My first week in Fontainebleau

On Sunday morning, Fred and I grabbed some fresh croissants for breakfast and walked around Fontainebleau. He gave me a quick tour of campus, the Chateau of Fontainebleau and the centre of town. Fontainebleau is located about 70km South of Paris. It’s a wealthy town, with many shops such as Hédiard, Mont Blanc etc…

The campus is fairly nice, but not as spectacular as in Singapore. Some wings are kind of old and crummy, while others are almost brand new. There’s plentiful parking as most people live in neighbouring villages and drive to school. It’s truly a rural campus, right in the middle of the forest of Fontainebleau. There are many wild animals, which cause car crashes. Drunk driving is a major issue in the area, as public transportation is very limited and INSEAD parties often involve the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

I visited the local “Nicolas” and purchased an old family favourite, a rosé Domaine D’Ott, and enjoyed it with Fred and Karine. After a late afternoon lunch on the main plaza, we walked around some more before dinner at The Bacchus. Upon our return to Fred’s city centre flat, I backed up my computer and formatted the hard disk. After reinstalling Windows and setting up various software, I discovered that my 1.6GB Outlook backup (.pst file) was corrupted, and the content could not be retrieved. I lost over 20,000 emails. Disastrous! Although 19,976 emails were junk, I did lose a few very precious ones. Fortunately, my phone synchronises with Outlook so I did not lose my contact list, notes, tasks and calendar.

Monday morning was the first day of class. It was a lot of fun to talk to people I hadn’t seen in 2-4-6 months. After some happy reunions and some catching up, I attended the first session of Global Strategies of Management. I then purchased a SIM card from Virgin Mobile, which was launched last month and offers great deals compared to the incumbents. I had dinner with Coby and Tapan at a local restaurant. I had forgotten how smoky French restaurants and bars are!

On Tuesday morning, I signed our lease for the house I will be sharing with Ben, Gustav, Coby and Tapan. It’s located around 5-10 minutes from Campus and right on the N-7, a major Route Nationale. It’s a bit loud because of the trucks speeding by, but it’s otherwise absolutely fantastic. It’s HUGE! We have a monster living room, a large kitchen with a fireplace and a petit salon with fireplace on the ground floor. There are 2 bedrooms on the first floor, along with a largely useless “sports room” on the first floor. The master bedroom is the size of a small basketball court, with its own huge bathroom. The second bedroom has a double bed and nice decoration. There are two additional bedrooms on the top floor. The large one has a double bed and its own salon, while the single room is pretty plain and boring. The garden is almost the size of a football field, so we may host a very large gathering of friends. We have a large garage with a broken down Mercedes. I will post pictures of the house soon.

It took hours of negotiations to determine who would live in which room, and at what price. Coby will only stay with us for 3 weeks, so we transformed the petit salon into a decent makeshift bedroom. I was hoping to get the second bedroom. After we set up a complicated system of options, I ended up with the fantastic master bedroom for the first month, and have a choice between the single room and the petit salon and the single room. We celebrated our new house with a bottle of wine and went to a party at another charming house in another village.

We fully settled into our house on Wednesday. We purchased a BBQ, tons of cheese, loads of wine etc. I finally figured out how to turn on the hot water, after Tapan and Ben had to suffer through cold showers. I drove to Carrefour on the A6, which is the size of a Wal-Mart. On Friday, I dropped Leo at Orly airport and attended a class. Friday night, a neighbouring house held a very successful BBQ, where at least 100 people showed up.

On Sunday, I played golf with 6 other INSEADers at the Cely Country Club. It cost 55 euros for the round (INSEAD price on weekends) plus 17 euros for the club rentals. I actually played pretty well: 47 and 46 (with a 10). I hadn’t played in a while so it was fun. Sunday night, I had lasagne with my roommates and we figured out how to plug in our PC to the TV to play DVDs.

On Monday, I felt guilty of all the wine and cheese I have been consuming, so I signed up for the INSEAD gym, which is outrageously expensive at 50 euros per month. On Monday night, we received our grades from P4. I was not surprised to learn that I have fallen off the Dean’s List. The cut-off rises for P4, and while I am extremely close, I am below it. Oh well….

This Friday, I am flying to Stockholm with Coby. He has a couple of friends there and we will try to meet with them.

Before the end of INSEAD, I would like to visit a few more European cities, perhaps Prague, Madrid, Barcelona, Tallinn, Split, Rome, Zurich, Reykjavik etc… I am only taking 2.5 credits in period 5, so my workload is quite light. It will give me more time to work out, travel and enjoy myself before returning to the labour force. Job search is nearing its conclusion, and I will soon announce my plan post-MBA. I have also started thinking about what to do this summer, as most positions do not start until September.