A Trip to Loire Valley

On P1/P2 break I went on a two days trip to Loire Valley with my partner Inna. Loire Valley is an area in France located on both sides of the Loire river, and is rich with Castles, Chateaus and interesting cities.

The capital is Orlean, a city located 1 and a half hour drive from Fontainebleau. Unfortunately there is not much to see there, and another hour drive brought us to Chambord, the biggest castle in the area. It is truely magnificant, and the rich architecture of the roofs and terraces is impressive. There is a very interesting stare case with two parrallel starecases allowing two persons to go up without meeting. Leonardo De Vinci was involved in the engineering of the castle.

From there we went to Chambray castle (20 minutes drive), not very exciting.

Then we went to Blois (pernounces- blua), a city of medivial ages, a very impressive view from the other side of the Loire. A line of gray roofs, with several large castles and cathedrals, very dense on the mountain side. The Chateau is from 4 different architecture styles - Reinnesance, Gothic, and others. We walked on stairs that looks a lot like Piaza Espania in Rome, and in the couple of streets full of stores and pasteries.

The next stop was Embois, another small town, with a medivial style Chateau, near the Leonardo De Vinci museum. Again it was nice to walk for half an hour in the European Village style streets of this town.

The last stop of the day, and where we spent the night, is Tours, a large city located 3 and a half hours drive from Fontainebleau. They have a Gothis cathedral in the center of town (a small version of Notre-Dam in Paris?). It was a perfect location for next days' trip.

The next day we started with Azay Le Rideau Chateau, 20 minutes further from Tours. This Chateau is a small but impressive one, located on an artificial small lake, giving a reflection in the water. There is a small garden. Very nice. We came at 11:45 so only the gardens were open for a discounted price. It was sunday and there was a flee market out side the Chateau.

Next we started going back, visiting Villandry gardens. These are probably the largest and richest gardens in the Loire. Different shapes and colors, walking around different vegetables and fruits and a big artificial lakes and tunnels. You can walk up to the forest for a view of the entire area.

We ended the trip by visiting Chenonceaux castle. This is the most touristic attraction, and you can tell from the moment you enter the place. This chateau is the most impressive from the inside (although surprisingly small). It is located literally on the river, with several arcs holding it like a bridge. Pitty that the line of water is low. The gardens are nothing like Villandry but worth a visit. They have an old farm and a winary (the whole Loire is filled with winaries).

A little tip about the cost: Each chateau cost 7 to 10 euros per persons, sometimes there are discounts for students, or for persons below 25 years of age. Fuel (diesel) cost around 40 euros. And the hotel cost 35-100 Euros per night (search the web). You might want to sleep in Embois or Blois instead of Tours, or look for a small place on the way.

And a word about the roads in France: The highways cost money (probably 30-40 euros for the entire trip). Otherwise, N152 (I think) takes you all the way to Tours. It's partly yellow and partly red, but most of the ride is in one lane, and you can get stuck behind a slow car for half an hour. But the road is pretty, so there is an upside. Once you get near a chateau there are good way signs.

INSEAD Impact

(3-10-07)

Advetures as Academic Rep

Ever since I got here I wanted to do something different. I figured that INSEAD is the place to take initiatives and engage in activities that I have not done before. I looked for several things that could interest me, and finally decided to become a Section Rep.

In the first two periods we are divided into 4 sections. Each section has 5 representatives: The Social Rep (responsible for drinks, events, activities, champaigne fines for people who are late or fall asleep in classes), Academic Rep (responsible for all program related issues), Career Rep (responsible for connections with career services), Campus Rep, and IT Rep. The role that suited me most was Academic Rep, and I was elected for the role (let's say that no-one wanted the position more than me).

And so I found myself dealing with all sorts of situations: the class did not understand the material in one of our classes, so I engaged several activities to handle the matter: I am in touch with the professor and we aligned to make the subject more approachable to the croud, and I organized a session where students from strong background in the subject sat with the students who found the subject hard; I arranged (and taught) an Excel Workshop for my section (next week I do it again for entire class - pretty scary); I delivered messages from the professors to the students and vice versa. Quite a challenge, and a little time consuming- but a lot of fun. I found it fun to have people discussing the professors and the lessons with you, exchanging stories and suggestions. Very fulfilling position. Yesterday I had a meeting with Dean Fatas, who wanted ro hear from us the major issues that we faced and how we are handling our duty.

Student Council

In the last week it was announced that the next Student Council would be elected next week. I collaborated with a team that runs for the position. After we get elected (of course we will) we will be in the Student Council starting p3. Should be very interesting and a unique experience for me.

Our team is called INSEAD Impact, and we have a proactive agenda. Our moto is "Easier INSEAD For You - No B.S.", and we have a bull (no relation to Meryl Lynch) with cross on it to emphasize the last term. We worked all week on posters and flyers (lots of hard work), and we had a presentation.

Our competition are a group called "Show Us". They decided to turn INSEAD into an american high school (Veronice Mars or something), and made a campaigne with all the accessories and tararam. Agenda was not really necessary in their case, but it should be a closed call any how.

Voting ends tonight, and results are tomorrow, so I will update when we win.

Social Life at INSEAD

INSEAD is a great experience and an oportunity to meet new people. Actually I have a lot of fun, and besides the studying, it is a good change in my life. Before I went to INSEAD I was stuck in a routin and now I feel that my life is pretty exciting. Too bad that currently my wife, Inna, is not here with me.

Well, to illustrate what I am talking about, here are the activities from the previous week.

At Monday I had dinner at friends house.

At Wednesday there was Rosh Hashana dinner (Jewish new year) at friends. The next day there was the official Rosh Hashana dinner at Shangri-La - over 30 people came (Israelis and Jewish). Everyone contributed a dish and it was wonderful and very exciting.

At Friday we had a group dinner at the house of one of our group members, an Indian dinner cooked by his lovely wife. It was great we loughed all evening. It really bonded us as a group, and we learnt a lot about each other cultures.

After dinner I went to a custom party, Quention Tarantino style, in Shangri-La.

On Saturday there was a very big BBQ in the Mint House in Bois Le Rois, and an unexpected number of students showed up. It was amazing, and after eating tons of meat, we ended up playing ping pong and poker (some of us even played Golf).

Thoughts about the MBA Program of INSEAD

8-Sep-2007

"Don't obssess with the grades", told us Dean Fatas last week in the introduction meeting. He said that we all passed the "applications test", so we don't need to worry so much about the tests in INSEAD. This is the moto of the school - grades are not important, and that is why a Z-score policy is apply (the grades are completely relative, in normal distribution). The dean told us that everyone would get good grades and bad grades, simply because no-one is the best in every course. One course you are up, and the other you are down, and that is completely normal (just make sure not to be in the bottom for every course). By the way, the grades are confidential and we are not allowed to reveal them on-campus-recruitment. Some students make it to the dean's list.


This, and the open-door policy at INSEAD, is well reflected in most of the courses. The professors demand highly of us - we can't be late (and we often start at 8:30 - traffic can be really annoying near the obelisque in that hours), we must prepare ourselves before each class (and there is simply no time between classes to prepare), and we can't miss any lecture (this may result in a failing grade). For example, we have a professor that don't let people in if they are late - he starts talking, and 10 seconds afterwards people try to enter, he says to them: "You are late, you have to leave", and that is it! Someone calculated that one lecture cost us something like 150$ (pretty big loss).

However, the attitude is very friendly. We call the professors by their first names, we can come to them with any questions and problems, and some of them are really entertaining and encouraging.

In the first semester we study finance, economics, accounting, statistics and leadership. The first 4 I already encountered at some level during my first degree, but the last one is really new and fun - we watch movies in class, play card games and other fun activities with the purpose of allowing us to figure out what leadership is all about.

The more analytical courses are not that hard. The economics is taught really slowly. The finance we should learn from the book (because it is taught quite dryly). The statistics is quite entertaining (and the math is not hard - it was much harder in Advanced Probability at the Technion). Financial Accounting (not the most interesting subject to say the lease) is actually taught very thoroughly and the professor keeps us occupied and "cold-calls" us - quite bizarre that this way the course is actually digestible.

There is a lot of stuff to read between the classes, and my group found it best to solve exercises together (I like it). You don't have time to breathe (hence why I did not post much lately), but you can figure out what is important from the rest. The thing is that you must prepare for the class BEFORE it actually happens, because the professor might pick on you. Like in first grade, everybody must sit in the same location in all classes (of course I was selected to sit in the front row), and we need to put a sign with our names before us.

As a December 07 student told me: The life at INSEAD is spread across four axes: Academic, Social, Career, and Clubs. You can put the weight only in academics, but you may choose to spread your time in all of those four axes, and might even benefit from it. This is an advice that I intend to keep in mind.

Opening Ceremony and Welcome Cocktail

(28-Aug-2007)

Well, this is a night to remember. First there was a 30 minutes welcome speaches from the dean, Prof Antonio Fatas, and some other speakers. I liked the speech of the head of alumni , Mr. Daniel Labrecque, who said "When I sat in your places, 25 years ago, there was a guest speaker as well, but I can't remember his name or what he had to say". Basically, he said that it is going to be an intense and interesting year.


After the speeches, there was a cocktail party. We all dressed up in suits (except for some wise guys who decided to come in Bermuda shorts and moccasins). There was champagne and Kir Royale (apparently Kasis with Champagne) - but not enough. Well, after 2 glasses my head spun anyhow.


The intention of the evening was to meet the other students, so they packed the 300 students in a room with no air condition, so after 20 minutes everybody ran outside to the balcony where there was not enough room for everybody.


I am not used to talking to people that I don't know, so I followed the lead of the other students (mostly the Amercian ones - do they teach mingling in school over there?). Basically, you see someone standing alone, or a group of people that has an open space between them, go ahead, shake hands, say your name and where you are from and ask the other gentlemen or women their name and country. Then you can circle through these questions:

• What did you do before you arrived to INSEAD?
• What are your plans after the school?
• When did you arrive to France?
• Where do you live around here?
• What is your section?

I shook a lot of hands (almost like a politician), and put on a smile all night. If I was lucky then the person I was talking to was interesting and we had some common ground, so I could actually enjoy myself in the conversation.

I was impressed with the diversity of the students. I knew it will be like this when I applied, but seeing it with my own eyes was amazing. Almost everybody in the room was born in one place, but lives in another. A lot are managers and consultants, some of them 26 years old with already a rich international backgorund.

This was hard work, and I was exhausted in the end. So we went to the restaurant, where we met a very nice guy from France, who shared his religous and professional point of view. It was the best time of the night.

My First Day in France

(21-Aug-2007)

Our flight was at 1 AM, and we almost missed it (duty free…). That’s a wonderful start, wouldn’t you agree? After I settled down in my Exit seats on the plane (which appeared to be actually the row in front of the Exit, so we couldn’t lower the seat backs), I thought a bit about the day to come.

In order for everything to start well the first day must go smoothly. There were several obstacles to overcome (yes, I know, too much application essays…): the overweight (or how to send 100 kilos on the plane when I am only allowed 50), the car (or how to pay for something in advance and still get it), the ride (or how to use a GPS and to avoid making the 60 km trip in 3 hours), and the apartment (or how to see pictures of a dreamy apartment and end up in a hell hole).

Well, the overweight (we actually managed to send 20 kilos above the limited weight) was all done with, after the nice receptionist in the airport agreed gracefully to allow us on the plane with a trolley and a huge backpack.
As for the car, I was just charged 4000 Euros for the leasing (which was done by a company in Lebanon from all places by email), without getting a receipt, so obviously I couldn’t help myself from thinking that I will get to Charles De Gaul Airport, and no-one will know who I am and what the hack I want. How disappointing, the guys from TT Cars were great, supplied the car on schedule, and even explained to me in perfect English how to get to Fontainblue. Talk about two birds on one strike. The car – a Citroen C3 - is a real piece of crap, but that’s another story.

We arrived to Champagne Sur Seine on 9:30, amazingly enough (I was almost certain that everything will go wrong, so I had notified them the day before that I will arrive at noon if not later), and even managed to find the house (with no address).

The landlords actually knew who we were, and the apartment looked just like in the pictures. It is a gorgeous little place, with 2 sunny fully-equipped rooms. The huge balcony has amazing view of the Seine and the village that lies beyond it, Thomery. The church gongs every hour, and we are located in the middle of the forest. The only things to disturb our peace are the train that goes every hour, the August winter that suddenly came upon us (with no heating because this is supposed to be summer, and not rainy with 13 degrees), and the smell of the apartment that made us spend the entire afternoon cleaning it furiously (after we visited INSEAD and bought groceries for 40 Euros in a local supermarket – ATAC).

I must say that overall the day went perfect, and tomorrow we will make the errands to connect us to the rest of the world –the internet, phone, TV, bank and so on.