A bit of Autumn colours on campus

 

 

 

 

Images from far away: Mannheim

It seems that Stephan has been having lots of free time on his hands. On the other side, he has also been quite busy taking pictures. Combine both, and you have his photo albums online:



The photo above was taken during our Kick-Off Week in early September. Click on it.

He also took loads of pictures during the Official Graduation in the Mannheim Palace's Grand Hall.

Enjoy.

Whatever gets the job done!

Got my scooter on Monday. And it was a really good acquisition, I am using it often. It is at least 40% quicker than walking, and more fun too.
I know I look silly on it. But I do prefer to spend the little spare time I get doing things instead of walking.

WBS Telecom Forum

The Allumni Association organized a forum on Telecom on Monday. I wasn't going, but went. Good company and I am here to expand my horizons, right?
I am glad I did.

 

We had 3 presenters, and the first one, Gabriel Solomon, did an excellent job of downloading a huge amount of information in a very short time. A couple of seconds per slide, that was it. It was maybe even a tiny bit too fast, but I surely liked it and time flew by, great style.
But not only the style of the first presentation was interesting. Actually, I found that the whole discussion was highly interesting for me. And the data Gabriel provided was very relevant.
They were talking about the situation onf the mobile phone market and infra-structure in Africa. This is not information you get served on a silver plate on a daily basis.
It reinforced my wish to study more about the economics when you are dealing with the poorest. There is lots of good things to do getting the majority of this planet economically involved, and there is money to be earned while doing it.

The book fair

This is a post for the future, as the book fair has already happened on Saturday.
Every beginning of term the Students' Union (SU) organizes a not-for-profit used text book sale in the end of week 1. It surely is a great place to get the books that you need for a very good price.
Below some observations that I made:

• Arrive early. I arrived at 9:50, and this was good. I was one of the first 50 people to have their pick. The fair opened at 10:00 and by 10:20 the best offers were gone. By 10:30 there were thousands of people queueing.
• Cheapest books are on top. You will find different tables with piles of the most popular books. In those cases, the ones on the top are the cheapest, so it is easy and quick to grab what you need. If you want a book in a good condition, grab a bit lower in the pile.
• Take cash with you. Only cash accepted.
• Make a list of what you need and prioritize. You won't have much time to decide.
• Be prepared to get an older edition. I got two books, both of them are not the newest edition, but one before. But, for 5 and 3 pounds each instead of 45 or 50, it was really a no brainer.
• Be prepared to spend more than the bargains described above. If you get a book which costs 45 pounds for 25, it is still a win-win situation for you and the seller.
• Take a strong bag with you.
• I hear that we are going to have something similar this week at WBS.

• Ah, yes, very important: take good company with you.

Well, that's it for now. Let me grab my new (usede) Accounting book and do some work.

071007 Leamington Spa: The Two C(h)ristian(o)s Birthday

Cristiano and Chris had their birthdays this week and this was enough excuse for us to get out of campus. And the sandwich was even kind of nice.

From 071007 Leamin...

The way back was also peculiar, with negotiations with a taxi driver going on and, as a result, the defection of a big number of our group from the bus stop. Later negotiations didn't work very well, so we saved some money waiting for the bus. Below a picture of part of the remaining contingent. Now I can say that I have Srilankan friends, something quite new for me.

From 071007 Leamin...

Video in class

Continuing the observation on the high tech infrastructure available at WBS, it is impressive to see how video has crept into the structure of the classes administered here. We have seen videos in the obvious case of Market Analysis (or simply marketing, if you wish), but also in Practice of Management (PoM) and Operations Management (Ops). It has been used during the induction week and I am probably forgetting some of the other times video was used.
In any event, it is there. We have seen advertisements, we saw how lettuce is harvested by Polish undergraduates in Cambridge, we saw the result of the PoM project of a group from last year (with 2 Mannheimers, yeah!).
This is, of course, only possible because the lecture room is very well equipped with computer, audio and video systems.



And this is taken for granted in such a measure that we wouldn't be able to imagine class without a simple powerpoint presentation. Well, it wasn't too common where I come from.