Juergen's secret MBA diaries

London

2007-09-30T23:27:00.000Z

So here I am...back in London!
I flew in yesterday after a week at home with the family and friends.
After staying at a fancy hotel for a night, I moved into my flat today. My flatmate Amin helped to carry all my stuff from the car into my room. The afternoon was filled with unpacking, a trip to IKEA and a trip to Heathrow airport to return the rented car.

In a couple of hours my student life will finally be over and I am back as a member of the workforce...but this time as an Investment Banker in the British workforce.
More on that and what I actually do, after week 1 on the job...Good Night!!!

Back in Germany

2007-09-28T22:12:00.000Z

I came back to Germany last Friday to see my family and my friends, and to relax for a week before I get back to work.
Initially I wanted to take 2 months off after my MBA to travel and see the world...so many friends from my MBA program invited me to visit them in their home countries. I could have travelled to Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Spain, Estonia, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Thailand, Australia, China, Taiwan, Japan, pretty much every state of the US, Canada and many more countries. But it wasn't meant to be!
My dear employer gave me 3 weeks, take away a week to finish the MBA and one week to go flathunting in London, this leaves me with one week to prepare for my new job...this week (or what is left of it).
Not that I didn't want the job...I guess I wanted it so much that they were able to make me start earlier rather than later.

Nevertheless, so far the week at home has been a good week, filled with playing cards, eating excellent food and being taking care of by my mom - thanks!
Of course, I also met with some friends and I partied (only once), but I spent most of time in my bed with a book or sleeping.

The party last night was of course massive and me and my two friends Andy and Florian had a great time. Of course we partied in style with several other friends, champagne and a bottle of good vodka to celebrate my new job and Florian's new job (pilot with Lufthansa).

The year...

2007-09-23T17:32:00.000Z

So this was it...my year in Oxford!
2 days ago I finally moved out of my college and vacated my room...officially, I will be a student until Sep30, but that's just a formality.

So, how was my year?

It all started with a car journey from Moembris to Oxford. I remember the night when we arrived, I couldn't believe that I actually made it into Oxford...it was unbelievable. From the first moment, I fell in love with the place and my new classmates...I quickly made friends during the first couple of days and my best friends from the year are still those who I went out with during the first couple of nights in Oxford. The courses started with a massive bang and I fell dead asleep on the couch in the cafeteria on friday afternoon after week 1.
The first term passed quickly with overwhelming amounts of work, two visits from Melina, Queer Bop (the party of the year), my first Oxford Ball, being run over by a car, a meltdown with my study group in the last week (I actually told them to go f*ck themselves and left) and my first exams in suit, gown and bow tie.
Spending christmas at home, my world collapsed when my love Melina broke up with me...nothing seemed to make sense any more and fortunately I managed to put up enough energy to start the second term...looking back I am quite surprised that I managed to do that, considering how shattered my life seemed to me. I guess all the hard work kept my thoughts occupied and the pain away, at least as long as I was around people.
The second term was easier than the first one from a coursework point of view - we all had our bruises and scars from the first term and now we knew how to shell out a 1000 word essay on a completely random topic that we had never heard about in 30 mins. After all those rejections during the first term and 1000s of trips to London to meet every Investment Banker who would listen to me for 2 minutes, I finally managed to make a bank interested in me...even though it was just an internship, I thought it was the chance of my life. During Hilary (term 2), I was even visited by my mom, who stayed in Oxford for a week, even though I had almost no time for her. Finishing with more exams and picking our electives for the third term, the second term went by in a second.
Trinity (term 3) was tougher than expected, but nevertheless, I had the most fun during that term. I was more relaxed, because I knew I had an internship over the summer and I knew the tricks of the trade to spend as little time as possible in the library and as much time as possible in the pub. Several college balls, the massive MBA Olympics in Paris, Wadstock open air festival, the African drumming session, the Sylvester Award show (Juergen = most likely to end up in jail) and the Wadham College ball were the highlights of Trinity.
The summer was all "work hard, play harder" as an Investment Banker in London. I literally worked my ass off to finally get the offer to join Macquarie Investment Bank after my finals in Oxford. I LOVE LONDON and god bless capitalism and the greedy investment banks ;o)
Last week I finished up my MBA in Oxford and said goodbye to more than 200 friends...and that was it, my year in retrospect.
There were good times, there were bad times (even very bad times), I learned a lot about myself and I guess I changed (at least I have become fatter, thx to the English food).

Would I do it again? Definitely! It was one of the best years of my life and definitely worth the sh*tload of ca$h that I paid for it.

Would I do some things differently? Definitely!
I would probably change my approach to getting a job (I wasted so much time on useless application efforts during the first term), I would try to better accomodate my love life in the whole situation, I would not walk home from a friend's house at 4AM in the morning just to get mugged (more correctly, almost mugged), I would probably not drink as much to avoid all those terrible hangovers I had (but then again I probably would), I would spend more time on exploring Oxford (and I mean the ancient Oxford, not the pubs, although some of them are ancient as well) and I would not miss the deadline of a 100% course paper for business history during my summer internship...I would probably have done some more things differently as well, but that doesn't really matter any more! I've done it the way I've done it and it has gotten me to where I am right now.
AND, from an academic point of view I am happy with where I am, from a professional point of view I am exalted and from a personal point of view I am quite happy about having made tons of new friends for life, but at the same time I am sad for having lost the most important friend...

Everybody is leaving :-( & I found a flat :-)

2007-09-19T09:11:00.000Z

It is so sad! Everybody starts leaving...every night there are farewell drinks at some pub and all we do is pretend that nothing will change...

Every night good friends are in Oxford for one last drink, good friends with which I have partied, studied, argued and worked with. Friends who have influenced the way I think and act.
Hopefully, some day, maybe, if I am lucky I will see them again. Of course, I will stay in touch with some of them and others I will probably never see again.
Nevertheless, I wish all of them good luck and thank them for being the way they are and being with me in Oxford for the past 12 months.

PS: Fortunately, a lot of us took jobs in London and so we will be able to hang out once in a while with the Oxford MBA crew

ALSO, I FOUND A FLAT IN LONDON!!!
I will live in Maida Vale - Little Venice, in a really nice house and an awesome flat. I will share the flat with Amin, a 26 year old persian guy, who currently studies for a master's degree at UCL. In a year from now he will join an Investment Bank as well...so it will be a real Investment Banker appartment ;-)

paper finished

2007-09-14T11:30:00.000Z

wwoooooohhhooooo, I just handed in my final individual assignment for the MBA!
(well, actually, I didn't, my buddy Andy Taylor did it for me, because after last night I was too hung over to go to the Examination Schools myself to hand in my paper, so Andy took it along)

anyways, i'm done now and that's all that counts
i probably won't get my results until November, but that doesn't really matter right now
tonight will be the farewell dinner and that's all that counts now!

presentation finished

2007-09-12T13:08:00.000Z

Just had the final presentation for the capstone course as part of the group assignment...it went pretty good!
The whole team was happy with it and we went straight to the Jam Factory right across the street to celebrate the occassion with a beer.
Afterwards I almost forgot to upload our slides on the University intranet...if it wasn't for Ruben who called me, my whole group would have failed and probably killed me...lucky me and thank you Ruben.

Here is a picture of the team:
from right to left...me (Germany), Kevin (USA), Matt (USA), Daniel (Germany), Mihkel (Estonia), Richard (USA), Gabe (USA), Ruben (Belgium), Florian (Germany), Ean (USA), John (New Zealand)

Capstone Course

2007-09-11T22:07:00.000Z

This is the final part of my MBA studies in Oxford...the Capstone Course!

What are we doing?
A scenario analysis - we try to see what the future holds for certain industry sectors and develop 30 year outlooks for them.
The topic this year is climate change and sustainability. The first 4 days are filled with lectures, guest speakers (excellent guest speakers who talk about everything that is related to the energy sector...the best part was the argument between the guy from the nuclear industry and the guy from the solar industry - omg, that solar guy had NO IDEA what he was talking about, i think he made up stuff along the way), group work and an individual paper.
Really interesting stuff so far!!!! The speakers and the panel discussions were absolutely excellent with really high profile speakers.
Now we are working on our group assignment, for which we picked the Oil&Gas sector. Our scenarios are called "Party like it's 1999", "Eco-Topia", "Fight Club" and "Forced Innovation"...to go into detail would take too much time now - we all want to get this stuff done quickly so that we can spend valuable time in the pub.
Here is what our brainstorming session has produced:

Oh, my individual paper. Yes, I also have to write a 3000 word essay until Friday, for which I picked the topic: "Ultimately business cannot reconcile the tension between its short term responsibility to maximize shareholder value and the long term imperatives of sustainable development - Discuss"

So what happened over the summer?

2007-09-08T22:17:00.000Z

In July - right after my last lecture - I took off to London to start my internship at Macquarie Bank. Since I didn't have a place to stay I just crashed a friend's place, where I slept on the floor between the TV and the kitchen table. Not very comfortable!
Monday morning 8:30 - I make my way to the office with hundreds of other suits in a part of London called "The City". This is one of two areas in London where a number of financial institutions are located. Suits, Suits, Suits as far as I can see, some of them holding the Financial Times Newspaper, others with a Starbucks coffee in their hand, but all of them seem to be in a rush to get to their offices FAST.
So I arrive at Citypoint (the building I work at) and I am led up to the 29th floor, where my colleagues for the next two months, a laptop and a whole lot of work is waiting for me.

The office is amazing and my colleagues are great. The company does everything so that we don't have to leave our desks and that we feel important:
-you can drop off drycleaning at the reception and they take care of it
-a massive kitchen with everything you could ask for on every floor: sandwiches (nutella, marmelade, jam, honey, peanutbutter,...), fruits (incl. fresh mangos, papayas, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, etc. every day), more than 10 different kinds of cereal, sodas (coke, 7up, orangina, perrier, etc.), fruit juices and a huge flatscreen TV for the occasional break...and all that for free
-dinner (we usually order sushi) on company account brought to your desk
-a cab home paid for by the company if you work past 9PM (which is usually the case)
-a chaffeur service to and from the airport whenever we have to travel
-of course we only stay in the best hotels in town whenever we have to travel
-drinks, dinner, lunch...everything is on the company account when on a business trip

I end up working 13 hours on my first day...that night I just crashed as soon as I got home. But it didn't get any better, I usually work 12-14 hrs a day and 3-5 hrs/day on weekends. I loved it!!
Also, who wouldn't want to work with a view like that right from his desk?!

You wouldn't believe how much responsiblity you get in an investment bank. From day one, you are expected to deliver to the highest standard. I was hardly there for 2 weeks when I was asked by my director to come out to one of the companies we had taken over. During the management meeting there he told the management and me that he wanted me to work with them to develop an analytical way to price their product for a multi-million dollar government contract. I thought I hadn't heard right, but he was expecting me to basically tell the management how to price their products - they had done that for more than 30 yrs probably and I had hardly gotten my head around what exactly their product is. INSANE!!! Again, I loved it!

Apart from all the work, there was still time for a lot of fun. Constantly cracking jokes at work, going out for drinks aftre work (no matter how late it is - sleep is overrated), go-karting (guess who won out of more than 40 racers - oh yeah, the GERMAN!), clubbing (of course only in London's best clubs), etc.

Within a couple of days I had completely fallen in love with the investment banking world!

After 2 weeks I finally found temporary accomodation for the summer and moved to Swiss Cottage in London. This gave me the opportunity to experience numerous rides on the London tube during rush hours - horrible!!! The tube transports more than 3 million people every day and I was one of them...I can only imagine how much this must suck when the summer is really hot (thank god this summer was not really a summer).

So my summer consisted primarily of working 7 days of the week and having a big night out on Fridays. I haven't really had the chance to see anything of London, but I enjoyed my work, it didn't really matter.
Towards the end of my internship, when my project finally started to come together, I was asked to attend a feedback session. The feedback was very good: they were extremely impressed with the work that I had done, the way I had dealt with the management of the company that I worked on AND...they want me to join their team full time!!! WOW!!! They gave me a contract (insane salary and even more insane bonus) and 1,5 weeks to make a decision.
So...from October onwards I will be an Investmentbanker with Macquarie Bank in London - a dream come true!
For a start I will join their Renewable Energy team in one of their Private Equity funds. My first position will be as an executive and...I have my own two analysts who will do all the spreadsheet modelling for me, because "...considering your extensive experience and your excellent work, we want you to focus on improving our businesses...". As I am the only German on the fund so far, the fund management has told me that they probably want me to get involved in every transaction they do in Germany - which means: tons of management exposure!
But what will I really do there? Ever seen the movie "Wall Street" with Michael Douglas (aka Gordon Gekko)?! Oh yeah, that will be me ;-)

As you can see, my summer turned out to be the best summer in a long time, even though I didn't have a single day of vacation.

It never seems to end!

2007-07-04T16:23:00.000Z

So after the exams I thought I could relax a little bit...I couldn't have been more wrong!

On saturday and sunday I worked on two assignments and on monday my 2 summer classes started. Now I sit in lectures all day for 6 days in a row...then I have one day to move to London and on Monday I start my project with the investment bank.
...no break for Juergen...

nevertheless I am really excited to finally see a business from the inside again! I am really looking forward to putting what I learned over the year into practice. I wanna be challenged!

Finished my (hopefully) last exams for the MBA

2007-06-30T16:06:00.000Z

I did it!!!

I'm done with my last exams for the MBA!!!!

Unbelievable!

so, how did it go:

Restructuring & Implementation: good, as expected

Managing Complexity: Considering the fact that I started studying the day before the exam, it went extremely well

Capital Raising Techniques: I totally rocked this exam!!! Very easy...

Taxation: OUCH!!! could be my first "fail" of the MBA...i totally tanked this one

Financial History: so so...should be a pass

Guess what we did right after our last exam...we went to the pub at 11:30 in the morning and celebrated this historic day with Pimm's, beer, Steak, chinese dinner and a night at the club until 3AM in the morning.

Wadham Ball

2007-06-23T13:48:00.000Z

OH...another ball

NO!!! not just another ball, WADHAM BALL!!!

Theme: "Viva la Revolution"

Believe me, it was a revolution...my college is awesome! There were about 40-50 MBAs and so many of them told that this was by far the best ball they had been to in Oxford.

-excellent food
-lots of cocktails
-bumper cars
-miniature ferris wheel
-lots of Pimm's
-shisha tent
-a "capitalist pig"-roast
-open air stage & bands
-ice sculpture
-ice cream
and much much more

it was one of our last parties together here in Oxford!

Since the the was "revolution", I decided to not wear the traditional black tie outfit but to go a little more revolutionary with a Che Guevara TShirt under my black suit, a leather tie and a communist star button...but see for yourself

Exam Prep

2007-06-21T15:46:00.000Z

This will be a really close one!

I have 5 exams next week and I have hardly done anything so far...

I should study really hard, but all I do is surf the web, watch movies, sleep and bum around!

this is how Oxford students study: get a white board and cram all the information from 8 weeks on it...then stare at it for 10 hrs until it makes sense :-)

Grand Final of the MBA: "Drumming the stress away" and "Sylvester Awards"

2007-06-16T16:24:00.000Z

Friday was our last official day of lectures! Some of us (including me) will take summer classes, but it is not mandatory for everyone. We will also come back in September for one more week, but these will not be regular lectures.
So, friday was a big day for us.
In the afternoon I had to give a presentation with my team for my Capital Raising Techniques class. We had to pretend to be an investment bank that was pitching for a deal to take a company public. Interesting experience!!! Although the team was great and everybody contributed, my part was the heartpiece of the offer. I did the valuation of the company and structured the deal to get the maximum payoff for the owner - so, i ended up doing most of the talking. I think we did a great job and were told by our lecturer (an ex-investment banker himself) that we were very professional and "slick"...NICE!!!

In the evening, the school had set up free drinks and a free BBQ for us...with lots of meat.
It also seems to a kind of tradition for the MBA class to finish the last term of lectures with a drumming session. So we invited some guys from the Drum Cafe in Oxford to lead the drumming session. It was an awesome way to drum the stress away and scream your lungs out...see for yourself:

if you can't get enough, check this out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c81lpw_ZSU

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag9JYpxReYA

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

The night ended at the "Baby Love Bar"...it wasn't late when we went home...no, it was early morning already!

After collectively nursing our hangovers in the library while finishing some last assignments, we were all ready for our very own "MBA Sylvester Awards Show".
Over the last 2 weeks people could vote on the internet for which student should get which award (more on that later).
The Sylvester show consisted of food, drinks, belly dancers, more african drummers, live music (from our very own MBA punkrock band - GO EAN! GO EAN!), MBA songs, recollections of the year and of course...the awards!
There were a number of categories for awards...e.g.:
-best to take home to parents (male/female)
-classanova
-most likely to fail the course
-best team member
-best abuse of MBA e-mail list
-best story of the year
-most stereotypical of his/her country
-secret crush (male/female)
-most likely to become leader of his/her country one day
-and lots more

I was nominated for:
-CLASS CLOWN: For the student that put pride aside and happily played a fool for the greater good of the class

and

-CSI Oxford - The Inaugural Jeff Skilling Award: Celebrating potential achievement in the field of Corporate Social IRresponsibility. Who's the most likely to flirt with trouble?
(in case you don't know who Jeff Skilling is: he was the mastermind behind the Enron scandal, which ended as one of the greatest bankruptcies in history)

I ended up winning the Jeff Skilling Award (and you know what: I AM DAMN PROUD OF IT!!). So, what does that tell me...do my classmates think I will end up in jail?! I guess I got the award because I often joke about the "ethics" in business. For me, making a profit is the most important part of the business...I believe that when a company is profitable it creates the most value for society.
Another part of why people voted for me might have been that I am up for every "bad" plan that is out there! As long as it sounds like it will be fun, I am in! But I also know when things get too hot and when to bail.
Anyways, Jeff Skilling was also incredibly smart and self-confident (During his admissions interview for Harvard Business School, he was asked if he was smart, to which he famously replied, "I'm fucking smart"), so I should be proud to have won that award. I will end up being better than him though...he didn't know when to cash in and bail - I will!!! I prefer a nice Island in the Carribean to doing hard time in jail :-)

Daniel and I also presented an award - of course in real Oscar's award show style. We presented the "Conan the Librarian - For the library stalwart who could be found in the library at any hour"!

What a way to finish the last term of my MBA!

Finals

2007-06-13T16:58:00.000Z

Another Oxford tradition:
When you visit Oxford in May/June, you might see something really strange (apart from all the other strange stuff that is going on here).
Students throwing flour, ketchup, baked beans, rice and other gross stuff at each other...while wearing suit/dress, gown and bow tie!!!

Apparently all the finalists get "trashed" by their friends after their last exam. All their friends wait outside the exam schools for them and as soon as the finalists leave the building, their friends kidnap them, tape them up, infuse them with champagne and pour ketchup, flour, shampoo and other gross things on them.

The whole ritual usually ends at a bar with lots and lots of beer...here are some impressions (good god i hope that doesn't happen to me)

Random Stuff

2007-06-08T13:44:00.000Z

Just some random things to keep me from studying:

-Movies
Apparently Oxford is a famous site for shooting movies. Every once in a while whole streets are blocked, because some film crew decided that part of their movie takes place in Oxford. To us students this is really annoying, since this means sometimes we can't take the shortest way to school and thus loose time...

-Tourists
Also quite annoying...every weekend they swamp the city, causing huge queues in the sandwich shops! Sometimes I feel like an animal in a Zoo...they constantly point at us (especially when we have to wear our gown and bow tie for some reason) and take pictures of us - makes you almost feel like a celebrity

-Death
A couple of weeks back a student from St Johns College got hit by a garbage truck in front of my college. He died right there on the street. Not a nice way to die, especially when it's your last year in college.

-Assignments
Last year's class told us that the last term would be the easiest one...with lots of hanging out in the pubs. Apparently their MBA was either different or they managed their time a lot better than we do. Everybody is going nuts with assignments! Apresentation here, 4 essays there, a couple of case studies and some spreadsheet assignments. It seems like EVERYONE is in the library...this place is crowded!

-almost over
WOW! I can't believe it! Only one week of lectures to go...
I just can't believe that this is it...
I spent the better part of the last 9 months with my MBA friends and now this part of my life is almost over. Everyone will leave Oxford in a couple of weeks and go to work somewhere on this planet (UK, USA, Spain, Russia, China, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Korea, Brasil, etc.).
I will miss this place and my 200 friends, but I will still have all the memories that I will never forget.
The good thing is though that a lot of us will be in London after their MBA. So we will still be able to hang out together.

I better get back to my assignments...

Bergkirchweih - Trip to Germany

2007-06-03T23:37:00.000Z

So I just came back from a short weekend trip to Germany with my buddy Barry. Flew into Frankfurt where Andy picked us up and went straight to Erlangen to have some fun at the Bergkirchweih (huge beerfest close to Nuremberg).

3 days of eating excellent & greasy food, drinking lots of beer and hanging out with my fratboys.

Barry (from the USA) LOVED the beerfest. He especially enjoyed the pork knuckle and the huge Schnitzels - of course I did too.

The "F" word

2007-05-28T21:10:00.000Z

When a word is being used by Oxford professors twice in one week, then it can't be inappropriate to use it in your daily language...that's what you would think, right?!

Well then...I guess I will use the word "Fuck" more often then.
It's been the second time in 7 days that I've heard a professor use this word in class.

Wow! Even Oxford professors are humans... ;o)

Summer VIIIs

2007-05-26T20:39:00.000Z

Summer VIIIs : THE rowing competition between all the colleges in Oxford took place earlier today.

What an event...1000s of students gather by the river, equipped with Pimms (English Gin-based drink), beer and snacks!
Of course, I was one of those students.

We chilled by the river, socialized and watched the boats go by. I don't even know who won, spending time with my friends was more important (especially when considering that there are only a couple of weeks left - which is kind of sad!).

Living the student life - and enjoying it!

Grades for Hilary & Dean's List

2007-05-25T11:58:00.000Z

They are here...the results for Hilary term!

And I totally delivered...Dean's List - TOP 10% of the class!!!

"The criteria used for Dean List selection is based upon a combination of the student’s contribution to the class/school and their academic results for that particular term. As a result of being selected for the Dean’s list, students are invited by the Dean, to attend various lunches and events, including the Dean’s List Dinner."

Distinctions in Financial Management, Finance II, Macroeconomics
(almost) Distinctions in: Entrepreneurship Project
Pass: Operations Management, International Business & Global Governance, Marketing

Marketing was a close one...50...one point less and I might have had to resit!

OOOUUUCCCCCHHHH

2007-05-23T17:11:00.000Z

MY KNEE HURTS!!!

I walk like a pirate & can only shower with a plastic bag around my knee...I HATE THIS!!!

Back from MBATs

2007-05-21T20:16:00.000Z

MBATs was great fun!

After 3 days of sports in Paris we came home yesterday...

The results:
Overall ranking 4th out of more than 15 (1: LBS; 2: IESE, 3: HEC)
Small schools 1st

Team Sports 2nd
Recreational Sports 1st

1st places in:
Rowing, Tabel Tennis, Women's Shotput, partying (we were told that we were the loudest and craziest crowd)
2nd places in:
Men's rugby, Ultimate frisbee, Badminton, Tug-of-war, Relay 4x200, Women's 100, Women's 400
3rd places in:
Women's Rugby, Indoor Volleyball, Squash, Salsa

1 dislocated shoulder
2 concussions
1 seperated shoulder
1 busted knee
2 twisted ankles
1 shredded knee (mine)
1 groin pull
1 shredded hand
90 damaged livers

...and...we broke one of the LBS's guys leg playing rugby WE ARE MEAN!!!

THREE CHEERS FOR OXFORD, HIP HIP.....

Unfortunately I severly injured my knee (again) playing soccer, so I wasn't able to play rugby the next day...I would have loved to be out there on the rugby field with my boys! They were awesome...

4 days of massive partying, 1 night in Paris, met loads of MBAs from other European business schools, lots of fun

shortly before departure...3 casualties

Off to MBATs

2007-05-17T03:54:00.000Z

In about 30 mins I will leave to Paris...what for?? MBATs of course...the MBA olympics http://www.mbat.org/

I will compete in soccer and rugby...and depending on my schedule also in swimming and handball.

Should be lots of fun. We'll take the bus to London Waterloo station, the Eurostar train to Paris and after a short lunch stop in Paris another bus to HEC Paris campus.

Most importantly of all, we will kick some serious a$$! We're all especially keen on beating Cambridge (of course) and London Business School (no 1 Business School in Europe...they are very cocky and will pay for it *grin*!!).

Wish me luck...

1st REAL rugby practice

2007-05-14T21:22:00.000Z

after our awesome performance in touch rugby against Cambridge, we now have to prepare for the MBA olympics...this time for REAL rugby.

Just got back from our first practice session...Boy, this is a tough sport! But loads of fun!

We have a really good team - although about half of us have never played rugby before!

We'll see how we perform at the MBATs (olympics)...

BBQ @ BSchool

2007-05-12T20:44:00.000Z

aaawwww...I feel soooooo full!

Just got back from a MASSIVE BBQ

One of my classmates from the states bought a smoker (special BBQ Grill), tons of meat, side dishes and beer...and organized a BBQ for his buddies.

He got up at 7 AM to prepare the grill, the meat and everything else.
Finally in the afternoon (a smoker uses very little heat and lots of smoke to cook/grill the meat), everything was ready.
I had a HUGE steak, chicken and some lamb sausage. It was sooooo good...unbelievable!

Now I have to lie down for a couple of hours before I will be able to work again.

We decided to have another BBQ in 2 weeks from now...I'm REALLY looking forward to this!

Another Ball - This time: Pembroke

2007-05-12T10:21:00.000Z

Since I can't get enough of balls (have been to Mansfield, Exeter and Keble so far), I bought a ticket for the Pembroke Ball.
Being one of the poorer colleges (poorer in terms of not being as stinking rich as the other colleges, but still rich), Pembroke students tend to compensate that through crazyness.

The Ball's theme was "Crystal Maze" and they had 4 zones:
-Aztek
-Futuristic
-Ocean
-Medieval

The ball started at around 8PM and at exactly 730PM it started raining...no, it started to pour down on us...Dammit!
Nevertheless, we didn't let this spoil our night.

Once again, an awesome ball with lots of beautiful ladies, great food and drinks, good music and a good time with friends!
Oooohhhh, it was sooooo hard to get up this morning...but I finally managed to drag myself to the library and work a little bit.

It was kind of wet in the beginning...

...but as the music got louder and louder (notice the beers in the front)...

...we got in the mood for some gambling...

...since we didn't win, we had to chase the girls with a camel...

...and ended up with some pretty hot ladies!

12 hours of Music, Peace and Happyness - WADSTOCK

2007-05-06T17:11:00.000Z

Wadham + Woodstock = Wadstock

Once again, my college threw one of the best parties this year. An all-day open air festival on the beautifully trimmed English Lawn.

The weather was great, the music was awesome, the crowd was amazing and the food&drinks were cheap. So, what more could you wish for?!

Everbody was chilling on the grass, hanging out with friends and enjoying the atmosphere. Even the Dean of the college made an appearance on stage and played saxophone with a punkrock band...only in Wadham!

Miss UK

2007-05-04T14:07:00.000Z

You won't believe it, but one of the runner-ups for Miss UK is my classmate...well, almost...she is not an MBA, but does a Masters degree in Financial Economics. I know her though.

I didn't know geeks would be interested in beauty contests...

The link to the newspaper article and her pictures went around the class in a matter of seconds.

I hope she wins...she surely has the looks and the brains to do it.

Mayday

2007-05-01T09:30:00.000Z

I just came back from my Oxford mayday experience.

After taking a short 1-hour nap from 3:30 to 4:30 this morning, I went out to meet my buddies from the BSchool at the Oxford Retreat Pub - YES at 4:30 in the morning.
In the night from April 30th to May 1st all clubs are open until 6 in the morning and the pubs open up at 4 in the morning. Everybody goes crazy and parties all night long (except the poor MBAs who work on assignments ALL NIGHT LONG)...
From the we headed over to Magdalene Bridge. At 6 AM the Magdalen choir sings a Latin song from the tower of Magdalen College for exactly 6 minutes! Then, all the (to a great part drunk) students get naked and jump from the bridge into the river...INSANE...MADNESS!!!
This year the police closed down the bridge and nobody was able to jump off. Apparently last year the water level was so shallow that several people broke their legs. So no nakedness and jumping from the bridge this year.
After the song, the mayday dancers ("Merry Men") in their pagan costumes started dancing all over the street...that was fun to watch!
From there we went straight to the "Dining Room" (restaurant) to have a proper English breakfast with bacon, sausage, egg, beans, etc.
After a quick drop-in at the Kings Arms for a pint at 8 in the morning, I am now back in my room to catch a couple of hours of sleep, before I have to get back to work again.

Happy Birthday Juergen

2007-05-01T03:16:00.000Z

Until a couple of hours ago it was my 26th birthday.
When combining the words university student and birthday, one usually thinks of a wild party...apparently this doesn't come true in Oxford.
My 26th birthday consisted of a lecture in the morning, reading numerous articles and essays in the afternoon and spending all evening and half of the night on an assignment for my taxation class...WHOOOP WHOOP...exciting!

Thank you Oxford for this wonderful 26th birthday!

Here are two of the messages that people left on my "message wall" on facebook.com:
-"wishing you a very happy birthday, and 24 hrs of drunkenness"
-"As you start to stare down the barrel of 30, just remember: you can only be young once... but you can be immature forever!"

I better hit the bed! I need to get up at 4:30 (yes, AM!!) for the Oxford MayDay tradition. More on that tomorrow.

Oh, one more thing! A couple of people from RollsRoyce are coming to the business school tomorrow and they asked to have a short chat with me about opportunities with them...let's see what they have to say and how that goes.

Group Pics with Cambridge Team

2007-04-29T16:17:00.000Z

Soccer:

Rugby:

Rowing:

Cricket:

Warrior faces...

2007-04-29T16:11:00.000Z

some more impressions from the Oxford Cambridge Sports Day:

Kicking some serious Cambridge A*#

2007-04-29T15:49:00.000Z

Once every year, the Oxford MBAs compete against the Cambridge MBAs in several sports:
-Soccer
-Touch Rugby
-Cricket
-Squash
-Volleyball
-Badminton
-Rowing

The tradition is that Oxford is victorious and Cambridge receives a beating (which is deserved of course for committing treason some 800 years ago -> explanation: see history of cambridge).

Yesterday was the big day!
The weather was wonderful and we kicked off the soccer game at noon. The competition was intense and on could feel that there was a lot of emotion in the game. There was a clear seperation of fans: Oxford supporters on one side and Cambridge supporters on the other side (during the course of the day we started mixing and it became a friendly & fun event; the reason? probably the many free rounds of beer)
In the end, we were victorious even though I have to admit that Cambridge had the better individual players. But we had the better team and god was of course on OUR side!
Same with touch rugby...we slaughtered them!
Same with Cricket...our Indians showed some serious Oxford action on the field and humiliated Cambridge!
Same with Squash...Oxford won!
Same with Volleyball...no chance for Cambridge!
Same with Badminton...Cambridge went down!
Same with rowing...ooopppssss not really!! Actually Cambridge beat our team. What a shame!!! Our rowers better not show up to class on Monday!

Result for me:
-played soccer
-played rugby
-was insulted by a cambridge soccer player several times (due to my excellent defense work...admittedly not always fair BUT efficient)
-major knee injury (I'm limping like a pirate)

Lots of sun, new friends and cold beer made this an enjoyable day which ended with a massive party at the business school. Free food, tribute to the MVPs of the day, live music and a DJ ended the night. Around midnight most of the Cambridge MBAs left (beaten of course). The others that stayed over night were about to be shown what a real Oxford night is like.

"You become fat.."

2007-04-27T18:32:00.000Z

You won't believe what happened to me today...

I was in the library working on an assignment when Ya-Hsin walked by.
She is from Taiwan and we worked in a study group together last term...the last time i saw her was shortly before easter, so not too long ago.
I greeted her and she just stared at me like she was looking at an alien. After a while she said in her funny asian-english: "oooohhh I didn't recognie you first...hihihi...you become fat...hihihi..."
WHAT???? I couldn't believe it! She hadn't seen me for only about 4 weeks and then she tells me I've become fat?! Even so fat that she didn't recognize me any more?
What a shock...
Now all my buddies here call me "Fatty". Well, at least they can laugh about it.

Damn English food!!!!!!

Great guestspeakers...

2007-04-26T20:19:00.000Z

Seems like this term we have some really really good guestspeakers for my lectures. I just read the list and it includes CFOs, Private Equity Managing Directors, Heads of Strategy, etc. from such great companies as Royal Bank of Scotland, McKinsey, Barcley's Capital, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, etc.
Guestspeakers basically teach one lecture session on a certain subject and give us some really valuable inside into the practical side of how things work.
I'm really looking forward to this and hope they can make it...in the past, the line up of the guest lecturers has changed regularly on short notice, because it is almost impossible to plan with people in positions like that. Nevertheless, the lecturers have always been able to find appropriate substitutes through the school's network in case on of the speakers cancelled in the last minute.

Touch Rugby - OUCH!

2007-04-24T23:42:00.000Z

Saturday will be a BIG day!
The Cambridge MBAs are coming over to compete against us in sports...

I am part of the mixed soccer team and the mixed touch-rugby team (the soft version of rugby).
Having never played touch rugby before (just like most of my classmates), we decided to have a practice session before the game on saturday so that we actually know what we are doing.

So after some hours in the library we met on the beautiful back yard of the business school - a real English lawn (it wasn't that beautiful any more after we were done with practice).
It was a real fun game and a good break from studying...but if touch rugby already hurts that much (I have bruises all over my body), what am I going to look like after the MBA Olympics in Paris??? Andrew talked me into signing up for his rugby team (no touch, but full-contact).

More of Exeter Ball

2007-04-22T23:29:00.000Z

Caroline riding the bull...she showed us guys some real skills there and lasted about 1 1/2 minutes (Richard on the other hand managed to hang on 3 seconds after telling the operator "Turn it up a couple of notches or I will hang to this thing forever!")

Crazy picture with the crazy moulin rouge dancer AKI (50% Japanes, 25% German, 25% Italian...what a combination)

Two of my buddies posing with the moulin rouge dancers...yeah, they really liked us MBAs

Exeter Ball

2007-04-22T23:05:00.000Z

Last night I went to another Oxford Ball - at Exeter College. It was epic!
There were about 30 of us (MBAs + wifes/husbands and partners), all dressed up in tux, suit or ball dress.

The theme was Moulin Rouge...they had:
-champagne reception
-moulin rouge dancers "The Readymaids"
-other dancers (waltz, salsa, etc.)
-Volksfest-like booths (shooting, throwing balls, etc.)
-donuts (all you can eat)
-a chocolate fountain
-drinks (all you can drink)
-a BBQ (all you can eat)
-live music
-a shisha tent
-bull riding
-fire-eaters
-performance artists
-a ring the bell stand (Hau den Lukas)
-a HUGE twister game for about 15 people
and much much more

The college looked awesome...and with the building illuminated in different colors, the dancers, the fire eaters and the performance artists, one could totally feel the moulin rouge vibe.

The ball ended at 3 in the morning, but the party didn't end for us...we went on to have breakfast at one of my classmate's house and I finally dropped dead in my bed at around 6:30 this morning.

Me and my three dates for the ball...

Me and two of the gorgeous Moulin Rouge dancers

Me and ma boyzzz!

Week 0 of Trinity

2007-04-21T08:56:00.000Z

It's good to be back in Oxford and seeing lots of my MBA friends again...during the break many of them travelled all over the place and we all spent a lot of time at the pubs sharing stories of our break over pints of ale and a nice british steak and mushroom pie with chips and vinegar.

On Tuesday we had the annual Private Equity Conference at the school, which was extremely interesting and a great opportunity to network with real capitalists ;o) the people from Deloitte Private Equity Group were so nice to take us out for drinks (spending 500 GBP within a little more than an hour with about 20 people is quite impressive...a big thank you to our sponsors from Deloitte)

I spent the rest of the week preparing for the things to come and attending my first lectures of the term. Basically, I took it very easy and went to bed quite early, because my body signalled me that I needed a break from all the partying of the last couple of weeks. I even managed not to go out on Friday, but rather stay in and work.

I'm off to the library now...I'm such a GOOD boy!

What happened in the meantime...

2007-04-14T02:41:00.000Z

Back in Oxford after 10 days of excellent food (there is actually stuff like FRESH salad out there), partying (not that I never do that in Oxford...), fish-racing with poor little goldfish (don't even try to understand that), playing cards with grandpa, seeing family & friends and driving on the right-hand side of the road in Germany.
On April 1st I was so sick of Oxford that I decided to go to Germany over easter. So I booked a flight and 2 days later I was at home.
When I was back home the whole heartsickness came back up again (not that it had ever really disappeared) and I realized how valuable family and friends are. Somehow my mind associated going to Germany with seeing the girlfriend...that hurt a lot (since there is none), but fortunately my family and friends kept me pretty busy.
I had a great time in Germany, but I didn't do anything for university - nothing!

Now I am back in Ox and ready for the final term: Trinity - one of those fancy traditional Oxford names again

Sleeping Juergen

2007-03-29T17:46:00.000Z

I thought I'd share this with you...

Some of my friends over here have a lot of fun taking pictures of me sleeping (preferably at the business school and sometimes even during lectures). They actually have a folder on their laptops dedicated just to pictures of me sleeping...here are some of them.
As you can see I work so hard in Oxford that I hardly get any sleep and have to take a nap during every break. (Or is it because of all the parties? mmmmhhh????)

Trip to London

2007-03-29T00:55:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to London to meet my friend Joanna..she offered to give me a special tour of London.

It was awesome...we had a great time. As she is a history student in Oxford and has lived in London all her life, she knows quite a lot of stuff about London. She showed me all the really cool places (not the standard stuff)...and we had excellent food.
We went to Soho, Downing Street, the OXO tower and tons of other places. Surprisingly, the city reminds me a lot of Frankfurt...I think I could live here for a couple of years.

Here is the amazing view from the OXO tower at night.

Post Exams BBQ

2007-03-25T19:50:00.000Z

since MBAs can never party enough, we got up "early" (1 PM) yesterday to head over to Andrew McInerney's house to have a BBQ in the cold...and believe me, it was soooo cold (not North Dakota cold, but still very cold).

The food (there was everything: american dessert, bulgarian salad, israeli meatballs, etc.) was great and once everybody was fed, the whole thing of course turned into a party...even Andrew's dog enjoyed itself.

Hilary - Mission Accomplished?

2007-03-23T17:14:00.000Z

EXAMS ARE OVER!!! YYEEEEHHHAAAA

Last day of exams...6 in one week! I think/hope I passed all of them. Surprisingly, the "easy" ones were the ones I thought would be the toughest.

Right after the last exam we went to the Turf Tavern...Oxford tradition for post-exam drinks.

As you can probably imagine the party later that night was AWESOME. First we treated us with a nice steak at the Brown's restaurant and then we went to Maxwell's, which was almost entirely packed with MBAs...WOW!!!

First day of exams...

2007-03-20T05:05:00.000Z

Today was the first day of exams for Hilary term.

Financial Management was way harder than expected and I only managed to answer 8 out of 10 questions. But everyone else that I have talked to so far have answered only 6 or 7, so I should be fine.
IBGG was OK...just use the buzzwords and everything is fine ;o)
But the best thing was that we take our exams in the "examination schools". One of those really really old buildings where people have taken exams for hundreds of years...the thought of that is just amazing.

Just came home from the pub...went there with Diliana, Daniel and Barry for post-exam drinks and food. Now I'm back to the books...tomorrow's exam is Marketing.

As you can see on the picks, Oxford students have this weird tradition of letting facial hair grow during exams week. Some MBA students almost make a competition out of this as you can see.

Freaking out!!!

2007-03-16T18:38:00.000Z

I'm about to freak out...

I just realized that I started studying way too late!
There is no way that I'll be able to cram all the stuff for next week's exams into my head - unless I chain myself to my desk and don't sleep until monday (the value of sleep is overrated anyways).

Monday - Financial Management (easy), IBGG (I'll just bullshit my way around this subject, I should be fine)
Tuesday - Marketing (another blablabla subject, no problem here)
Wednesday - Finance (doable if I had more time), Operations Management (I look at last year's exam and my notes and I have no clue what this is about- DAMN!!!)
Friday - Macroeconomics (haven't even looked at it, but it scares the hell out of me)

We'll see...this term I'll have to aim for the simple "Pass" instead of going for the "distinction"!

What am I doing here, wasting time writing my blog?! I better get back to work!

The beautiful wheather doesn't help either...everybody is outside, except the poor MBA students.

Cologne Stopover

2007-03-12T13:08:00.000Z

On our way back to Oxford we stopped in Cologne for a couple of hours and met Nora (friend & former co-worker) and her friend Nadja. They showed us around a little bit, answered questions about Cologne (although one still remains open: what are those blue pipes???) and we went to the Rhine, the Cologne cathedral and had some Koelsch beer and food at the Frueh. The food was good, the weather was great and I got to hang out with to beautiful ladies...what more could you wish for?!

I LOVE this picture...guess why ;o)

After a 3hour delay we finally left Cologne airport. Due to the delay we missed our bus in London and had to wait forever for the next one. Now I'm finally back in Oxford and am about to fall dead asleep.

Case Competition Part II

2007-03-11T18:38:00.000Z

To make things short: We did not win! The jury loved our analysis, but our presentation was a desaster. Maybe we should have stayed in on Friday night just like all the other teams to practice the presentation instead of going out...at least we had fun. I'm especially satisfied, since I built the financial model for our analysis and a senior manager from Goldman Sachs pointed out that only two groups built good financial models, one was ours!
The winner was a team with a girl from a university in Norway, one from Warsaw Business School, one from a university in Milan and a guy from Spain...so it was either female power or their short skirts ;o)

Saturday afternoon was fun as well. We had an outdoor event which involved climbing trees, jumping from platforms, walking over rope bridges and sliding down from a tree while hanging on a cable...cool stuff!

Afterwards, we had a nice dinner in Koblenz where they announced the winners and went to a club. The party at the club was great, we had a good time celebrating the winning team.

Case Competition Part I

2007-03-09T21:02:00.000Z

At 2 in the morning, Kislaya, Barry and I left Oxford for a case study competition in Vallendar (close to Koblenz), Germany.
We spent about 4 hrs waiting at London Gatwick Airport consuming tons of coffee to keep us awake...what a waste of time!

We arrived in Vallendar just in time for lunch, so I took my two team members to a typical German Restaurant, where we had Schnitzel, Schweinebraten and German beer.
Before the case event started, John our 4th team member joined us (he took the train through France and Belgium). Here we are:

The other teams came mainly from German universities, but some others were present as well.
Today, at 9 in the morning, we finally got the case study...the main question was: Should Metro Group expand into the Baltic states?
After going out last night and showing my other team members some German bars, the first hour of work was not easy as you can imagine. But by 10:30 and some breakfast finally everyone was fully awake and up to 100% power again. The room in which we work looks like a mess...we work REALLY hard!!!
We just decided to make up for the lost time by having a working lunch, so I guess we will just grab a Doner Kebap.

Summer Project secured!!!

2007-03-04T13:38:00.000Z

Good news!!!
I've secured a summer project...with the Australian Investmentbank Macquarie.
I will work with them in London for 9 weeks.
My task will be to make an industry analysis of a business sector (sorry, can't tell you which one) in Germany to identify possible takeover targets.
Unfortunately the business school doesn't accept individual projects (we're supposed to do them in groups) and Macquarie wanted to have only me, so it looks like I will have t write a theses...NO! This is the one thing I did NOT want to do again.
And to make things even worse, it looks like I'll have to write it during the next term while taking 6 courses...oh my god!

Today is the Indian holiday "HOLI"! Interesting stuff! People throw color and paint at each other and it gets pretty messy...but it's raining in Oxford, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to see any of that here or even participate (I would love to!).
Here is a little bit of background reading and a video a friend sent to me...this is what they do on HOLI...looks like fun!

http://www.holifestival.org/

Peace in the Middle East? NO!

2007-03-03T05:42:00.000Z

I think I already told you before, that every week on Friday (right before Happy Hour) one nation of the MBA class gives a 30 min presentation on "How to do Business in..."; it is usually a little bit about the country, the political system, major industries, but most importantly about business culture (dress codes, small talk, talk business first or leisure first, etc.)
So far we have had presentations from:
-India
-USA
-Israel

Today the presentation was about Israel...really interesting stuff! Sascha (the guy from Israel) talked very openly about the stuff that is going on there and he encouraged us to ask whatever we wanted to know. So, one guy asked whether he thinks that there will ever be peace between Israel and the other middle eastern countries - Sascha looked at him with a stone-cold face and said "NO, not during my lifetime and not during the lifetime of my kids!" The whole room was filled with silence for a couple of seconds...
WOW what a statement!!! This quite struck me...especially, because Sascha is usually an extremely optimistic guy.

Yesterday I also had dinner with some people from Shell. It was quite interesting, their top man was the Head of Controlling for Shell Worldwide...a really big shot!
I was seated between two Geologists, which made it an interesting evening for me. Of course in the end came the usual recruitment talk:
-what do you want to do after your MBA?
-what do you think about Shell?
-would you consider working for Shell?
-blablabla...networking
I will definitely keep in touch with those guys...Shell is an interesting company and they were really excited about my background in energy.

Jamming away!

2007-03-02T17:54:00.000Z

For this weeks Happy Hour, Ean organized some guitars and microphones...open mic night! Anybody who wanted to give it a shot could just grab a guitar and start jamming or singing. It was great, we had some good laughs!

Here are some pics...enjoy!

Celebrity LookALike

2007-02-28T07:34:00.000Z

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

2007-02-24T04:03:00.000Z

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

2007-02-19T06:54:00.000Z

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

2007-02-16T20:30:00.000Z

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.

2007-02-10T23:49:00.000Z

What a Friday!!!

2007-02-10T23:13:00.000Z

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

2007-02-09T18:55:00.000Z

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

2007-02-09T00:51:00.000Z

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

2007-02-06T22:33:00.000Z

Here are two clips of the night of the nights!

Town vs Gown

2007-02-06T13:23:00.000Z

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

2007-02-01T16:42:00.000Z

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!

Aussies & their parties; First Grade of Hillary

2007-01-29T17:12:00.000Z

My lesson learned from this weekend:
Never go party with Australians if you have a lot of work to do on the following day!!!

Saturday afternoon the Australian society of Oxford had a nice little BBQ...outside!! My friend Andrew (from Australia) had invited me to come.
Unfortunately a meeting with my Entrepreneurial project group took a little longer (3 hours) than expected and instead of enjoying lots and lots of meat and Aussie beer, I "enjoyed" a pizza and a can of Coke over lots and lots of work.
However, nothing kept me from joining the Aussies at their party on saturday night.
Let me tell you, Australian's are crazy!

The next day I finally kicked myself out of the bed at 3PM. About an hour later I was finally able to start working on my assignments...Whoooo!

I just got an e-mail saying that our first assignment for the term (an case study on "Networked Corporations - The future?" for my International Business and Global Governance course) has been graded. Although I only bullsh*#+ed in the paper, I got a distinction! Very cool...seems like I'm really good at bullsh*#ing

by the way...just in case you wonder WHO Hillary is - Hillary is the name of this beautiful second Trimester of the academic year in Oxford!

Snooker @ a gentlemens' club

2007-01-24T20:23:00.000Z

A good company presentation (Bain & Company - a leading management consultancy), good food, nice wine...what more could you wish for?!

And that was just the start of last night!

Afterwards we went to the Oxford Union (kinda like a gentlemens' club - members only).
We chilled for a while in one of the really old and nice libraries, enjoyed a cold beer and sat in huge, old leather armchairs.
For 9PM we had booked one of the big snooker tables. Fortunately one of us knew the rules, so we played snooker for the rest of the evening...that's the Oxford lifestyle!

Now I'm back to the books, preparing for tomorrow and getting some assignments done - and missing out on a pub crawl with my friends from college...well, maybe I'll join them later, when I'm done with my assignments.

Oxford Professors

2007-01-17T22:44:00.000Z

First Macroeconomics lecture, Oxford University Said Business School

Lecturer: Prof. Oren Sussman from Israel

"The first economics textbook I bought was by John Maynard Keynes (one of the most respected economists). Until today I don't understand most of the things he wrote and I probably never will...also, I will probably never finish the book."

Now that's something...an Oxford Economics Professor telling his students in the first day of the lecture that he doesn't understand what one of the world's most respected economists had to say...

Mmmmhhhh...makes him human!

Break-up Season & Headhunters

2007-01-15T21:40:00.000Z

Doing an MBA can be an extremely costly adventure!
-tuition fee
-college fee
-readin materials
-traveling expenses
-living expenses
-partying expenses
...
...
...
-relationships

It seems like it's break-up season right now. Over the last week I found out that at least 10 of my classmates got dumped by their partners over the last 2 months (interestingly most of them over the holidays) - one guy even after a 9 year relationship. Most of them cite the same reasons...the MBA takes the best of you and you don't really have time to invest in the relationship.
It was quite shocking to hear that, but at least I'm not alone, so now we can feel miserable together rather than alone ;)

Tomorrow I'm meeting with an Investment Bank in London. Exciting stuff! I met one of their managers at one of the events at the business school and he invited me to sit down and talk about career options at the firm.
Well, let's see how that goes...
Also, I got a contacted by a London-based recruiting agency. Two of their clients might be interested in me and asked to meet me. One of them is a small New York M&A advisory investment bank specializing in the Oil, Gas & Energy sector. The other company is an energy consulting firm.
Seems like my energy background helps me a lot...energy is HOT HOT HOT right now.
I'll see if I can fit their requests for meetings in my tight schedule *hehe*

Today was the first Finance II class...with our dutch lecturer - funny guy! The course is exactly what I had expected, so I am quite happy to have chosen it for the second term. Tomorrow morning is "International Business and Global Governance"-time. Unfortunately I will miss my afternoon lecture (Marketing) due to my trip to London. I guess that means: more work! I'll have to sit down and actually do all the readings myself ;o)

I'm also really looking forward to my first Macroeconomics class on Wednesday. The Professor (Oren Sussman from Israel) is the guy who interviewed me. From last year's MBAs I know that he has some quite controversial views and that he is an extremely straightforward guy...if he thinks your opinion on something is crap, he will tell you exactly that. Should be quite challenging!

Picking electives for Trinity

2007-01-12T05:57:00.000Z

Woooooowww!

Hilary has hardly started (it's still week 0) and we're already asked to pick our electives for Trinity (3rd trimester).

We have 2 full days of presentations on the various electives we can choose. We have to pick 6 out of 35. Not easy!
The professors are really making an effort to convince us to pick their elective. They all have exactly 15 minutes to "sell" their elective to us...cool concept!

I'm currently considering the following electives:

-Theory & Practice of strategic negotiations
-Managing Complexity (new approach to business in cooperation with the Oxford Physics department)
-Social Finance
-Business History
-Controlling Management Information
-Entrepreneurial Finance
-Corporate Valuation
-Private Equity
-Restructuring & Implementation (including M&A)
-Capital Raising Techniques
-Lessons from Financial History

some other interesting electives from the list are:
-Business-State Relations
-Business in China
-Social Innovation
-Social Marketing Lab
-Real Estate
-Design Leadership (in cooperation with Design students from the University of London)

The allocation of the places in the elective courses is a really weired process. We all have 120 "credit points" that can be used by us to bid for places in the courses...kind of like e-bay ;)

Back in Oxford - where your best isn't good enough since 1117

2007-01-10T07:33:00.000Z

I finally made it back to Oxford after the holidays.
Seems like nothing has changed over here. It's still raining and the buildings are still old old old.

The 2nd trimester (or Hilary as it is officially called) started badly...as always in the morning, I was late and rushed down to my bike to get to the business school. I roughly had 2 minutes left, before some careers workshop was supposed to start. So I unlocked my bike and suddenly discovered that both the front and the rear tire was flat...dammit! Now I had to walk all the way to the school and of course I got there late. However, when I got there, I discovered that the workshop was cancelled, because of "miscommunication" - yeah right!
Thanks for making me get out of bed early, having run to the school in the rain, just to tell me that I can turn around and go back right away.

I just hope this is not a streak of bad luck!!!

Anyways, as the title of this post might already suggest, I found something quite funny about studying at Oxford University. I got it from an internet forum where students can post little comments on what it's like to study at the oldes english speaking university in the world. Enjoy! I read it and believe me, the sad thing is...almost all of the things said are actually true.
Long, but funny

You know you’re at Oxford if:
You’ve ever drunk your coffee while sitting on the toilet – to save time.
You’ve heard someone give an academic explanation of how they cooked their food.
You’ve ever violated three or more traffic laws per mile during your bike ride to the library – to save time.
If you find that aforementioned bike ride to be the most relaxing part of your day.
If you read for an hour before you realize your trouser legs are still rolled up from the bike ride.
If you’ve ever skipped a lecture to go read for the paper due in a week.
When the most annoying part of your day is the 45 seconds it takes for someone to stomp their wooden-soled boots through the library - as loud as they can.
If you dream about your research.
If you're more worried about losing your Bod card (library card) than your bank card.
Relatives that have been dead for years come visit you and suggest that you get some sleep.
You say the same sentence over and over again, not realizing you've said it before.
You say the same sentence over and over again, not realizing you've said it before.
The Sun is too loud.
Trees begin threatening you.
You can see individual air molecules vibrating.
You explore the possibility of setting up an IV drip of espresso.
You wonder if brewing is an essential step in the consumption of coffee.
You and Reality file for divorce.
You begin to talk to yourself, then disagree about the subject, get into a nasty row about it, lose, and refuse to talk to yourself for the rest of the day.
You go to bed at 3AM and think, "Oh, it's an early night!"
Social life? What's that??
You talk to yourself in the 3rd person.
You write sentences on multiple choice tests.
It's okay to fail, so long as you are not alone.
You frequently catch yourself saying "What? We had work??"
Cheating became too difficult, so you took up telepathy.
Your books weigh more than you do.
You consider giving up going to the bathroom permanently to give you more time to study.
You skip breakfast to get in some extra cramming time to gain that "upper edge" on everyone else.
Pressed for time, you conclude an essay with, "And they lived happily every after. Amen."
You find that you spend more time sleeping in lectures than at home.
When you're watching TV, you feel guilty because not all of your work is done.
Breakfast?! What's that?
The bags under your eyes are heavier than the ones carrying your textbooks.
You always seem to have one continuous headache.
You haven't seen light in so long you glow in the dark.
You find yourself thinking "Without stress my life would be empty."
Your contacts are so thick that you have trouble closing your eyes.
You have a permanent caffeine-and-sleep-deprivation high.
You can measure your daily caffeine consumption in gallons.
You've taught yourself how to take naps while walking to your next class.
You think "getting high" is a reference to grades.
You're one of the few to know that the "perverted American Dream" isn't a porno.
You clean up your room and find a bed.
You wonder about things like what would happen if your car travelled at the speed of light and you turned your lights on.
It's the little things that confuse you.
You have the chemical formula and steps of synthesis for caffeine memorized.
To celebrate finishing your exams you decide to be really wild and go for coffee.
You hold "parties" to study.
You look forward to your parties.
Your fellow students look forward to your parties, attend them, and do actual studying there.
You think "social life" refers to life in Soviet Bloc nations during the Cold War
You talk in your sleep -- in Spanish.
You no longer speak English -- You speak a combination of English, German, Spanish, French, Portugese, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and Polish.
Fellow students understand and use the same combined language.
You make a date to do homework together and you actually do.
A good night's sleep is 5 hours
You have theological discussions at parties
You have theoretical physics discussions at parties
You spend all your time complaining about your work, then do it hurriedly because you want to get to bed and don't know where all the time went
You look forward to arguing
You have no idea who the drug dealers are
You consider sweet tarts, chocolate, and caffeine drugs (so actually, you DO know who the drug dealers are, in a way...)
You forget to breathe

Life sucks...sometimes

2007-01-02T13:17:00.000Z

First of all, I want to wish the readers of this blog a wonderful new year 2007 and I hope all of you had nice holidays with your family and friends.

In my last blog I mentioned overweight fees right before I flew back to Germany...guess what? Looks like I called for it. They charged me 85 GBP, which just about doubled the value of the christmas presents in my luggage.
After arriving in Germany, I went straight to Ruegen (island in the Baltic Sea) with Melina. The trip was not the best vacation we've had together - I just wanted to relax & chill out and she wanted to go out and do stuff.
Back home, it was great to see the family again and we had a nice christmas party at my grandparents' house (just as every year).
The day after christmas I went to Frankfurt and partied hard with my best friend Andreas and some other people. It was a ball, although I tripped, fell and crushed the glas of my watch...argh!

Two days later (on the 27th) the completely unexpected happened. Melina broke up with me after more than 3.5 years. It still feels like a world collapsing and I think that moment something died in me. All the fighter, I drove to Dortmund twice and tried to win her back...unfortunately, without success.
New Year's eve was horrible as you might imagine. I went to a private party and seeing all the couples at midnight was just too much...
Now all I can do is wait and hope...Melina told me that she needs time to think.

Luckily it's only about one week until I get back to Oxford. I hope being there will distract me a little bit.

Just in case you read this Melina:
I LOVE YOU!!!

6 in 4, pub golf and Ryanair

2006-12-16T02:13:00.000Z

Living life on the fast lane...now I actually know what this really means!

I took 6 exams in 4 days:
Monday:
-Financial Reporting: harder than expected, but should be able to pass
-Decision Science: definite pass
Tuesday:
-Developing Effective Managers (DEM): pass, but you never know for DEM?!
Wednesday:
-Strategy: pretty sure pass
-Managerial Economics (I almost sh*# my pants before this one): way easier than expected, pass
Thursday:
-Finance I: I have a funny feeling about this one (got all the formulas right, but made some mistakes in my calculations), although I'm usually really good in Finance

Taking exams in a suit, white bow tie and the gown was a quite unusual feeling, but...that's Oxford, it's different/special/weird/or whatever you want to call it, it's all that. The weirdness of Oxford was also obvious when the exams started. Everything is very formal, same procedure every day and the desks are unbelievably small. Besides that, because of another tradition we wore flowers for each of the exams. For their first one, students wear a white carnation - virgin-like. After being bloodied by the first exams students wear a pink carnation from then on for every exam.
As soon as we got done with our last exam on Thursday, the champagne bottles popped out in the car park - what a relief, it was over (for the time being)!

About an hour later some 40 of us, all dressed up as golfers (or what we thought golfers look like), met at the pub "Cape of good hope" for a pub game called "Pub Golf". Teams of 4 go out on a pub crawl and have to drink a certain drink (beer, bitter, water, coke, whiskey, cider,...) at every hole (pub). The jury determines a par (sips) for every drink and after 9 holes a winning team is determined. It was very funny, lots of hole-in-ones were scored and in the end we decided that calculating the winner's score was too difficult and just kept on partying.

After sleeping in today and nursing my hangover, I did my chrsitmas shopping and just packed my stuff. My flight back to Germany leaves from London tomorrow morning at 6, which means i have to leave oxford at 1:30 tonight (bus trip, check in time restrictions, etc.). My suitcase must weigh about 30 tons and Ryanair will probably charge me 1,000 Euros over-weight fee.
Well, after having Ryanair's business concept in a case study, flying with it make it a completely different experience - well, no it doesn't, I just had to find a way to mention that I analysed Ryanair ;o)

MBAs = school children???

2006-12-10T05:38:00.000Z

Just started studying for my Developing Effective Managers exam.
While reading through my notes I found a quote from my lecturer that I wrote down at that time...so I thought I might as well share this with you:

"Teaching MBAs is the most difficult thing for a teacher - except maybe school children!"

WOW! That's something, huh?!
I guess we are difficult to teach...but comparing MBAs to school children? I don't know. We certainly behave like them sometimes ;o)

Another quote that just came to my mind (can't remember who said it though) is related to how the first trimester of our MBA felt like:

"Getting an MBA in Oxford is like drinking from a fire hydrant!"

I think that't pretty accurate & drinking from a fire hydrant doesn't seem like an easy task to me. Here at the Oxford Business School you get more than what you want and what you can deal with.

AAAwwwwwww, I should get back to studying. Looks like I embrace every opportunity to get away from studying - even writing a stupid post for my blog :)

Study, Eat, Drink & Sleep...

2006-12-08T09:21:00.000Z

Study, Eat, Drink & Sleep...that's all I've been doing for the last couple of days and that's about all I will do for the next couple of days

I hardly see daylight, as I study mostly during the night.

I'm done with Decision Science, Finance and Financial Reporting. Right now, I am struggling with Managerial Economics. Clarence (a fellow MBA from Sri Lanka) will give me a small "support class" today.
I hope to start Developing Effective Managers and Strategy late today (both not very quantitative, but LOTS & LOTS of qualitative concepts).

Next week will be the big one - 6 exams in 4 days
I will start out on Monday with Decision Science and Financial Reporting...fingers crossed!

I better get back to Managerial Economics (oh, I love/hate this subject!!!)

We are all like zombies...

2006-12-01T06:57:00.000Z

So far, this week has been the worst of the term!
I haven't slept more than 3 hours per night since monday, I have a major argument with my study group and I just feel completely burned out.
Almost everybody in my class seems to go through the same sh** as me. We all look like zombies...looking like death...I see people falling asleep during lectures more often than anytime before (a lot of us are taking every opportunity to get a minute of sleep)...most of us are extremely tense and study group meetings become a major pain.

I don't know how I will survive this week??? But then, it's only one more day until the weekend starts (and this term ends) with a major Hawaiian Party at the business school.

Define a strategy for the business school

2006-11-28T02:27:00.000Z

Imagine you pay 30.000 GBP to someone just to help this person with his/her homework...sounds stupid?
Well, I'm doing that right now.
My strategy professor told us today that the business school is currently redefining its strategy and that he is on the work group that does that. But what does that have to do with our strategy lecture? He sent us out of the lecture theatre and told us that he wanted us to split up in groups, work out a strategy for the business school, be back in 1 hour and present it to him and the class...WOW!!! We all came up with very good ideas, some of which the professor even wrote down, because he wanted to think about using them.

I better get back to work now...this will be a really tough week - the last week of the term with a major assignment due on Friday. I don't think I'll get much sleep for the next couple of days.

being very lucky

2006-11-26T11:32:00.000Z

Melina is here again to visit me.
She got here on Friday, we met with some other MBAs at an Indian Restaurant and went to celebrate Andrew's baby daughter (see old post) at one of the pubs.
Besides walking around in Oxford and enjoying a nice dinner at a french restaurant, Melina spent a lot of time waiting for me to get done with group meetings or to finish my assignments. The good thing is, she never complained once, although she came over all the way from Germany just to wait for me outside the business school or laying in bed while I try to work on assignments on my laptop...I can consider myself extremely lucky to have such a supportive and understanding girlfriend.

Sweety, this post is just for you...THANK YOU!!!

I have an EP team - finally!

2006-11-24T07:12:00.000Z

Finally I made up my mind and decided to join a team for the Entrepreneurial project.
A team of 3 Kenyans and one American asked me to join their team.
Our business idea is to set up an investment fund for small-/mid-sized companies in Kenya (50k -250k investment per firm). The goal is to set up a fund that is profitable and has social impact as well. One of the big challenges will be to quantify the social return - how do you calculate giving back to the community?!
The good news is: we have to ex-bankers on the team, so the number-crunching part of the project should not be a problem. My main task is to take a critical look at their numbers and come up with an idea to sell this whole thing to investors from the western world. We will also need to have a look at competitors...however, so far we've found none: Private Equity & Venture capital firms are mainly looking at investing larger amounts of money, whereas Microfinance firms usually invest very small amounts of money.

I'll keep you updated...

1st MBA baby of the year

2006-11-21T22:39:00.000Z

I went to class this morning and I wondered where my friend Andrew was - he usually never misses a class!
At about 10am I received a text message saying that his daughter, Ava Sophia McInerney, was born this morning at 2 minutes after midnight.

Congratulations Andrew&Claudia and all the best for Ava!!!

And here she is:
-6 lbs full of energy
- "...she has taken to feeding like a duck to water..." (quote from the daddy)

Silicon Valley comes to Oxford

2006-11-21T06:37:00.000Z

Once a year, the business school holds an event called "Silicon Valley comes to Oxford".
It basically means that executives and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley in the USA come to Oxford to talk to us MBA students, give lectures and ask us for advice and ideas for their businesses (they really do that).
Today was the big day...to name a few of the visitors:
-Matt Cohler, Vice President Strategy and Business Operations, Facebook (famous US website)
-Tom Esselman, President, Altran USA Holding (a 16,000 employee innovation consulting firm)
-Bob Goodson, Sales and Business Development Director, Yelp (really cool US website...check it out: yelp.com)
-Maria Sendra, Chair of Southern California region, Baker & McKenzie (famous law firm)
-Chris Sacca, Head of Special Initiatives, Google

First I went to a panel discussion about various topics. It was quite interesting to hear what these people had to say about setting up a business in Silicon Valley.
But the really cool part was the Master class. I picked one by Bob Goodson of Yelp.com and Pete Flint of Trulia.com. Both are quite young and full of energy. After telling us a little bit about their businesses and answering our questions, they told us that they wanted us to help them. They actually had prepared 3 issues that both of the companies were facing right now and for which they do not have a solution. So we started bouncing ideas off each other and had a great session. We even came up with some stuff that they hadn't yet thought about...although we were asked not to post it on the internet - guess why?! Competition in Silicon Valley is tougher than ever.

Although I wasn't able to attend all events (due to a case study that I had pushed to the last minute), it was a great day.

more of queer bop

2006-11-20T00:21:00.000Z

Barry getting spanked (and enjoying it) by a dominatrix

Richard and one of the angels in underwear

Eric enjoying a CLOSE examination by a nurse in a rubber dress

Queer BOP

2006-11-20T00:03:00.000Z

What a wild party!!!

Last night my college had its famous Queer Bop, check it out it's even on Wikipdeia: "an annual night of slightly debauched behaviour popular with students of all colleges"
As my college is extremely liberal and a strong supporter of gay rights, they have Queer Week once a year which ends with a massive party. Tickets were sold out on night one of the ticket sales. I managed to get 15 tickets (I had a lot of convincing to do - but in the end, the girl that sold the tickets gave in), so I invited a bunch of MBAs for the weekend.
Daniel, John, Matthew and I met at Shelby's house, because she had offered to dress us up as gays. This is how we ended up - nice , huh?! (Shelby even gave me a whip, handcuffs and a rubber skirt)

Back at my college, we met with other MBAs and took a little group picture:

It was absolutely insane...and should one of us ever become famous or go into politics - we all have pictures to blackmail each other.
The party was completely crazy. Girls running around in nothing but a thong and stickers on their nipples, Guys in Latex or as village people...INSANE!
We definitely had the best party so far and I don't think it will be possible to top that. I still can't believe that these people are supposed to be some of the smartest in the world?!

No news on Entrepreneurship Project

2006-11-18T23:32:00.000Z

Damn!
Last night I decided that I want to work on the Social Finance project, so I sent an e-mail to that team. And now I just heard that someone was faster than me and their team is full...this really sucks!
I don't really know which other project to pick, because neither of them seem appealing any more after I had picked the Social Finance.
I'm thinking about setting up my own team and coming up with an own idea.
The James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the business school has offered to meet with us and help us to come up with a business idea...might try that.
We'll see!!!

Entrepreneurial Project

2006-11-16T16:17:00.000Z

As I might have told some of you, as part of our MBA we have to form teams, come up with a business idea & business plan and present it to Investment Bankers, Venture Capitalists and Private Equity people.
Right now we are in the process of forming the teams. It works in a way that people who have an idea pitch this idea to us to try to get other students join their team.
I have set myself a deadline until Saturday to decide which team/business idea I want to join.
So far the following business ideas are on my short list:
-Dr. DarkOh; provide quality assurance to prevent distribution of fake medication in developing countries
-FighterNation.com; Live-streaming of martial arts fights in the USA
-Social Finance; providing the link between social capital and enterprises in developing countries
-Kyoto : Trading "the dirty" for the sake of "clean"; carbon-dioxide consulting & trading for small & medium sized companies
-Media Distribution house for independent movies; connecting independent movie makers with movie distributors (video rental stores, movie theaters, etc.) by circumventing the big distributors (e.g. Sony)

It's gonna be a really hard decision to make...but if I don't do it now, all the good teams are gonna be full.

Exciting, huh?! What should I pick? And, does the team that I pick really want me to be on their team?

I will keep you updated!

just tired...

2006-11-16T06:41:00.000Z

...this program is killing me!

I've hardly slept during the last couple of days. Apart from my mattress being crap, I have tons of assignments, readings and recruiting events - to give you an idea of the assignments:
-case study for Developing Effective Managers class, due on Monday
-case study for Decision Science class, due on Tuesday
-group case study for Finance class, due on Friday
-group case study for Decision Science class, due 2 days ago (at least I'm done with this one)
-major industry report for Managerial Economics class, due Nov 27th
-major Financial Statement Analysis for Financial Reporting class, due on Dec 1st
-group case study for Finance class, due Friday next week

I think I'm going crazy already...enough of this moaning...gotta get back to work now

...there is light on the horizon though: QUEER Bop, the party of the term, is coming up this weekend in my college & I'm going; I was even able to get 15!!!! tickets for my MBA friends, although everybody was allowed to buy only 2 - looks like I know how to "organize" stuff

James Bond for a night

2006-11-05T23:11:00.000Z

This is what it must feel like to be James Bond!

This Saturday the crew (John, Daniel and myself) decided to go to the first college ball of the academic year. So we got ourselves 3 tickets for 60 pounds each (very expensive 60GBP = 90EUR = 120USD), which included a champagne reception, canapes, a startet buffet, main buffet, all night BBQ, breakfast, cocktails, dessert (including a chocolate fountain), music (DJs, Jazz band, Oxford Belles a Capella), a prize draw, casino games (blackjack, roulette, poker, wheel of fortune) and lots of other things.
Of course the event was "black-tie", which means men are supposed to wear a black suit (preferably a tuxedo) and a black bow tie and women are invited to dress in their best dress. And that's what we did, we dressed like James Bond would dress for a night at the casino in Monte Carlo.

When we arrived at the Mansfield College, the view was amazing. The whole college was illuminated by colored flood lights and a huge red carpet welcomed us at the entrance - see for yourself:

Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan - looking good and ready for a Vordka-Martini:

The ball was AMAZING!!!
It was unbelievable...everything was perfect: the music was good, the drinks were perfect and the girls looked stunning. What more could you wish for?

At 4 o'clock in the morning and after intensive eating, gambling, dancing, drinking and socializing we were ready for breakfast. But, the three of us were not the only ones to fancy a breakfast...there was a huge queue in front of the dining hall. So I decided that it was time to leave John and Daniel and head home for some sleep, which was a good decision, because I was told the next day that the breakfast wasn't the highlight of the ball.
On the way out of the college I passed several people that looked like they weren't able to go home by themselves anymore - so maybe after all it was a good decision to not finish that last drink completely ;-)

Oxford's dangerous traffic!!!

2006-11-02T02:01:00.000Z

Taking part in Oxford's traffic can be REALLY dangerous!

...suicidal pedestrians...
...kamikaze-like cyclists...
...blind car drivers...
...reckless bus drivers...

Today I learned this the hard way.

About an hour ago I left the business school on my bike to grad some food.
As I was driving on the "wrong" side of the road (in this country this actually means on the correct side of the road - !left! - weird Brits!) a car came out of the garage on my left side. This guy looked at me, I looked at him and so I thought he had seen me. So as it was my right of the way I kept going. WRONG DECISION! When I got up to his car he just pulled out of the garage and hit me...I flew all across the street and landed on my ass on the other side of the road. Luckily there was a traffic jam on the other side of the road so I didn't get run over.
The guy (old man) got out of his car and the first thing he said was "You don't have your lights on!" - can you believe this? He had just run me over and the only thing he cares about are my lights?!
Fortunately nothing happened to me - except for a couple of scratches...but my bike is a wreck!
A witness came right up to me and offered to give me her contact details. After a little bit of arguing the driver finally agreed to pay for my bike...

I just got back from the bike shop and it seems to be less serious than it looks. Repairs will only be about 40 pounds - and I can have my bike back by tomorrow 1PM. I need my bike! Couldn't live without one in Oxford - imagine all the walking I would have to do!

Anyways...I will probably be more careful in the future (at least for a while)!

If you ever come to Oxford, remember one thing: Oxford's traffic is deadly!

Weekend Guest from Germany & Beer Wars

2006-10-30T22:52:00.000Z

This weekend my girlfriend Melina came over from Germany to visit me.
It was great fun. I picked her up at the Oxford bus station and about 1 hour & some food later we were on our way to Green College's G-Bop. The motto was "everything that starts with the letter G"...there were students dressed as gifts, goblins, galaxies, goths, etc...we went as Germans (which was pretty easy).

After a while John and I got pretty bored and we decided it would be a good idea to start a beer fight. Well, everyone else didn't think so. We ended up soaked in beer and attracting the displeasure of everyone around us.

Saturday was a little more quiet. After exploring the city we went to have dinner with Ean&wife, Barry&wife&friend and Shelby. We definitely learned a lesson on planning ahead. It took us about 2,5 hrs to find a restaurant that still had enough place for us (remember: it was a saturday night and there were 8 of us)...next time we will definitely book a table beforehand.

After all, we had a pretty good weekend.

Class Section C wins soccer tournament!!!

2006-10-28T23:57:00.000Z

WE RULE!!!

Today we had a small soccer tournament between the three MBA class sections and the MFE class.
Even though almost all of us went to the Bop at Green College last night, a lot of people showed up (except for John "all-of-you-have-to-come-to-the-soccer-game-on-saturday" Stanton, who had a fever...or should I say was hung over). The only problem was, only 5 people from class section C (my section) showed up and all 5 of us were a little hung over. That meant:
a) the team consisted of: James (South Africa), Andrew (Australia), Tom (USA), myself (Germany) and Jesse (USA)
b) we had no replacements
But in the end everything went well and we didn't loose a single game...but almost started a fight with another team, because they complained about us playing unfair. Did we play unfair? Well, let me put it this way, we pushed the limits (and sometimes our opponents).

AND THE WINNER IS: CLASS SECTION C!!!!!!

Assignment Nr.1

2006-10-24T12:46:00.000Z

We just received feedback on our first graded group assignment!

Guess what?! We got a "Pass with distinction" - Professor's feedback: "Well done! Your answer is thoughtful and well written."

Looks like the stress was worth it. So far we are the only group that got a distinction...

The assignment was a case study on Ben & Jerry's ice cream company in relation to competitive advantage. After the case I hated Ben & Jerry's (it cost me some hours of sleep), but now I LOVE Ben & Jerry's :-)

I hope there are many more distinctions to come for us...

...mmmhhh...I think I will go to the grocery store to buy some ice cream to celebrate this!

Italian dinner

2006-10-22T04:03:00.000Z

mmmhhhhh...just got back from the best dinner I've had so far in the UK.

The Italian girl in red (see pic) cooked for us.
We had:
-green salad with tomatoes, cucumber and avocado
-chicken in white wine sauce
-mozzarella and basil wrapped in grilled slices of aubergine

We decided that everyone would have to cook for the others at least once during the year...so I guess I will get Norwegian, Canadian, British, Greek, French, Moroccan, South African, Belgian and some more Italian food during the year - yummie!
Unfortunately that means that I will have to cook, too. Well, i guess it's time for some canned ravioli ;-)

As you can see below, Francesco, Martin and myself "volunteered" to do the dishes afterwards - but it was worth it!

Now I am back in room working on some case studies and there is a huge Pyjama party in my college. Too bad I can't go - damn work!

Study Group assignments - no...please...don't

2006-10-19T06:45:00.000Z

Maybe I've told you this before, but we are all divided into study groups of six. My group is very diverse...a doctor from Nigeria, two IT specialists from India, an engineer from Spain, a marketing specialist from LA (the only female in the group) and me.
It's fun to hang around with the group, but the diversity doesn't make working together easier.
It's a total mess actually...we argue quite a lot about the case studies that we have to prepare...and sometimes I feel like freaking out. Nevertheless, in the end we always agree on a solution for the case (well, we have to, because the group assignements are graded), but it takes a lot of time to get there. We are still in the process of setting up the rules for our case studies...different cultures can have for example very different understanding of deadlines!

I guess I will spend a lot of time with my study group during the next weeks (lots more group assignments to come).
I just hope we don't hate each other by the end of the term...

Matriculation

2006-10-15T03:32:00.000Z

From today on, I am officially an Oxford student.
I have already had a week of classes, but until today I wasn't officially a student of the University of Oxford.
The ceremony itself was "quick & dirty", but it felt very orgasmic ;-)
We all had to wear our subfusc (which we also have to wear for exams), consisting of the cap, the gown, a white bow tie and a black suit. The place of the ceremony was the Sheldonian Theatre, a beautiful & very old building. So we were in the Sheldonian and the vice chancellor of the university conducted the matriculation in latin...now that was interesting...I didn't understand a word he said.
Anyways, it took about 10 minutes and now I am a student. Of course, we had to celebrate that with a beer at the famous King's Arms pub...

Later on (after a 4-hour-meeting with my study group) I went to a sexy subfusc BOP. It was fun, since most of the people tried to look sexy in their subfusc...basically by wearing nothing (maybe not nothing, but at least not much) under their gown, but I'm not going to show you any pictures of that event.

REAL hell week has started!!

2006-10-14T18:24:00.000Z

The fact that I haven't posted for a week should tell you a lot about my Week 1!
The workload is overwhelming and the course is extremely intense. I spend about 13-14 hours per day at the business school (not even taking into account the time I spend in my college preparing for the next day)...I hardly got 6 hours of sleep per night this week. You could really see the influence the workload has on people over the week. On monday everybody was excited, loud and looked healthy, by the end of the week all of us looked like ghosts.

Here are the highlights of my week:
On monday I had a 1-hour one-to-one session with one of the career counselors. We talked about my career goals and the best strategy to achieve them. It is very helpful to have someone to help you develop a career strategy. I will meet again with her a couple of times over the course of the year to discuss my progress and career search strategy.
My first Managerial Economics class was very exciting. We played a trading game (everyone had a certain number of shares at a certain value and a certain amount of cash; the purpose was to trade the shares without knowing the other's valuation of the share and of course to make money) to explore the pricing mechanisms of the market - believe me, it was a very noisy game.
We also started working on our first study group assignment this week - a strategy case study on Ben&Jerry's ice cream company...due today 12 o'clock sharp. It wasn't easy to fit everybody's ideas in the 1000 word limit. To be honest, it was horrible...we definitely have to become more efficient in solving case studies...we argued way too long. I almost freaked out on several occasions when someone would challenge something that we had already agreed on 10 minutes earlier...argh!!
"Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The unusual suspect in the quest for clean and enduring energy" - that was the name of a talk that I went to on Thursday night. It was about why fossil fuels are the right source of energy for the future instead of renewable resources. It was highly interesting and very controversial. Only a small number of MBAs went to the event, but afterwards we had a very long and very lively argument about the topic...I loved it...that is exactly what I signed up for!
On Friday it was all over...I was totally done! After my last class I fell asleep on the couch in the common room. I woke up just in time for the happy hour (we have our own bar in the business school & a happy hour every friday). After having a couple of drinks I went straight to my college where I fell into my bed at 10PM on a friday night - unbelievable, huh?!

Another interesting thing is that recruiting really started from day 1. From monday onwards we met with possible employers (at the moment primarily the big investment banks like UBS, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, ABN Amro, Barclays Capital, etc.) to learn about their associate programs (entry position for MBAs) and to network. The good thing is that they always have free drinks and food for us ;-)

Superhero BOP @ ChristChurch

2006-10-08T18:15:00.000Z

Last night John, Daniel and myself went to Christ Church college's Superhero BOP. Although it was supposed to be a "Christ Church students only" party, we managed to get in. John was invited by a girl he met a couple of days ago, so we snuck in through a side entrance.
The party was a lot of fun and it was dangerous for us to talkto other people as we always had to pretend to be Christ Church students. Everytime someone asked us where our room is or why they hadn't seen us during the first week, one of John's girls jumped in and started talking random stuff...luckily it worked & we didn't get caught!

Here are some of the superheros that we met:

Wadham Hall - see post below

2006-10-07T14:49:00.000Z

This is the Wadham dining hall where I had my first formal dinner in college...looks very Harry Potterish doesn't it?!

Week 0 - Done!!!

2006-10-07T14:00:00.000Z

Week 0? Why week 0?
Things are a little bit different here in Oxford. First of all, Oxford students study in Trimesters...they are called Michaelmas, Hillary and Trinity. Each term is eight weeks long. Therefore, Week 1 -8. But, since many students arrive in the 2 weeks before the term starts (induction events) and stay in Oxford for another 2 weeks after the end of the term (exams), there is naught week (week -1), week 0, week 9 and week 10.
And that's just one of the many unwontnesses in Oxford life.

I have survived the parties of naught week and now I have also made it through week 0. It was a tough week! It was an amazing week! It was a fun week! It was an overwhelming week!
What happened during the week?

Monday - read previous post

Tuesday - more induction events (including a team-building event...the business school has a partnership with a consulting firm, who offers one-on-one sessions to MBA students for skills training, self assessment, etc...the good thing is, that it is included in the tuition fee)

Wednesday - kick-off meetings for Oxford Business Networks (OBN) in Management Consulting and in Private Equity; OBNs are interest groups for MBAs who are interested in this sector, students organize speakers, meetings, conferences and network in the industry of interest; I went to both kick-off meetings and it seems that it is comparatively easy to attract top industry leaders to come to Oxford, although, it is additional work for us and one can only actively participate in one/maybe two OBNs; today was also my first formal dinner in the college...suits and dresses...good food...eating with the professors in the Hall (see picture in next post)

Thursday - more OBN kick-off meetings; I went to the finance interest group...sounds really interesting; afterwards, I went to the Fresher's Fair with Diliana and Daniel, where all Oxford clubs and societes try to get you to join them; it is unbelievable how many societies there are...seems like there is a club for every interest (from political via origami to legalize fox hunting), sport (from soccer via decathlon to salsa dancing), culture (from norwegian via chinese to hindi),...I joined the arabic society, the fencing club, 3 finance societies and the scuba diving club, we'll see what I'll be able to do once week 1 has begun; at night I attended a panel discussion on "Capitalism: a force for good"; 3 entrepreneurs talked to us about how capitalism can be utilized to make the world a better place; one was an ex-Goldman Sachs investment banker who is now involved in fund-raising for several charities, one was a hedge fund manager who only invests in "social & sustainable" businesses, and the third one has founded several companies that make money by helping the community (I wonder how that works?!); after their presentations we had the opportunity to ask questions, but the really interesting part came when they turned the whole thing around and started asking us questions...and their questions were tough! Although I have a hard time connecting to that kind of thinking, it was nevertheless a very interesting and inspiring event

Friday - more OBN kick-off meetings; I went to the energy interest group; seems like only a few people are interested in this field - somehow I became the temporary chair of the OBN; my task is now to set up the next meetings and come up with an idea of how we want to organize ourselves and what we want to achieve during the year; I have decided to be actively involved in the Energy OBN and go to most of the meetings of the Finance OBN...I probably won't be able to participate in the other OBNs because a day has only 24 hours (sadly); I spent the rest of the day updating my outlook calendar for the next 4 weeks...took me about 4 hours...the opportunities are unbelievable...some many choices to make every day; honestly, every day there is always at least one company presentation that I would like to go to, a speaker I would like to see, an sports event that I want to attend...oh, and by the way: I have classes that I have to attend!
My college had one of its famous BOPs (oxfordish for party) that night: School Uniform BOP...unbelievable...if you know what I mean ;-) It was definitely a wild party!

That was my week 0! How was yours?

Member of the MBA class of 2031/32

2006-10-03T06:57:00.000Z

Here you can see a future Oxford MBA...starting to network with us future alumnis at the Amgen CEO reception very early in his life.

Amgen CEO reception part 2

2006-10-03T06:53:00.000Z

Made it through the first day

2006-10-03T06:40:00.000Z

Finally I made it through the 1st day!

INFORMATION OVERKILL!!!!

I guess I better learn "selective hearing" as quick as possible, otherwise I won't be able to handle all the information that is thrown at us.

Apart from a lot of administrative stuff, all MBAs had the opportunity to introduce themselves in front of the class in one minute (they actually did "kick" people off the stage for talking more than one minute). So I had my one minute of fame for the first day.

After free lunch and dinner, at 5PM, Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer arrived at the business school and talked to the class about leadership, corporate culture and challenges in the pharma industry. In the end we had the opportunity to ask questions and argue with the CEO of one of the world's largest pharma companies...what a great opportunity.
I actually talked to him personally over a glas of wine after the reception. Although I wasn't really impressed with what he had to say, it was still a great experience to talk to the CEO of the year of 2005.

Here are some more impressions of the reception afterwards:

Hell week start...part 2

2006-10-02T17:12:00.000Z

Hell week has begun...

2006-10-02T17:05:00.000Z

...with breakfast!

I'm still meeting lots of new new and interesting people - the diversity of this wonderful class is fascinating and unbelievable!