Juha, our only Finnish friend at IESE, is inviting 20 of us from IESE (inclduing partners) to his home country for the New Year. We are meeting in a town north of Helsinki called Rovaniemi on 29th morning. From there, we are going to take a bus, see Santa Clause ( I didn't know Santa Clause is originally from Finland) and then go to his winter house in the evening.

Six of us including myself, Srijana and Sarita are taking a night train from Helsinki at about 7 pm and arriving to Rovaniemi at 9 in the morning. I am really looking forward to this trip. It will be my first time in Finland and the first time experiencing -30 degree C cold and also the Northern lights ( http://www.northern-lights.no/english/what/index.shtml ).

Prospero Ano Nuevo , todos!

When I was in middle school in Nepal, I first knew that vodka originated in Russia when preparing for the Quiz Contest programs. Time has changed. I actually get to experience and discuss/validate those theories nowadays. Just before the final exams, my Russian friend Evgeny invited me for an evening dedicated to Vodka. Evgeny, Wesley and myself ready for the vodka evening

Spicy vodka from Ukraine
Russina Vodka

The vodkas were authentic(at least thats what he told me before he started drinking). There was also an Ukrainian spicy vodka. I had no idea, vodkas could be spicy too. It was a fun evening. I was also trying to make sure I can handle the string alcohol content by eating as much food on the side and drinking a lot of water.

Labels: evgeny, russia, vodka

On Dec 15 and 16, we had the final seminar of the European Entrepreneurship Accelerator (EEA) course in Barcelona. INSEAD students and professors, IESE students and professors, entrepreneurs of the companies we worked with this semester and the sponsors were present during the conference.

I really enjoyed listening to some of the successful entrepreneurs who built their ideas on what looks very simple and persisted on their goals. It was encouraging to see that some of the entrepreneurs were very young, which reinforced my feeling that it is not too early or late to start a new business on my own. For now I have accepted an offer to work in the financial sector in London after my MBA, but my idea/passion of starting something on my own has been further strengthened by this course.


The stunning but partial view of the new IESE campus from the top of the building. We gave a tour of the new campus to our guests , friends from INSEAD and the entrepreneurs.

Max, Lutz from INSEAD and myself with the Barcelona city view in the background from the new building.

Labels: entrepreneurship, insead

On the Friday Nov 17th when I went to Zürich for a meeting and presentation related to my "European Entrepreneurship Accelerator" course, I missed one finance class because of the schedule conflict. (And I forgot to notify the professor that I was missing the class.) It so happened that about 20 students missed the same class the same day. Apparently, many didn't come to the class because of the random-dinner and BOW effect. Random Dinner is an annual event at IESE where Ist years are assigned randomly for dinner to the second year hosts (and vice versa, in the next semester). And BOW is the weekly "Bar of the Week" event which only starts from around midnight like any other Barcelona night life event. But there were also people who couldn't come to class for reasons like job interviews.

And guess what, there was a guest speaker invited for that class on that day. So the professor got understandably upset and gave all of the people who missed the class a report of minimum 4500 words (with 50% weight on grades) on a valuation of a company to work on. When we talked to him on why the students who had good reasons to miss the class were also punished, he had this line of reasoning:
Like with everything in life, there are innocent victims. If the whole class believes in a team, those people who didn't have a good reason to miss the class would offer to do the report for the innocent victims as well.
Apparently, some people did offer to do the double reports, one for himself/herself and one for one of the innocent victims.

So here I am today, just starting to work on this project after working on "Options and Futures" submission, Marketing paper and ENTAC presentation this long weekend. And it is due this Wednesday by noon. Wish me all the energy in completing the paper on time. What a coincidence that I had to miss the class on the same day when 20 others missed!

Labels: class, iese

I knew my friend above (name unknown) didn't like to get disturbed when he is doing some research work. I didn't know he had already communicated that to the restaurants in Zürich. When we went to a Mexican restaurant in Zürich, I was surprised to see the sign below on the wall. Quite influential, isn't he? I am impressed, my friend.

When we were visiting Trogen, a beautiful village in Switzerland, Anil Kathuria, my Indian friend from IESE looked much happier. I wonder what he was imagining. Is he meeting "special someone" when he is going to India this winter?