Last Week in September

What a week: busy, but not achieved anyting...

Monday, Sept. 24:
Due to an error or misinterpretation in the course Negotiation Skills for Business I loose the negotiation (but indeed I had the best chances to win it).

Tuesday, Sept. 25:
I read just one paper about Korean Monetary policy, thn tried to learn Mandarin with a Chinese, but I fail on how to distinguish a Pinyin z from a c... (orally)
Then there was an interesting panel discussion about China and India and the question of democracy.
After the panel I got to know a UK-German prof, but couldn't talk, since I had to rush on. LAter on, he wouldn't answer my mails.
Then I attended the reception at the Swiss House in Biopolis (near Buena Vista MRT), good food, good contacts, few time.

Wednesday, Sept. 26:
Slept late, too late. I barely manage to review 1, 2 chapters in Negotiotion (due to mid-term exams next week). Then my MPW group has an interview with Leslie, former Singaporean master swimmer, in his "Elements" massage saloon in Orchard Hotel; we discuss our proposal for a employee satisfaction survey.
In his firm, this doesn't exist. If the cheap labor starts to complain, the management screams, try to keep 'em under control. If too many problem, ppl get fired.
I guess you call this "hard-core hammer method of management - hire, shout-shout, fire"

Thursday, Sept. 27:
I should actually organize a seminar still (but just don't get to it), AMP class is interesting, but cannot follow really. Then meet the AMP prof, but he didn't read my (crappy) paper outline, at least I got some new ideas. About grad school application: to be postponed, he has no time yet to discuss/recommend me sth.
Then I had a good discussion about Chinese organizational behavior/university administrative mechanisms etc.
A prof. in pol. science (Gov and Pol in SEA) comes up with the exam content (4 days prior to the exam). It appears that half of the stuff we didn't cover in class nor do we have appropriate material on it available. --> we prob end up learning from wikipedia for this (why the hell then I am at a university??).

Friday, Sept. 28:
I am too slow in reviewing the materials for next week's mid-term exams (4, 3 of those on Monday!!).
In Mandarin we got back our first exam/results. I have only a B (too weak in oral, listening stuff).

Saturday, Sept. 29:
Get up at 4.40am, take MRT to Changi Airport, arrive there at 7am, to pick up my parents (SIA flight from ZRH tba 7.05am). We take MRT to Aljunied, put the baggage in the Hotel (next to the red-light district...), proceed to SMU, where we talk and have coffee.
I learn while they're experiencing the city.
Dinner we get together at Newton's hawker center (boah, you should have seen how much I've eaten, crazy!). At home too sleepy to learn.

Sunday, Sept. 30:
Learning, but growing anger about those fucking exams. Either they seem to ask redundant "learn-by-heart" stuff, but demand a lot to have read, or they are assembled (apparently) that chaotic, that you do not even know how to learn for them.
I go crazy

Cast my ballot - als Auslandschweizer:-)

Cool, right? I can even participate in the Swiss federal elections to the National Council (200 seats, Lower House) and select the 15 people for my constutiency (Kanton Aargau). I just got the material by mail last Friday and send my list back today.

And today was also the Mid-Autumn Festival (Sept. 25th, varies each year due to the old Chinese Mooncalendar). Actually, I had to clean the flat (ugly, moldy washroom and my room) learn, then a panel discussion (about democracy in India and China, how nice:-) and straight afterwards rushed to a diplomatic reception at the Swiss House, the business and education networking platform of the Swiss Embassy here in Singapore, with Ambassador Woker as speaker. Incredible how many people here are linked to Switzerland!
Later on I got an SMS of my Chinese friend depicting two rabbits (they are the pet of Shi, who flew to the moon, according to the legend).

Zài jiàn - gotta work

ADI

007 vs. 881 :-)

The first movie I watched in Hokkien (Chinese dialect from the South, spoken also in Taiwan) I enjoyed with a local (and MPW teammate) who taught me about the (for me hidden) wit of the film.
The movie is simply called 881, but plays in a different field than 007. Instead of a never-ending sequellization of British kiss-kiss-bang-bang (which I like, btw:-) it is a local, Singaporean production, depicting the fate of Getai singers.

During the "festival of the hungry ghosts" ("called zhong yuan jie", right?; in the 7th lunar month of the old Chinese calendar, which ends up in the mooncake-filled mid-autumn-festival:) there are set up ad hoc stages (tai), where part-time singers perform (to sing = chuàng ge).

881 (babayi) stands for the papaya sisters who perform well, gt challenged by a techno-influenced girl-group "Durian"; finally the small papaya girl dies (smoked too much!!!).
It is filled with symbolic meanings, exaggerations, sit-comedy but also tragedy (I almost cried towards the end when small papaya goes down). For a foreigner, it is a good opportunity to learn more about this apparently profound Singaporean subculture (Getai).

Check out youtube for some trailers and clips, e.g.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubeLcCnqGWo

Swiss Elections (Oct. 21, 2007)

Switzerland faces ordinary general elections on October 21, 2007 to its bicameral federal parliament (National Council with 200, State Council with 46 seats; although the latter is not completely elected on this date).

Btw: In case you're from the Canton of Argovia (German: Aargau, roughly 600'000 inhabitants), pls vote for Stefan Huwyler (JFDP, list 4b) --> www.waehltstefan.ch

Since I have registered myself as official foreign Swiss citizen, I'll get the absentee balloting mat sent from the embassy here in the next days:-); they even sent around already an issues of "Scweizer Revue" discussing the topics around the elections.

If you wanna know more about Swiss politics/elections, check out:

http://www.smartvote.ch/index.php
Nonpartisan survey, incl. all candidates and their political orientation (both on the left-right/liberal-conservative dimension as well as on the smartspider-8-issues web). You even can create your own pol. profile and compare which candiates suits you best.

http://www.swissworld.org/
general infos about Switzerland; gov.-funded promotion site, but very good overview and helpful infos.

http://www.bk.admin.ch/dokumentation/02070/index.html?lang=en
Swiss Confederacy Guide booklet. In English only as PDF, but quite essential to get a grasp on the parliamentary mechanics in politics.

CU

Money (I)

Hey, actually Singapore is a trading city-state. The openness ratio (export to GDP ratio) is more than 180% (compare this to the roughly 50% of Switzerland and the mere 11% in the US or Japan). There are numerous banks here.
But, if you wanna open a new bank account, it is somewhat onerous. Here you gotta wait 2 weeks until you get your bank card, and another week for receiving the PIN code and the access to tranfer money to/from the account. Well, may be I am spoiled, but in Switzerland it takes you at max (!) 3 days to have the account fully operational (card, PIN, e-banking etc.)...
Another difference: OCBC bank here seems to be the only one who exempts you the fee for opening/maintaining a bank account (but only for the first 5 years, and only if you open the account as a student). In Switzerland, I don't pay any fees so far for any account (the exemption lasts until you're 30 years old).
Finally, it seems normal for banks to demand a minimum deposit (!), but again here is only one account who exempts you from this. In contrast, I have never faced a minimum deposit requirement for a Swiss bank account.... the standards/customer friendlyness seem worlds apart.

So now, I just wait to get this damn PIN code to draw in new funds from my home country - meanwhile "sitting dry".

Interesting is is money also from a monetary policy perspective over here (in conjuction with the demanding/rigorous ECON325 course on "Asian Monetary Policy").
The MAS (S'pore's central bank) has apparently hybrid regime of a BBC (band, basket, crawl) in order to tighten Exchange rate and pursues also a goal of low inflation (we don't talk about central bank independence here:-).
More on this later

Mid-Autumn Festival / Mooncake

After a tiring week and a quirky Mandarin exam on Friday (on Sept. 14 - the writing part was very easy, but listening and then writing the correct Pinyin was apparently considered by most students as difficult; we all laughed in the exam because we didn't understand anything...), I had a nice experience on Saturday evening (pretty in the dark, i.e. after 7pm) at Clarke Quay (ckeck out the hip place on the rather dire site http://www.clarkequay.com.sg/), where a wonderful Chinese explained me the numerous Lanterns hanged around the River (apparently depicting the 100 most common Chinese surnames out of a total of only 593). Originally, Chinese names seem to be inherited matrionially (or matrilineally?)
Some other big devices (i.e. lanterns, in specific shapes) empytomized Conficius, the great poet Li Bai (who wrote the story behind the Mooncakes, if I am not wrong) and a big gate (fixed at a bridge at Clarke Quay).

Further down at Chinatown, there was a big procession with lantern-wagons depicting numerous Chinese mythological items.


http://www.visitsingapore.com/publish/stbportal/en/home/apps/event_detail.html?pageName=home&buttom=detail&eid=7413

Earthquake - Wed/Thu Sept 12/13, 2007

Ouuu - Shaky!
This is the first time I kind of experienced a vague tremble related to a quite strong earthquake roughly 800km away from Singapore (off Sumatra; 8.5 magnitudes on Richter scale).
There have been several trembles, but I only felt one on Wed-evening and one on Thursday morning.

Strange that the Singapore newspaper (the free paper Today for example, cf. http://www.todayonline.com/pdf_main.asp?pubdate=20070914) focuses exclusively on the effects of the shake on Singapore - even thought it is clear that Indonesia is much more affected. The main message here seems to be "everything ok, our buildings are good" (at least for once they couldn't cite the otherwise omnipresent PM Lee for this event:-).
Are the S'poreans a bit too concerned/preoccupied about themselves and how good they are?

You need to google to check that the effects have been detrimental for Indonesia (cf. e.g.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0912/breaking74.htm).

Closing Time

qui cherche, trouve:-)

http://studentloansharks.com/Sounds/SoundBoard.html
--> column "Music", title "closingtime.mp3", by semisonic

lib-sound

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":-)

MPW group meeting, enactment of scenes for movie clips, 5.9.2007

ADI alias Linus Carver as the emotionally imcompetent tar performer in a HBR business case. Picture taken at 3pm during an 8-hour group meeting (12.30-8.30pm...!!!!) for the course Management of People at Work at SMU.
Ppl here seems to have usually long, exhaustive meetings with vry few outcome... completely inefficient and mind-numbing.

Afterwards, I went to the library to hopefully catch-up with my work. After a brief dinner at Kopitiam (this is like the square-root of McDonalds times 10; i.e. a food-store/court with semi-dependent food stalls which just have to pay a share of their revenues to the Kopitiam-infrastructure provider) I went on to read in the library and guess, what kind of ppl came in at 11pm?
the Indians... also keen to study hard. A quick reminder of how strong and competitive India could become within the next 10-30 years?

cooking at the common evans lodge "kitchen", 3rd floor. very narrow - and a lot to eat, yeaaah! It was delicious!

1.9.2007: MacRitchie Reservoir visit

after the strenuous MPW group meeting, it began to rain heavily (typically Singapore: First they say on the forecast that it going to be sunny, then they say it'll rain heavily, then they say it will rain only at noon...) at around 14.30.
In Singapore, you're never sure what the weather is gonna be. Actually, you don't need to listen to forecasts. just make sure you wear light apparel, good shoes and take an umbrella with ya (the army would say: umbrella is "Sackbefehl"). Usually, it is between 23 and 35 degree Celsius hot and very humid. In case you walk a lot around, it doesn't really matter whether you are wet by sweating, or wet because of the rain...
Due to its exposure to the sea - I guess - the weather can change very quickly, sun follows rain follows sun etc.
So, at Saturday afternoon, I took the MRT to Toa Payoh Station, where I arrived at 3.15pm and the sun was already back again. Just fine to go to the MacRitchie Reservoir (lake).

The MacRitchie was built in the 19 Century and subsequently enlarged to serve as a water catchment or fresh water pool for Singapore (the chief engineer's name was MacRitchie). Later on the Brits saw that the need additional water supply which is why they turned to the Sultan of Johor Bahru (Malaysian province next to Singapore) for water (from where S'pore still gets water today - despite some quarrels).

The MacRitchie is quite cool to hike around. There are good trails (one around the lake is 11km), mostly near at the lakeshore. You see some monkeys, turtles and other animals. The nature park is surrounded by two golf courses (at one I briefly encountered a Chinese golf player who spoke German:-).
more infos: http://www.nparks.gov.sg/nature_central_history.asp

Unfortunately, the HSBC (right, in Singapore very much everything is sponsored; e.g. in the Night Safari park you see an old elephant which is "sponsored" by another bank...:-) TreeTopWalk closes at 5pm (hum!!!) and my Chinese collegue and I were not able to get there on time. On 25m altitude above surface, you would walk there 250m around the tree tops.

However, we managed to get on the Jelutong Tower, a roughly 20m high metal device from where you get a great view to the primary (or secondary) forest still in place here.

Unfortunately, I gets dark very early here (sunrise at 7.10am and sunset at 7.10pm...), so we walked in some muddy trails in the darkness. Due to poor trail-arrows/directions, we got on the wrong road and more and more deeper in a second golf course until we reached another lake (Lower Peirce Reservoir, north of the MacRitchie...). Damn!
My fellow took it remarkably easy tough.
check out the latest pic's at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8557504@N04/?xp=1

Back to the Golf Resort Restaurant, we finally reached the bus station. Nr. 167 took us to the Farrer Rd, from where we reached Evans Lodge (at Evans Rd) by foot.

Around midnight, we cooked experimental chinese Hotpot with a more-than-crappy-stove. But we had a lot of fun!









http://www.nparks.gov.sg/nature_central_history.asp

MPW class - group 1, 2nd meeting

hard working on Saturday, MPW OB guru summary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeWHh4jhvw4