Happy New Year/Semester

A very belated Happy New Year! It has been a month since my last post but it has been a very busy month. After spending a week in Hong Kong to celebrate New Years, the China trip was a blast and I've included below some pics. Superweek was emotionally draining for many of my peers (I'm glad I'm not doing banking) and with new classes and recruiting season kicked off in high gear, this has been a very busy first week of school!


Hong Kong Trip - Before the official school trip to HK/China, a small subset of the students decided to fly into HK a week early to explore the city and get settled into the different time zone. Surprisingly, Hong Kong was warm and I didn't realize how much fun it would be. Lan Kwai Fong was definitely THE place to be during New Years as it was packed with locals, ex-pats and tourists. Among the fun things we experienced include: Victoria's Peak, Stanley Market, hanging out at Starbucks next to the world's largest Buddha, Lan Kwai Fong, random shopping at markets all over Hong Kong, Karaoke (uh... KTV overload??), Dim Sum (mmm pork buns), Macau (I actually walked away up), custom suit tailoring and random people watching. All in all, it was one of my best trips I've taken with lotsa fun memories.

China Trip - Even though this was an "educational" trip, it was fun to learn about China's business environment from different perspectives. Our schedule was very packed as we had company/government presentations in the mornings and afternoons, and Yale alumni events during the evenings. We had some free time on the weekends but because we visited 3 cities in 10 days (HK, Shanghai, Beijing), it felt like we were always on the move and checking in and out of hotels. Coming from an operations background, I really enjoyed visiting the GM plant and seeing the steel being produced at Bao Steel. My favorite presenter was the Senior Vice President of Cummins Engine. He was very articulate and gave a good overview about his vast experience in working in Asia for the past 17 years. It truly is amazing to learn about the explosive 9% GDP growth in China. He was also very generous in hosting us for dinner at the exclusive Cihna Club in Beijing the night before we left. The picture on the left is me standing in a very austere building (MOFCOM - Ministry of Commerce).



I hope to blog more this semester and congrats to all the Round 1 admits, I look forward to meeting everyone at welcome weekend. Also congrats to all the Round 2 prospectives who got an interview invites, Yale SOM is truly an exciting place to be!