Day 215: Cricket Mania

Cricket fever has hit INSEAD! The Cricket World Cup is being played in India at the moment and students with Indian ethnicity make up the largest national group on campus (~10%) so it's a pretty hot topic at the water cooler these days. More people have probably come to appreciate (or at least understand!) cricket in the past few weeks than ever before. Tomorrow, India play Sri Lanka in the World Cup final in Mumbai and I know quite a few of my classmates are already on flights back to India as I'm typing this so as to catch the action live in the stadium. 1 particularly passionate cricket fan I know is paying almost SGD$4k for flights and tickets for him and his wife just for this weekend! I'm actually a little jealous (even though I only JUST got introduced to the game 2 weeks ago) but the chance to watch your country's team play in a World Cup Final of the nation's #1 sport in your home town can only be described as a once in a lifetime experience. If you don't pay the money now, is double that amount of money going to be able to "buy" you this experience some time in the future? Triple that amount? Probably not.

Catching the Semi-Final game on Wednesday at Krish with the Indian contingent was quite a spectacle. My  classmates were jumping up and down, yelling triumphantly as the Pakistani wickets fell, and these were my normally mild-mannered classmates! I can't even begin to describe what the more rowdy ones were doing. ;)

In other news, the first "dings" of rejection bells were heard as applications were sent out for jobs and subsequently rejected. Apparently, it's a ritual that when you get a job rejection, you strike the bell in the bar to  let out your frustration and disappointment. Your friends might also see you there and perhaps buy you a beer as you all commiserate and share the various rejection letters you all have received collectively.

Over the past 2 weeks, I have also been volunteering to give mock interviews for my peers preparing for case interviews (mainly for consulting but other industries are beginning to use them as well). You can definitely feel a bit of frenzy building up on campus with regards to interview prep. It almost feels like people are competing to see who can do the most mock interviews. There are a lot of resources out there that say you should do this or do that. I say you should just find a style that works for you and stick with it. You should not have to force yourself to fit some mould. If that's the case, then maybe that isn't the right style for you?

I don't believe in stressing out too much about it because when you are stressed, you sorta lose that natural touch which I think is important to bring to the table (other people may disagree). You want to present yourself for who you are and see if that fits with the company/people are you applying to work with. I take interviews very seriously and prepare for them in advance but at the same time I try to be as natural and calm as possible. I like to see them as conversations rather than interrogations!

Day 202: World events and recruitment as "dating"

I believe one of the myths of blogging is that when someone doesn't update for a while that nothing is really happening. Contrary to that belief, I think too much has been happening in the world right now and especially the past 2 weeks that it's been rare for me to take a break from things to really reflect about it.

Outside of INSEAD, we've seen continued uprisings across the Middle East and most violently in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. Citizens have been rising up against their governments in a show of their dissatisfaction with the status quo and government forces have been cracking down brutally to control the protests. The UN only just recently passed a resolution declaring a "no fly zone" over Libya to prevent excessive brutality of Col Gaddafi's forces against his own citizens.

We've also experienced the day that "shook the world" on the 11th of March in the form of a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake that realigned the earth's axis slightly and shifted Japan 4 meters to the east. You would have thought that the earthquake itself would have been the most damaging episode of that event but it turned out to be the subsequent tsunami that really wreaked the most havoc by sweeping away entire towns and cities or covering them in mud and debris. In the aftermath of the tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear power plant began to suffer a meltdown due to the shutting down of pumps meant to cool the fuel rods, creating yet another potential disaster that as yet people have no idea how to quantify or really think about. As news trickles in from the front line of this unfolding situation, people do not yet know what is the appropriate response to such news and something like this has never happened before. Do you stay and help your nation in this time of need, not really knowing how things if you are putting yourself and your family in harm's way or do you save yourself, evacuate from the surrounding areas and come back when things have cleared up? I don't think there's any right answer to these questions and that is what is making it so difficult for people to respond.

Inside of INSEAD, we are fortunately not to have suffered from any disasters of this nature and we are physically detached from the situations. However, as some of our classmates have friends and relatives in these affected regions, we have also joined forces in organising fund raising events to aid the relief efforts. It is a very heartwarming show of solidarity with the rest of the world as we help out our fellow man. You can never predict where the next natural disaster will strike next or in what form.

Recruitment fever is officially also upon us now that we are in P4 and people start realising that they are fast approaching the end of their time in school and need to figure out what they are doing next. I have been caught up in the wave of activity as well, researching companies, reaching out to my network to speak to people about opportunities, attending on campus recruitment talks and helping out my peers with case interviews. The curse of choice means that people realise that they CAN do quite a number of things given their work experience and interests but find it hard to really narrow down what exactly they WANT to do. My peers and I are all ambitious and driven people otherwise we would not be in business school to begin with, but having to choose just a few things to focus on among the wide range of options out there is not easy.

The whole recruitment process is kinda like dating really. You see an interesting company that you would like to work for and then realise that the criteria they have listed for a successful candidate sounds a bit like your own profile and so you apply, summarising your best intentions and achievements in a document that is meant to capture their imagination. The company of course is highly desirable and has many "suitors" and if she likes what she sees, she calls together these "suitors" and thus begins the tango of interviews, case studies and assessments to help her really understand if you really are the one for her. Through the various interactions and conversations you have along the way, both sides begin to get a better appreciation of the other and what the other party has to offer; most importantly I feel, whether there's a good fit with the personality/culture of both parties. Both parties tend to be extremely polite and pleasant as you "court" each others' feelings while at the same time try to get a better sense of the other. Along the way, you may be rejected and left heartbroken especially when you think that things are going well, only to have the rug pulled out from under you. But you have to pick yourself up as soon as possible as the next opportunity is just around the corner and you might miss it if you are still dwelling on the past. No effort is ever wasted effort of course as the experience only makes you sharper, more self aware of your strengths, weaknesses and your own character if you bother to take a step back and reflect. It may take weeks, maybe even months, but if you keep on trying, you eventually find a company that wants you as much as you want them. Both of you become excited about the future together as you begin what hopefully is a rewarding and fulfilling relationship.

Day 187: Last day at Niseko

Despite my unfortunate accident, I must say that I like Niseko over other ski resorts that I've been to in the past. The powder is really excellent, there are a lot of slopes to choose from and they are not too crazy, the food is great and the onsens are heavenly. Not many other places have the whole package quite like this place. No wonder then that property prices here are ridiculously high although I hear that it's seen quite a dip lately due to the strong yen and now it's much more of a buyers' market. Apparently it's much less busy now than in previous seasons.

Our visit here in Japan was slightly tarnished by an unpleasant incident yesterday after dinner (which unfortunately was not that good either). One of members of our group came to pick us up from the restaurant in Kutchan and accidentally parked in the parking lot of the restaurant next door instead (she doesn't read Japanese). She had only been there at most 15 minutes but the owner of said restaurant got so upset that he parked his own car in front of our van in an attempt to prevent us from leaving. He demanded that we pay him 3000 yen for parking illegally in his lot. After getting someone to translate for us, apparently this sign said something to the effect of "if you're not eating at Izakaya Torisho and you park here, it's a 3000 yen penalty". Something we all can understand the principle of except that we don't speak or read Japanese so there was no way for us to have understood that sign. The restaurant owner clearly did not give a damn whether we understood Japanese or not and kept shouting over and over again "3000 yen!". Maybe he's had a few bad incidents in the past (we will never know as he did not speak English and we did not understand Japanese, although we knew enough to know that he was beginning to get vulgar with us) but he really came across very poorly as extremely money minded and lacking in understanding of what it means to be someone in a foreign land. After we managed to dig a way out of the barricade, he sent his wife to stand in front of our van to prevent us from leaving. How crazy is that??? We knew there was no silent escape from this if he was willing to sacrifice his wife (how "noble" of him) in exchange for 3000 yen.

It was an honest mistake on our part and we apologised profusely. There was no sign that any of his customers were turned away as a result of our parking there as it was almost closing time when my friend came to pick us up but clearly he just wanted his money. We tried to negotiate a lesser fee when we realised he definitely wanted money over anything else but even then he rejected our offer insisting that we pay the penalty as written on his Japanese sign.

We then had a brain wave. Since parking was free for customers of his restaurant, why didn't we go to his restaurant and order something for less than 3000 yen. We would then automatically be his customers, in which case our parking would be perfectly within "the rules". Realising that he had been out-foxed, this was when he REALLY reared his unreasonable side and refused to honour "the rules" that he had set out in writing from the start. Recognising that there was no winning this argument unless we had spent at least 3000 yen, we then proceeded to sit in his restaurant to warm up (no point standing out in the snow right?) and order a couple of beers till we reached 3000 yen. At least this way we got something for our money (instead of nothing at all).

I don't know if they have ever been overseas before in a country where they don't speak the language and but I hope that one day they understand the frustration of what we went through when coming across really unreasonable people.

Word to the wise people:
DO NOT GO TO IZAKAYA TORISHO IN KUTCHAN
The owner is mean and unreasonable =(

 

I think people should always be nice to tourists, because one day... you will be a tourist yourself.