This entry is all about avoiding the three looming papers and valuation project that are due next week and instead filling you in on the summer options here at Said Business School.

Essentially, you have a choice of three summer scenarios, with some room for creativity and combinations:
1. Strategic Consulting Project (SCP): This is an eight-week consulting gig performed with a team of four students…I’ll explain more in a minute.
2. Summer Electives: Two week-long summer electives (you can two at the same time and get it over with in one busy week) also provide the necessary credits for degree completion. Taking electives frees up the rest of your summer to do an internship, write your next business plan, or sit on a beach somewhere far from the business school.
3. Thesis: Individual research thesis…unless you are really into research and/or have a project that would warrant this kind of work, the thesis option is not a very popular one.

Summer Consulting Project:
The SCP is a great opportunity to actually try out all the stuff you’ve learned over the year. While I obviously haven’t done mine yet, I’ve been told by various alumni that they really did use something from every class during the SCP. Sponsors (corporates, non-profits, individuals, etc) for the projects are solicited by the Projects Office at the School, and this year they presented a list of about 40 different projects ranging from a feasibility study with the Borough President in on how to support social entrepreneurship in the Bronx, NY to a study on the impact of 20/20 Cricket by the International Cricket Council, to a merger integration project for the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. The School coordinates a bidding system in which teams bid for projects in order of preference, and submit CVs and cover letters for each project of interest. Teams can bid for up to ten projects. The companies review the teams, typically interview several, then choose the team they like best. In general, it seemed like most teams got their first or second choice. Most projects include a travel/living expense stipend, though there is a cap on compensation. Each project has a scope of work and deliverables clearly defined ahead of time, and students have to turn in a final report to the exam schools at the end of the eight-week session.

Students can also source their own projects by approaching companies that they’re interested in earlier in the year and setting up a project directly. Companies work with the project office to make things “official” and students are guaranteed the project if it is self-sourced.

I am SUPER excited about the project that we ended up with. Four of us will be heading to Tanzania for the summer to work on new business development plans for an organization called APOPO. APOPO has developed a system for training giant African pouched rats to sniff out landmines—does it get any better than that? I didn’t think so, either. Here’s a video of what they’re doing:

SummerElectives:

Week-long summer electives are offered from the end of Trinity term through the first week in September. Several of the really popular electives from Trinity are repeated, so if you don’t get into the class that you want in the third term there may be a chance to take it in the summer. While the courses are condensed and intensive, I’ve heard that some of the best courses of the year are taught over the summer. This is also a great option if you’re looking to set up an individual internship or other type of non-assessed arrangement during the summer months.

Thesis:
As I said, not many people choose this option, though it’s a great one to have if you need the entire summer for an internship, or if you have future plans that would benefit from a dedicated research project.

Finally, the school allows students to extend the MBA into a 15 month program, allowing you to take the entire summer for an internship, and then participating in an SCP from September—November. This is great, again, because it allows for additional flexibility. The only catch is that you need to find three other students who are on the same time schedule. You could write a thesis in the fall term, as well.

May has been really busy so far. It started on May 1st with the traditional May Morning, i.e. the Magdalen College Choir singing from atop the Magdalen Tower at 6am in the morning. I don’t know how many thousands of people assembled in front of Magdalen College at that early hour but it definitely is another one of these weird Oxford traditions which no one really understands but which are a lot of fun, especially since they served free shots of Bloody Mary with the breakfast at the Big Bang afterwards. That’s probably the first time I had a Bloody Mary for breakfast but it was a good way to start the day and get ready for the lectures. On that day, I had Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation from 8:45am to 12:15pm; then, I attended a seminar on Fair Trade from 12:30 to 1:30pm before I had the Business in China lecture from 1:30 to 4:45pm.

Some more lectures on Friday before the weekend started with our Elvis Happy Hour at the Business School. Every Friday during term, our catering service organises a Happy Hour. In that week, they came up with something special and organised an Elvis Tribute Band. Really great fun!

Later on, the party continued at some friends’ place. Looking at my calendar, I see that I had meetings with two different study groups the following day. I wonder how I managed to attend and be productive. Anyways, on Saturday, Keble College  had its ball – themed For bidden City. That was the first proper College Ball I went to here in Oxford and absolutely worth going.

But doing the MBA is not all about partying. Lots of work the following week, especially since we went to the MBAT from 8th to 11th May and thus had to work on all the assignments due immediately after this great event before we could leave for Paris. Additionally, there were two more highlights before the MBAT: a talk by Lloyd Dorfman, the founder and chairman of Travelex, and a black tie dinner at my college. The talk by Lloyd Dorfman – he presented some anecdotes from his life as an entrepreneur – was interesting, especially since I got the chance to attend the dinner afterwards; and black tie dinners at my college really are always fantastic!

The MBAT in Paris is organised by the HEC business school. Many of the leading business schools gather there and compete in different disciplines – from salsa dancing, tug-of-war, rugby and all the more traditional sports to pétanque. As a member of our sailing team, I’m very proud that we won gold in that discipline and finished first ahead of Cambridge and the London Business School. Needless to say, that it was not only about the sports but mainly about just having fun, partying and meeting students from other business schools. The MBAT is a truly unique and amazing event!

We came back to Oxford on Monday morning. The big thing of the week was SCP interviews. The SCP is our Strategic Consulting Project which for us is one of the options for July and August. In teams of four, we could apply for several different projects. All the organisations did their interviews last week. We went to London for a project based in Canary Wharf and did some phone interviews for projects based overseas. I’m really curious which project we will get. But no matter where we will end up, I’m sure it will be a great experience! I’m really looking forward to working together with my team; they are all great guys.

On the party side, I went to an exchange dinner at Trinity on Wednesday and to another one at Brasenose on Friday before we all went to the Cuban Bop at St Antony’s. Besides all that, there were some more assignments to be handed in, e.g. a two-page individual piece of work for Social Finance which I just managed to upload before the Brasenose exchange dinner on Friday.

You may have heard by now about MBATs—the MBA Olympics hosted by HEC outside of Paris. Trusted alums told me that this would be the best event of the year, and I wasn’t disappointed. Go to www.mbat.org to check out the official event site. I’ve been told that organizing the event (4 days, 2000 MBAs, 24 sports!) is part of the operations management assessment for the HEC students.  

About 160 of us piled into three buses early Thursday morning for the 12+ hour ride to Paris. First thing the next morning, game on. It was pretty fun to see the athlete come out in people that you wouldn’t have expected (or seen) otherwise. One guy on our course ran the 100 meters in 11.8 seconds on a shoddy track! Another guy was a phenomenal rock climber. A friend of mine who claims to “jog” occasionally came out and placed third on our team in the 7 km cross country race, beating all the girls and most of the other guys! Needless to say, I’m not jogging with her anymore ; )

Our ultimate frisbee team placed second overall. It was the last sport of the first day, so we ended up with a huge cheering squad. We had to go up against London Business School, which had a bunch of American guys who had played a lot before. We were down 4-0 after about 10 minutes, then managed to bring it back to 5-5, then they took off again and I think we lost 10-6 or something. It was a great game, though, and so fun to have lots of people watching, cheering, saying things like, “wow, I didn’t know this is how you played frisbee!”

I ran cross country too, which was literally the most pathetic race of my life–I wasn’t planning to run, but got woken up by the cross country captain at 7:30 am saying “we need one more girl to field two teams…you have to save the day!!” Of course, I’m a sucker for saving the day so I stumbled out of bed and ran to catch the bus to the starting point. I was exhausted from the day before, dehydrated, confused, and the course was really long and really hilly…I think I ran about 10 minute miles the whole way just trying not to die. In the end, they didn’t count our second team, so the whole thing was pointless. The only good out of it was that it gave me a chance to preview the course for the mountain biking race later that day. Let’s just say it was a lot more fun on a bike.

Our guys rugby team won the whole tournament—I haven’t ever paid attention to rugby before coming here, but it is by far the roughest game I’ve ever seen. At the end of the last match the guys all looked like they’d been through a war zone—dislocated shoulders, twisted ankles, scrapes, stitches, bruises…but wearing their gold medals proudly. The weather was gorgeous all weekend, and a bunch of us went to Versailles for the afternoon before catching the overnight bus back to Oxford. Now, back to life—3 assignments due this week.

We are already in week 2 of our last regular term, the so-called Trinity Term. Actually, this term, our lectures already started in week 0, so, it’s the third week of classes, i.e. it would be the third week for me if I hadn’t missed all the lectures in week 0. The Easter Break started with the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. That’s a huge conference hosted by the Business School. I think there were more than 700 delegates present, among them the three Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Jody Williams, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.

The week after that, the Oxford Literary Festival took place at Christ Church College. Since I really love books I went to quite a few events there, e.g. to a discussion with Louis de Bernières and to a really interesting talk by Robert Fisk, the Middle East Correspondent for the Independent. It’s fascinating how much he knows about the history of and the present situation in the Middle East. If you ever get the chance to go to one of his talks you should definitely go for it. I’m sure his books are really interesting, too. Unfortunately, their length is a real disincentive to read them.
That reminds me of some of the readings we have to do for our classes. Although most of them are quite interesting unfortunately these are often long and I just don’t manage to read all of them. But before getting back to our lectures, let me continue with the Easter Break.
Well, during the break, there were also two major assignments (Financial Management and the Entrepreneurial Project) due. So, it wasn’t all about enjoying life in and around Oxford for me. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the break. My girl-friend visited for a few days. Although that’s really unusual we had a wonderful snowy day in Oxford.

We then got a rental car and went to the Cotswolds for a couple of days. In Stratford-upon-Avon, we saw a Shakespeare play (The Merchant of Venice) at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. In Cheltenham, we had lunch at a two-star restaurant, the Champignon Sauvage. Besides that, we visited Winchcombe, Charlecote Park, Sudeley Castle, Broadway Tower and Chastleton House. I was really impressed by all these villages, castles and so on, and can only recommend visiting the Cotswolds.

It’s one of the advantages of studying in Oxford, not only that there’s so much happening in Oxford itself but also that there are so many interesting places close by. For example, I still definitely want to visit the Blenheim Palace and Salisbury.
During the break, we had two more conferences at the business school, the Summit on Business & Environment and the Private Equity Forum. Since I couldn’t get enough of these conferences I went to another one in Germany during week 0. That’s the reason why I missed all my lectures then. Anyways, I think I have managed to catch up with everything by now. I chose quite a variety of courses this term. My most favourite Trinity courses are Corporate Social Responsibility & Ethical Marketing and Business in China.

Watz crackin kids….well trinity term is about to get rolling…here is a looooooooong update…it talks about what i consider one of the highlights of my oxford year…trip to dubai! It was my very first time to the middle east region and it just blew me away. Below is a day by day break up…. What else…sick as a dog since i came back..35degress Celsius to 8 with some hail will do that to u. I write this fighting the flu. Also have a longish trip coming up in bout a weeks time…NY-Austin-California. Time to take the business idea on the road and also meet up with some family and friends. So without further ado, i present to u – the Dubai show!

Day 0:  7 of us on a flight from Gatwick, London to Dubai. I nearly missed the flight as the damn cab refused to come in the am (530 to be precise) and I just about caught the bus to Gatwick by jumping the Q. I had to – the next bus was a couple of hours later which means I miss the flight. There is an unforgettable story to share even on this flight trip (yup…tat is how interesting this trip was). So we are on the 45 minute flight from doha to dubai. 4 of us are sitting on adjacent seats in the mid row of the flight. Suddenly one of the people on the left side of the seats along our row calls the air hostess and complains that one of us is harassing him. We were all busy watching some stupid gig on the tv then and we look at him as if ‘what the ..’. The air hostess asks him as to how is it that he is being bothered to which he replies : “ He (pointing to one of us) is removing bones from his neck!!!”. I swear we thought we heard him incorrectly and the air hostess obviously chose to ignore the complaint. Wait it only gets interesting. We get down at the airport and are moving towards customs and much to our surprise, the person has lodged a complaint with the airport cops and hence that one of us is thus held back for q & a. Cut to and hour and half later we are upstairs in the Dubai police joint at the airport, and speaking some hindi I find out the the complaint made is still the same: “that one of us removed his kidney and bones from his neck using some black magic!”. The cops though obviously in disbelief have to entertain the complaint and they confiscate the passport of one of us and ask the person making the complaint to go get an xray to prove otherwise and ask us to ocme and collect our passport the other day!! I kid u not! Its difficult to believe because even as we were going through this, I was messaging back and forth with a couple of local friends in dubai and they obviously thot I was making this up sitting in some bar. Though it was very very late, we all needed a drink when we got to the hotel at like 2 am. We hit the bar right before the last call, caught a pint and went up to crash at 3. Obvious as my luck would be my dear friend with whom i was sharing the hotel accommodation was flying in later that night and he lost his bags. So in all honestly I really slept at 5 am with a morning alarm set for 7.00 am. Dubai hadn’t really kicked off well at all!

Day 1: Up to the automated morning alarm service, the day started in the fast lane. Quick breakfast and we were on our way to the Shell office. They were located at the Convention Tower. This was my first serious view of Dubai as we were on our way there in the bus. My first impression was Los Angeles on steroids (to borrow a commonly used way to describe Dubai in Dubai by expats). Wide roads, traffic and legoland like contructions. Overall for Sheik zayad road and most of new dubai think Los Angeles weds Las Vegas. At Shell we had a great morning. We had the head of the Middle east regions and 

Day 2 (the day that changed my life..for now): Day 2 was to be in Abu Dhabi all day. After a looooong bus ride (1.5 hours) we got to the ADIA Tower – our first meet for the day. This is the morning meet which would really start to turn me around somewhat in awe of the magnitude of stuff going on in the middle east region. Though a highly covert sovereign fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority might well be the worlds biggest investor fund (though they do not officially publish their numbers) and the second biggest international institutional investor in the world. They recently struck a deal on November 26, 2007, with Citigroup, the largest US bank, by agreeing to invest 7.5 Billion dollars in Citigroup. This deal gives ADIA 4.9% of the New York-based bank, making it the largest shareholder, with Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud of Kingdom Holding of Saudi Arabia the second-largest shareholder, with 4.3%. But what was ‘surreal’ was the obvious richness seeped into the 33rd floor of that building. A fantastic reception, without doubt the most breath taking view I have ever seen overlooking the corniche and a snappy presentation. We obviously could not get much details as previously mentioned it is an organization that as a policy does not divulge much details. Personally I felt it would be a great organization to work for. If morning session left me dazed, I had to recover fast as the afternoon lunch was hosted for us by the Undersecretary of the Department of Civil Services, Ali Rashed Al Ketbi – a very friendly young personality with a sharp acumen, The lunch was a lavish 4 course middle eastern meal at the Emirates Palace a 7 star wonder and the biggest land mass hotel in the world. I also had the good fortune of having a wonderful lunch time conversation with a British academician who had for the past 18 years been in the middle east region helping out with strategy with regards nation building activities. The meeting was insightful as it was obvious that one cannot ignore the middle east region of the world. Infact this might well be the region that pulls the world through the ongoing recession (i personally believe the states is in recession currently as i write). The biggest problem that the MENA (main players Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Dubai, Sharjah, Oman, Bahrain) might have is too much liquidity which is causing inflation. Except for Dubai the other regions have enough oil reserves to last another 5 decades. Most importantly they are really focused on investing in infrastructure (universities, art, research, telecomm) a lot more carefully not the repeat the 90ies mistake and they can do it without fully opening the floodgates to the world like Dubai. Dubai today has 95% expats and just 5% local emiraties. But then again, Dubai has no choice – they are adopting a Singapore weds Las Vegas model and have successfully made it into a top trading and tourist spot. As you shall read in the following days, some of their tourist destinations are simply jaw dropping and make anything i have seen in any top spot in the states ny, la, vegas, miami or london, beijing, mumbai pale in comparison. The bus ride back was dreamy! Lots of sleepy snaps should be testimony to that. The evening was a wonderfully chilled out event serving the perfect antidote. Chandni, Farhaan and myself went down to the Jumeira beach. Falafel wraps by the seaside, be giving them a brain dump of my day so far, followed up by a nice meal at Saladacious (yup the duck pasta rocked most ;-)!) and then onto Baristi. Another big ass resturant cum bar cum sheesha place on the sea. A few drinks, walk down the beach cum bar (yup it was that long) and then on our way back we got a ride on of the electric vehicles and the guy himself a newly transported expat actually took us down to the pier – a drive usually forbidden for the ‘commoners’  Phew…all in all. This is a crazy part of the world with things changing every day and every night, lot of action, people and youth from world over and way too much cash. That can be a heady mix!

Day 3 (anything’s possible!): Ok i m running out of time. Been 20 days since i started writing bout this trip. So I ll rush thru it now..:-). But day 3 we went to Nakheel…These guys literally are magician real estate people. They can do anything. Sheikh Mo woke up one day and wanted to increase the coastline of dubai from 60 odd km to much more as real estate on beach is valuable. The crack team of HBS alum come up i guess with the ingenuous idea of reclaiming land in the sea and voila more beach. Nakheel is the company that made it possible!! They really took great care of us. The piece de coupe of the trip was a boat ride to the middle of the sea and then suddenly in there u see trucks spitting sand and islands and huge villas…in the middle of freakin nowhere in the sea!!!!! The next presentation was HSBC. Not much here for me..:-). The nite went to madinat with farhaan and channi, also channi’s place for the first time. Madinath is the absolutely magical mini city almost full of fancy restaurants and bars. Great drinks at bar raza and must see hukka bar called sheikh pier…back at nite close to 2-3 am with jobs and Vicki!

Day 4 (fun continues): Next morning we went to the office of Dubai holding in the emirates tower. Would love to fill in on the details but maybe later. Was unbelievably lucky to actually see Sheikh Mo in person walking out of a restaurant in the towers. Afternoon at another consultancy firm ! Evening went to the networking event hosted by us for the alum and other guest at the wonderful palace hotel in old town (which actually is anewly build town which resembles old town..go figure). Great setting and met a few interesting ppl. Great chat with an alum who now works with ICC, the cricket body based in dubai. Followed that up with a trip to ‘bar dubai’ with chandni, aashima and luvraj to get some desi grab..chat to pav bhaji to kulfi…awefun!!!!!!!!!!

Day 5 (Thursday): mah fav day! Okie. Went to the 3 big ones – mckinsey, bcg and booze allen. Great talk at all 3. Had the most international lunch hosted by BCG at place called Galliard. N i mean international… argentenian fish, Chinese tempura, lebaneese mezaas, Persian khus khus, Indian dal, Italian pasta, greek salad, lamb cooked in a style could not recognize! Back in the hotel…quick drink with farhaan and Vicky at the hotel bar called longs bar (which is named so as it was the longest bar in dubai at some time).. Then went to what was my favourite place in dubai…old dubai. Crossed the channel via a ferry where i hit up an interesting conversation with a local who had been in dubai for 40 odd years. Was sad though as he lamented on how all the progress and internationalism in the last 10 odd years has hurt the trader – at one time the main vocation in dubai the most!! Then had dinner, sheesha and drinks and just lazed at kan-zaman – beautiful old open air and terrace restaurant right on the river. Just talking with family, enjoying good weather and food…loved it loved it loved it!! Slept over at chand’s that nite!

Day 6 Me and chand left for the hotel as we were to go for the world famous Dubai desert safari. Was great fun going in huge  land rovers doing dune bashing!! Then a couple of hours in a setup in the desert in the middle of nowhere with some belly dancing, middle eastern kebabs, camel rides et….and back on our way ot the hotel!

Got to packing and grab a couple of hours sleep before is say good bye to dubai!!! That was my trip..sorry for rushing thru day 3- 7..but better have it there than never ;-). N no..dont believe a word of what i said about dubai. Do yourself a favor. Go visit Dubai! And you will be blown away… Since then have been on amazing trips to the US (NY, Austin, Bay area) and Paris (I LOVE THIS CITY)…Shall put up updates soon…wait for them… Peace out!

If you wanna check out the full Dubai Trip Album click here