so proud and impressed

I know, it has been an awful long time without any news and this post is not going to be very long, either. I just wanted to share the following article with you:

Special Delivery


It's about Dhruv's business in India and a must read :-)

Well done Dhruv!

Finished - again

After Trading and Market Microstructure yesterday afternoon - which was ok but for sure not great... - I sat for my last exam this morning in Derivatives.
I think it was fair and hope that what I wrote makes some sense :-) In Oxford you actually never now up to the point when you finally receive your grade. This is due to the fact, that all exams are "curved" which means that after grading them - something like a normal distribution curve with a mean of 63 is used to adjust the results in a way that the results fit the curve. That makes the personal outcome of an exam dependent on the performance of the rest of the class. We will see ;-)

Now I'm back to the library to work on the last two papers for this term. They are due on Monday but I want to finish them as soon as possible to be able to spend some time with Klaudia. We have barely seen each other this term and I'm really looking forward to having her home again tomorrow.

Therefore I better stop blogging for the moment and go back to my work on Negotiations...

Examinations again

This morning I sat for my Capital Raising Techniques 2 hours exam.
I think it was fair and the form of the exam (4 compulsory questions in part A (short answers) and 2 out of 7 questions (essay form) in part B) provides the possibility to pick essay topics one is comfortable with.
I'm not sure whether my choice to write about the differences between mezzanine and high yield bonds both from an issuer and arranging bank perspective was clever... I'm afraid I might have mixed some things up and did not elaborate enough on the bank's side. But we will see ;-)

At 2:30 I'll sit for the second but last exam in my course: Trading and Market Microstructure.
But before that I'll have lunch, a quick nap and a bit of last minute revision ;-)

BBQ at RAC

You might not believe it, but we really had nice weather for a couple of days.
Brent was kind enough to take the opportunity arranging a BBQ at Templeton's Rewley Abbey Court where quite a number of our classmates live. He is a great chef and we had chicken, ribs, salad and to top it all apple pie with ice cream.
Given my workload this week and the fact, that I was a little drunk on Monday night after hanging out with some of the Germans I stayed away from the beer and left early to get some work done...

Here are some pictures of the BBQ...

A lot of work

Before we started with the course someone said: "when you made it through Hillary - everything else is a walk in the park" - unfortunately I can't remember who it was but it is absolutely not true. This term is really hard. I was lucky that it started pretty ok, but right now it is really on the edge to getting difficult to stand.

Without complaining - here is my list of work for this term:



looks pretty busy, doesn't it. :-)

Well, anyhow: I better stop blogging and go back to the Private Equity assignment which is due on Monday.

Just a quick note on what else is going on:

On Saturday we had the Sylvester awards which is something like the Oscar's but for MBAs. There were awards in categories like:

most loved lecturer
best pub crawler (for the person hanging out at pubs most of the time)
schmoozing (best networker)

and many more.

I was nominated for "best all around / nicest person"

but couldn't win against Gareth who obviously is even nicer than me ;-) I think he well deserves the award, so: congratulations!

Dress code was "spicy black tie" and there were so many people with wigs around that I couldn't resist to have a picture of me wearing one of the best ones:

The evening carried on with karaoke in the common room,

dancing at Bar Risa, more dancing at Anuba, kebab on St. Giles (my first one in Oxford) and finally Tequilla Fanta at Brent's place.

Puh, what a night. I came home at six in the morning but managed to be at school for meetings from 12:30. We worked till the school closed at midnight, when I went home to proceed till six. After 90 minutes sleep the alarm rang, I handed in my Private Equity assignment at the examination school and went to school to finish the Derivatives assignment which was due at 5 pm that day. Well deserved I spent the evening doing nothing but eating and watching movies :-)

On Tuesday I was invited for dinner at Katy's, Francois' and Christie's house where Nick cooked a fantastic pasta sauce. It was a very nice evening in great company and I feel really sad when I get remembered that we have only a couple of days to go in this term and only weeks till the program is over.

On anther note: I finally figured out what I'm going to do over the summer. I will do a Summer Consulting Project with a London based Hedge fund. In a team of four we will spend eight weeks in London exploring future business opportunities for the fund. I'm really curious to see how a Hedge fund actually works but at the same time I'm a bit scared by the amount of math that will be involved in the project. I will write more about the project once we figured out how strict the confidentiality is...

Oxbridge

Another tradition in Oxford is to play all kinds of sports against Cambridge. This happens on every level of the University and so there is a MBA competition as well. Every year one of the two schools hosts a whole day full of sport and party activities for the respective other school.

This year it was Cambridge to host us and they did a great job.

We left early on Saturday morning (5.30am) and sports started at 11.00. I participated in squash and ultimate frisbee. Whilst our victory in squash was by only one point, the triumph in ultimate frisbee was slightly clearer (17:2). The Oxford crew managed to win in more sports over all and was therefore declared the winner of the competition. Sports we won include touch rugby, 100m sprint, punting and basketball whilst we lost in football, table tennis and cricket.

--- part of the successful squash team ---

But sports were not the only important things during the day. Meeting with the people from Judge Business School and making new friends was at least as important as the rest. I found it very interesting to see how comparable and yet different the programs are. Overall I was impressed how friendly the atmosphere during the whole day was. Everyone was full of good sportsmanship and the competition was never too fierce. We were treated as welcome guests and got an amazing insight into some parts of Cambridge’s history as well.

--- fooling around in St. John's courtyard before the squash game ---

I hope our successors will host the Judge crew on the same high standard next year!

On the way to Paris

A group of round 150 of us met this morning at 5:00 to start our journey to Paris. Although it was pretty early and quite a number of us had a heavy workload over the last days to get assignments done before the tournament, it seemed as if everyone made it on the buses.

We are now on our way to Dover where we will enter the ferry. Our expected arrival time in Paris is 4 pm. I keep my fingers crossed we make it without major delays.

The weather in France is expected to be great and while I write this I recognize, that I forgot my sunglasses :-(

During the tournament I will compete in "Cross Country" and "Ultimate Frisbee".
Cross Country is basically a team marathon with teams of six running 7 km each. We have some pretty strong runners on the program and I'm curious what their times will be. I didn't have the chance to practice a lot for running, so I don't expect anything ;-)

Ultimate Frisbee is a teamsport and should be fun. We practiced regularly over the last weeks and I hope we can achieve a good placement in the end for all the hard work to pay off :-)

Maybe I have the chance to blog from France...

Visitors from all over the world

Another thing I have to quickly share with you...

Isn't it amazing from which parts of the world the visitors of our blog come?!

Spring in Oxford

Given the great weather these days (21°) and the MBAT coming up very fast, I decided to swap future performance in my derivatives exam against enjoying a run in the afternoon sun. I hope Celine will understand that her cute french accent could not keep up with spending some time outside :-)

Passed again

We just got our results for last term's exams.
I passed all classes and was even able to achieve a distinction level mark on Financial Management which is a big positive surprise! The rest of the marks are ok.

Now only the mark for our EP is outstanding :-)

May Day

While Germany celebrates Labour Day and Ascension Day, the British celebrate May Day and in Oxford especially May Morning.

I thought that the fact that our flat is only one minute away from Magdalen Bridge where everyone meets on Max Morning would give me a big advantage, but it turned out that the bridge was not only closed for cars this morning but for everyone.

The reason for that is, that over the last years quite a number of drunken people jumped from the bridge into the River Cherwell which is so shallow that they got seriously injured.

So I had to wait till the singing was over and the bridge was opened before I could meet some of the other MBAs. Ok, there would have been a way around the bridge but at 5:30 in the morning it was way too early to decide quickly enough to not miss the choir :-)

Bachelor Party in Germany

Partying is always a good reason for a trip home and this weekend there were two occasions.
Saturday morning Rafi invited to his birthday brunch and on the evening we celebrated Marc's "last free day".

We met at six and handed over the bachelor t-shirt which Marc had to wear the whole evening.

Subsequently we entered an old American school bus which is now equipped as a party bus

to drive to Duesseldorf where we spent the rest of the night going from bar to bar :-)

Duesseldorf is always full of bachelor and hen parties which gave Marc the possibility to practice his newly acquired dancing skills and us the chance to take some nice pictures ;-)

At four in the morning the night ended and I was pretty happy to be able to go to bed after being awake for 24 hrs (I had to leave Oxford at five to catch the bus to the airport...).

Trip to Dubai

Today a group of SBS students left for a networking trip to Dubai. We took the 6:15 am bus to Gatwick to catch our Qatar flight via Doha in Qatar.

I have never been flying that nice. We got video on demand at our seats and the service was so outstandingly friendly.

Here are some pictures of our group of seven who travelled together. Overall we are 20 students on the trip. The rest of us arrive in Dubai from India, Jordan and other home countries where they spent the break so far.

When we arrived in Dubai our Nigerian classmate Shola was stopped by the police because a guy who set next to him on the flight from Doha to Dubai contended Shola hat used some voodoo magic on him during the flight, taking bones out of his neck and stealing him a kidney. Well, even though it sounds funny the local authorities had to pay attention to the complaint which ended in an hour discussion at the police station. Finally we could make our way to the hotel - but Shola has to go back to the airport tomorrow to get his passport back since the crazy man wants to provide x-ray evidence of the voodoo. That was a very interesting start in our networking trip and we spent some time at the hotel bar discussing how voodoo could help us all getting pretty lucrative jobs ;-)

Tomorrow at eight the official part of our trip begins with meeting Shell who generously sponsors our trip. So it's definitely time for some sleep now.

I hope I will be able to post more impressions of the trip soon.

Our trip to Wales

Starting on God Friday after a two hour EP meeting we left for Wales around two pm and managed to arrive at Little Hill End Barn in Llangennith around half past five. Thanks to modern GPS navigation and the help of Nick who stayed at the same place a couple of weeks ago



we found everything immediately.

After making ourselves comfortable with the place

we left for the first stroll through the neighbourhood which is not more than a couple of houses and a camping ground.

The dunes and the sea are only five minutes away and presented themselves in beautiful light.

Our planes for Saturday included the visit of a traditional farmers market in Grovesend. Since the description on the internet was not very detailed we actually had no idea what to expect. Arriving at the Community Hall in Grovesend we were nevertheless a bit surprised to see the market consisting of not more than ten booths selling stitching, embroidery and other craftwork but barely food. The only meat stand displayed a sign saying that there was no meat today but orders could be left for later delivery. We didn’t even ask whether delivery to Little Hill End Barn was possible. All in all our visit did not take longer than 10 minutes. The disappointment did not last long and after a short shopping stop at a nearby Tesco we continued to Lllanelli for a coffee.

Back at the Barn we decided to walk to Worm’s Head to find out how long it would take us. The small island is only accessible during 2.5 hrs before and after low tide. A trip therefore has to be carefully planned.

We found out that it is only a 45 minute walk either on the beach or at the bottom of the hill. We helped ourselves with some free information material at the National Trust visitor center and stayed for a mocha at a small café overlooking the beach.

On our way back we planned to visit Worm’s Head the next morning after a traditional English breakfast at the small café.

Since the weather didn’t look very good the next morning

we changed our planes and took the car to visit some of the suggested sites on the Gower peninsula. We started with King Arthur’s stone - a somewhat 6,000 years old dolmen, mentioned in documents more than 1,000 years ago.

From there we drove to Oxwich castel were we luckily weathered a strong rain and hailstorm while having a stroll through their small Welsh history museum.

Next stop was Three Cliffs Bay and Pennard Castle. The castle is located in the middle of a golf course. It acts a bit as a symbol to the course – very much like the old pipe on the course I used to play in Oberhausen just from a totally different period of time.
Three Cliffs Bay is a marvellous piece of earth and from the top of cliffs we had a great look.

Finally we made our way to Mumbles to have a scoop of Apple Crumble ice cream at Verdi’s café. Thanks a lot to Hermeet for the great advice. The ice cream and the amount of interesting people in the café were definitely worth the trip.

Weather on Monday morning looked much better. So we made our way to the small café for a full English breakfast which should give us enough energy for a whole day on the Worm’s head. With enough time left to the next high tide we started the climbing tour to the small islands. After a while of balancing over stones and cleft we finally enjoyed a great look over the surrounding.

On Tuesday we went only for a small trip to the small island on the opposite site of the Rhossili Bay. Burry Holmes is not even half as big as Worm’s Head but enables a nice look around as well.

We spent the afternoon sitting in front of the barn up to the point when it got too cold.

On our way back to Oxford we stopped in Cardiff the Welsh capital for a quick city tour. Totally tourist like we took one of the red double decker to see Cardiff’s main spots in round 60 minutes.

After five totally relaxing days we finally got back to Oxford in the early afternoon and prepared our place for the visit of the Kontny girls...

You can see more pictures of our trip to Wales here.