Argentina

After Prague I took an amazing train ride to Budapest. The entire journey was beautiful through lush green valleys with cows grazing and little houses perched on hillsides. The 7 hour journey was extremely easy and far more pleasant than flying. I arrived to Budapest and had high hopes for my hostel as it was rated 9.4 out of 10, which is something I've never seen before in my life. It said on hostelworld that it was rated the best hostel in the world in 2011. The first night I started playing drinking games with all the residents. The drinking games were organized with the hostel and started promptly at 7 pm. What struck me first is that everyone was 18-22 years old. That would have been fine, but the drinking game became absurdly raunchy extremely fast. I lived in a fraternity for four years in college, but even for those standards the stuff they were talking about was too much, especially amongst strangers and completely sober. Since I was bored in Prague with the lack of host...

Now that I am catching up on all my blog posts, I went to the European MBA Olympics at the beginning of April hosted by IESE, an MBA school in Barcelona. I competed on the soccer, basketball, track, and touch rugby teams. We didn't end up winning anything, but it was fun to run around and go to the beach. They made a really cool video highlighting the event. Once it switches to the salsa competition, just turn it off because it's terrible after that. 

Recently, I started reading the Elon Musk biography. The books starts with a critique of the Silicon Valley that I hadn’t fully appreciated. Who are the successful technology companies of the last 15 years? Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, SnapChat. At the end of the 20 th century, it seemed as if technology was going to unlock human potential by giving the world access to vast stores of information. Instead, it has turned us into narcissists that obsess over the number of likes we have, take selfies, and never dare to touch food that we haven’t first photographed. To be fair, perhaps these companies were merely unlocking an innate narcissism that humans have always had. Nevertheless, the promise of a sci-fi future gave way to selfie sticks and the world’s top computer programming graduates flocked to the Silicon Valley to write code for apps that maximize clicks rather than advance the frontiers of technology. Even companies that I hold in high esteem like Google at the end...

I am on the train from Prague to Budapest writing this entry. This trip to Prague is one of the least planned trips I have ever done, and that’s saying a lot as I normally don’t plan much. I booked the flight about 10 days ahead, and didn’t book the hostel until the day of. I arrived to Prague with no fixed plans or itinerary. I wasn’t even sure how many days I would stay as my return flight is out of Budapest. As can be seen from the photos below, Prague is a beautiful city. It’s crazy that the city was founded in the 4 th century. Part of the city is called “New Town,” which was established in the 14 th century, so it is hardly new. It is just more new than the “Old Town.” The first thing I noticed about the city was the ubiquity of the beer, or “pivo” as they call it. Czechs have the highest consumption per capita at 169 liters per year, and that number counts the entire population including babies. So really the per capita consumption of adults is probably double that at aro...

P2 was chaos at INSEAD. My course volume increased from four courses to six, and at the same time I was busy with job recruiting events. The first week back to school there was an employer presentation every single night followed by networking cocktails. Students, including myself, were scrambling to finish internship applications for consulting firms as well as other big firms like Amazon, Uber, Microsoft, and others. Pretty much everyone was in firefighting mode just trying to get done the tasks due in the next 1-2 days. I was swept into the chaos because the place I had interned in the fall that had promised me a summer internship had gone radio silent. Despite turning in my application on February 9 th , as of March 15 th when all the applications were due, I had heard nothing. So, in order to make sure I didn’t end up with nothing, I jumped into the rat race and submitted applications. Unfortunately, most companies were not interested in people recruiting for the United St...

My mom and sister were nice enough to visit me for my b-day. Here's a brief account of what we were up to:  Julianne arrived early and gave a speech to eager MBA students interested in Fintech: Thursday: Walk in the Fontainebleau Forest. I decided to take J&M to rugby club’s weekly party. I knew it was a bit rowdy, but since Mom has partied more than I have recently at OYC, I knew that she could handle it. Rugby club has all these drinking games they play throughout the night. For example, at any point in the night someone can say “God save the Queen” and drop a coin into your glass. If this happens, you must finish your drink. However, they must say “God save the Queen” clearly before dropping the coin, which gives you a chance to cover your glass with your hand or move your glass. Another game involves trying to attach a hair clip to someone’s clothes without them noticing. Once the hair clip has been attached, you sneak away and shout “Ou est le peg” or “Where is t...

Easter with the Blockers was great. Every time I’ve been to Hayward’s Heath it’s the same routine that I love.  Morning: Spend 2 hours slowly eating breakfast and reading the paper. There are occasional outbursts from the Blocker clan lamenting the news. David will eventually settle into the crossword puzzle, which he can finish surprisingly quickly. Here is Oliver feeding Karis during breakfast. Quite a contrast in sizes. Afternoon: At some point after all puzzles in the newspaper have been solved and all stories read, there will be talk of taking a walk. Usually, there will be a two hour window from the time the walk is announced until the time it actually happens. The walk will be a pleasant one in the English country side. On Saturday instead of doing a walk, we decided to go to a Dulwich Hamlet soccer game. Unfortunately, Jack had broken his ankle, but Karis was there to save the day: Evening: After the walk, everyone will be clamoring for tea and many wi...

On the train back to Paris from London after spending the whole weekend with Julianne, Antonia, and Jack. The whole journey door to door is about 6 hours, so doable for a weekend and the train ride is comfortable. On Friday, all of us went to a work party at Julianne’s office in Shoreditch. The office is a converted apartment with everyone working in the living room. It had a very start-up feel as to host the party they had pushed all of their desks against the walls and set up a beer pong table in the middle. Everyone was casually dressed and Julianne was the only female employee. It ended up being really fun to meet Julianne’s colleagues and “bant” with Jack and Antonia. Bant is my word of the week and something Jack says all the time. It’s comes from the word banter as in have banter with friends, like when you’re drinking with friends and having a good time. We had a fairly early night as Jack had a rugby match the next day, Antonia had a date, and Julianne and I had to be out...

On Wednesday night last week I met my old French roommates from Buenos Aires for dinner in Paris (Axel & Alex). We went to an Argentinian steakhouse and had a great dinner conversing in Spanish. Axel now works importing/exporting French cheeses to Latin America and regularly works in Spanish and Portuguese. Alix works as a consultant in Paris and is getting married in the summer to a French man. Another girl named Julie who also studied abroad joined us as well and she actually married the Colombian roommate of one of the exchange students in Buenos Aires. So out of the 4 of us, 3 of us had our lives substantially shaped by the experience and became obsessed with Latin America. Alix, on the other hand, has never returned to Latin America after 8 years. Here's a picture from 2008 and now. Anyway, after dinner I caught the last train home and arrived at 11 pm to the train station in Fontainebleau. I looked at the bus schedule and realized that no buses ran after 10 pm...

It has been a little over a month since classes have started and I feel like I am in a routine now. Overall, I am pleased with the business education I received from the University of Washington, because so far nothing I have learned has been significantly different than what I learned 7 years ago in undergrad. The only difference is that the lecture is more discussion based and way more people ask questions and share experiences related to the material. Although I have tons of in class time, I do very little out of class studying and have yet to go to a single TA session since everything is review. This has meant that I have had more time to play soccer and basketball, go to the gym, and do career prep stuff. The weird thing about classes at INSEAD is that there is no fixed schedule. Any class can be on any day of the week at any time and it changes every week. I have no clue what is driving it. The good news is that they have an official calendar and all the class times automa...

Yesterday the Financial Times rated INSEAD as the #1 business school in the world. I'm a bit skeptical that it is better than the likes of Harvard, Wharton, or Stanford, but not complaining. https://www.ft.com/content/69a61dd4-d9be-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2017 We were ranked last year as #1 and some of the professors and teachers were hinting that we were going to lose it this year, so people had already started saying: "Pssh, rankings don't mean anything." But now I think everyone will suddenly think rankings are the One Truth . Still though, I am surprised by how many people in the US don't know of INSEAD. I didn't even know about INSEAD until I started looking at MBA programs. I think one of the issues is that most rankings by US publications like US News or Forbes only rank US Schools. They omit any international schools like INSEAD or London Business School. Anyway, everyone is pretty ...

Sandra visited me last week so I just wanted to show some pictures from the trip. First, the Chateau de Fontainbleau where French rulers lived for hundreds of years including Napoleon. It is also the location where Napoleon abdicated before being exiled to Elba. Here's a color photo someone snapped of Napoleon when he abdicated in 1814: And here is me capturing the historical importance of the location: The Chateau is absolutely absurd and looks more like a set for Game of Thrones or something that Disneyland created, but it's all real. Check out this bedroom: Of course the castle sits on vast gardens. Unfortunately with the weather being around 20 degrees Fahrenheit we didn't explore too much. We also managed to go to Paris for a day despite my busy class schedule. The weather was absurdly cold all week in the low 20's so we decided to spend most the day indoors at the Louvre. I had to walk around like this with two jackets, gloves, hat, and scarf a...

Classes started last Monday and I have been very busy. Here's a sample of a weekly schedule: Basically, I have 6 classes: Finance, Accounting, Statistics, Organizational Behavior, Ethics, and Microeconomics. Given that INSEAD is a one year program attempting to cover 80% of the material of a two year MBA, they cram in a lot of class time. So far the material has been very easy as it is all entry level stuff that I already covered in undergrad. For example, I was an accounting and finance major so I have taken 9 accounting courses and 6 finance courses. At INSEAD I am taking introduction to finance and accounting. Similarly, last semester I took econometrics for which statistics is a pre-requisite. At INSEAD, I am back in statistics again.  The good news is that the teachers are very good and the classes are mostly case based with lots of discussion from students. INSEAD also has a very good zero-tolerance policy on using laptops or phones during class. At SAIS, I noticed th...

Quick update on the rest of orientation week. The week continued with a lot of team building/ reflection type activities. Everyone had to decide whether they were a hunter (knows exactly what job they want), or an explorer (career switchers). On day 3, I was finally introduced to my study group with whom I will be doing all group projects for the next 4 months. So it will probably be a love-hate relationship if my past study groups are any indication. Anyway, I was excited to meet them and I think it's a good group. Here they are below: Our first task was to create an anti-drug or anti-drunk driving poster in 2 hours to be used at INSEAD. It was a great first task as we essentially had 6 strangers in a room trying to decide on a poster design. I ended up being the most creative/artistic one in the group and was brainstorming and drawing pictures on the board. At one point Sajeed said, "Taylor, do you mind if I ask what your background is?" When I said I was an acco...

After a very pleasant Christmas in Seattle and New Year in Salamanca, I arrived to Fontainebleau ("fon-ton-blow") at 11 pm the day before orientation. Didn't exactly leave buffer time, but that seems to be my style. Luckily my new French host "mom" picked me up from the train station unannounced. I had been planning on walking 40 minutes with my suitcases at night as there were no taxis, so a ride was much appreciated. The next day orientation began and 532 caffeine fueled MBA students from all over the world began exuberantly networking their hearts out. It was truly a sight to see and I was doing the same. Everyone is keen to be accepted to the group and show that they should be here. At this point, I have probably introduced myself to about 100 people and had very similar conversations kind of like when you first check into a hostel. What's your name? Where are you from? It's extremely exhausting to be firing at 100% for an entire day of orientation...