Tuesday, March 14, 2006
The Problem With Blogs...
I have, and I'm sure you have also no doubt discovered this probably with both glee and disappointment, discovered the biggest problem with having a blog. Providing updates to the hungry masses. This space has been "A continuing Reminder of My Failure" for the past 2-3 months. Which is not a pleasant lasting memory to leave etched in the foreverness that is the Internet. Should a prospective employer come across this area they will surely immediately drop any notion of hiring me for my neglect of both family and friends for such an unseemingly long time. For this new life woe that has now entered my life I obviously have only one person I can blame. Al Gore. However, his continuing silence in response to my angry emails regarding his invention of this electronic superhighway thingy have forced me to return from the seemingly dark bowels of Shanghai and CEIBS to let everyone know that, No, I'm not dead, stuck indefinitely inside an opium den, a newly minted billionaire too good to regard your presence anymore, or been sequestered by the Chinese government to do hard manual labor for my capitalist roader ways. Or yet at least.
Regardless, and blogging can be time consuming (ok, I may have also chosen to watch some of my Law and Order Season 1 & 2 boxed set instead of writing, but can you blame me??). What has happened in the meantime is what I will attempt to update here a soon as I can in what I can only expect will look like a stream of consciousness brain fart of random posts. So, first things first, I guess.
We are obviously well into (halfway even, I think) our second term of bschool here at the increasingly sunny and warm CEIBS campus. The new EMBA (Executive MBA, the unlucky SOBs that get to work all week then come to class on the weekends) class starts tomorrow of which there are apparently a record breaking 60 foreigners. Perhaps this as something to do with the Financial Times ranking the EMBA program at CEIBS as the number 13th in the world and where 60% of participants are top management (CEO, CFO, on the Board of Directors, etc.). Just as important (or going out on a limb, more important) is that the same newspaper upgraded CEIBS' MBA ranking from 22 in the world to 21. A positive step but a significantly slower rate of increase than in past years (2005 - 22nd, 2004 - 53th, 2003 - 96th). Logically, though, the higher you get the tougher it gets to keep moving up, but we were all hoping to break into the crucial Top 20 designation. With the Finance club, we've created a recommended reading booklist, hosted a Senior Director of the Shanghai Futures Exchange and lined up two Private Equity speakers for the next two months. Also worth mentioning briefly is that it is "internship" season, although belatedly so. The administration was not quite on the ball when informing the students of the internship deadline it was a mere 5 weeks away. Que panic mode. This is a topic I'll need to cover in more detail in the future. Also forthcoming and long over due is a Term 1 review. Stay tuned (but not too tuned in!).
Next post, will be the flip side (the fun one!) of life in Shanghai, especially Chinese New Year, which is now firmly in my top 3 favorite holidays.
Otherwise, here is a short review of the Term 2 classes and stop me if I bore you here:
Operations Management: The teacher is great and has been in China since 1980(!). The subject (mainly manufacturing) in general is interesting, but actually arranging floorplans and analyzing bottlenecks is not quite my cup of tea, I've found. Touring factories is fun, designing them... not so much. We've recently started Just-in-Time, Lean manufacturing/engineering, etc. Most brutal, however, is a business simulation that starts this Friday. Basically, we are managing a virtual factory online. The trick, however, is that for everyday of factory time, one hour of real time goes by. So from 1pm to 5pm, for manufacturing days in the factory have occurred. And this factory doesn't stop. Goes 24/7 and doesn't take a rest when we're sleeping or in class.
Management Accounting : A necessary evil. I'll leave it at that for fear of saying something I'll regret.
Strategic Management: This teacher is a raging Briton (probably an oxymoron, I know) and this class is most people's favorite but has been the most challenging. All case study based and we've looked at industries from metal container packaging, to the European airline industry to consulting services. In fact, today we had an associate partner from McKinsey, the world famous consultancy, speak to us in class today.
Business Ethics & Corporate Governance: This one is interesting but geared more for the Chinese since most of them haven't been exposed to environmentalism and business ethics like most of the foreigners have been for most of their lives. You'd see what I mean if you saw the pollution in China. Not to say my Chinese classmates are unethical or anything of the sort but just haven't had some of these things drilled into their heads like I have had.
Corporate Finance: Mostly a rehash of CFA material for me which some new twists thrown in for good measure. Our professor, Chang Chun (or Zhang Chun) is apparently quite famous in China and the editor of a respected business magazine and comes to us from the University of Minnesota.
And for your viewing pleasure, a short video from one my favorite new websites.
YouTube - Shanghai MagLev Train
Regardless, and blogging can be time consuming (ok, I may have also chosen to watch some of my Law and Order Season 1 & 2 boxed set instead of writing, but can you blame me??). What has happened in the meantime is what I will attempt to update here a soon as I can in what I can only expect will look like a stream of consciousness brain fart of random posts. So, first things first, I guess.
We are obviously well into (halfway even, I think) our second term of bschool here at the increasingly sunny and warm CEIBS campus. The new EMBA (Executive MBA, the unlucky SOBs that get to work all week then come to class on the weekends) class starts tomorrow of which there are apparently a record breaking 60 foreigners. Perhaps this as something to do with the Financial Times ranking the EMBA program at CEIBS as the number 13th in the world and where 60% of participants are top management (CEO, CFO, on the Board of Directors, etc.). Just as important (or going out on a limb, more important) is that the same newspaper upgraded CEIBS' MBA ranking from 22 in the world to 21. A positive step but a significantly slower rate of increase than in past years (2005 - 22nd, 2004 - 53th, 2003 - 96th). Logically, though, the higher you get the tougher it gets to keep moving up, but we were all hoping to break into the crucial Top 20 designation. With the Finance club, we've created a recommended reading booklist, hosted a Senior Director of the Shanghai Futures Exchange and lined up two Private Equity speakers for the next two months. Also worth mentioning briefly is that it is "internship" season, although belatedly so. The administration was not quite on the ball when informing the students of the internship deadline it was a mere 5 weeks away. Que panic mode. This is a topic I'll need to cover in more detail in the future. Also forthcoming and long over due is a Term 1 review. Stay tuned (but not too tuned in!).
Next post, will be the flip side (the fun one!) of life in Shanghai, especially Chinese New Year, which is now firmly in my top 3 favorite holidays.
Otherwise, here is a short review of the Term 2 classes and stop me if I bore you here:
Operations Management: The teacher is great and has been in China since 1980(!). The subject (mainly manufacturing) in general is interesting, but actually arranging floorplans and analyzing bottlenecks is not quite my cup of tea, I've found. Touring factories is fun, designing them... not so much. We've recently started Just-in-Time, Lean manufacturing/engineering, etc. Most brutal, however, is a business simulation that starts this Friday. Basically, we are managing a virtual factory online. The trick, however, is that for everyday of factory time, one hour of real time goes by. So from 1pm to 5pm, for manufacturing days in the factory have occurred. And this factory doesn't stop. Goes 24/7 and doesn't take a rest when we're sleeping or in class.
Management Accounting : A necessary evil. I'll leave it at that for fear of saying something I'll regret.
Strategic Management: This teacher is a raging Briton (probably an oxymoron, I know) and this class is most people's favorite but has been the most challenging. All case study based and we've looked at industries from metal container packaging, to the European airline industry to consulting services. In fact, today we had an associate partner from McKinsey, the world famous consultancy, speak to us in class today.
Business Ethics & Corporate Governance: This one is interesting but geared more for the Chinese since most of them haven't been exposed to environmentalism and business ethics like most of the foreigners have been for most of their lives. You'd see what I mean if you saw the pollution in China. Not to say my Chinese classmates are unethical or anything of the sort but just haven't had some of these things drilled into their heads like I have had.
Corporate Finance: Mostly a rehash of CFA material for me which some new twists thrown in for good measure. Our professor, Chang Chun (or Zhang Chun) is apparently quite famous in China and the editor of a respected business magazine and comes to us from the University of Minnesota.
And for your viewing pleasure, a short video from one my favorite new websites.
YouTube - Shanghai MagLev Train
