You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2010.
This hip and fashionable roadster is officially my new French ride. Check it out, the Renault Clio III:
I got it from MBAcars.com, which seems like a pretty good deal – 700€ for the first month (okay that’s a lot) but then only 10€ per day after that, or about 300€ per month. If you cancel early, it’s 10€ per day for up to a week (70€) charge, so if/when my friend is able to lend me her own sweet French wheels (a saucy, top-of-the-line Fiat 500), I can just give this one back for a minimal cost.
MBAcars.com actually has some kind of interesting deal where they lease you a French car, which is later sold internationally. I’d have to employ more brain power to figure out why that works, but it’s interesting. They also have a whole variety of cars ranging from the lowly Clio III up to something called the Laguna Coupe (which is, evidently, this road devouring monster, complete with its own video and weird house music). And while I certainly dreamed of touring the French countryside in a beautiful 1965 Mercedes SL, or frankly even a 1985 Mercedes SL (slightly less cool), I didn’t think springing for something like that would be a clever idea as my income for the next year approached negative $100K.
On a related note, I love that there’s an MBAcars.com. How specific can you get? If that’s a functional business model, them I’m starting PaperClips4Preists.com or maybe MudWrestlerLoans.com or some other incredibly niche service.
iPhones auto-correct “INSEAD” to “undead”. I think that’s hilarious. Future MBA’s below…
Oh – just got this proof of this exciting news…
This title is doing double duty for this post.
Duty #1: I am sailing through my Pre-Reading. I just finished Gabriel Hawawini and Claude Viallet’s action-packed, 
toe-tapping party favorite Finance for Executives, euphoniously subtitled “Managing for Value Creation”. I joke, but it was actually pretty interesting. I swear I’m not turning into a mindless, numbercrunching financebot, but at least now when someone starts talking about leveraged buyouts (“LBOs” for those in the know), I can wonder intelligently whether they really think they’ll be able to increase the cash flows from the acquisition quickly enough to repay the short-term debt that they probably took out to acquire asset. That sounded like business stuff right? And now I actually know what the difference between Present Value, Net Present Value, and Internal Rate of Return are. I used to just pretend like I did. So to Gabriel Hawawini, thank you for making me way more competent in semi-sophisticated business analyses than I ever was before. Viva Finance for Executives!
Duty #2: I am officially sailing with the INSEAD Sailing Team in Portofino at the 2010 Rolex MBA Regatta, hosted by SDA Bocconi. I am so out-of-my-mind excited for this. It looks like I’ll be leaving on Thursday, Sept 23 (at 4:30 AM – aghhh) and coming back on Sunday, Sept 26. I’m missing a couple of days of school, but the folks in the know say that a) it’s worth it (obviously) and b) I won’t miss too much, so I should be okay.
It looks like we’ll be sailing either Beneteau First 36.7s or Jeanneau Sun Fast 37s (Jeanneau doesn’t have as fancy a website as Beneteau).
Meanwhile, I just found this slick video put together for something called the Nespresso Cup with Paul Cayard (of America’s Cup fame) driving a SWEET Wally Yacht, which I think is Dark Shadow (for those who don’t know Wally, click here – they’re ridiculous) and talking about how much he loves Portfofino. Here it is. Or as we say on pirate ships, thar she blows:
Okay, I’m off to meet some other ’11Js for cocktails at Rare View. It should be fun. I hope we don’t get rained on. Oh, and I leave a month from tomorrow. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
Good news. I now have FULL INTERNATIONAL COVERAGE! Thank you to the two people in Australia who believed in me.
For Business and Pleasure - INSEAD '11J 
