There are no atheists in foxholes.
Finally the toughest week (so far) is drawing to a close. Everyone around me is bleary-eyed and worn out from what has seemed like a marathon session of classes, projects and general crap, with to-do lists as long as your arm. The late-late-night party at Villa Vivante last night was a welcome relief, as I desperately needed a drink. Or seven. Dodging in-between the wii players to snag a piece of birthday cake, courtesy of someone I hadn’t met before, I finally had a chance to kick back a little bit.
Thanks to my team for picking up the slack on our group projects, most of which I had little clue about. The fact that a marketing case can involve convoluted statistics confounds me; marketing people are supposed to sit around, sipping martinis and asking stupid questions such as “does it come in blue.” The class is my least favorite, possibly because it brings out all the bad dynamics of a large group without structured discussion, combined with a fairly arrogant professor who rattles off concepts at a machine-gun pace–concepts that seek to quantify things like “market segmentation”, which always seemed like a bit of a judgment cal to me.
Ironically enough, the prof I appreciate most is my finance instructor, Pascal Maenhout. He’s a nervous, inevitably impeccably dressed Belgian with an agreeable, if slightly aloof, demeanor. While nice to talk to about fast cars, the man is so intense that he comes across as a bit scary initially, American Psycho style. I say “ironically” since this is the class I probably understand least, despite the good instruction. Regardless, I’m trying to do my group’s options pricing assignment in an effort to both catch up, and to do my part after collapsing in bed a few times this week instead of helping out.
Queue Marisol in the car last night, mumbling about options and “pulling a naked short.”
Hoo-hah, I finally have a room in Singapore. It’s not Dover or Heritage, but then again it’s also about half as expensive; a one-room subsidized flat (HDB) about 5 minutes from campus, from a friend of an online acquaintance’s (dog’s babysitter’s college roommate etc.) who changed his mind about letting me have it. Good stuff; the money I save will come in handy when we can’t rent out our rooms at Le Vivier. about 200 students are going to Singapore, and less than 70 are coming over here. Those who are will have the surprise of their lives when they step out of that plane in January…