A Diversification Strategy

It seems starting a blog about an event that will start 3 months from now may have been slightly premature. Although I can write great lengths about to do lists, these are currently not that exciting. So I'm going to widen it up a bit.

Today I've been thinking about the cheap nasty T-shirts one sees sold on Oxford Street booths. Like "Adihash Gives you Speed" and "Just Did It" with a spermy Nike logo. I wonder who comes up with these. Perhaps it is retired Sun Headline writers - it's one liner heaven. And more worryingly, there must clearly be a market for these damned things. Who on Earth buys them? I've never seen anyone wear them. It seems so counter intuitive that you can create a market for a product that lots of people buy but are then too embarrassed to wear them - it shows that they must know it's a really crap T-shirt, and yet seem to ignore that fact when making the purchasing decision. There must be a case study in this somewhere.

My car dilemmas

I would start this entry with a tedious to do list, but I've been writing so many of them in my spare time that I'm sick of the sight of a huge list of things, each of which cannot be done at this point in time for one reason or another. Needless to say it is huge, and shrinking very slowly, if at all.

Instead, I'm going to brain dump my current car dilemma. Having accepted a space in what's turning out to be a house full of rather quality people (not by accident of course), I've destined myself to becoming a car owner for the first time in my life. So my dilemma is how to buy a car abroad.

I don't particularly fancy going all the way to France to look at cars - especially since that would completely destroy my achievement of securing a house space on the information superhighway. Not only that, but it seems INSEAD students have a somewhat distorted (to me anyway) of the second hand value of old clapped out cars. From what I've seen, similar cars in the UK cost around 50% less. But then is that discount worth it so you don't have to trounce around with a wrong hand drive car for a year? And it's still not completely clear whether you can have a car in France on English plates. Some people have suggested that the legal limit is 6 months, but nobody ever checks. I, on the other hand, picture trying to explain this using my practically non-existent French to a befuddled gendarme, and then start thinking about whether I really ought to reconsider my reluctance to go on a car buying trip.

Decisions, decisions....

French Bank Accounts

Reading the available information online reveals some people have got it in for the general administration of things in France. It seems getting bank accounts, phones, mobiles and all the rest of the rigmarole needed to uproot to another country requires a level of stamina worthy of a marathon runner.

For my part, I'd like to do my bit and fly that French flag that little bit higher. I e-mailed a lady at BNP Paribas (in French no less), and she replied immediately (in French - I was touched), telling me that all I needed to do was to send her 3 documents by fax. Not only that, but she actually complimented me on my French. 24 hours after doing so, my account was all set up. All I need to do is swing by the branch at some point and pick up my card.

In fact, the cynic in me can't resist pointing out that it takes less time to open a bank account in the socialist dreamland that is the Republique than it does to move money between two bank accounts within what has to remain a nameless fringe member of the EU.

Pre-reading

A certain clever clogs has started their MBA pre-reading exercise with
Finance For Executives. Imagine my surprise at discovering it is written by an INSEAD professor. Either I shall have the benefit of being taught by some of the leading academics in the field of finance, or someone is reaping abnormal profits from punting sub-standard books of finance on unsuspecting keen-to-impress pre-MBA students. Thankfully, from page 20, it looks more like a case of the former.

The whole experience is not unlike lifting the bonnet of a car and explaining what all the bits of it do to someone whose experience of cars has extended to sitting behind the wheel and pushing pedals.

My experience to date of companies has been as entities that make things people buy. Popping the bonnet of a balance sheet open and pointing at all the bits and saying "Look - this bit is the leverage. This bit is the profit. This bit is return on equity". It's all fascinating stuff, however, seems sadly devoid of interesting things one can quote in a blog. Alas, I'm only on page 20 though.

Game Theory and Accomodation

One of the first challenges a budding INSEADer must face is securing themselves a roof over their head while they study. This involves a thought process which goes somewhat along the following lines:

1. I want to live somewhere nice
2. I want to live with some interesting people
3. I don't know where is nice
4. I don't know who the interesting people are

The result? I decided that seeing as the whole MBA thing is a bit of a gamble anyway, and hence choosing my prospective accomodation and housemates through the medium of the Internet does not significantly increase my overall risk exposure. Rather than spend precious time and money vising bazillions of houses in Fontainebleu, I thought I would just like the look of something on NetVestibule (INSEADs online community) and go for it.

With that decision taken, a waiting game ensues. You wait for interesting looking people to post interesting looking houses. But then you have a clock ticking. Leave it too late, and come August you may be on the street. The philosophical question of knowing when something is good enough (which seems to be a recurring theme for me) pops up here.

In choosing my house, I adopted Dirk Gently's (one of Douglas Adams' characters after he wrote the infamous Hitchiker's Guide) philosophy as to what to do when you are lost. His view is "When lost, follow someone who looks like they know where they are going. You most likely won't get to wherever it was you were trying to get to, but instead you're likely to end up somewhere you needed to be".

I patiently bid my time until a house came up on NetVestibule. A driven person who certainly seemed to give the impression of knowing where they are going described to me the stringent selection criteria which have been applied to the house, as well as its prospective cohabitants. It all sounded very driven, and quite reassuring, so I said "Heck, why not" on the spot.

With the house down, all that's left to do now is get a car, and then the rollercoaster is almost set up.

Blog is go

As part of my preparation for embarking on my MBA at INSEAD this August, I found myself spending an inordinate amount today reading the blogs of INSEAD alumni. Not being someone who follows others, I thought why not break with tradition and write my own blog. So here it is.

Being somewhat new to this whole blogging thing, I am filled with a sense of trepidation as to what exactly it is one does with these things. I am hoping to be able to deliver tales of parties, exciting lectures and people so interesting merely trying to describe them with text distorts the space time continuum. However, judging by the achievements of others, these will be laudable goals. More likely it will end up as a tale of hectic schedules on steroids and long winded descriptions of the basic fact that there are only 24 hours in any given Earth day. So don't say I didn't warn you.

So far, my biggest challenge has been naming this blog. I think Career Casino sums up my outlook quite well. Having gotten to a certain late-twenties point in my career, I can't say I know exactly what it is I'm after career wise. But it probably has something to do with business, and it will most likely require gaining some more knowledge. So I'm hoping that stepping into the Career Casino that is INSEAD and plonking an eye-watering sum down on the table should not only provide for a fun year, but hopefully end up with a net gain in the career bank. Let's just hope that unlike casinos, leading business schools do not play a zero sum game with their customers. Otherwise this could have been one humongous mistake.