Life as a MBA student in Belgium

My life has changed. I have changed. And I am very happy!!

Amidst all the excitement and millions of things to do to adjust to the new life, my blog was neglected. It is the easiest thing to neglect and so it is neglected first of all. When I started getting comments and messages from some blogger friends about my whereabouts, I decided that it indeed has been a really long time and I should better blog about my new life.

I don't know where to start. I have been in Belgium for a month now and many things have happened since then. Mom and Dad came with me to Belgium to drop me here and then to go on a short Europe trip. I am immensely glad and thankful to them for coming with me because with all my luggage (almost 60 Kgs), I would have broken a few bones and all my suitcases before reaching my destination. Leuven is a small town, at a distance of 30 mins train ride from Brussels. I love the town. It is only 3 Kms in radius! You can see the entire town in half a day. And because it is a student town, you can see students and university buildings everywhere. It is almost like one huge campus.

That is the Town Hall in Leuven. A beautiful building at the heart of the town.

The weather here is gray most of the time and it rains almost every second or third day. The two awesome things about Belgium are its beer and waffles. They have hundreds of varieties of Beer in Belgium. I knew about Leuven's beer connection before coming here and that people here love drinking beer but I had no idea that someone like me who hates it would become an ardent beer fan. Waffles have a similar story. I have never had a sweet tooth but the sight and smell of a freshly baked waffle can make anyone drool. In Brussels I tried a just-baked waffle topped with strawberries and chocolate sauce. I have no words to describe how good it was.

That was my first beer in Belgium!

Now about the MBA life - My classes started on 1st September, so I have been into the program for 17 days now. The first week was all about lunches, dinners, drinks with classmates and alumni, getting to know the school, and even a party at the Dean's house (and what a party!). It was fun at the beginning and before we knew it, the grind started. In just 2 weeks, we have completed 3 subjects!! From the very first day of classes, I have been immersed in team assignments, tutorials, reading for the next day's classes, networking and trying to stay in touch with friends and family back in India. I did not realise when waking up at 5 AM and sleeping at midnight started sounding normal. I did not realise when going to the school on weekends to work with your team for group work became usual. I did not realise when the book shelf in my studio was piled high with thick binders and heavy books. I did not realise when reading 300 pages everyday started seeming achievable. I did not realise when I actually finished an impressive amount of reading. If I collectively count the number of pages for all subjects I have read so far, then that is probably more than I read in an entire year before starting my MBA.

But you know what.... it is fun! I like it! Every moment of sitting in class, every moment of group work, every moment of reading micro and macro economics, financial accounting, statistics and managing across cultures.... I love it. Even when I crib, even when I tell my boyfriend in India that all this work will make me die early (he is a MBA so he thankfully understands), even when I don't get time to cook, even when I am too tired to update my blog, I am loving every moment here and I can see that I am changing as a person. My thought process, my stamina, my ability to cope with pressure, my social networking, everything has already changed drastically. And that is when I am only 1 month into my MBA!

To top it all I joined French classes here which will start on the coming Monday. I have no idea where in the world will I find time for studying French but I have still joined.
Oh and by the way, before my classes started, I managed to visit Amsterdam and Den Haag in Netherlands. Beautiful places would be a gross understatement for them. The canals of Amsterdam give it the romantic feel of a quintessential European city and Den Haag has these beautiful buildings and a mix of the old and new in Europe.

I have made some new friends. We are 90 students divided into 2 sections of 45 each in this year's batch. Among these 90 students we have 42 nationalities, so our class is one of the most diverse in the world. Conversation topics during lunches with my classmates include; Geisha in Japan, our upcoming trip to China, the integration of Europe after the second world war, Barrack Obama's political campaign, Mexican food, Life in Nigeria, the Australian boyfriend of my batchmate from Peru, French versus Dutch language courses, and other equally diverse and interesting topics.

I am sure that my year at Vlerick is going to be a life changing experience for me. No matter where I land after the MBA, no matter what job I get (or don't get!) the learning that I am getting here is immense. My only regret is that I am not able to blog regularly. Some of my classmates have blogs and they post every few days, although I don't understand where they find the time and energy to do it, but taking inspiration from then I will try to blog more often. I suppose that I am just not that great at managing my time.

I will post some pictures of Brussels, Amsterdam, Den Haag and Leuven in my next post!! :)

My Affair With A Romance Language

It has been long since I was on blogosphere and I admit that there were a couple of times since I last posted when I started writing but then just gave up. I blame it on multiple factors, but Delhi heat takes the biggest share of blame. I just hate this time in Delhi. The dry and scorching weather gets me into depression, and I should add here, that it really takes a lot to get ME into depression. Going outdoors is suicidal these days, even in evenings. The only places to hang out are malls, and it gets intensely boring to hang out exclusively at malls. With all my social life limited to Facebook and French classes, there was not much to talk about. Moreover, I was in a lazy, introspective phase.

I promised last time that I would blog about my French classes, as they are a lot of fun. They still are fun and I love my time there. The teacher is nice; she gives good material, and teaches well. I have two more students in class with me (both men), so it is a small and intimate class. We get many opportunities to laugh because we keep making silly mistakes that are at times HILARIOUS. One such instance that comes to my mind is of the day when Swati (our teacher) asked me to make a sentence that starts with 'Je voudrais...' (I would like...) It was our third or fourth class and I was still struggling immensely with vocabulary. I started to say something but the sentence that popped out of my mouth was "Je voudrais un bon homme." (I would like a nice man.) Shucks! That was followed by a shocked second and then peals of laughter from everybody including me. The other two students in the class specially laughed loud at that. Embarrassing, I know. But trust me, that's nothing compared to the mistakes that THEY make.

I think it's time to describe the other two students in my class. 'A' seems like a pretty boring guy and he is the one who struggles the most in our classes. It has now got to the extent where the rest of us feel he wastes the time of the class because he just doesn't understand things. Whatever job 'A' is doing, it keeps him busy in some health related seminars these days. He comes to the classes right after work, travelling from CP to Gurgaon. I appreciate his dedication, especially in this weather. He turned up a little late during one of the classes. We looked up as he entered the room to join us. The first thing that I noticed about him on that day was that he was wearing a big, round, red badge, which said "Loose weight now, Ask me how" in shining white letters. Before I could stop myself, I pointed to the eye-catching badge and asked him, "What is that?" His response, "Oh, I forgot to take that off after the seminar." WTF? He traveled all the way from CP to Gurgaon and then walked into the class wearing that. I wonder how many people asked him tips for loosing weight that day.

I call the other guy "My grey eyed Ipod" or The ipod for short (this nick suggested by GO). He has beautiful grey eyes but at times irritating manners. He sings really well, calls me nearly everyday, and hangs up only after singing me a song or two. I know it is funny, but I admit that I enjoy it. I mean how many men these days would sing you songs everyday when you are not even dating them (and nice songs at that). I know he is either too nice or too creepy and I am still trying to decide in which category to place him. He is doing well in class though and I enjoy talking to him, especially when he talks passionately of his career. Like me, he is going to start his MBA program soon but in Canada. He is intelligent, having completed his engineering from a good college and worked for a couple of years, he managed a great score at GMAT and then admission at a decent B-School. I am impressed at how informed he is about his field and at the amount of reading he is doing. From financial accounting to French vocab to oil fields in Canada, he has read up a whole lot. I am always impressed with well-informed people but at times, he intrigues me. He would at times say non-committal but suggestive things, which might mean that he is flirting. I give non-committal responses then but try to make it clear without being too obvious that I am not interested in any relationship or fling (or anything) at all at this point in my life. I just don't like it when men try to play it so safe that they stand neither here nor there; I think that's not being man enough. Of course, I might be wrong with the whole thing, it might be just premature alarm bells ringing in my head, and therefore currently I just brush aside such things and ignore. However, while talking, laughing, arguing, at every imaginable instant, I am watching him to try and understand where he is heading with all his talk (and songs!).

On a different note, I met my best friend Amit yesterday after more than a year and half. Although we could manage less than an hour with each other but it was totally great. I took him to TGIF (my favorite hang out) and we of course had LIITs. I haven't laughed so much in ages as I did in that hour. Friends always make you feel so good. Although Amit and I talk nearly everyday but meeting each other after that terribly long period felt really great. I am glad we could make it because in a couple of months, I would move to Europe and then I don't know when we would ever meet.

Ah! It feels wonderful, now that I have finally written this long post. I wonder why I was putting it off. There will be more to come and soon :D

Pub Going, Loose and Forward

This consortium is the perfect example of how a small snowball of an idea can gain momentum throughout the nation and grow into a giant, all-engulfing, avalanche of pink chaddis to the Ram Sene Office in Bangalore. For once, such a below-the-belt tactic seems totally fair and sensible. Hence, I am now a proud member of the Consortium of pub going, loose and forward women. I have joined their facebook group and asked all my friends, cousins and anybody whom I know to join the campaign. I read in the TOI today that the Ram Sene's Bangalore unit chief Vasanth Kumar Bhavani has said about the campaign that, "It's a free country. However, we would like to know the background of these people since nobody from good families would resort to such cheap steps". Yeah, you are right Mr. Bhavani. People from good families only beat up women and drag them by the hair.

I don't want to question how a celebration of love on a particular day can be a part of only western culture. I don't want to start discussions about why women should have the right to drink, go to pubs, and socialise without the fear of being beaten up by hooligans who want to sudharo every female in the country. I don't want to ask these hooligans that what happens to their moral policing when a woman is raped, abused or molested. All I want to say is, oppose them, stand against them, fight them back.

This Valentine's I am going to raise a toast for all the men I know, who are real gentlemen, and who support and take care of women around them. For my brother, who helps my sis-in-law around the house with every possible work, unasked; who took me out to celebrate in a pub when I got my first salary; who really respects women. For my Dad, who brings me a bottle of white wine whenever I ask him; who has never had a problem with my dressing sense; who really respects women. For my friend Amit, who pulls out chairs and holds open doors for women no matter what their age is; who would make any girl feel like a princess just because he thinks women deserve it; who really respects women. For GO, who accompanies me to pubs even when he is not much into drinking; who gladly lets me be the person I am even if he doesn't agree with me about something; who really respects women. I will a raise a toast to all of them not because I feel they are going out of their way for the women in their lives but because these men do it without the airs of doing women a favor. They do it because that was how they were brought up.

Go ahead, raise a toast this Valentine's to all such men in your life and to every woman on the planet :-)

Movie + Drinks + Movie = Bad Headache

A movie, followed by a couple of drinks, followed by another movie results in a bad headache!!

That was the lesson I learnt on Saturday. GO and I had another date; GO drove all the way from Noida to Gurgaon again, I made him wait again and we had drinks again. Everything was pretty much the same except for the fact that this time I insisted on watching two movies that day. Yeah, I make such insane choices at times. I totally disregarded the fact that GO comes from Noida on a weekend so that he can meet me and not to watch lousy movies. However, I had to watch a movie and it was painfully difficult to pick between Raaz and Slumdog!! Okay, I know there's no comparison between the two movies but I am a die-hard horror movie fan. I enjoy the creeps that I get sitting in a theatre and moreover I had enjoyed Raaz 1, little did I know that Raaz 2 has not even the remotest connection to it. I fell for the line 'and the mystery continues...' and assumed that it continued from part 1, but, no, it didn't. To make matters worse Emraan Hashmi looked like a wild gorilla because of his hairstyle. I made GO suffer through Raaz and he kept asking me at intervals, "You really wanted to watch this???". I unconvincingly replied each time, "Come on GO, it isn't that bad. And if it gets worse, we can walk out in between". We did walk out but only when just 10 minutes of the movie remained and I realised that we barely had time to grab a bite before it will be time for the Slumdog show.
We were in Ambience Mall and neither GO nor I had ever been there before. I just loved this mall, specially because you don't get the feeling of being at a crowded place at all, so much so that it almost makes you feel that you are not in India. Anyway, after Raaz both of us badly needed good drinks to recover from the disappointing experience and we found a pub, Firangi Paani. Unusual name and nice place. They have an awesome scheme going these days, they have a ladies nite on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, when ladies can have free drinks, yeah absolutely free!! No I am not advertising for them, I thought it may be useful for anybody in NCR :-). Anyway, I ordered the usual LIIT and GO ordered some nasty and evil looking cocktail with Blue Curacao in it. It tasted just like cough syrup, sweet and heady, ugh!! The LIIT was good, not as good as in TGIF though. We were a little high soon and didn't realise that we had missed nearly 20 minutes of Slumdog already. Anyway, we rushed to the auditorium, I with unsteady steps and GO holding my hand. I dropped on my seat in the audi and wanted to sleep right away but GO whispered in my ear almost threateningly, "Don't sleep, watch this movie, it's better than Raaz." He filled in the background so that I could understand what was going on, and although I was almost on the verge of sleeping, and my mind had gone comfortably numb, I watched for a few minutes. The movie was good, my mind slowly aroused itself and then I really watched it, taking in the brutalities, the dust and grime, the reactions of the foreigner couple sitting next to us and even though the narrative went on at a breakneck speed, I enjoyed it. However, GO kept making some intellectual comments about how the director had caught an incomplete view of India albeit a poignant one.

By the time we came out of the audi, I had a bad, real bad headache. Lessons learnt: Never watch two movies in a day; never mix drinks and movies; never mix GO and bad movies (although he is sweet and can watch any movie with me but I later feel guilty).
Next date is already planned and despite headaches and lousy movies, I am loving it! :-)

Long Island Weekend......... Contd.

My last post (or should I say non-post) was unintentional. I accidentally posted just the title and hence the funny post without words happened. I would have removed it but when I got a couple of comments on that post I decided to let it stay.

Anyhow, this post is about what I did this past weekend and how does Long Island come into picture. I met GO (My George Orwell) on Saturday after a pretty long time. None of us remembers when was it that we last met, as if we have collectively lost that portion of our memories. I can guess that it must be close to 2 years but I am not sure. Its funny really how we don't remember when and where did we last meet. We have stayed in touch throughout, courtesy orkut and phone, probably that's why we never realised that time is flying by and it's probably 2 years that we haven't seen each other. Finally we met and I noticed that GO looks as cute as ever; the same smiling face, the same witty jokes, only this time GO had a car :-)

We wanted to catch a movie, or to be true, it was I who wanted to catch a movie because I usually don't get company in Gurgaon for the movies. The only available option was Chandni Chowk to China! GO warned me that it was a crap movie but I HAD to watch it, so we did. Crap was an understatement, the movie is outrageously bad. I don't even want to write about it. However, GO and I still had a good time by laughing at everybody and everything in the movie. After the movie it was time for TGIF, yeah whats a date without a couple of drinks!! Oh, didn't I tell you that it was a date? Well it was, seemed like it at least :-)

Whenever I want to try a new drink, I mostly end up getting confused and then I order what I love drinking, Long Island Iced Tea. I love its name (specially because Tea is the only beverage that's not in it), I love its color, I love its taste, I love its ingredients (gin, vodka, tequila, rum and triple sec) and I love it because its stronger than any other cocktail :-). So I had 2 LIITs and they were enough for me because I did not want to scare GO when I met him for the first time after soo long. The next time we meet, I am going to have more. You reading that GO?

We laughed, discussed drinks, friends, old times, new times and later GO helped me walk to the parking lot, even 2 LIITs make me need support while walking. He dropped me home and I have to say now that I really had a great time. Would look forward to the next time you come here GO :-)

Sunday was another thrilling day. I met another great friend, Karan. We attended an MBA fair where some Australian Business Schools were participating. Karan had come with some friends and three of us who had taken the GMAT (all 3 of us have decent scores), got on the spot offer of admission from University of Technology, Sydney. Now, how cool is that?? You go to an MBA fair, you are not even interested to study in that country and you are offered admission in a University that's ranked 9th in Australia. None of us was delighted however, because we have gone through gruelling days and nights to apply in couple of universities in US and we are still not sure whether we would be offered an interview, let alone admission, and here we get a straight admission offer with the only condition that we need to submit our documents. I mean wasn't that too easy?? Still, I GOT AN ADMISSION OFFER FOLKS!!!! In August, probably I would be writing from Australia about how much I love Sydney and how cool my university is :-)

When 3 of us had admission offers, that called for a celebration. Since we were in Vasant Vihar we went to RPM, the only disc in the vicinity. It was time for LIIT again :-). The LIIT in RPM was stronger than it was in TGIF. We drank and danced, 5 guys and me, all of them sweet and decent guys, and had a great time. So this past weekend was my Long Island Weekend and I still feel that I just can't have enough of LIIT :-)

Of Drinks, and Cigarettes, and Books

Okay, so last night I went out with my cousin Chummu and had two cocktails and five cigarettes. I needed it, the break I mean; the break from monotony. Yesterday I tried a Gin cocktail for the first time; usually I am a Vodka or Wine person. To tell you the truth, I could hardly tell the difference between Vodka and Gin. Probably because the Gin was mixed with other things to make my cocktail. I wanted to have more drinks but did not, since we had to come home later and I did not want Dad to suspect that we had been up to some mischief when according to him I had taken Chummu to check out an awesome new Pizza place.

Last night was fun. I smoked for the first time and smoked five cigarettes in a row, which later made me feel that all my innards are on fire and that my intestines have turned to ashes. I have tried to smoke twice before but could never suck it in. Last night I managed to achieve that feat and in amazement mixed with a sense of achievement stopped only after five cigarettes and when I had started feeling queasy. However, I am not going to have a smoke again, never. I had a very disturbed sleep last night because of those five bloody cigarettes.

Anyhow, I and Chummu had a sort of reunion yesterday. It had been a reeaallly long time since we talked like that. It was good, everything, the drinks, the gossip, the sleeping together, even those cigarettes in some way. I also had a talk with GO (My George Orwell) after having my drinks and cigarettes, and it was fun too. I giggled a lot while talking to him. Usually I don't giggle, I laugh. Was I flirting? Naaah. GO is an old friend, I can't flirt with him after all these years. I don't think so!!! However, I know I usually am a big flirt after a couple of drinks. But no, I wasn't flirting with GO. Oh well, I sense some confusion here :-)

Oh, the best part of last evening was that I bought two books. GO was after my life to read Nineteen Eighty-Four, so I finally bought that and another GO-recommended book, in fact his favourite, To Kill A Mockingbird. That makes me a rich book lover for sometime. I and GO have plans of catching up this Saturday. Its been a long time since we met, so GO would drive all the way from Noida to Gurgaon to meet me. That's sweet of him, ain't it?? :-)

Home Alone and Partying

I was home alone for a few days. Dad's gone to Hyderabad and Mom's visiting my sister. So, did I behave like an opportunist to have some fun in the absence of my parents?? I sure did, what else did you expect. I totally threatened my friends to make some good weekend plan since noone knows when I would get such an opportunity again. I cannot have late nights in the presence of my family, curfew timings for me are 8 P.M. Yeah, I know, gross!! But I don't complain, coz I love being with the old gal and the old guy :-) But that doesn't mean I wouldn't feel guiltily glad when they are not at home.
So a friend of mine told me that one of his friends was having a house party and I was welcome to come along. Now, I didn't even know the guy who was throwing the party. But what the hell!!! At 25, you are still allowed to visit parties where you don't know anybody. (Ain't it??!! ) So, I went without the least idea of what the party was going to be like, how many people would there be, etc. All I knew was that the party could go on till veryy late and there would of course be drinks. As it turned out, the party included somewhere around 12 nice people. The host was very friendly and very drunk by the time everybody arrived. So we drank, ate, talked, played cards, and finally danced. I did not drink too much, as I did not want to embarass myself or my friend by being tipsy. So all I had were 2 vodka and orange juice and one shot of Tequila. We danced through the night and it was in the wee hours of morning that we said our goodbyes. I reached home at 5:30, dead tired, and dropped on bed without even changing.
So I had all the fun I could in the absence of my parents, and that would keep me going till the next time they are not home. :-)
Till then, I would be a good, homely daughter