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!! :)

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

Family Time

I have six people at my home tonight (including me). My sister, her husband, and my cousins Ashu Bhai and Nitu are staying with me tonight. We are watching Bruce Almighty and sipping on a lemon tea each and it is already midnight. Wow!

We went to another of my cousins' place in the evening to celebrate her husband's Birthday. The dinner was superb and the chocolate trouffle after dinner was simply exotic.

We are going to have a late night gossip session. Ah, how I love gosiping! :-)

My sister bought a beautiful silk Lehenga for me from Benaras. Oh, it is such a pretty pretty thing.

Reminiscing about College Days - Part 1

Oh! those were the days. I don't want to sound like someone whose life isn't exciting anymore and keeps revisiting the past to fill the void, because that's so not true. Life has given me bigger and better things but College Days are always remembered, especially when your college buddies were a gang of girls known for being different from other girls. We were 8 girls living together in a flat in our hostel and the flat number was 18A. By the end of our first year, this number held a feeling of notoriety among the girls and warden and one of curiosity among the guys. What's up with 18A??? Why can't they be like the rest???
The simple answer to which was that 18A fortunately comprised of girls with similar mentality and attitude; all of us were thrown together by some strange co-incidence. We were never known for great achievements in studies (though most of us were good at studies and succeded in getting ourselves placed during campus placements). We were known for- untidy rooms, always breaking the curfew timings, loud music, late night parties, being too friendly with guys, never mixing ourselves with other studious girls, and creating other troubles. My hostel days were a lot of fun because of my mischievious friends and especially because of my roomie NV. We managed to spoil each other a lot during the four years of living together. NV was active in keeping the room untidy and I was lazy in tidying up, so the result was a mess to which we got used quickly. The coming of Warden into our rooms was always the time of great frantic activity- stuffing bags and clothes under the bed and in the almirahs, hiding novels and pretending to be in deep concentration over Math books. Once Warden said she would check our rooms before bedtime and we wanted to impress her for once with clean rooms. After dinner NV and I tidied up to the best of our ability and waited eagerly for Warden to come. She came and said, "Your room is very tidy". Both of us smiled from ear-to-ear and said, "Thank you Ma'm". To our astonishment Warden was furious, "Shameless girls, that was meant to be sarcastic" and she stormed out of the room. We looked around carefully, "Shit NV, how could you miss that pile of your clothes visible from under the bed", to which NV said, "And how could you miss the pile of novels on your table with the table-lamp overturned on top of them". To our horror we realized that our eyes had stopped seeing the mess, but we never changed, at least for 3 years.
We shared the same hostel building with male students, which at times caused trouble. Once at night there was a power-cut and instead of studying by the light of emergency lights like the other girls, we were having fun. The weather was hot and we came out of the flat with our chairs and sat there to enjoy the breeze. Our flatmate Plucky was in a jovial mood and started dancing to the song 'Can't get you out of my head' which she was playing on her portable player with batteries. She is a good dancer but that day her moves were particularly provoking and funny, as the light was low and there was nobody around. We watched her as she jumped around, moved her waist, gave arousing expressions and what not. In a few minutes we were laughing hard and as the song ended we heard the sound of clapping from somewhere above us. All of us dashed inside but cautiously came back again out of curiosty. On the floor above us was a bunch of senior guys from MCA and they clapped again as Plucky came out. Plucky was red from embarrasement remembering her dance moves but walked back inside in a dignified manner and slammed the door behind her, following which we heard loud laughter from the above floor.

On the day I turned 25

After having these amazing Dimsums, I watched the extremely boring movie Kismat Konnection. Vidya Balan looks pathetic and her outfits are 'oh-so-outdated'.






Cheers!!! I love White Wine. That's Di with my gift and Jiju uncorking the celebrations.











I can't wait to spill it into glasses. We had 2 glasses of wine each before going out for dinner.







You guessed it! That's my Birthday dress. But no points for the guessing, as I already posted a pic of my B'day Dress. :-)



















Posing with my new bag :-)