Archive for January/2006

Jan 28, Chinese New Year Eve, Ambassador Qiu XiaoQi celebrates CNY with Chinese students in Spain.
Qiu says that China has surpassed England and France to become the 4th largest economy in the world. The interest in China among Spanish community has reached a historic height. The Spanish government made an “Asian-Pacific Action Plan” last December to further strengthen its ties with AP region, and China is put to the most prominent position in the entire Plan. Chinese President Hu Jin Tao’s visit to Spain last November is one of the most important events of Sino-Spanish relationship during recent years. During the less than 48 hour visit, King Carlos I met five times with President Hu in different occasions, including a very private royal family dinner, which is rarely seen in diplomatic activities.
Ambassador Qiu encourages the students on their study. He says that he has heard many Spanish companies complaining about the lack of professionals who can speak both good Chinese and Spanish.
After the speech, Qiu watches CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala with all those present.
For more information, please click the link http://world.people.com.cn/GB/57507/4070485.html

Today Finanical Time realeased a new ranking of global MBA. There is no big surprise for the first ten, campared with the last time ranking. USA schools took 8 out of the best 10 seats. And LBS and Insead lead other European schools.
During the first-tier schools (No.17), IE registered a biggest progress from No. 19 to No. 12 glabally. And IE is No.1 in Spain and No. 3 in Europe. Here is the <u>ranking.
A good job!

Front row: Du, Renguo
Back row: Taowen, Justine, Cheryl, Benny, Jiong & Mingcan
Many classmates are interested in the exchange program in China and let’s hear the feedback of Sandra Wang, an an alumni of IMBA2005 and had a wonderful semester at Tsinghua. Sandra also did a part-time internship at HR department of Lenovo Beijing, here’s what she says about Tsinghua:
“Tsinghua is a great place to get to know quality students. Big campus. Lots of people. Big city, in fact.
Lenovo recruits regularly on Tsinghua. Also, the career services at Tsinghua forwards resumes to the Recruiting team at Lenovo. Check out Lenovo’s websites for postings, and submit accordingly, as there are different contact names for different posts. Also, for expatriates, they post on That’s Beijing.com under “careers”. Hope that helps.”
Renguo was an exchange student at IE from Tsinghua, he studied both undergraduate and MBA in Tsinghua and this is what he says:
“I don’t know what is the best way to describe Tsinghua, because I have too many feelings blended with Tsinghua. Just tell those people, if they want to come to China for exchange, Tsinghua is the best choice.”
For more information on TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY:

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Hong Kong Univesity of Science & Technology (HKUST) MBA currently ranks #44 in the world, #1 in Asia. It has a very strong faculty with some professors from the Ivy League schools (eg. Havard, Upenn, MIT, Princeton, etc.) Conveniently located 45mins from downtown, HKUST is highly accessible from every corner in Hong Kong and you can go sailing in the nearby Clear Water Bay. Many exchange students take advantage of its proximity to other Asian countries and travel to Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, etc for a long weekend or simply indulge in a 1-month tour across Asia. Employers rate HKUST favorably as one of their first choices (together with my motherschool “The Chinese University of Hong Kong”) to hire business graduates.
If you have further questions about these two schools, please post it in the COMMENTS section under this entry,
I will then compile and post the Q&A and on this BLOG by Feb 1 as soon as I get feedback from our contacts there.
Last but not least, many classmates have asked us how long it takes to learn Mandarin. Well, if you practise it on a daily basis (+ physically live in China for some months), I would say you can pick up it within 1 or 2 years, but learning to write Chinese would definitely takes much longer time! And please remember, mother tongue in Hong Kong and South China is Cantonese, which is very different in pronounication from Mandarin.
Good luck!!

For more information on HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:

http://www.bm.ust.hk/

Tomas Gutierrez Perez (the smiling guy wearing tie at the back) is our favourite professor in Term 1. He teaches Quantity Analysis and was named “Solver” when he plays football with the students. I have never seen such a dedicated teacher who has a full-time job but goes so much of his way to help students. He gave review session before every exam (twice on Sat. evenings) and he spent time to talk to us individually after the 1st exam if we wanted to review marks.
On Christmas Eve, we received this email from him:
TOMAS GUTIERREZ PEREZ wrote:
Subject: Feliz Navidad desde Tenerife
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 22:06:31 +0100
From: “TOMAS GUTIERREZ PEREZ”
To: imba-2005-s3@ie.edu, imba-2005-s4@ie.edu
Hello everybody.
After sleeping more than 10 hours, and not having to teach on a Saturday evening I was about to sit with the family to have dinner when I realized I had forgotten something.
Using the expression my mother has used during the more than 30 years she has been a teacher, I forgot to wish Merry Christmas to “My Kids”.
So here I am in front of the computer, sending just a few lines to wish you a great night and a great dinner with your families and enjoy these days of relax and peace with your loved ones.
It was a pleasure to have you “in front” in class and sure it will be a pleasure to have you “beside” in the BOTW during a 2006 that I’m sure, for most of you is going to be a year that will change your life’s in a way you are not able to realize right now.
Best wishes to all of you and your families, from the “Forget about Excel” teacher.
Tomás Gutiérrez

¿Qué pasa?
When you arrive in Madrid, be prepared that you will hear this question very often. It´s the same as “What’s up?” in English, usually the rely will be¨Nada¨(Nothing). Well, actually this is far from the case. Your life at IE will be FULL every single day.
Multinational…as always!
The current year IMBA program in IE constitutes students coming from over 50 countries and regions. We are virtually working with classmates and professors from all over the globe, and Chinese students here are absolutely minorities. We have finance guru from Kuwait, engineer from Egypt, investment-banker from Switzerland” you name it, we have it.
Cultural shocks almost every day. In my last class of Quantitative Analysis, when the prof. wrote down his telephone number on the blackboard, one classmate jerked out in a super HIGH key:
-Tomáz, is this for GIRLS???
The whole class burst in to laughter, while the prof. turned around and said
-Dear class, as you all know, he is Italian”
Before last Christmas, all the girls in my class gathered to have a chicas´ dinner(girls only). Well, 14 girls coming from 13 different countries, you can imagine how eye-catching our table was! Of course, the girls´ topic is universal”by the way, we did enjoy the gossip that night…
Fiestas
Spaniards are well-known for their night life. This relates to the life pace of local people. We usually have class from 0900 till 1500. That is, lunch comes after class” starving? but this still matches with the normal lunch time in here (1400-1600)! Dinner time is after 2200″ and then, after midnight, fiestas! You can switch from one bar to another for the whole night(I should say the whole morning).. and going home at eight o´clock is not big deal.
Sounds a little bit crazy, right? ja, welcome to Spain! Here you have superb music and superb peers- irresistible.
IE has a famous club named Bar of the Week, which serves as a fantastic platform for networking. Somehow you will find another side of your classmates in the bar as compared in classroom”and you will get to know who are genuine party animals gradually.
After all, don´t forget to attend the class later at 0900, and be prepared for all the assignments!
Enjoy…
A quote from a classmate: Study hard, play harder!
Very ture.

It is delightful to see everybody coming back with great smiles and more energies after the holidays. Yes, more energy is indeed called for to survive the heavy loading of Term 2. We have about 180 pages to read each day, let alone numerous cases and group projects. Basically our daily activities are studying, doing teamwork in workgroup, eating, reading and sleeping (hopefully for 5 hours a day!) nothing else. Some of us manage to do some sports like swimming and playing basketball every Friday after school. It is cool!
What’s the strategy of surviving this term? Division of labor. As no one can finish all the assignments, it really matters how well your workgroup works together to get things done in an efficient manner. Most groups divide 8 people into 2 subgroups with different combinations of functional experience and industry focus. Then one subgroup comes up with a draft and have the other subgroup comments on it.

I really love my workgroup. It is the most culturally-diversed team I have ever worked with. Our team members come from (see photo, from top left to right) Russia, America, Lithuania, Hong Kong, Italy, Argentina, Columbia and Portugal. We had a fanstatic team building workshop in mid-Nov in basketball games. There is an on-going, structured assessment program we give 360 degrees comments to each other from term to term. This provides invaluable insights into our Personal Development Plan for two main areas of leverage: 1. Analytical skills, decision making skills, 2. Interpersonal & practical skills: persuasion, cooperation & communication.
I am really looking forward to enhance a great deal of both core business skills & soft skills in this term.

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