Sunday, February 26, 2006

First encounter with 2008 classmates!

This weekend I have had my first encounter with some of my future classmates!

Friday night I went out in Kensington and Notting Hill, and even though I enjoyed myself very much, I started to doubt heavily if I should move to London. Everything is so expensive, rents are crazy and it really depresses me to think how poor I will be! From a short-term financial perspective, it is really crazy to go to London Business School, while INSEAD would be a financially healthy option (low living expenses in Singapore, a one-year program, probably same starting salary and bonus afterwards...) but somehow in life I have not often made those "rational" choices. In the end I want to be happy, and I think I will enjoy life more at London Business School, should I blame myself for that?

Luckily, lots of my doubts were removed on Saturday afternoon when I met some of my future classmates! What a nice bunch of people! Unfortunately we were only 5 people of the class of 2008 who got together in "The Volunteer" near the school, luckily we were also joined by Rusgirl who happened to be in London that weekend like me. Apart from seeing how nice people were and how much I would enjoy spending more time with them and meeting the other 300 classmates, I got valuable advice on how to live, where to live etc., apparently it is possible to pay less than 200 pounds per week rent! I think the rent is still the aspect that most scares me. Hard to believe that only two years ago I was agonizing over the 50 pounds I paid per week for student housing in St Andrews (true, I don't intend to live in a freezing ground floor room that is dark and 10sq meters in size anymore-20sq m and heating would be nice!)!

I am excited about the admits weekend in May, hopefully I will be able to find flatmates and meet a lot more people from my program. My first impression of my future classmates is excellent and I am very excited about meeting more people in the coming months!

The saddest news from my job are that I have hit the record this week with 8 flights within one week, though I have to admit 2 of them were private (to London and back :-) ). I guess choosing a private equity project was not the smartest decision after all ;-). The project is over now though and the next project will be more relaxed, I will only have the regular two flights per week for the next 4 months (except for a team event that seems to be planned in Milan), so I won't complain too much.

2 comments:

Forrest Gump said...

wow, that a lot many flights. I dont take that many flights in a whole year :)

also, it is interesting to see you thinking about your choice of Insead and LBS. Both are great schools, and you wont know if you had been better off at Insead, but I believe these are those few decisions which you take from your heart, rather than just your brain. And i believe you cant go wrong with LBS.

Good Luck.

MBABlogger said...

Congrats and good luck :)