Sunday, September 10, 2006

Sunny weekend in London

Life is still very relaxed here. Unexpectedly, it turns out we don't have any "real classes" till October. We are spending our time during the week mainly on preparing our CVs for the CV book, getting introductions about leadership and management and other such issues. The only real course would have been Business Statistics, but I'm waiving that one, so I have 5 free days over the next two weeks. It's really not very busy yet in academic terms, so I get to go to the gym everyday, which is very nice.

Contrary to weekdays, weekends are very busy. On Friday we had our first off campus party. A classmate who owns a house in Clapham threw a big party in his house, which I think about 60 or 70 of our class attended. Moe was so kind as to share his vodka with me, so I had a splendid time :-), even though one of our classmates who apparently was a DJ in his pre-MBA life didn't show up.

On Saturday I went to Harrod's food section with my husband to get some good cheese, which is not so easy in your average British supermarket. I love Harrod's food section, if I could I would buy all my food there. Last night three Indian classmates had a little dinner party. We were in a group of about 10 or 15 people, enjoyed Indian food and lots of wine and had a very good time.

Today was the warmest day in London so far, and I went to Hyde Park Speakers' Corner. If you want to see freedom of speech in action, this is the place to go. It is all quite useless though, as the speakers seem to be mainly fanatics who are not interested in listening, and the same goes for most of the listeners. The highlights were an American Muslim preacher claiming that men and women weren't equal ("because my wife doesn't pay any bills, but I pay bills") and an English guy claiming that Christianity was the religion of peace, and Islam was the religion of war and violence, unsurprisingly he ended up surrounded by a group of 5 Arabs shouting at him.


Then there was a Jamaican who claimed he was an angel (little did he know that he had another angel listening to him :-) ), and an English woman who simply insulted her audience. Overall, an interesting experience, I am constantly astonished how much energy people spend on trying to convince others of their religious or political opinions, since in my experience it is a completely useless effort and a big waste of time.

Then I had the great pleasure to meet a Maroccan friend who is just starting her MBA at HEC. She wrote me once because of this blog and since then we had been emailing once in a while. So this was the first time we met in person and I enjoyed it very much, even though there was not enough time. When I started this blog, I was mainly focused on helping other applicants, I hadn't considered the fact that I would actually make friends this way, but now this "side effect" is highly welcome :-).

Overall, the weekend was excellent, it is simply impossible to be bored in London. The great part is that the weekend continues on Monday, since I am waiving statistics :-). But I have two cases to read, so tomorrow I actually intend to do a little bit of work as well.

4 comments:

-tvu said...

Agreed. Didn't consider making friends w/ my blog also, but I took blogger (petitecanadienne) for a surfing lesson a couple of weeks ago.. She enjoyed it, but was too sore the next day for lesson # 2. hehe...

Anonymous said...

I am trying to study for the gmat, and it's going slow. I write next week, and I am not sure how well I am going to do, as I am not doing well right now. Will keep you posted if I get a good enough score to apply to R1.

Also, was wondering if you knew of a cheap and easy way to get from Vienna to Geneva. I look at all the sites online and they seem to be euro rail passes, and I am just traveling once. I live in Toronto, so it's hard to find out. Anyway, just wondering since you live there and might have a better clue.

Thanks a lot. Michelle

angie said...

Hey Michelle, good luck with the GMAT.

Regarding Geneva to Vienna, that is quite a long way so you should check out flights rather than trains. Cheap airlines that may cover that route are easyjet, ryanair, airberlin etc., I'm not aware of any Swiss or Austrian ones but the must exist. Good luck!

-tvu said...

I must have been blind. Thanks for the link! Yes, to be open, LBS is my one of my top choices. Wish me luck, I really want to be class of 2009! Can you shoot me an email (tvu at uci dot edu), I have a favor to ask of you regarding the application. Muchas gracias amiga!