Orientation-FIRST DAY @ ESSEC

For now till next year july, if anyone ask me where Im from, the answer will be:

ESSEC

It is far too complicated to reply that Im from Singapore but was born in Taiwan, and am now studying MBA in luxe in Paris.

Anyhow, the orientation was indeed useful for me. Not only it made me conclude the point above, but Ive got to know some new friends who I will be spending the coming year with.

On friday, I took the RER A3 to Cergy Perfecture to go to the ESSEC campus.
Had a little bit of problem buying the RER ticket at the machine & finding my way on foot from the station to campus. All thanks to my broken french, I managed to reach school on time. So! who says the french are not helpful?! I managed to get through it all with 2 strangers help.

opps the one who walked with me to the campus was in fact an Italian. I was impressed with myself that we could carry out a decent french conversation all the way from the station to campus. I felt that she was like a little angel sent to make me feel welcomed to ESSEC.

Actually when I took the RER, I passed 2 horrible looking towns on the way to Cergy, how glad I am that I stay in the city... it will be sad to be surrounded by these towns...

My first friend is a Japanese gal named Akiko, I am very lucky to meet her at the door of the school. When we realise we were both in the luxury mba program we were so glad to have found each other. I was also her 1st friend!

We had an introduction session with Denis Morriset our program director. The last time we met was in Shanghai during the interview in May. Really amazing that Im finally seeing him in france finally. He will be my professor for many of the classes in future.

Each student had to introduce himself to everyone in the "old" classroom. This year marks the 100th anniversary of ESSEC, hence we have the privilege of moving to a classroom in a new building coming monday! Akiko & I was very excited about it, the building is very futuristic looking, with glass walls.

The 38 of us in the program came from diverse backgrounds & it was like watching a movie when I listened to their self introductions. M Morisset was hoping we exceed 20 nationalities & wished we all had duo nationalities! I was the only one representing Singapore with another guy Damian who half represented Spore as he was born in Spore but lived in Canada. Actually I think he looks very Sporean, except for his accent.

The oldest Student in the class is Jung, a 51 year old japanese who was the GM of Mitsukoshi in Tokyo. We all admire his spirit to return to school after being such a successful personality in Japan.

In the afternoon, we were splited into 3 groups of 13 to attend a super boring computer class which was actually rather useful. I received my essec email addy & learnt how to submit reports, or homework to our prof online & to utilise all the search engines in the intranet for our future assignments.

During the class, my thai partner & me were busy entertaining ourselves surfing the internet. It was obvious who was the most ON in the class, a taiwan borned American chinese gal called Catherine. She was the only one asking questions all the time. Maybe its ok to take it easy on the first day? hahaha... i sound very french now!

When the class ended, None (my thai partner who incidentally live 1 metro stop away from me) and I went around looking for a phone company to get a prepaid card. Ginger who is a taiwanese who grew up in belgium, told us of a good promotion at ORANGE.

Unfortunately the cards were all sold out at the mall near my campus, None and I decided to go to La Defense to try our luck. We finally got our numbers there.. he is a very particular person. When the sales man gave us 2 numbers, he wanted the easier to remembered one.

Thats why I ended up with 0642252366. URG!! Young boys are definitely not as gentlemanly.

By then, it was 7pm, our lunch & champagne in the professors' room were all digested. We couldnt find a good restaurant at La Defense & ended up at Bistro Romain.

The capaccio is not bad there (not as good as before though) but the pasta was yucky. Next time, I will simply go for the capaccio and choc mousse free flow. However I dont think there will be a next time!

The LSE students wont be able to join us next week & we can start class at 9am instead. Phew! That means I can still sleep till 715 am :)