Recently in INSEAD Category

Aiyoh, some of my classmates ah, si beh jialat!

They think every part of Singapore I also know. They expect me to be countrywide ATM locator, and of course I must know every single place in Singapore that has alcohol, including the tempolaly watering hole, what they call it, Aqua (like tranny issit?) at Riverside Point where we had our party tonight.

First of all, olganisers give instructions must give zai zai one! Tell us Clarke Quay, of course I go to Clarke Quay lor! Acherly at Riverside Point, must cross river, dun talk cock lah! Make me walk all over the place until my feet red red, very pain!

I know we are all in INSEAD, very crever one, but I also very atas hor. I also very guai, hardly go out since I studied in Engrand where I also drank a lot cos all these ang mohs ah, very crever to drink. Then I stopped partying cos got to work very hard in Singapore. Then I go to INSEAD then I start drinking all over again.

Tonight very good already hor, me and Sim the only P3 Singaporeans around OK! We very happening sia! Anyway like other times we all drink drink talk talk laugh laugh and den when we see someone we know, we muah muah kiss kiss also … barely know people also kiss… If we do that at work in Singapore, everybody will stare at us! They will call us Siao! Shake hand greet people already very good hor…

So you see what we go through. You treat us like walking dictionary - no - street directory! Hello ah… if we know so much why would we be in school??? You think my head got GPS issit? Also ah, most of us quite conservative one. Maybe dinner we go out, but we don’t drink so much lah! We go beach party but maybe we dun wear bikini lor … or our swimsuit dun look like postage stamps, like yours.

Also in crass today, some of you say our Gahmen not democratic one but never exprain why you say so … I also dunno what to say liao. Maybe our biggest party can have more competition but we can still vote what (even if I never got chance to vote before). Next time I will ask you all to exprain why. We are not a regime hor.

Anyway I also got crass again early in the morning, tabuleh tahan, dun argue with you all anymore. Got to koon.

But next time you kachow me … I hantam you then you know!!!

First day of P3’s been going well so far. I had Organising for Strategy Execution at 8.30am, and not too surprisingly the class was only about half full. Then most of the P3s from Fonty left halfway to attend the integration talk (for Fontysiders to learn more about the Singapore campus) so that made the class even smaller.

As a result it was just me, JM, MB and a few others sharing our views on what should be done to help the ailing company in our case study.

After lunch I met most of my other groupmates who are all from Fonty. It is a little strange returning to INSEAD as a senior, and also with so many new faces from Fonty. Those of us from the Singapore campus are simply happy to see each other and catch up, and the Fontysiders are doing the same thing too.

There is a party tonight and I hope my health permits me to attend…

Hi everyone,

I’m sure the new P1s are excited at starting term. Some of you have already had a taste of it at Business Foundations. And the P3s newly arrived in Singapore should be busy setting up their new homes and exploring Singapore.

Before I forget, may I say WELCOME to Singapore!

I have a couple of things in store for you guys (pending approval), which will be revealed on this blog and also in a mass-email to everyone in the Singapore campus. Look out for it!

In the meantime, some quick tips:

1. You don’t have to give monetary tips. This applies to every kind of service but if you really, really want to I don’t think you’ll be stopped. Service charge is already included in restaurant bills. There’s no need to tip the taxi driver (although in my family, occasionally we tell them to keep the change).
2. Try the local food. Try our local coffee and tea (called ‘kopi’ and ‘teh’) at our coffeeshop (called ‘kopi tiam’). Don’t criticise our Western food just because it isn’t the same as yours back home. Also, don’t assume things like ‘all pizzas in Singapore suck’ just because someone else ordered a pizza from a really average joint which no Singaporean even raves about. I’ve heard all these criticisms and would like to address them on this blog. Presumably being in INSEAD and living in a new country most people will be open to trying new things, even if the chilli nearly kills you the first few times ;-) There is a Foodies club in Singapore as well, for the epicurious.
3. Explore Singapore. It may seem small to you, but we’re densely populated with a few races living together harmoniously. Knowing Singapore is not just about visiting many clubs and pubs and Western restaurants. I strongly recommend the Night Safari. If all goes well I may be organising heritage tours as well.
4. In case you think Holland Village gives a flavour of the ‘real’ Singapore, it isn’t exactly so. It’s one of the more ‘expat’ places and therefore more international, just like INSEAD. This is another real question I’ve answered in the past few months. If you want to see a real Singaporean neighbourhood I’m sure I or my fellow countrymen/women can take you to a local HDB flat for some kopi or teh.
5. I don’t need to tell you guys to explore the rest of South East Asia as well. You’ll be going off travelling in groups almost every weekend. It’s a great opportunity, so enjoy yourself! But don’t think that Singaporeans don’t travel, because that isn’t true. We’ve been in this region all our lives already, plus we spend our weekends with family. When I’m in Fonty I hope to travel more.
6. If you’re buying an iPhone, show your student card. I got S$50 off my iPhone at SingTel ;-) If you want to get computer and camera equipment, ask me along!
7. And if anybody wants to play golf or join me at the driving range … let me know!

Here’s a glossary for ordering local coffee and tea, taken from Wikipedia’s article on Singapore cuisine:

At kopi tiams, coffee and tea are usually ordered using their local names.

Coffee

* Kopi, coffee
* Kopi-gau, coffee (strong brew - "gau" is "厚" in Hokkien)
* Kopi-po, coffee (weak brew - "po" is "薄" in Hokkien)
* Kopi-C, coffee with evaporated milk
* Kopi-C-kosong, coffee with evaporated milk and no sugar ('kosong" means empty in Malay)
* Kopi-O, coffee with sugar only
* Kopi-O-kosong, coffee without sugar or milk
* Kopi-O-kosong-gau, a strong brew of coffee without sugar or milk
* Kopi-bing or Kopi-ice, coffee with milk, sugar and ice
* Kopi-xiu-dai, coffee with less sugar
* Kopi-gah-dai, coffee with extra sweetened milk

Tea

* Teh, tea with milk and sugar
* Teh-C, tea with evaporated milk
* Teh-C-kosong, tea with evaporated milk and no sugar
* Teh-O, tea with sugar only
* Teh-O-kosong, plain tea without milk or sugar
* Teh tarik, the Malay tea described above
* Teh-halia, tea with ginger water
* Teh-bing, tea with ice, also known as Teh-ice
* Teh-xiu-dai, tea with less sugar
* Teh-gah-dai, tea with extra sweetened milk

Right after the last exam, we headed to the bar, and were greeted by a lovely ice sculpture shaped in the words “INSEAD” and “A1 A2” which are the names of the two sections in Singapore. You pour vodka on the ice and drink at one end of the sculpture. It was very impressive. And lots of free champagne, funded by our champagne fines. Our social reps did an amazing job!

At the bar, the Zero Coupon band gave what was perhaps its finale performance. I also “guest-starred” by playing one song, and was pleasantly surprised at receiving lots of cheers and praise from classmates. I am feeling the love!!! :) It was great to play in a band where there’s lots of spontaneous teamwork - especially in my case as I didn’t rehearse with them before that. It went well enough.

Our MBA Dean Jake Cohen even joined us at the bar for a while. Later, one classmate (who was a bit tipsy) saw our INSEAD Dean, Frank Brown, walking out of the back of the building and called after him, “Mr Brown!”. Frank Brown actually popped back to ask him what’s up… it was hilarious.

Another classmate barged into the P1 Business Foundations class and popped a bottle of champagne, welcoming the participants to INSEAD and probably stunning them. He later got dunked into the fish pond.

We left for dinner at Cicada and had a great time, then headed to Oosh! at Dempsey for drinks. Met RT after that for and we caught up over ice cream. It was a great night!

My tasks for the next few days:

Sort out INSEAD High-Tech club rebranding… Seems we may have to split up the Fonty and Singapore clubs if the direction is different. Have yet to hear back from Fonty and do a teleconference to sort things out. So we will miss the first round of club presentations to the new P1s and will aim for the second round. In the meantime, there are other new interesting clubs for you guys to check out. For those of you with media, telecoms and tech experience and interest, do save a bit of time for us, OK? ;-)

I am also in charge of putting together the Dash video, which I’ll work on during my holidays, so watch out for it!

Also, I will be going on two holidays: a cruise to Penang, then back home for Christmas, then to Dalat in Vietnam to play golf. Yesss….

My holiday reading will be a new book on Social Networking written by a professor and a senior research fellow at INSEAD. It’s called Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom. I am considering doing an independent project on social networks if it’s feasible and there aren’t other electives I want to take. Or at the least, getting in touch with the authors because it is an area of high interest to me, as many of you know.

Also, the job market is pretty tight and our Alums who graduated in the last difficult period (post-dotcom boom) have sent us advice via Career Services. Some say we should just go back to our old job/company and hang in there, gain more experience and then when times are better, move on to what we were planning to do. This is a bad time for aspiring career switchers. So we’re grouping ourselves according to experience, expertise and region and leveraging more on our networks there.

Oh well. We’ll see how things pan out. They can’t get much worse than they already are, or so I hope.

Exams could’ve gone better, but this time there seemed to be more people with similar sentiments. Overall I am sure I’ll do better than in P1. Heard from another classmate-blogger that our seniors’ average grade for Finance (a really, really tough paper) was 17%! One finance-savvy classmate told me we should pray for the standard deviation to also be 17, so even if you get 0 you will be only 1 standard deviation away, and pass. Which sounds pretty ridiculous but that’s how the Z-curve works.

Also in P1 I didn’t get any negatives (a negative score means you’ve failed and definitely need to resit), though I may have to resit something anyway to pull up the average. If so, it will likely be the paper(s) I took while suffering from food poisoning…

I actually like our Finance professors and wish it didn’t always have to end this way, especially as I learnt so much from this class. Prior to INSEAD my knowledge of Finance was zero (not counting knowing how to manage my bank accounts, buy and sell shares, fund my projects).

Since then, my finance knowledge has moved up to, say, 50% or 60% and for the sciency/engineering types who grasp quantitative concepts faster, say it’s 70% or more. However compare that to classmates who have worked in Finance all/most of their lives, have a Masters or other qualification in Finance and gets full marks the P1 Finance quiz. There’s a bunch of them asking questions so advanced that the professors say it’s beyond the syllabus. Let’s say that at INSEAD, their knowledge moved up from 90% to 95%. Obviously on an absolute scale there’s no contest, and on a comparative scale I’m pummeled to death. However thanks to the smarties, we also get a bigger standard deviation which will hopefully save my ass.

The last exam, Process and Operations, had twists in the questions, some easier, one definitely the hardest, and I kicked myself for not spotting some things but oh well, it’s over. I hope the soft subjects will help me. I told God, “If there’s only one subject I can do well in, let it be Marketing”. However the paper required a lot more calculations than we expected! Doing well at Strategy would be nice too, as I plan to move into a strategic role. I will be focusing on these areas (as well as Organisational Behaviour) because I have a genuine interest and my career path will continue in that direction. Whatever you do, as you move up in life, you will have to start managing and leading people, groups, organisations. Had an interesting conversation over the weekend with my former HR boss about it and maybe I will chat more with her in future on this topic.

Still, I wish I could ‘get’ quant concepts faster like my classmates with engineering, finance and science backgrounds. Those of us with more artsy backgrounds rely a lot on more savvy classmates to explain things to us, and I’m grateful for the Finance help, particularly to “Professor” RB, and to MEK for clarifying things shortly before the exam. What gets me however is that the standard at INSEAD is high, it is not easy to get in, and I’m in a company of very talented, brilliant people.

Overall for the subjects, I feel I grasped the key concepts enough that they will linger in my memory, and I can apply them to my future work and that will be important in the long run. However in the short run, I must get through to the next round!!!

That’s all I have left to say about the exams. Onward to P3!

Two articles I spotted in the local press today refer to INSEAD:

The Straits Times ran an article, ‘Surge in MBA applications’, a rising trend in this economic downturn. [You can now view the full article.]

Here are relevant excerpts about INSEAD:

“French business school Insead reports more applications today from the unemployed, compared to a year ago.”

Our local press always refers to us as a ‘French’ school despite our slogan, ‘The Business School for the World’. Our PR team really needs to work on this. I thought our Dean Frank Brown was very particular about our positioning as international, not French, especially now that we have centres in other regions as well.

On increasing the cohort sizes:

“Others like Insead are expanding enrolment next year, from 919 to 960.”

This statement as a standalone is OK, but wait till the end of the article…

There are quotes from various MBA applicants in Singapore and their reasons for doing an MBA now. An incoming INSEAD MBA is cited:

“Computer engineering graduate Chow Lee Ling, 28, is looking forward to starting at Insead’s Fontainebleau campus next month, because she will ‘get to analyse the crisis as it unfolds in her classes with people from different backgrounds’.

She also hopes that networking with successful Insead alumni will give her a ‘leg-up’ in her career.”

(To the incoming student: Actually, your Finance classes will begin with a much more basic and mundane topic, the time value of money, and in between you will probably get insights from professors on the crisis. But yes, the networking is great :))

[Update: Lee Ling wrote to me after viewing this post - she was misquoted in the article.]

What is slightly puzzling is how the article is structured, such that after quoting these students from various schools, it then ends by mentioning two ‘top’ schools - Rutgers and Chicago.

“However, schools say the spike in applications means it may be harder to get in as top schools like Chicago Booth School of Business, which takes in about 90 students yearly, and Rutgers, which accepts 50 students a year, are not increasing their intake.”

The sentence is clumsy and misleading. I interpret the overall point is that the really good schools wouldn’t increase their cohort size - perhaps referring to quality control. Which then implies that INSEAD isn’t as good. Admittedly, overcrowding is a valid concern as we’re already feeling there are too many students on campus. But increasing cohort sizes isn’t indicative of diminishing quality. Some top US business schools have far larger intake sizes than we do. So the point here is weak.

Also, the writer should understand that a top university doesn’t necessarily have a top business school. For instance, universities like Oxford and Cambridge are also top in many areas but their business schools are ranked above average, not number 1. We should compare apples to apples.

Next, I wouldn’t deny that Chicago is a very good university with a great business school, but it only has an EMBA programme here - the MBA programme is only in Chicago - so again, the journalist is not making the right comparisons.

And when you do make the right comparisons: INSEAD’s ranking is far better than Rutgers’s business school, which is not in the BusinessWeek top 100 at all but is only listed as as “U.S. Programs Also Considered For Ranking”. INSEAD is currently #3 on the non-US list, #6 in the Financial Times 2008 rankings after Harvard, with Chicago as #9.

The article also praises Rutgers for updating their syllabus to include macroeconomics to help students better understand the current economic crisis…

“Others like Rutgers are wasting no time retooling their MBA programme to make offerings more recession-focused. Come next year, it will offer electives like a macroeconomic policy course examining the US credit crunch to address the current climate.”

…when INSEAD has long included macroeconomics as a core (compulsory) course. We saw it coming a long time ago. And ‘International Political Analysis’ is also a core course, so you can say we’re very holistic; definitely a school with an international, big-picture outlook that fits our slogan.

In short: Between us and Chicago, we are the best business schools with campuses in Singapore. And we have the best MBA programme in the country.

Maybe we have a communication problem; maybe our official spokespeople aren’t that passionate about it and other schools seem to get the limelight more. But I’m sure many classmates are proud of being at INSEAD for many other things as well and we ought to have better recognition overall.

Of course, what matters more is how much you get out of the school, not just the prestige that goes with the brand name, but I’m also sure if you name-drop “Harvard” you will see Singaporeans going all agog with admiration. INSEAD is much newer, more specialised (business only), and thus it faces an uphill battle in name recognition among people outside the business community.

There is another article which briefly quotes INSEAD’s Executive MBA director on Singapore’s decision to embark on a trilateral partnership involving US and Chinese universities.

We’ve had our Strategy, Managerial Accounting and Leading Organisations exams so far. Today marked the last of our existing group’s work together. We’ve done assignments together for the last 4 months - that’s 40% of our time at INSEAD. I can hardly believe it’s over!

We worked pretty well for the last group exam, and did quite well too, and we’re hoping for a similar result this time. We had the same plan but this time more time was spent brainstorming as it was a more complex, intertwined case. But our views were aligned and our writing styles were (amazingly) so similar this time that integration was smoother.

As with any other group with a diverse mix of people, we have had different views about things over the course of time. I believe these differing views helped to create a stronger alloy and avoided groupthink. And I do hope we will all remain friends.

Onwards to Marketing, Finance and Operations exams next week!

Today was my supersmart groupmate RB’s birthday, and I was trying to think of something interesting to do to him. It also happened that this morning, our Strategy professor liked our group’s submissions for the Apple case and wanted us to present our views on a particular question.

My groupmates asked me to make the presentation as I was the one who prepared the slides for that question! Despite being a big Machead (i.e. Apple fan) I had long abandoned any notions that my work would be singled out for show and tell at INSEAD. So this certainly gave me a confidence boost which will hopefully help as the Strategy exam is this Thursday!

RB had improved many of our slides before submitting it, so he offered to come up with me to present. Then I realised we could spring him a little surprise. So I told RB he could present 1 slide and I would present the other. I quietly passed a note to another groupmate MEK to tell her that when RB presents we should sing ‘Happy Birthday’. And so the whole class sang!

We proceeded with our presentation. At the end, the professor told me ‘very good’ and we saw similar comments written on our paper submission :)

Then we got news from our Marketing professor that we scored 93% in our last case. I think we learnt from our mistakes in the previous case and did a much better job this time. We seem to get consistently high scores for analysis and this time, full marks for recommendation. Last week we scored 25/25 for a Managerial Accounting case where the mean was just 19.82 marks, even though at one point it nearly killed some of us (with angst). So it is heartening to know we can get full marks for qualitative components as well. Overall I hope this makes our group above average. We need every ‘competitive advantage’ we can get! ;-)

Gotta go. This may be the last you’ll hear from me until after the exams which end next week (unless something very significant happens)…

After interrogating various classmates, with all of them refusing to tell me what exactly I was nominated for on Santa’s naughty list (they were made to swear an oath of secrecy to non-attendees), I finally found someone who told me.

I was nominated, apparently, for having 1000+ Facebook friends and updating my status 15 times in 20 minutes. Wow, someone counted?! :P

How can it happen? Well, I have set things up for automatic updates. When I update my blog, it pings Twitter so that my Twitter subscribers are alerted to a new blog post. And when Twitter is updated, my Facebook status is updated automatically as well. It is a whole chain of events. You can call it an assembly line with no bottleneck. Of course, I can also choose to Twitter without blogging, and update my Facebook status without blogging or Twittering. So you can imagine the potential here.

Having said that, I don’t think I could have done 15 updates in 20 minutes! But I might just do that now to prove your point. Since I’m naughty already, I have to live up to the reputation, no?

I guess it doesn’t help to announce I just added 2 more friends this evening. Actually a few hundred friends come from INSEAD alone, and because I also joined our juniors’ Facebook group a lot of them have become my Facebook friends too. I have many friends from other schools and workplaces. Then there are 200 odd people I play Mob Wars with, and I don’t know them in person and they can only view my Limited Profile. Apart from that and several other random friends of friends or people I’ve met online via blogs or other community channels, I know everyone else personally.

INSEAD’s very own Sinterklaas (Santa Claus) is coming to Campus this evening. And apparently my presence was expected, because it seems Sinterklaas thinks I have been naughty in trying to do well this period and might thus affect the Z-curve.

I am not sure what punishment would have been meted out on me, but since I have dinner plans tonight, too bad! (In Singlish: You want to saboh me? I siam!)

And me, disrupt the Z-curve? I am so flattered. I’d be happy with an average score - anything so I don’t have to resit any papers. If it’s Z-curve disruptors you want, I’ll gladly volunteer my groupmate RB of 6 Sigma fame. I’m sure he has a much greater impact on the Richter scale.