Love, Money, Life...

Since last Friday, the 7 Chinese in our class initiated a fund-raising on campus for the people suffering in earthquake in Sinchuan. We received many warm supports from many friends and strangers until this Tuesday. All the funds will be proceeded to China Education Development Foundation to rebuild the schools in Sichuan for the thousands of students there. A big thanks to the love from IMD community!

There is money out of love, and there is also passion for wealth - a little surprise for our second last week before the building block final exams, we met Warren Buffet in the MBA auditorium yesterday afternoon. Organized by family business research centre, our Organizational Leadership Prof. Ben Bryant and Entrepreneurship Prof. Benoit Leleux gave us this opportunity to interact with Mr. Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway and Mr. Eitan Wertheimer of ISCAR group. For the richest man in world, success simply means how many people would hide you in case of danger. At the age of 77, he still goes to his office at Omaha every morning because he enjoys it as part of his life...

Summer is coming soon, just before 3 papers, 4 exams, 2 weeks preparation and 1 discovery expedition in Kenya!

Humility & Humanity

We've had the "International Political Economy" course for a few sessions where Prof. Jean-Pierre Lehman always started with a "Literacy Test" about the regions we were going to discuss in the following four hours. The topics range from history, politics, economy, literature, etc. It is during such session I realized how ignorant I am of the "Globalized world in 21st century". While most of the class think we are the most international MBA, these literacy tests revealed the truth. There are 7 or 8 colleagues who are ahead of the class in terms of global knowledge.

As Prof. Lehman said, "How often in your lives have you found yourselves or are you likely to find yourselves in an environment of 90 persons from 44 nationalities, with no one dominant, for almost an entire year?"

With such diversity, there is certainly different viewpoints & conflicts. What Prof. Lehman has been trying to facilitate is an open and free environment for discussion. It is a challenging & rewarding experience at the same time! I hope in the end, we would be able to settle in a common ground, which is probably the evolving humanity in a historical context.