Frog to Dragon: HEC MBA & Tsinghua MBA Blog

Posted by Pam at 7 June , 2011

First I would like to apologize for leaving my blog for such long period (over 3 months!) without any updates. Of course I could say I was busy and then recovering but it doesn’t justify much…
m( -_- )m

During my second semester at Tsinghua, on top of classes, I have been busying myself with the MIT China Lab program and my Tsinghua graduation thesis.

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Tags: Academics, Travels
Posted in: 3. At Tsinghua MBA | No Comments »

Posted by Pam at 12 August , 2010

I arrived in China last Saturday and I’m in Japan since today, on holiday, until the Tsinghua registration on August 25th.

Wudaokou station by night

In the length of 5 days, I managed to open a bank account, visit 14 flats in the Wudaokou area and finally sign a lease for me to move in when I get back on August 24th. I also met about 15 of my new Tsinghua classmates, and then I couldn’t help but think of when we did the same thing with HEC admits, a year ago.

What can I say about these 5 days… It felt like being ran over by a truck!
Of course, it was self inflicted toughness, giving myself just 4 days (while massively jet-lagged) to find the flat of my year time. But, hey, this is China! And not exactly the sanitized expat China from Beijing’s East side. I dare say that my 5 senses were exposed to the experience.
The Beijing I’ll live in for a year is crowded, noisy and smelly. It was cold and humid, as summer is there, and I heard winter can be really cold. I also found that Beijingers love their chillies.
I think I’m in for a challenge ;)

But the internet connectivity in China is so damn slow!

Tags: Travels
Posted in: 3. At Tsinghua MBA , Just me | No Comments »

Posted by Pam at 29 July , 2009

So here I am. I came back home to Paris a couple of hours ago after a 7 weeks holiday trip which brought me to China, Japan and Tahiti.
Another month of holidays to go, also to take care of various administrative errants and shop for school stuff :)

And last week, while in Tahiti, I learned I have been accepted to the TEC On-Campus Program that I had applied to early this month.

Everything’s good :)

Tags: Assignments, Travels
Posted in: 1. Pre-MBA , Just me | 2 Comments »

Posted by Pam at 22 June , 2009

When visiting China for the first time in 2004, one of the things that struck me was that, when in China, one should switch one’s mindset to another scale for everything altogether. And it’s not based just on demographic or geographic statistics. Here, everything is bigger.

Entrance to the Forbidden City

Well, it may not apply to everything (such as the size of a roast duck), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen city parks as big as Beijing’s own Beihai, Zonghai and Houhai gardens. Not even mentioning the Summer Palace park which doesn’t really count as a city park and lays by the 4th ring. If the notion of city ring doesn’t mean anything to you, think of the nice peripheral highways that border your city. Paris has two: the Périphérique and the Francilienne. Beijing has seven of them… Oh, and did I mention it? They’re bigger.

This year, one of the reasons why I went to Beijing in the first place was to visit the Tsinghua University with which HEC has a double MBA degree agreement. A nice lady from the Tsinghua SEM IMBA admission office greeted me and we discussed about the application procedure. Finally, she gave me their IMBA brochure and invited me to visit the campus. Now I must mention that students typically travel between different academic buildings riding a bike. I’ve seen some people do it with a taxi. We walked… and going from toward the South exit (where SEM is located) to the North exit (by the dorms) took us 40 minutes.

Today, I’m in Xi’an, home to tens of thousands terracotta warriors. Flying tomorrow to Shanghai and its two world tallest towers, then flying back to Beijing and its world biggest airport…
And ponder upon the fact that people don’t know what gigantic is before coming to China.

Tags: Travels
Posted in: 1. Pre-MBA , Just me | 2 Comments »