.tv
nb2: I found the following on the bottom of a CV I was reading today: "I have been in Switzerland since 1998. I have lived in London, England, since when I was seven years old and have spent half of my lifetime living abroad. I like baking." Good to know.

Les Diableretes, redux

2008-02-10T21:26:00.000+01:00

Here are some random pictures of people, taken a few weeks ago, just to prove that there are other people here. The one on the left features (from left to right) Steffen and Max, both of whom are in my study group. The one on the right features Martin, and a number of other people that are hard to make out. This was lunch on the waterfront on a Saturday afternoon.

I'm back in blog, and I'm baaaaaaaaadddddd. At skiing at Les Diableretes, aka Glacier 3000, which is what I did today. Yes, I went skiing! Hooray. Here's a trail map:
We were mostly up in the Scex Rouge area, which is basically a massive and completely flat area crisscrossed by pomas and t-bars. "This place looks like Belgium." Martin and I scared the bejeezus out of Natalia by taking her on a run down the left side of the map to Oldenalp on the Combe D'Audon, and then from the Oldenegg (yes, these are the real names), we also tried the run down to Reusch. It was like Blue Mountain, but with massive towering rocky faces, fewer runs, and even fewer people. There are actually three runs that aren't blue. Incidentally, the run grading system is different o'er here: blue = easiest, red = intermediate, and black = hard. These black runs were not hard, however. Except inasmuch as they were almost solid ice. Thank goodness the patio at the Scex Rouge was nice, and had a live accordionist. Seriously. Live accordion in the sunshine at 3000 metres -- who could ask for anything more?

Truth be told it was very very fun. I went with Martin, Max, Natalia, and Aoife (p: EE-fa), and through a funny sort of coincidence, the place they wanted to go was the very same Glacier 3000 / Les Diableretes that Laura and I had been to last weekend. Martin has a car here so he drove, which was excellent, and it was much faster to get there (just over an hour) than last week on the train. The road up from Aigle however is really quite something: switchbacks, hairpin turns, no shoulders, fast, long, and torturous. I ate bread (I was hungry) and Natalia hung her head out the window trying not to be sick. I thank the bread for giving my stomach something else to think about. I also thank my head, for being more intelligent last night than I was on Friday night.

Yes, Saturday night at 11:00 pm I was at home reading Institutional Perspectives on Economic Coordination. It's a feel-good story, in case you hadn't guessed. I hear Hollywood is going to option it.... or was that Bollywood? I'm not sure, but no matter. So, picture me sitting in my living room, listening to the clock ticking in my head, looking at the cool-o-meter sink through the floor, and deciding NOT to go out to yet another birthday-dance-party. Deciding to go to bed early. Deciding to skip even the casual Saturday evening beer or glass of wine. Wow, what self-restraint, you are probably saying to yourselves right now. You might have even called to someone, a significant other perhaps, to comment on how mature I've become.

Well, you'd be wrong, and this other that you call so "significant" would have wasted their time listening to you. Because the real reason I didn't go out on Saturday was that I was still moderately hung over from Friday. Apparently Friday is when I drink too too much, and Saturday be damned.

The story of Friday is rather a short one. Class all day was group work to complete preparations for, and draft-present, our Industry analysis on the pharmaceuticals industry. Good times. I've learned a lot about Alzheimers... deeeeeepressing. At least we decided against colorectal cancer. There are some small mercies in this world. So anyways, we presented the damn thing (in draft, I remind you) at 1:45, it went off swimmingly, and we were then left to work away the afternoon merging our work with the Disease Management group (not joking). We finished at 8, and much to my chagrin, I hightailed it to catch some other people who were on their way out to dinner at the Pirate (PIRATE = K x CHAGRIN, where K is a positive integer). The Pirate (yar) was substantively better than when Laura and I went ($24 for a wiener, in case you missed that post). This time I had moules frites and they were quite tasty. Right, back to the story. I also had three beers. Then we went en masse to the White Horse, the local pub which is conveniently just around the corner from both my abode and the Pirate, and I lost track of the drinks after that. I recall the lights coming on at the end of the night, I made it home with enough steam to drunk-dial Laura and talk her ear off for a while, and when I woke up on Saturday morning I cursed my 10am meeting and my pounding crashing bashing head and stomach. I hurt just writing this post. Alcohol = poison. If you forget this, you may just find a way to remind yourself.

Anywho, that's my gig. Tomorrow I'm back in the saddle, doing all the work I didn't do this weekend. The tectonic plates are colliding here, and the work mountain is getting higher. I'm in the valley looking upwards. It's going to be a long, hard, lonely winter.

~ Intermission ~

2008-02-06T18:32:00.001+01:00

And now for something completely different.

Fraulein Laura

2008-02-05T22:10:00.000+01:00

I'm back!

It's true what Ian says...I'm stuck in Frankfurt and thought that, as long as I'm here, I might as well take this nerdosphere to the next (German) level. Here are the details, as per the email I just sent to my family:

I am here in Frankfurt on an unexpected extension of my Europ-Ian tour. My delayed flight from Geneva landed at 17:08...which was just enough time for me to miss my 17:00 connection, of course! After a brief meltdown (why is this the second time in my life that I have found myself sprinting through the Frankfurt airport?), I got hooked up with a ticket for tomorrow and a night's accommodation at some weird hotel in what seems to be the German equivalent of Mississauga. I had a good dinner, though, and even got invited to join my new German businessman friends: Dieter, Peter, and Wolfgang. We ate American-style burgers and drank beer and bashed Americans, which cheered me up considerably!

Not much more to tell, faithful blog readership. Oh, except that the hotel is World War I/II aviation themed: there are black and white pictures of propeller planes, pilots and their planes, pilots and their girlfriends and their planes, propellers hanging from the ceiling of the bar...

A note about the backpack -- while it looks cool, it could use some help in the function department. It has a very small neck (makes stuffing difficult), and it's so dark inside you can't find anything you put in it! And the name is "Bobble-B" (or something silly like that). I would have called it X-Pack. Now that's a name for an extreme backpack...a culturally translatable name, I might add. I should be in business school.

Back tomorrow...Lufthansa/Air Canada willing!

Here ends (officially) my blog postings for the foreseeable future.

Laura of the Rhineland

Getting to the airport early doesn't help ...

2008-02-05T18:39:00.000+01:00

... if your plane is more than an hour late. In this case, Laura's plane from Geneva to Frankfurt, the necessary pre-condition of a timely flight from Frankfurt to Toronto. If my memory serves, I heard:

- Hotel room
- Dinner tonight
- Breakfast tomorrow morning
- Shuttle to and from hotel
- Booked on flight to Toronto tomorrow

The EU also forces airlines to offer a boatload of cash in various circumstances, including if a flight is delayed 5 hours or more, or if you are "denied boarding". Does missing your connection because your first flight was late count? We'll see.

Faithful readers, having been spoiled by Laura's picture- and film-rich posts for the last two weeks, you are now re-introduced to the poverty that is me. Black and white. No frills. Short sentences. Punctuation only where absolutely necessary. Brevity.

It's about time I learned about brevity.

Ian

ps here are three pictures of that weird backpack I was given a few weeks ago. I forgot to post them earlier. I am working on learning what the word "layout" means.

Au revoir, Lausanne

2008-02-05T09:11:00.000+01:00

I'm getting ready to leave Lausanne, and I think Ian has already found a way to fill the void: today there's eight hours of economics, tomorrow the same for accounting. It's a romance of a different kind, I suppose.

I'm glad to have come and met Ian's friends and seen more of the school, the city...I have a much better appreciation for how hard he's working. I'm very proud! If Ian doesn't have a heart attack/nervous breakdown before graduation, he's going to be one amazing Business Leader of Tomorrow Today.

I hope to be back sometime soon, but in the meantime I'll turn the blog back over to Ian. Stay tuned for updates from within the Inner IMD Circle!

Viva las Switzerland:

Laura of l'aéroport Genève

Lausanne, the Random Photo Essay (now with meat plate and angry gull video)

2008-02-04T16:02:00.001+01:00

Glacier 3000!

2008-02-03T20:48:00.000+01:00

We said to ourselves this morning, "Selves, if you're going to see something in Switzerland, it might as well be mountains!" Agreeing with our own sage advice, we hopped on the train to Les Diablerets, a small resort 60km southeast of Lausanne that sits at the base of a 10,525-foot glacier! Thanking our lucky stars that we purchased our demi tariffe cards yesterday (which entitle us to 1/2 price or discount fares on all trains, buses, and boats for one year!), we started our journey -- Lausanne, Aigle, Les Diablerets -- which involved a fun tram trip out of Aigle that was very picturesque!

Unfortunately, when we arrived in Les Diablerets (named after a folklore tale involving devils playing games in the glacier peaks), we realized we had missed the bus that we needed to take us to the infamous Glacier 3000! But, as you can see, we passed the time waiting for the next one in sunny Swiss fashion:

Suitably full of cheese and beer, we felt ready for the 3000 experience! Here are the details, as per the brochure: "Within just 15 minutes, the panoramic cable car takes you from Col du Pillon up to the eternal snow at 3,000 metres above sea level. A spectacular view onto the most beautiful alpine peaks (Eigen, Monch, Jungfrau, Matterhorn) can be enjoyed from the restaurant, Botta, designed by the famous Swiss architect Mario Botta." OooOOoooh, right? Obviously, nothing was going to put us off the journey -- not the fact that the 100km/hr (plus!) winds had closed that portion of the ski hill and the cable cars were at their absolute limit for safety and stability (the ticket woman told us, very seriously, not to be afraid), not the 55 CHF per person price, not the fact that we were in city clothes on the glacier... Up we went! It was a pretty scary trip -- all that swinging in the air from a great height made the glass of wine at the top even more necessary than previously expected! Also, there was a bit of a tense moment when the restaurant was closed/evacuated: with only a few patrons inside, the sun starting to set, and the wind picking up, the powers-that-be had decided to close Glacier 3000 and we got the last car down with all the restaurant staff! The 3000 provided thrills and chills, as promised!!!

We made it down in one piece, but we vow to return: there is an amazing toboggan run -- there are 540-degree turns! 1,000m of track! 3 jumps! 2 bridges! -- that was closed today... but Les Diablerets hasn't got us beat! And it's only a couple hours away...

We decided to take a new route home: bus to Gstaad and then train from there -- 1st class train tickets at half price=bargain. It's too bad you can't see the beautiful scenery (light was low and the train pretty shaky, but around here you can't help but catch a lovely mountain scene in a photo, even in such conditions.

Conclusion: Switzerland is more fun with Ian.

Laura "la Diablerette"

2008-02-02T10:19:00.000+01:00

Since Ian has elected not to cultivate "The Daniel" (lest he start to resemble this lovely passport photo from yesteryear), he asked me to make him a hair appointment yesterday. His colleagues at IMD thanked me: they have seen the old driver's license photo -- they borrowed it from me for the yearbook! -- and they are worried for the future. Making appointments over the phone is a little too taxing to my French, so I went in person and managed to have a lovely "conversation" with the very encouraging salon woman. Yay for language skills, and more importantly, yay for the infinite patience of the locals! The Lausanneans (?) seem to appreciate the effort at French, fumbling though it may be at times: not knowing the word for "hazelnuts" last night at dinner, we tried to ask the waiter about the chocolate desserts, and he said that serving our table was like playing a game of Taboo! Thank you, Hasbro, for building cultural bridges via boardgames.

Dinner was at Cafe de Grancy with Rich and Tanja, Matt and Nicola (fresh off the train from Germany). Four of us elected to have the special, "La Famille Quesnoy," which was veal something or other. Ian loved it...until speculation at the table ran rampant that it was veal liver. Then he claimed he noticed the rather unpalatable texture. A likely story... All was made right with numerous drinks at Ye Olde White Horse...perhaps a few too many, seeing as Ian was late for his start-up group this morning by half an hour. We'll see if apologetic/compensatory pastries buys him the forgiveness he's hoping for.

Ian actually has a few hours off later on (!!!), so we are heading to the Musée de l'Elysée, the photography museum here in Lausanne, to catch the very cool looking Edward Steichen show. As an extra bonus, I think it's free today, as part of some first-Saturday-of-the-month promotion. Then we're off to some wine and cheese club thing at IMD (like Ian doesn't spend enough there already...), and then I'm sure Ian will pass out from exhaustion...and not the Lindsay Lohan kind of "exhaustion" you read so much about in People magazine.

We're hoping to take off tomorrow on a little day trip somewhere, so stay tuned for Laura and Ian travels and original photos!

Who is that handsome, hirsute man?

2008-02-01T11:11:00.001+01:00

It's my very talented friend Daniel Scott Tysdal, winner of the EYE Weekly short story contest! Congratulations, Daniel -- I am starting a fan club for you in Switzerland. We're working on a logo right now, and some sort of slogan to shout at our rallies, but we're trying not to get too militant about it. Best to stay a bit neutral over here. Although...is it okay if we copy your hairstyle?

You can read Daniel's story "What is Missing" here (PS live link...oooOOOoooh): http://www.eyeweekly.com/arts/books/article/16563

Laura, proud as punch, jealous as punch in the face

Bent out of shape

2008-01-31T23:19:00.000+01:00

Laura is, and I am too:

My head hurts. You can actually see where it's getting bigger on the top, if you look carefully. I've also picked up a bit of a permanent grimace unfortunately. It's kinda funny, but as my head has expanded with the growing of my brain, the skin can't keep up and it pulls my face backwards, exposing my teeth. They tell me it will all sort itself out in a few months, six to eighteen at most. Anywho, I am still alive, kicking and screaming all the way.

Laura's posts are funnier than mine. I wish I looked like the Monopoly man.

ian

"This is your year!"

2008-01-31T19:19:00.001+01:00

Um...no it isn't. We (the partners) have already come to -- and accepted -- the realization that this year is "about" our spouses at IMD, and so it is rather hard to buy into the administration's party line that we are just as important, just as integral, just as valued blah blah blah: "This is your year, partners!" Oh really? Then why does my name placard at IMD workshops read as follows:

Laura Boudreau
(Ian B)

And, even more annoyingly, why do people ask me, "Who do you belong to?" when I walk in the door?

When I got into a brief discussion about this issue with Lisa (Admissions/Ombudsperson for 08), she told me that the whole "belonging to" terminology was just an off-shoot of various and necessary administrative procedures. I'm sure that's true...in part. Surely my name is linked to Ian's on Excel spreadsheets lurking all around IMD, fine, but to have it on my bloody name card at a workshop that is supposed to empower me to express my individuality, creativity, and agency while I'm here in Lausanne? It's a mixed message, to say the least.

On the one hand, the partners are supposed to be hip-hop dancing and making pottery and having a lovely ol' ex-pat time, and on the other, it's already assumed that we will crack and be a burden to our partners, and so therefore we need psychologists on 24/7 call, nutritionists to tell us how to lose weight (apparently I can have a "nice talk" with some woman name Patricia about this), and some sort of herbalist from Paris to help us treat ourselves for anxiety. It's like frosh week for people with capital-I issues...and I never much cared for frosh week, even at the time.

There is a general consensus that it is all kind of bullshit and we will make our own friends and manage our own lives; if we need help, we'll ask, but thanks for your card. Tanja thought all the vaguely ominous "it's going to get worse" talk about the IMD workload rather laughable, considering that her husband, Rich (in Ian's group), spent the last four years in Special Ops in Baghdad. How much worse can it get? Plus, believe it or not, people here have problems that can't be solved with salsa dancing (gasp!) or Jungian analysis -- Josefine, for instance, has a 5-year-old on her hands who cries herself to sleep because Daddy's not home...that is, of course, when said 5-year-old isn't saying that "Daddy went back to Sweden" and refusing to talk to Jesper, even if he manages to make it home before bedtime (which is pretty much never). Wait -- maybe they have an herb for that?

The problem is not with the partners themselves -- I've generally found the women (and they're all women) to be very dynamic, interesting, engaging people -- but rather with the weird programming that we are subjected to/is available to us. I'm all for a little companionship and camaraderie, but this workshop today made me glad to be visiting Lausanne and glad that I have my own life, which is not contingent on the next pot luck party, theme to be decided.

Speaking of my own life...

Good news today from across the wires! My short story "Hurricane Season" has been accepted for publication by Grain! Grain is a great magazine that I have a lot of respect for, and you can check it out here (apologies that this isn't a live link...haven't figured that out in Blogger): http://www.grainmagazine.ca/

M. Winter sent his transatlantic regards:

laura that is fantastic. grain is a hard
magazine to get into, strong material.
I might have poked you here and there
but you sucked it up and did the revisions
so good on you. michael

YES! Good on me, indeed! I am tooting my own horn! Ian is proud. He took me out for dinner (but I had to pay because he had no money...so much for those finance classes!), and he and I laughed over caramelized fig pasta (?) about the IMD Culture of Capitalist Oppression of Women and Minorities. (Perhaps Ian has forwarded you the rather dismal email the admin sent out to "all the gays and lesbians"?) Argh!

Enough raging...

Ian's work is going well -- he's currently building a model to determine the value of real estate in Lausanne (and/or any other city), and apparently this means he is going to start wearing a top hat/bow tie and looking suspiciously like the Monopoly guy:

In not so good news, our ski trip to Verbier has been scuttled! The company Ian's working for has determined that it can't afford to send the team out to test the ski product in question. Ian and I might still go the two of us, but it's looking a little unlikely. We'll have to see how the week plays out.

Hope the world is continuing to turn over there. And no, I am not offended by the lack of comments... Not at all... ;)

It's a chilly night here...hope you are all bundled and well!

Laura (the one who belongs to Ian)

For you, Doubting Thomas

2008-01-30T20:53:00.001+01:00

Okay, not a "cat"

But still...

"It's like hell, just more expensive..."

2008-01-30T17:17:00.000+01:00

That was the subject line of the "IMD Diary" yesterday. Two IMD-ers, Catherine and Mathieu, have volunteered to write the daily e-newsletter in order to give friends and loved ones a window into the lives of overworked and sleep-deprived tycoons-in-the-making...although sometimes that window is better left shuttered, I think. ;) Here's the link (which you'll have to paste in your address bar) to the diary: http://www.imd.ch/programs/mba/programstructure/mba_diary.cfm?

I was having a similarly un-fun day. I have, since we last spoke...
- botched (although also potentially fixed? not sure...) not one but TWO rent payments for Ian via bank machine wire transfer (noting here that Swiss banking is quite complicated!)
- burned myself on the stove
- blown the apartment fuse again
- been subject to periodic and inexplicable stink of apartment -- maybe something to do with the Metro construction outside? Hmmm sulfur....
- had a small meltdown as a result of all the above, triggered by not having change for the bus

I regained my confidence/sanity by meeting up with some IMD wives this afternoon and I got around the city just fine, thank-you-very-much, which has helped me to realize that, no, I am not failing life...just Swiss electricity. We were quite the international coffee klatch: Leila, originally from Iran, now living in Toronto, Raquel from Brazil, and Shweta from India, via a few years in Germany. As weird as it is to be a lady who lunches, it is actually rather comforting to talk with people who are having similar experiences, and it's fun to have people to go sight seeing with. Lausanne is quite small -- and today quite gloomy! It's true, Brenda! -- so it's just the right size to cover in one afternoon. (Yes, that small.) We saw the Chateau (top left), which now houses administrative offices for the government (exciting!), and the Cathedral (at right). I also saw another example of ingenious Swiss architecture (bottom left), one that I might remember for Mr. Banana. Yes, folks, that is a very elaborate cat ramp you're looking at. If only Banana had somewhere to go other than College Street, I might consider such a creation.

And now to the Migros for dinner materials! Migros is a kind of super store that, as near as I can tell, sells everything. Factoid: It is also one of the largest employers in Switzerland.

Amazing, I know.

Laura of the Alps

Lausanne, light and dark

2008-01-29T09:39:00.000+01:00

Blew a fuse -- nay, THE fuse -- for the apartment this morning. Luckily, M. Vuistiner, the best landlord this side of the Atlantic, solved my problems and then invited me to tea in the restaurant. Ian is worried that I will be lonely here, but obviously I am already a pro at breaking things and influencing people...

Today is a work day (these short stories don't write themselves), but I'm planning on channeling my Intrepid Explorer impulses and taking a walkabout in the afternoon. The trees are...knobby? Gnarly? Bulbous? (Man, this writing stuff is hard.) More on the flora, fauna, and flaneur possibilities later, I'm sure.

Ian sends his regards. I've noticed he's losing weight in spite of the daily lunch-feast at IMD, but otherwise he doesn't seem to be doing too badly. If things get rough, he always has 20 sessions of Jungian psychotherapy to fall back on (and, as I discovered yesterday, so do I -- go Partner Program!).

Yours in mental health,
Laura

Hostile takeover!

2008-01-28T18:48:00.000+01:00

Hello, blog readership!

You may have noticed that Ian's posts have become less frequent of late, likely as a result of his (nearly) round-the-clock work schedule, and so I have initiated a takeover of his blog while I'm here in Lausanne. Really, it's for the best -- Ian's updates on Forensic Accounting for Nerds and Geeks are no match for my Daily Observations, Swiss-Style.

I arrived on Friday afternoon after a rather...interesting flight -- my seat partner, Hilde, from Germany, served as a valuable object lesson, demonstrating why Ian and I shouldn't live apart long term:

Hilde: What are you going to do in Lausanne?
Laura: I'm visiting my boyfriend -- he just moved there for school.
Hilde: Oh, that's nice. You'll have such fun. [Pause] I'm leaving my partner of six years. He lives in Winnipeg. [Pause] Winnipeg is far from Germany. And I hate Winnipeg.

To her credit, Hilde gave it an honest go (she moved to the 'Peg in October), but...still. As you might imagine, there was much discussion of long-distance relationships (Hilde says one year apart is "nothing" and I shouldn't worry, but six "is just crazy" -- I am not to let it get to that point...and I agree), and the conversation was fuelled by a few drinks... By the time we landed in Frankfurt, I knew a lot more about the perils of international dating, and Hilde was crying uncontrollably. Lesson learned, methinks!

Made it to IMD, which (for those of you who are feeling like you need more authenticity in your lives) is the "real world":
Ian's colleagues are very nice and I very much enjoyed going out with them to the local IMD watering hole, The White Horse. Everyone encouraged me to hook up with the "Partner Program" while I'm here. As I've said to a few of you via email, I think "Partner" is a synonym for "Wife," and "Program" is a euphemism for "Stepfordization." It seems to me that, in general, men come here for MBAs, and their wives come here to take cooking lessons and tobogganing day trips... That said, a few Insta-Friends would be nice while I'm here...and I like toboganning...so...I am getting an ID badge and now I'm on the listserv and already signed up for some "transition" (?) workshop on Thursday and possibly some yoga on Friday... When in Lausanne, right?

I've also done a little window shopping (no boots yet, Brenda!), but my favourite store has got to be the "Bazar D'Ouchy" -- it puts the bizarre back in bazaar, that's for sure, and it is an excellent example of several Swiss stereotypes in (fully automated!) action:

(Note: if this video shows up sideways...I don't know how to fix it)

The food here is leaving a little to be desired. Our trip to "The Pirate" (which came highly recommended!) was particularly instructive: do not order $24 wieners. They are expensive and not that tasty. We failed to bring the camera, but I think you can visualize it yourself. Imagine a wiener on a plate. Then imagine paying $24 for it. Yar!

Anyway, all is well here and Ian is working like a dog. I will have more insights into European culture tomorrow. Bonne nuit.

LB

PS Language skills improving...in part thanks to my cosmopolitan cell phone, borrowed from one of Ian's Danish friends, it speaks to me in German and has an Arabic key pad. Learning, learning...

"Yes, but how do you feel about leadership?"

2008-01-20T12:15:00.001+01:00

.
A quick post, I hope.

I'm at school, in my group study room, supposedly doing industry research for our Industry Competitive Analysis project. We won the pharmaceuticals industry (hooray) and we now have a short window of time to figure out the industry, find a place that there might be an opportunity, and divine how to exploit that opportunity. According to the scant bit of research we've done thus far, last year Americans spent $200 billion on prescription drugs, so I suspect we're not the only people trying to figure out where to make a buck in this industry. Outsmarting them all and finding that hidden treasure is a bit of a tall order perhaps....

The latter half of this week has been interesting: we've just finished 'leadership development' week, wherein we spent all of Wednesday through Saturday doing various leadership exercises, supported/supervised by a clinical psychologist. Interesting stuff, to be sure. Our man, Michael Scott, is a "Principal Adult Pyschotherapist" in the UK NHS, has a private practice as well, also teaches and consults on organizational development, is an honorary senior lecturer in psychoanalytic studies at the University of Essex, etc. etc. etc. More amazingly, he sat almost completely still for four hours on Friday evening while we went around the room giving each person in our group three "helpful" and three "not so helpful" pieces of feedback! Yes, this is leadership development IMD-style. The whole shebang was actually quite good; I'm happy it's done, and I'm also happy to have done it. "Yes, but how do you feel about leadership?"

My favourite part of the leadership/feedback/pyschoanalytic stuff was how much people drank afterwards. The various sessions tailed off between 7 and 8pm on Friday, and by 8 or so there were at least 40 of the 90 people in our class at the local pub! The carousing continued long into the night, including a mass migration to a club downtown... when I went home at 2am there were still about 20 people going strong. My one conclusion from the night was made the next day, when I remembered that my tolerance for drink goes down when I don't imbibe for a few weeks.

Right then, back to the grind.

Ian

More on my social life, she says

2008-01-16T13:13:00.000+01:00

Brenda/Mom (my mother, in case you haven't met her) wants to hear more about my social life. I have 15 minutes before my next class starts so I thought I'd try and add something here.

In short, it's short. Social stuff here at this point seems to be a lot about integrating work into the other things that you might rather be doing. The working lunch, the working dinner, these are common features. Even when we have breaks during 4-hour lectures, most of the conversation in the washroom (the first place most people go) and the coffee machine (the second place) revolves around the class topic: agreements, disagreements, frustration, etc. Inasmuch as you've always wanted to integrate your social life into your work life, I suggest that one of the most effective ways to do this is to completely subsume one into the other!

But really, I overemphasize the point. This is true in large part, but on both Friday and Saturday evening last weekend, I went out on the town and quite enjoyed myself. Like most new experiences, I did get it somewhat wrong: I drank too much on Friday night, when I had an 8am class in Economics, and as a result of this rather rude shock to my system, I didn't drink enough on Saturday, when I had plenty of time to rest and sleep in on Sunday morning. Folly. Thankfully, on average (as a classmate here) I stayed out considerably later than the midnight that I actually went to bed at, because a number of people went out dancing and stayed in gyration mode until 5am. I have yet to figure out how.

The other aspect of social life thus far is the simple pleasure of enjoying my surroundings. Here are some pictures of a lovely sunset (taken from my living room window), some local (towering) trees, and the lake on Sunday afternoon.

Now with 30% less sleep!

2008-01-15T01:22:00.000+01:00

Same great Ian, more great bags under his eyes!

I overplay the point -- I have more spare time than I probably should... I have a sneaking suspicion that others are further advanced in the readings than I am. The "readings" incidentally, for the rest of month of January, are a stack of double-sided photocopies at least five inches thick. It's the 14th of January today; basically half-way through. I curse the fact that 2008 is a leap year... I'm terrified of what 29 days of readings will look like on February 1st. Last point on the readings: I also have nine or so textbooks to "familiarize myself with". I'm thinking familiarize is akin to "recognize the cover, if given a flash card or Rorschat (sp?) test". Aim high.

Anywho, the real problem with sleep is that I stay up late doing the things that I don't get a chance to do during the day, because even though I am enjoying the program, I'm unwilling to let go of my pre-IMD (read: social) life completely. I may yet be bludgeoned into it.

Bang ...

2008-01-10T23:38:00.000+01:00

... not a wimper. I thought things were supposed to end with a bang, not begin with one. Apparently, I was wrong.

If you've been trying to email me in the last two days, to share how your life is going or, say, talk about how much you miss me and my witty raparte, or even just to gossip about all these Mats Sundin rumours, you may have noticed that I've not been that able to respond. Again, to reiterate, you might have noticed this, had you thought to email me. Regardless of your emailing (or not), I've been very very very busy. I'd use more verys but I don't have enough time.

Yesterday morning continued our strong tradition of orienting, with brief hallway discussions on how to use a security pass and a locker key, as well as the handing in of my Swiss residency permit form... the blue version, the EU citizen version. I inadvertently filled out the yellow, non-EU citizen version first, and was really relieved to discover my mistake before the uber-uptight Swiss "authorities" did. I picked up the correct form, compared them, and realized the chief difference was.... the colour. There was a slight wording variation on the 3rd page: essentially, the tick box for studying (as a reason for residency) had been moved from 24 to 23 on the list of tick boxes. Anyways, I've handed in the correct form. Don't screw up your forms here.... it's simply not prudent.

Yesterday afternoon followed much like the morning, with more orienting. Career Services featured strongly, and I can confirm that many of my classmates would like a job in the future (as would I, I suppose). There are a lot of eager people in this class. So, we ran late into the planned-for cocktails, and then we ran even later with the introduction of the first case discussion material: a hard-shelled knapsack called Boblbe-e (pron: bobble-bee). Our assignment: go have a drink and some dinner, then return to our study group rooms (ah yes, we have study groups as of this afternoon) and hash out what Boblbe-e should do with themselves. I'll spare you the details, but the brief summary is that there are 12 study groups, and we were the second group to leave, just before midnight. When I got home (a short, 5 minute walk) I still had almost an hour of reading to do. Oh, and class discussion and presentation of the Boblbe-e case was to start at 8am this morning.

All would have been moderately well, except that apparently my brain, having not been turned this far "on" for quite some time, refused to turn quite all the way back to the "off" position. I'm tired today.

I am also, apparently, verbose.

So, with a newfound brevity:
Class started at 8. Case discussion quite interesting. Our group the first to present. We did well. Not perfect, but well. Lots of questions, which ran over on time (this is emerging as a theme). Two other groups presented. They also did well. The soft spots in other groups are easier to see, but the whole class is fairly collegial... as our group's presenter so elloquently put it, "hey guys, it'll be you down here next." Smells like team spirit to me. In runup to 11am coffee break, professor announced that Boblbe-e's co-founder / CEO from the time of the case was here, and would be in the class for the next hour to present what happened, what he's doing now, and to take questions. There was much rejoicing. Then urinating, followed by percolating (of coffee). Mr. Presenter was really good, really interesting. Actually strapped the prototype backpack to two peoples' backs and hit them, full force, with a baseball bat. He's a big guy too, and he really stepped into it. Bag got tons of press, product placement in 15 or so big movies (Charlie's Angels, among them), but through a combination of bad decisions, bad luck, and sheer circumstance, it all fell apart (the venture, not the bag). He went broke and I suspect maybe kinda loopy, went on a personal coaching retreat, and rejoined the corporate world. "Suit to jeans and back to suit" was the title of his last slide. It fits. Even though he was wearing jeans today. They then gave each of us one of the bags, a soft-shell version but quite cool. I'll wear it if I ever join the police or the military for sure. Actually, I do like it. Just don't know quite for what yet.

So, that was the morning. The afternoon was all about how we felt about the morning. Actually not quite true, but close enough. Dr. Jack Wood in case you want to look him up. "Yes, but how do you feel about those hungry, hungry hippos?" (thanks Laura). He went from 1:30 till 6pm.

Then, went to dinner with the other two Canadians, to put together a 2 page presentation and a 2 page summary hand-in on the last 4,000 years of Canada. Histori.ca would be proud. Or disgusted. Not sure. Then, back from dinner to read and write a summary of one of the three articles we have to read for 8am tomorrow morning. 9pm, round-table with the study group to present and discuss each of the articles in question, 10:30pm to finish the edits on the Oh Canada hand-in, and home by 11pm. Apparently this is a short day.

My eyelids are going to roll into the back my head, atrophied from a lack of use. Why am I writing this blog-novella? you ask. It takes time to relax, drink a beer, and settle my head apparently. This will all certainly be interesting. It already is. I'm reminded of the admonition to be careful of what you wish for, for fear that you may get it.

Sunshine, lollipops, and orientation sessions

2008-01-08T14:23:00.001+01:00

No lollipops. That was a lie. Sorry. I wanted to throw something out there for all the kids who might not otherwise read this.

Plenty of orientation sessions -- if you like being well oriented, this is the place for you. This has to be a short post because we're starting our first voluntary, student-arranged and directed orientation session in about ten minutes. Cultural sensitivity: there are 43 nationalities represented amongst the 90 students here, so we've broken into 11 groups (yes, that means Canada and the USA together) and we're all getting 10 minutes to help everyone else understand what we say after we say hello. I'm hopeful there will be a math orientation session tomorrow, given this numerical summary of our upcoming session (as written on the blackboard in front of the class):

11 x 10 minutes = 120 minutes

Yes, the cream of the crop over here.

It's really sunny today, quite gorgeous out really, and so I took some great pictures of the campus just now. The pictures tell only some of the story obviously, so to complete the picture in your mind's eye, imagine what the Starship Command on Earth looks like in Star Trek 5; that's pretty much the IMD campus. There's actually a semi-circular sliding automatic glass door... ok, to be more precise, there are two quarter-circular sliding glass door sections. When closed, they form a semi-circle. Fascinating, I'm sure. Here's a picture of the complex with the amazing door, just so we can all appreciate it. The door itself is on the left side of the picture, marked by... nothing. The amazing-looking part in the centre is a light well, in case you were dying to know.

These last two pictures are of two of the sculptures that are around here -- I actually quite like both of them, though photographing the dancing women on the right (as opposed to the dancing women on the left, you ask?) was quite a challenge. Thankfully I have short hair, and not my grade 10 tall hair, otherwise you'd see me in the shadows for sure.

I'd ask how everyone else is, but this is a fairly one-way medium. That being said, I definitely miss Toronto, Canada, friends, and family. Wishing you were here.

Ian

2008-01-06T16:56:00.000+01:00

A first blog post.

I hope this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but I moved to Lausanne, Switzerland yesterday. I'll be in Lausanne until December 2008, taking an MBA at IMD, the International Institute of Management Development (and yes, I also wonder where the second "I" is in the acronym.)

I made it to Lausanne a rather roundabout way, via Fernie BC and Kananaskis AB. In Fernie Laura and I went skiing with my family for a week -- Laura wore her new ski suit, a little too fashion-forward for me, but Laura's pretty confident I guess. I was actually really impressed with Laura's skiing: she'd only been on skis for two days before coming to Fernie, and she was totally amazingly good. She pretty much skipped over beginner and went straight to intermediate. Blue runs, top to bottom. Pretty damn good.

Laura and I flew out of Calgary on Friday morning, and after a decidedly sad goodbye in the Toronto airport, I continued on to Zurich. I took a train from the Zurich airport to Lausanne, and arrived just after noon. My trip was relatively uneventful, though definitely set to the harmonious melodies of the tears of children. I watched them unload eight (8) strollers off the plane while I waited for rows 1-35 to gather their personal belongings and stumble off the plane. At around minute-1 of my flight I discovered I'd left the earplugs in Laura's bag... I did however have the other 100 pounds of luggage. My two checked bags actually clocked in at 48.6 and 50.7 pounds, after removing the 3lb Economics of Climate Change ("this book actually causes climate change").

So, I'm here now, and all is well. The apartment is fantastic, although they weren't kidding about the new subway station being built "nearby", as this picture out my kitchen window will attest. The subway station itself is the part with the roof of white dividers in the foreground... if you can see the two circular fans built into the wall just past the station, I'm pretty sure those are for the tracks themselves. Here's to the majority of construction being finished in 2007 -- this would be a really loud place to live otherwise. Then again, perhaps when they start work again tomorrow, after their absurdly long European Christmas vacation, I will get my dose of loud.

I'm living in a part of Lausanne called Ouchy. Ouchy is basically a swank formerly independent village where rich people congregate. That's why they built the business school here, I guess. It's quite picturesque, and my apartment is just across the street from the marina. Ouchy, incidentally, is right across Lac Leman from Evian. As I sit here on the couch writing this, I can see the twinkling lights of France in the distance. The view from my windows is rather spectacular, and this morning the sun was streaming in and it was 8C. There are mountains off to the south-west, Swiss or French Alps I presume. Although they're surely around, I couldn't see any obviously rich people this morning.

Last but not least, I went for a walk around town today, and saw this Christmas tree. It was on a lawn of some civic building, possibly city hall. At a prominent intersection, I might add. I don't really know what to think, say, or write about this particular decoration style.

Enough of this "blogging" for now. Thanks to Laura for suggesting this; it makes me feel a bit more connected to Torontonian. Oh, and I've posted a few pictures of Lausanne on my flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianbrooks).

Ian