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
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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:
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
"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
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
Thursday, March 20, 2008
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
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