HT Week 2

Hello Guys,

Week
Well the tension has started to build up for ‘Hell-ary Term’. Had to attend number of meeting and seminars this week. Worked on many assignments as well. And even though I was studying regularly, I couldn’t finish all I wanted to. But the subjects are more interesting compared to last term. Partially because three out of five subjects are electives and I choose what I was really interested in. So the subjects for this term are:
Core:
Operations Management – a bit of manufacturing industry related subject. But quite a bit stuff for software companies too. Overall good content course
Marketing – Very interesting contrary to my prejudice about it
Electives:
Strategy II – Technology and Innovation – Very interesting subject. I like both, technology and innovation. And course structure is very good. We do almost one assignment every week and couple of big reports at the end of the week. Thought because of this, it is very intensive subject and eat too much of my time.
Global Strategy – Inevitably about outsourcing, off shoring and India-China. Part of it is repeated in the above subject. But still interesting
Macroeconomics – Number and theory... Economics is very interesting in that there are number of theories and theories of numbers... Looks like it will be useful later on.

And then Entrepreneurship Project. This is also interesting work.
But all in all very very busy week in terms of study.

Seminars:
Two big names this week. Tony Taylor. COO of Cathy-Pacific. This airline is major player in HGKG region. He was very nice and jovial person. Very smart too. He was very candid about his company’s position. For the first time I saw my thoughts matching with some CxO. He was very analytical, careful and calculative in taking risk. And he knew where are the problems. Nice to know that you can be conservative and careful and still be a COO.....:)
Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones. CEO of L’Oreal. First British to lead this French company. He his CEO since 20 years and have managed to grow double digit growth every single year. This is really very impressive record. And this guy was also very frank about his views. To say it in his words, when he started, people were thinking of French cosmetics as very effective and very pricy. And eventually they lost interest in it. They didn’t want French richness anymore. They wanted American ‘cool’ better than French ‘cool’. So what L’Oreal did was opened office in New York and put it as headquarter for some products. They also brought some American brands. And people bought them because it was cool because it was American. Makes sense... isn’t it.

Job Front
Well some lucky guys have started getting interview calls. People with relevant background or from developing areas like China, Middle East are favourite as of now. Guys like us who have IT background like thousands other are good for nothing for these consulting and finance firms. May be I have to start with Technical company only.

Weekend
Anyways. Had big plans for week end. Couple of parties, Rugby etc. Well.....Everything washed away... Couldn’t finish the assignments and reading... so cancelled all the plans one by one and spent most of the time in library ...Thankfully somehow managed to go for the formal dinner at my college with a friend. Nice dinner. Started at 7 and lasted for 2 hours. There was a Birthday of some undergrad and many of her friends were wearing devil costumes to celebrate. Eventually it turned out that most of them were from the Church quire. When the Birthday cake came, I never heard almost 50 people singing Happy Birthday in such a delightful and sweet voice. Such a great place to be. Coincidently my dinner companion’s birthday is also tomorrow who was very envy at this girl....

Nonetheless. Now here I am at Sunday night and have tons of reading to do. Anyways. You guys enjoy your life. I, along with Roger Federer, will survive from our setbacks last week.