AMP Treatise

Shangahi Stuff

Friday Night Party (AKA the Black Sexy Party)
In somewhat of a rash decision, our resident Indian decided to have a Halloween party at the school on Wednesday, a mere two days before the event was to take place. In a flurry of activity, some clever re-branding, and significant effort, the Black Sexy Party was born. I was nominated to be the DJ, which ended up being much harder than expected since the internationals and Chinese have vastly different tastes in music. Regardless, its hard to go wrong with the Jackson 5, James Brown, and Earth, Wind, and Fire! Oh, I know you wish you were there now. Also, starting the party off was a special selection of Halloween music. However, and I dare you to try this yourself, the number of Halloween songs that are actually tolerable is severely low and reserved mainly for songs you will only tolerate once a year, such as the Monster Mash, Thriller, and the Ghostbuster's Theme. The bartender actually had to go out and buy more liquor in the middle of the thing since we ran out (started with 15 bottles of liquor + beer).

Latina Masks & Knives
At the restaurant Latina (Brazilian BBQ churrascaria for those of you lucky enough to have been to one), we encountered a very, very scary sight. All the waiters/waitresses where wear masks. Now, this in and of itself is nothing to be concerned with and actually quite a pleasant sight. Until you realize that their job description is to roam around the place with pieces of meat and cut people slices WITH HUGE KNIVES! And they couldn't even see where they were going.

Space Ibiza
We got invited to the grand opening of this club, one of the more famous in the world and based off the coast of Spain on the island of Ibiza. This is really the first club I've been to in Shanghai so I can't really compare it to much else but it was really pretty impressive, at least the design. We were supposed to have a free shuttle take us from a hotel in Pudong. We got there, got on the bus, then expected to be taken right to the venue. However, we failed to ask a critical question, "Are we making any more stops?" Because the answer was yes, four! In the end, if you have the right perspective, we got a nice scenic tour of zhong Shanghai. If you have another perspective, it was a 90 minute bus ride for a 30 minute trip! But once inside, and although it was a bit far away from anything else, I was impressed. The place was an open space four stories or so high. Drinks were cheap, especially for a club, at about 25RMB for a beer. But, and this is going to sound weird, too many foreigners!!!

School Stuff

New Regime of Chinese Lessons
Tomorrow, a Dutch guy and myself start private lessons in Chinese. Eight hours per week in addition to the 4.5 hours we're doing in the classroom provided by the school. Chinese is really had but I feel like after being here for three months that I should be able to speak more. Hopefully, this will help. I just need to eliminate US$50 per week from my budget to fund it!

Finance Club President
I was elected the President of the Finance Club last week. My victory speech went something like this:

Thanks everyone for supporting my campaign for this very prestigious position. I'd like to commend my competition for the high quality that they set. There was some mud slinging and I had to throw some people under the proverbial bus in order to rise to the top, but I think you'll be happy with my dictatorship. I mean leadership. Everyone who would like to shake my blessed hand, please line up on the right. But please, no autographs. Ok, maybe some for the kids.

OK, so I ran uncontested and there was no competition. Still not quite sure what that means but I have heaped upon myself another helping of work. I know, not the smartest move I could have made!

Exchange Students
We have a new wave of exchange students her for the next 6 weeks or so. They come from Barconni in Italy, London Business School, Rotman in Toronto, McGill in Montreal, and a couple more. They have got the sweet life. Many of them have dorm rooms on campus as well as apartments in the city! Also, their course schedule isn't the most grueling ever conceived. I am not convinced I also need to be an exchange student.

New OB professor
Part I of Organizational Behavior ended two weeks ago and we're not onto Part II with a brand spanking new visiting professor. The new Professor comes from Canada and is a fantastic teacher. This part of the course is more about person to person OB and small groups, as opposed to

Course Mid-Term Results
We've gotten our Marketing report back we scored just about average. We had some problems with vagueness and having too many ideas and not enough information about each of them. The fact that we were limited to 6 pages double spaced really hurt us. I think we could have easily doubled the page count if we were allowed.

Statistics came back very good, but that should have been expected since I have a lot more statistics experience than most people. It would have been a very omnious sign had I NOT done well.

Still waiting on the Accounting exam result.

OB Part I exam went terribly. However, and I will not get into the specifics right now, the entire OB Part I course grade may get scrapped due to the exam that was given.


Finally, I need to update this space more often with less words rather than huge sporadic posts.