It’s a long time since I wrote my last blog entry. So, I don’t really know where to start since so much has happened in the meantime. I spent July and August in Bangalore in India. We, i.e. Parmender, Ashish, Jan and me, did our SCP (Strategic Consulting Project) there.For eight weeks, we worked in the Corporate Planning department of Infosys Technologies Ltd. We developed an actionable marketing plan for their retail vertical for three different regions. It was a great experience to work for a company that has had an annual growth of 30 percent for the last seven years or so and will most likely continue to do so. They really appreciated our work and I’m sure they will use our recommendations to further grow their business.

As for India, it’s just a fascinating country. We used the weekends to travel as much as possible and visited such places like Pondicherry, Kerala, Mysore and Goa. My favourite weekend trip though was the trip to the Dubare Elephant Camp where we stayed in the jungle for one night and, yes, we did get to see some elephants. They are absolutely fantastic animals.

I flew back to England on the 31st of August. Unfortunately, my flight with British Airways wasn’t very enjoyable. I had a ten or twelve-year-old kid sitting in the row behind me that kept kicking me in the back during the whole flight. The mother was not willing to stop her son from doing that and the stewardess simply told me: “You have to understand, it’s just a kid.” Anyways, I made it back to Oxford in time to hand in our SCP report to the Examinations Schools on the 1st of September.

The next weekend, I participated at the Business School Alumni Regatta. It was the first time Oxford participated in that regatta and we had two boats racing. Unfortunately, some of the crews from other business schools seemed to be a little bit more experienced but the regatta was a lot of fun – even without winning. We had really strong winds all weekend long and it just felt great to be sailing again.

We then had one last week of classes at the business school. The capstone course on scenario planning was really interesting and it was just great to see everyone again after the SCP. The capstone course was followed by a farewell dinner and an end of course ceremony. It’s funny that we had that ceremony before actually handing in our last paper. Our individual assignment for the capstone course was due one week after the ceremony. Right now, I’m waiting for the results, not only for this last assignment but also for our SCP report. They should arrive any day now.