The worst week at INSEAD

This week was the single worst week at INSEAD for the whole year. (I hope) There were several papers to hand in, including Finance, Social entrepreneurship, a 20% quiz in Strategies for Asia Pacific etc.

I had organized a “student sharing session” with two other students, after Shanti from Netherlands suggested we organize it. Shanti is the friend who arranged storage of my suitcase in The Netherlands when I went to Africa. I prepared a short presentation on micro-finance, and my experience in Tanzania. The other two presentations were about wealth management and private/offshore banking. We held our session on Tuesday night The turnout was quite low because we picked a night with a competing company info session on hedge funds, and with so many group assignments due the next day. I was still happy to share my experience with about 20 students.

On Wednesday night, I organized a Canadian Dinner, as there are over 20 Canadians currently on campus between the two intakes. I had made reservations at Brewerkz, a micro-brewery at Riverside. When we arrived, they offered the “Annex”, a private party room with a large screen TV, a pool table, darts etc. It was a great success, as every Canadian but 2 made it, as well as Christian, my friend from the Canadian Embassy, and a random Canadian who somehow learned about our gathering.

On Thursday, I had 5 courses! 4 courses per day is extremely rare, and 5 is absolutely extraordinary. The last one was a panel discussion with a VC and two entrepreneurs, including Ash Singh, a successful Sikh entrepreneur who was born in Thornhill, studied in Hong Kong and operates several ventures from Singapore. According to Google, he is the “coolest Sikh” in the world. We exchanged contacts, and I noticed that there are several pictures of me on his blog. Take a look at www.ashsingh.com, it’s a very interesting read! After the meeting, I went to the food court for an innocent dinner, but ended up drinking Tiger with two Germans and a Belgian discussing history and politics until past 3am. It was a very short night, because I had to get up at 5:30 to catch a plane to Manilla.