I Heart Opera!

Tonight’s performance of La Bohème by the Opéra de Lausanne was magnificent. Aside from featuring a great Musetta, the performance itself wasn’t exceptional, but it’s still hard not to enjoy such a wonderful libretto and score. It reminds me why I love opera so much. It’s an art that features music, singing, acting, dancing, elaborate set/costume design, and even a little audience participation when one considers the “bravo”s that erupt after an excellent aria. It stimulates many senses simultaneously to create a powerful emotional impact.

The show itself was just half of what made tonight so great. Several other IMD students and partners were there so part of the fun was just dressing up and going out for an evening of something different. As we sipped champagne during intermission we all agreed that we had made the right event choice tonight.

It was also a cool challenge to remove English completely from the operatic experience. The singing was in Italian while the supertitles were in French. It felt good just to go from one to the other, eliminating English from the equation for a few hours.

But enough about tonight; 9.5 hours of Finance starts early tomorrow morning so I’m off for now.

Men, Men, Men, We Are Stout-Hearted Men!

Today was a great day. Accounting has moved from archaic ledgers to useful tools (cashflow forecasting and investment valuation, for example) and our afternoon was spent with our leadership coaches working through issues in our study group dynamics. There were some difficult topics in those discussions but the fact that we are addressing them feels really good. This is the part of IMD I really love: the focus on the softer side of business.

What made today really great, however, was world class ping pong! We had more time than usual to play today and there were few enough people that we could play singles instead of doubles. This allowed me to play several matches with Martin, Alex (both in my study group), and Paul, the staff ringer. My games with Martin were pretty evenly matched and a lot of fun. Alex, after he warmed up, showed off why China dominates in this sport. Standing 10 feet off the table he dug everything up and brought serious offense too. It was inspiring to watch. Although he beat me soundly, my level of play increased as I played him. The hard forehand smashes I wrote about in a previous post were coming several-per-match instead of a few-per-week; it felt great!

The icing on the cake was beating Paul, though. Three weeks ago he would destroy me every time; today I was able to pull out our last match in extra points. He’s still going to beat me nine times out of 10, but winning once was a big step. I feel like Rocky. AH!

To commemorate this feeling, I must share a link sent to me by one of my buddies back in the States: The 9 Manliest Names in the World. Somehow “Bryan Guido Hassin” was left off the list, so take these suggestions with a grain of salt. I’ll just assume I was #10—who knows why they only published the top 9?! Don’t follow this link if you’re easily offended by profanity. Do follow it if you ever had a conversation with me about how envious we were of a friend living on a street called Iron Master.

I must end this post here as there is much work to prepare for tomorrow and the weekend. After all, I’m sacrificing tomorrow night’s productivity for the most manly of activities: going to the opera!

Crazy Aussies

On Monday I realized that the Opera de Lausanne would be presenting La Bohème this weekend and this weekend only. How could I miss such an opportunity to break free of the IMD dungeons?

I sent out a feeler email to the rest of the class to see if anyone else was interested. It came as no surprise that I received several positive responses from interested parties and, in fact, some responses from students who already had tickets. What did come as a surprise, however, was this email from Lucy, an Australian student with a petroleum engineering background:

“argh – [can’t make it. However] I’m in for Carmen in May – the last time I sat down and listened to it in its entirety was at about 3am working night-shift with a bunch of crazy Norwegian riggers off the north west coast of Africa . . .”

I love it. Reason # 8,264,921 to come to IMD: rubbing shoulders with people like Lucy.

Now I can’t wait for Friday’s performance. Then Saturday will be cigars and Scotch/Cognac/Port with students and alumni at the 5-star Beau-Rivage Palace. This may be the closest I come all year to the post-wine-dinner environment of the Petroleum Club of Houston. What better way to relax after 9.5 hours of Finance on Saturday? Fortunately the IMD Cigar Club is a standing tradition so there will be more opportunities to partake.

Leading People in Organizations

I’ve made it to 1971 in my American popular music journey. This year marks the first major appearances of Rod Stewart, Carole King, the Bee Gees, Al Green, Bill Withers, solo Beatles artists, and many others. It also marks Tom Jones’s surprising (to me), continued popularity.

As I find lyrics distracting, I’ve been listening to a great deal of classical music while working. It’s been mostly Beethoven so far with some other classical-era composers mixed in. It still never ceases to amaze me how Beethoven’s music can take me through such a range of human emotion and mood: joy, sorrow, anger, tenderness, triumph, loss, chaos, serenity . . . Who would have thought that notes scribbled on paper by a crotchety, deaf, old German would inspire such feelings in people two hundred years later? Incredible!

Maury Peiperl is a piano buff and opens each of our Leading People in Organizations (LPO) classes with a musical passage that relates in some way to our lecture. I’ve identified two of the three pieces correctly so far, which isn’t bad for someone whose only classical music education has been concert attendance. Credit the special women in my life for being my dates to the Symphony and for introducing me to classical music in the first place.

Whereas our Leadership class focuses on deep personal introspection, LPO is about leading and motivating teams, managing HR issues, and creating situations/environments conducive to peak group performance. Tomorrow is our first LPO session in a while. After our intense week of Industry & Company Analysis/Economics last week, I am eager to return to this softer side of our studies.

Willpower

I arrived later to Steffen’s party last night and stayed longer than anticipated. It was a lot of fun and it seemed like everyone was there. When I’m around many people I really feed off the collective energy and I could feel that starting to happen as we took eastern European shots, drank exotic beers, and talked about things that had nothing to do with school.

Although I took a lot of heat for it, I managed to be strong and extract myself pretty early. I was home before 11 and still accomplished several tasks before crashing early. It was a cold, clear night and the stars/moon were beautiful during the walk to my apartment. I’m glad I stuck to my decision. Now I’m well rested, ready for my workout, and measuring the progress of the sunrise against the mountains and lake outside.

Willpower – just like the 1968 song by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap. I’m almost finished with 1970 now. Since 1967 (my last musical blog), we’ve seen the rise of Simon & Garfunkel, the Doors, Tommy James & the Shondells, Steppenwolf, Neal Diamond, Three Dog Night, and Creedence Clearwater Revival–what an exciting time for music. The ongoing prominence of groups like The Temptations continues to surprise me (They seem somehow out of place in this era.) but I’m certainly not complaining.

Does life get better than this?

Last night was awesome: no studying, no partying; just great wine and even better conversation with a colleague followed by an early bedtime. Then I woke up early this morning and went for a run along the lake. It was cold by my standards, about 20 degrees F, so I really appreciated the Underarmour ColdGear items I received for Christmas. Between the topography and the temperature, running here in Lausanne is a lot different than running in Houston.

I was planning to take a nice, slow jog but the cold air and rest must have invigorated me; I quickly found myself running at my fastest pace since my arrival. Two of my study group members (Martin and Sergei) and I go running together once a week, which is always a pleasure. However, I still find it beneficial to run by myself now and then. It’s a great opportunity to get away from the IMD world for a little while and do some thinking.

Additionally, whenever I run on my own I finish with two steep, uphill sprints. These are followed by yelling “DRAGO!!!!!!” as I struggle to refill my lungs with the cold air–I know at least one of my readers will get that reference, AH!

Now I’m back at IMD for another day of presentation skills. Steffen, our Danish student, is throwing a party tonight, which I’m sure will be a lot of fun. The work is really piling up for the coming week, though, so I’ll need to resist the temptation to linger. Still, after this morning’s run, I’m pumped and energized.

Presentation Skills

Today and tomorrow are dedicated to studying presentation theory, making presentations, analyzing video recordings of our presentations, receiving (and providing) feedback, repeat. Our leader for these sessions is Steve Knight, who has been awesome so far. He has offered plenty of relevant advice to everyone, especially the non-native English speakers.

My mobile phone all but died last night so I am in the market for a new one. Accordingly it may be a few days before I am taking pictures again. In the mean time, February’s pictures thus far are here.

Happy [belated] Valentine’s Day to all and thank you SO MUCH to those who sent me cards. I know it isn’t cheap to send real mail across the Atlantic but the smiles your cards induced were priceless.

International Wisdom

On Monday we had a cultural values exchange–in ICA/E of all places! We were divided into groups by nationality (44 different groups!) and given a list of 12 virtues. Each group was then instructed to provide at least one proverb from its country about each virtue.

Although there were many great ones, my two favorites hands-down were:

Virtue: Fidelity
Nationality: French
Original Proverb: La fidélité en amour n’est que la paresse du désir.
English Translation: Fidelity in love is just the laziness of desire.

Virtue: Temperance
Nationality: Finnish
Original Proverb: Hosumalla ei tule kuin kusipäisiä lapsia.
English Translation: Rushing won’t get you anything but stupid children.

Awesome.

Also awesome: today in Accounting we dissected Carlsberg, a huge beer conglomerate.

Ping Pong

Ping Pong has become a regular part of life here at IMD. After lunch it is a great way to get the blood pumping before afternoon classes. Most of the people who play are a lot better than I am, having played much longer and more consistently. This afternoon, though, I was briefly on fire. I absolutely nailed a forehand with just about everything I had. It felt good. ICA/E with Boschek felt less good. Oh well, I call it a net positive.

Saturday Night Fever

Last night was a blast. At least a third of our class made it out to l’Atelier Volant, a night club in Lausanne’s Flon district. Several girls in our class have been going there practically every weekend so I figured it must be good. Surely they would have hookups with bartenders, doormen, etc.

Objectively speaking, I was a little disappointed with it. First off, no such hookups existed. This may just be a difference between European and American clubs, but I suspect that it’s not universal. If my Houstonian partner in crime (whose birthday it was yesterday–Happy birthday, Cox!) and I had been to a place several times, I think we would have established more relationships–as we did when we took St. Martin by storm.

The club featured three levels, each with a different style of music. The upstairs was purportedly 80s music. It turned out actually to be mostly 70s and 90s, without a great selection of either. When pressed for 80s staples, the DJ didn’t even recognize most of the names (although that could have been affected by my French skills!). I miss The Handsomes. At least this floor DID have Top Gun playing in the background, although most people there didn’t know the movie well enough to catch quote references. I miss my wing man.

The middle floor was salsa/latin, but we didn’t spend any time on this floor. The bottom floor was supposed to be Top 40 and it was . . . from four years ago. By the time we made it down there, it was nearing time for my departure and hearing the same tired reggaeton beats over and over again (which, apparently, are the same songs they play there every Saturday night) reinforced my decision to go.

Griping aside, I had an awesome time. It was great to get out there and let loose for a few hours. Each time more members of our class showed up there was this great feeling of inclusion and excitement as we welcomed them to . . . somewhere that wasn’t IMD! We had one classmate with a birthday and another with his wife’s birthday so it was fun to celebrate with them. It’s actually a good thing that the club didn’t wow me. If they had been playing classic 80s and/or rock upstairs or good hip hop downstairs, I may have been caught up in my own energy and stayed way too long. Instead I extracted myself by ~1:15, got some reading done at home, and went to bed in preparation for a morning workout–which I’m off to now!