MPW/OB/leadership/ "es menschelet" - correct some misperceptions

Ouh man!

Maybe I should correct some misinterpretations. I am delighted to be in a very good MPW course team (called STALKY, after our stupid first name "Oktoberfest" didn't really appeal to the German Professor...). We get along with each other wonderful and we havea lot of fun (not at all comparable what fellow HSG-Students told me about their group:-).

So, our only problem seems to be to increase efficiency. Silly is that you have 3 hours-15min-blocks of classes (e.g. 8.30-11.45 incl 15min break) at SMU, so if your team needs to be complete, e.g. for a video, you gotta wait till all are together; this is first of all seldom and second if you're together it is hard to find focus and concentration to get the things done (and done in a professional, serious and perfect manner)....

As a European, you ask yourself if you should push more and take over leadership (this is the approach a fellow HSG regular exchange female student has chosen and gotten promptly the attribute to seek "Swiss efficiency"; ähem..) or try to be more accomodative.
On the one hand side you gotta want to have things done, so push ahead; I am used to discuss things openly, confront ideas and opinions and argue tough but fair about them. However, if you propose here something, the others might just nodd or "overhear" it, if they do not like it, but rarely you enter a serious debate in order to find the best possible solution.
On the other hand, you deem it probably as not appropriate to push ahead, since you're a guest in a foreign country and you've got to respect the domestic culture, which tends to be - superficially said - more indirect and tentative when it comes to stating opinions. So as a direct-speaking guy, you would offend those folks over here, which means you better keep yourself in the back and do not try to dominate (as some would probably conceive it).

A tricky thing - I do not have found a middle ground now ... still experimenting (in various group settings).

Ouhh, it's soon 2am, so I gotta go soon to bed (I settled this as the latest time to start "listening to the pillow" after some quarrel with my roommate, woho apparently loves to sleep and allegedly cannot fall asleep if I am still at the comp - if you ask me, no wonder, if you sleep so long, you don't feel tired enough to falls asleep).


Strange is just that you apparently have to do presentations @ SMU in formal attire! So when I got up at 5.45am yesterday (Monday, Sept. 10), I had to grab my suit (at least tie, formal pants and formal shirt and leather shoes) and get to the MRT Woodlands. Crazy - this station is only 400m away from the flat, but you feel terribly oversweatened after arriving there (I suspect that the air humidity in the Woodlands is higher thatn in downtown... arghh).
So it is like a boon to dry up again in the MRT (45min ride to Dhoby Ghaut), before I got to the SMU at 8am to tie my tie and prep for the MPW presentation.

btw: if you're staying late in teh library (as I usually do), you get warned about the closing (midnight) at 23.45 with the rocky song "it's closing time":-)