Happy Halloween!

Greetings from the Grim Reaper!

Air Guitar at Momo’s

Anand and myself celebrating the beginning of P5 at Momo’s last week. Thanks to Tom for the pictures!

P5 has begun

My short trip back home proved quite successful – I returned with a couple of job offers in my bag, as well as a few more interviews in the process. I’m very happy about this, especially since it means that I won’t have to worry about job search too much during my final period here in Singapore. To all my classmates out there who are still looking, good luck! Remember, we will all get good jobs with our degree on the resume.

Today, I attended a workshop of the Venture Capital Case Competition (VC³) of the Asia-Pacific Students Entrepreneurship Society (ASES) in Singapore. After mentoring one of the teams in the competition over the past few weeks, I was happy to see them make it to the final presentation next Tuesday. Way to go, Team Pusoy Dos!

My last period at INSEAD is off to a good start. While most of my courses don’t begin before next week, the most entertaining one is already well under way. It’s called Your First 100 Days, and it’s about running your own company for the first few months after a Management Buy in. If you want to find out more, see this BusinessWeek article as well as this entry in Johnny’s blog.

Blog Design

I finally decided to change the look of my blog. It’s still work in progress, so please bear with me as I experiment with different themes and pictures. Oh, and please do let me know what you think about it – click on the “No comments” link to leave your comment. Equally, if you know of other INSEAD blogs I haven’t yet included in my blogroll (on the right), let me know as well.

Thank you!

Inflight Blogging

In-croy-a-ble! So I board my plane to Germany, and the pilot announces that there is wireless internet on board. Even better, the service, called Connexion by Boeing, is free on Lufthansa until Dec 31!

So yes, I am currently on board LH779 while writing this entry. This is cool stuff. Geeky, but cool. Remember, geeks are the new cool (can’t argue with that, especially after the most recent acquisition frenzy in Silicon Valley).

The best part of inflight internet is chatting with friends on Skype – free inflight calls! (I know, I’m way too excited about this …)

On somewhat unrelated news, P4 came and left (the most abrupt ending of any period so far, mostly due to a lack of exams), and so I only have one more period to go. Kind of sad to know that we will all go our separate ways in a little more than two months.

BTW, a big thank you to Henry, a P1 who told me he appreciated this blog very much, especially while getting ready to start at INSEAD, and thus encouraged me to take the time to revive it.

Haze over Singapore

This is one of the things I don’t like about my host country: every year in autumn, Singapore is plagued by haze, generated by the ashes from fires in Indonesia. These are not accidental fires, but rather set on purpose by farmers to convert jungle into farmland. Although all countries have been in urgent talks over the past few weeks over this issue, there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about it. The farmers in Indonesia rely on this method to secure the land they need for their survival. For more on the subject, see this article by Channel NewsAsia.

The Singapore National Environment Agency (NEA) has set up a website with hourly updates on the haze level in the city, including a schematic map of the current situation. A Pollutants Standard Index (PSI) of above 100 is considered unhealthy, and the agency recommend to “reduce vigorous outdoor activity”. In addition, “appropriate public advisories regarding the use of respiratory masks and other health matters will be given”. Over the past two weeks, the index has been above 100 several times.

Scary stuff.

In Germany for the break

I’m flying to Germany tomorrow (ok, tonight ;-) for a couple of interviews. Arrival in Munich is Wednesday morning, and my flight back to Singapore will be the following Tuesday evening (Oct 24). If you are in Munich at the same time and would like to meet up, let me know. I’ll be using my old German mobile phone number while back home.

Wish me luck for the interviews!

novoCampus is online!

novoCampus, the startup I worked at over the summer, is now online! novoCampus is a social network for German speaking university and college students – think Facebook plus Flickr and more in Deutsch :-)

Here are a few screenshots of the system (still an early beta):

Login Page – feel free to register (requires valid email address from a university or college)

Profile Page – your life at a glance

Friends Page – your network

Photo Albums Page – share your pictures

The site is only available in German, which is appropriate for the current target audience.

If you are a German speaking student yourself, feel free to sign-up and encourage your classmates to join as well. novoCampus is open for new registrations, but you will need a valid email address from a university or college to sign up. So far, most institutions across Western Europe and the US should be approved automatically, and more will be added later. If you have trouble signing up, please let me know.

Toyota Auris

So Toyota decided to name their new model in my honor – thanks, guys! The Toyota Auris concept car was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show as the “new Corolla”.

See Toyota Europe, article on Mobile Magazine, article on Autoblog

Thanks to Daniel for the hint.

No news is good news

So you thought this blog is dead right? Yes, I have been a bit quiet around over the past two months, but nothing to worry about. I’m currently enjoying Singapore, and now I’m back to blogging.

Spent the summer in Munich, working on two different projects. First, I interned with Yahoo! Germany, working on forecast models for their page view inventory and advertising revenue. Online advertising is an interesting business, and the market is growing like crazy right now. But despite having the highest number of unique users among all internet sites, Yahoo! is not able to monetize them – in case you missed the past few months of coverage on the subject, see articles on Yahoo’s own Finance site from July 19 and September 19.

In August, I helped a friend of mine to get a startup off the ground – novoCampus, a social network for university students in Germany. The site isn’t up yet, but the guys are working hard to get the first version out in the next few days (in German only). Exciting stuff.

While in Munich, I stayed with my cousin Stefan and his wife Iris in Solln, a beautiful suburb of Munich. They did ask me to put some photos of them online, but unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get them on camera over the summer – so I thought I’d include some pictures from the past. Iris and Stefan, do you remember when they were taken?

In the end of August I flew to Singapore, where I am spending the remaining two periods of my MBA studies. Life here is very different than at home, but I am slowly getting used to it. Outside it is constantly warm and humid, and inside they love their air conditioning systems like there is no tomorrow. But the food is great – most exotic items I’ve tried so far include original Bejing Duck (you eat the skin, not the meat) and life shrimp (that’s right, it’s still moving while you crack its head!). Very good, I must admit!

Below a few pictures from my flat at Heritage View, an apartment complex close to campus – never lived in an apartment with a swimming pool before, so I am enjoying myself :-)