Celebrity LookALike

Just found a website that somehow - probably randomly ;o) - compares your face to a bunch of celebrities and gives percentages of how much you look like them.
To avoid studying, I uploaded a picture of me...here is the outcome:




I think I can be quite satisfied with that *hehe*

Good Bye Mom! & WHU Case Challenge

After a week in Oxford, my mom is going back to Germany tonight. I think she had a good time here and enjoyed Oxford.















Today I also got the invitation from the WHU Business School in Germany to participate in their Case Study Competition (www.whu-challenge.de).
I formed a team with 3 other MBAs to represent Oxford and win this thing ;o)
If we take the first place, we will win a trip to a city in Eatern Europe (Warsaw, Prague or Budapest).

Oxford Mom

After missing her flight due to extensive security checks in Frankfurt, my mom finally made it to Oxford with a slight delay today...

I picked her up form the bus station, but had to go to a meeting at the business school right away. So we met for Dinner and went to an Indian restaurant, where we enjoyed some excellent food.

Unfortunately, I probably won't have a lot of time to show her around, because my schedule is packed with lectures and meetings.

The other Place - Cambridge

Every year, the business schools of the University of Oxford and Cambridge team up to host a recruiting fair with major international companies.
This year the fair was held in Cambridge, which meant that we got the chance to visit Cambridge for a day.

Their business school is located in an old hospital (not nearly as nice as ours) and looks a little bit like an elementary school form the inside.














The recruitment fair was quite interesting and I got the chance to talk to representatives from IBM Consulting, Roland Berger Consulting, Fidelity Investments, Deloitte Corporate Finance and KPMG...

Afterwards the Cambridge MBAs invited us to go on a pub crawl with them...of course we accepted the invitation and took this opportunity to show them how we party in Oxford.
Finally, at 2:30 in the morning we made it back to Oxford...wow! I'm soooo tired today!

Cultural Show contd.

What a Friday!!!

You probably know that feeling when you get up and something is not right...you just know that you will become sick. I had exactly that feeling, when I woke up yesterday.
But I just HAD to get up, because I needed to attend a climate change conference in Oxford. As chairman of the Oxford Energy Business Network, I was contacted by Shell to organize and coordinate a delegation from the business school to attend the conference.
The conference was really interesting and I got to network with some of Shell's top managers and a couple of scientists from all over the world.

Later on that day, my MBA class had planned a cultural show at the business school. Students from many different countries presented their artistic talent.
We had:
-an Australian singing "Waltzing Matilda"
-Poetry recitals by an Indian and a British guy
-Rock music from Seattle
-Indian dancing
-Belly dancing
-Romanian guitar music
-Bulgarian dancing
-a short Violin concert
-Salsa dancing
-Taiwanese singing
-Indian singing






















It was a wonderful event...unfortunately I couldn't join all my friends, who went to a club after the cultural show. I went home and went straight to bed...the night was horrible! It's now saturday night and I still feel like crap.

A stylish Oxford Night

I haven't had Sushi for a VERY long time. So when the Oxford Travel Society advertised their annual Sushi-All-You-can-eat-event I hooked up with 2 friends and we bought tickets.
The Sushi was Ok, but considering that I haven't had Sushi in quite a while, I really enjoyed it.


















After that we went to the "Whiskey & Cigars" night at Pembroke college. That was really cool. An excellent selection of Whiskeys from all over the world and also a selection of very expensive cigars. Now put that into an Oxford setting and you have a very stylish night.

Snow in Oxford

I woke up this morning and couldn't believe when I left my room to go to the shower...we had about 10cm of snow!

When I left the college I couldn't believe it, the whole city of Oxford was a massive snowball fight...15,000 students (well, maybe not all of them) throwing snowballs across the streets. Riding my bike on snow was difficult enough, but trying not to get hit by snowballs made getting to the business school an almost impossible task. Too bad I had a class that I needed to go to, otherwise I would have definitely joined the fight to support my college "army".

When I arrived at the business school, I wasn't sure if I was still sleeping and dreaming or if I was really awake.
Can you imagine 30 year old MBA students having more fun in the snow than little kids?! Snowball fights, building snowmen (with today's issue of the Financial Times in one hand), etc.
After a while I figured why they went crazy because of a little bit of snow. Most of the students from India, Thailand, Taiwan, etc. had never ever before seen snow in their lifes.
What an experience...for me AND for them!

Town vs Gown Videos

Here are two clips of the night of the nights!

Town vs Gown

Boxing - Sold out!

That's what I said in my last post.
However, one man's bad luck seems to be another man's luck. Someone had to return 4 tickets, so I bought them on Friday.
The toughest decision now was to choose whom to take along, as more than 8 of my friends wanted to see the match.
In the end, Ean, Florian and Matt got the tickets.

On Monday we were of course all psyched for the event. To calm down a little bit and to make the time go by, I went to see a talk by the Head of the Brazilian Securities and Exchange commission on how he plans to make Brazil ready for the 21st century capital markets.
Quite interesting topic, but even the most interesting topic can be made boring by a bad presenter. The guy had such a strong accent that I could hardly understand him and his slides were loaded with numbers (unreadable from the distance).

Finally, at 7:30 the doors of the debating chamber of the Oxford Union opened...WOW! A boxing ring in the middle of this old-old-old room, where british prime ministers and nobel prize winners have once debated during their time as students.
This stylish place had turned into a boiling pot filled with tiddly students and aggressive townies.














It was one awesome event. 15 matches...students vs. townies...even 1 girl-fight.
It was an evening filled with sweat, blood, emotions and a victory for the University of Oxford (Oxford Uni: 9; Oxford town: 6).

Exam Results, Rankings & Electives

Good news:
They just published our results for the first term...THANK GOD!!! I passed all my classes!!
So all the hours and hours of studying have paid off.


Bad news:
The Financial Times published the 2007 MBA rankings this week. The good thing is we improved by one place...Oxford University MBA is now ranked No.19 worldwide! A tie with the famos Kellogg Business School of Northwestern University and the Ross Business School of University of Michigan.
BUT!!! The "other place" (Cambridge) made up to 15 from 35 in 2006...unbelievable! That once again proves that rankings are useless ;-) On the other hand, they just audited Cambridge this year, whereas Oxford was last audited in 2004...looks like Business Schools usually make a big jump (up or down) in an audit year, so...whatever!


Electives:
I have picked the following electives for the next term (I will specialize mainly in Finance):
-Lessons from Financial History (Analyzing desasters like Enron...and maybe learn their tricks)
-Restructuring & Implementation (M&A)
-Capital Raising Techniques (How do I get people to give me money?)
-Private Equity (How do I decide whom to give money?)
-Managing Complexity (my only non-pure-finance course; agent-models...really weird stuff, taught together with the Department of Physics)

Unfortunately the course for Corporate Valuation was heavily oversubscribed and I hadn't bid enough points to get in (we had to bid on the courses...everyone had 120 points). We raised hell with the Dean, but nothing has worked so far...a lot of people are really disappointed, because we are paying a whole lot of money and should be able to take the courses that we think we need for our future career.

Instead I will probably take either "Taxation and Corporate Finance", "Fixed Income" or "Derivatives" - haven't decided yet.



Next week will be the "Town vs Gown" boxing match in Oxford. Every year students box against Oxford town people (and get beaten up pretty bad). I would have loved to go, but the event is sold out already...dammit! Out of luck again!
From what I've heard it gets pretty bad and the townies start yelling stuff like "Kill the f#*§ing student!" once the fights start...can you imagine a 20-year old history student fighting against a tough-ass construction worker? Poor student!!!
Too bad I will miss this one!