Wim's graduation and my ecape from the Insead bubble

July 3rd 2008 ... I don't think I will ever forget this day ... Wim is graduating!

It was weird going to this familiar campus and seeing all these people and their partners and parents. Even though you saw all these frowned faces of students feeling melancholic that the year had come to an end you could also see the faces of the proud parents, the sad faces of the partners who would miss the nanny's, lunches and kids picnics and then there were the faces like mine ... relieved that the moment to leave the bubble and return to 'real life' had arrived :-) (and also proud of my partner of course ;-) !!!)

But of course the happy moment of returning to reality was delayed slightly by a three-hour ceremony where we had to listen to speeches that claimed all MBA's were special, they would make it in life, they were the future ... probably pretty painful to listen to for the 1/4th of the students that didn't find a job yet ... then a speaker came to explain us about ... well euhm I remember it was something about Finance ... the rest of the speech I was in a near comatose condition caused by his boring voice and overly articulate English accent. All this was wrapped up with the calling of about 400 names ... of each student who graduated and they also needed to be photographed with the Dean. But thèn ... after thinking you would either get a lumbago from sitting on the chair too long or melting away on it ... it was all over and done with and time for cocktails :-)

Good to see everyone again ... the smalltalk truly didn't take any effort at all :-)

Afterwards we went to diner with Wim's parents to Barbizon ... nice restaurant ... all full of students and parents who also did not want to eat in a restaurant without a Michelin star ;-)

The food was nice but not as nice as the bill afterwards would make you think.

After this there was the ultimate, final, last ever party ... we enjoyed the free flow of Champagne and drinks and had a great time.

We woke up as you should after having a great time at a party like this ... still tired from the few hours of sleep and with a mild hangover.

It was only in the afternoon that it hit me ... in the past 6 months that I have been on this stretched holiday I have met some great people. Ellie left us too soon ... we still miss her every time we're out ... and now the other people will also soon return to their parts of the world. Time will tell but I hope to see each of these wonderful people again many times in the future ... I hope we'll always keep contact and I hope the Insead-partner-experience-bond will always be there. All the times I've cursed about not having a job, not feeling of importance and many other things I nagged about all seem worth it if I think of all the wonderful ladies I have met during this year :-) sounds corny but I mean it 100%

Marrakesh

Since we thought the Insead graduation trip was a bit expensive for what it was (and we weren't the only ones with this opinion) me & Alice decided to take our guys to Marrakesh for a few days.

What did we learn from this experience: never believe an airline that says "any identification - as long as it has a photograph" is sufficient ... the result was pretty disappointing: we had to leave Alice and Jon behind in Charles de Gaulle :-(

After a delay of about 2 hours we arrived in Marrakesh in Riad La Maison Rouge. It was this small riad with fifteen rooms, all very cosy. You couldn't lock any of the doors there and if you were thirsty (which happened a lot in temperatures of 48°C) you could just take anything from the fridge and write it down on a piece of paper.

The day after we arrived we explored Marrakesh. Everything was walking distance from the hotel that was in the old part of town, but in this heat we decided to take a day ticket on this open-roof tourist bus.

I was really surprised: I never expected that Marrakesh would still be thàt poor. After visiting Asia we thought we would not easily be surprised anymore by poverty etc ... but here we were ... people still transporting food by mule and carriage and the cars and the taxis there were even worse than the ones we saw in Thailand or Cambodia.

We visited the main must-sees of Marrakesh like the El Bahia Palace, Jardin Majorelle, Koutoubia Mosque, Djemaa el-Fna-square, etc.

The food was also great ... we had this great discovery meal on this rooftop terrace ... they just kept on bringing the little tajines pots for hours :-)

The last day we were all sweated out in the burning sun and awful heat and we decided to spend our last hours by the tiny little rooftop pool.

We had a good flight back and when we arrived back in Charles de Gaulle at around midnight they noticed that all the staff in charge of passport control had already left ... so of course they decided to make us wait until they came back.

The trip started bad with Jon and Alice who couldn't join us and ended funny in Charles de Gaulle without the right staff to let us out of the airport building ... but in between Marrakesh was really beautiful and worth visiting.

More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/wimdebruyne/MarrakeshJune2008?authkey=LRLTP1pCpWs

It's been a while ...

Well I must confess ... I have been neglecting my blog completely for the last few weeks. Don't really know why ... although the following might have something to do with it:

After the Summer Ball it all seemed to have hit me in the face ... I really lacked the energy to do any of this anymore: I was feeling bad of not being proud of who and where I was in life, I was feeling ignored and couldn't make the effort anymore of doing any kind of smalltalk with students or their partners, and I was feeling like there were only a few people on this planet that understood how it felt for me, I couldn't just talk about this with my friends at home because to be honest, I wouldn't even know how to begin explaining ... of course I mostly feared they would say I was crazy of doing all this. So safe to say June didn't start that well for me :-)

So I tried to 'cure' myself by driving back and forth to Belgium every weekend and spending time with my friends and family. And I tried to avoid campus, party's, ... as much as possible in the few days a week that I was here.

In Dutch we have this saying which if you translate it says "the last of the lead weighs the heaviest" which sounds pretty stupid if you translate it ;-) but anyway it means that even though the end of this crazy Insead year was approaching it seemed harder for me to cope with it and time seemed to crawl by.

Well somehow being back in Belgium, going out with friends (people dó like me), doing my own job interviews (people actually àre interested in what I studied and achieved so far), looking for a new car ... aaahhh life felt good again :-)

We've figured out we will live in Brussels after this and the past weekend I haven't only found a new (secondhand) car, we also found a duplex in Brussels we're crazy about ànd I signed my contract with Atlas Copco (starting July 28) as if this isn't great enough, we're also going to Marrakesh in less than a week with Alice & Jon, me and Wim will be doing our 'Road Trip the 3rd' (and they're always great and memorable no matter where we will end up) ànd we're also going to the Provence right before I start to work ... so even though the month started off like sh** ... it's ending great :-)))

(I've tried the Lottery immediately when all this luck was overcoming me ... but so far no luck in this particular area ;-) )

Even though I've made some true friends here ... with who I just know I'll keep in touch for years to come, I'm sooooooo looking forward to my life after Insead ... ME + WIM + "NORMAL" LIFE: I've really got a good feeling about all of this, even my own blog-Christal ball thinks so

:-)))

Summer Ball

About a month left to go before Insead will be over and I kind of like it here in Fontainebleau. We're about 4 hours away from family and friends and we plan on going back about every two weeks, so that we don't have to miss any 'big events' in Belgium. I'm working for Insead Career Services on a temporary project so that keeps me busy during the week, Wim has less classes and since the offers are rolling in it won't be long before we decide what we're going to do after Insead ... so things are looking good :-)

This weekend we had the Summer Ball at the Château of Fontainebleau, one of our friends came all the way from Belgium for this not-to-miss party.

There was this big see-through tent and there were a few rooms inside the Château. There was Champagne as much as you wanted, apetizers, a room with a live band, a lounge/jazz area and shortly after midnight there were fireworks and music above the lake.

Et l'histoire continue...

We've been back in Europe since one week now. After a few days in Belgium where we spent our time with friends, family and Wim's potential future employers, we drove back to Fontainebleau. Jet Lag is starting to get less but this is being fully replaced by another feeling that can be associated with a country where the wine doesn't cost 10€ per bottle: the mild hangover :-)

Our cute little studio in the centre is about the same size as our bedroom in Singapore but the fact that we don't have to share with other students totally makes up for that :-)

Waking up and opening the window, seeing a blue sky and the white houses across the street, hearing people speak French and seeing old ladies carrying baguettes (ok this last one is maybe a bit exaggerated ;-) ) ... this feels more like a holiday than Singapore ever did ... it's weird to explain. Maybe it's because this is a new experience again, or maybe it's because I'm seeing friends again, maybe it's because I'm close to home and get to go back every two weeks, maybe it's because it's the last period and knowing that this is going to be over soon ... but I feel more relaxed about the situation now. Let's hope this feeling is not just a side effect from the wine last night and that I'll still feel like this in a few days time ;-)


Wim's schedule is great too ... he almost has no classes so at least we'll have the work-free-weekends again ;-)

On Sunday we just hopped in the car and drove to this medieval town in Provins and just enjoyed how beautiful it is here. After a while of travelling in Asia you get used to nice beaches and temples and palm trees I guess and you get exited again if here you see an abandoned church and graveyard or even just a field with yellow flowers :-)

Off course I'm totally making this sound like a holiday but I am actually still hoping to get a job here because I had more free time during the last 4 months than anyone can handle. Hopefully this week I'll know more, fingers crossed.

Krabi & Friends

Our trip to Krabi was exactly as expected: a relaxing vacation with beautiful beaches and sunsets, delicious food and a fancy hotel ... just what we needed at the end of these 4 months.

The only ones trying to sabotage this tranquil holiday were the mosquito's that must have attacked me unnoticed from behind because the second day when I woke up I noticed that my back was covered in about 37 mosquito bites one even bigger then the other ... but even this awful itching couldn't ruin my mood :-)


After these 4 days of basically doing nothing but read, swim and sunbathe we returned to Singapore where again we had something to look forward to: the arrival of our Belgian friends.


We showed them around Singapore and completed the few things we also still had to visit before returning to Belgium (Wim finally managed to make it to Chinatown ;-) ).


After two days that went by too fast, they left to complete the rest of their trip.


We on the other hand spent that day scanning all Wim's courses on campus (about 1m of papers) ... which took us about 3 hours, and then we started packing all our things. It's going to be a close call to see if we're going to be able to take everything back home. Our housing agent gave us a hard time about staying 1 extra night, so we have to move everything from our place to another apartment in this condo and then tomorrow May 3rd at 22h55 we're coming back. We'll spend a few days at home with friends an family and possible future employers in Wim's case ... and then we're off to Fontainebleau again. I'll keep you updated.

Pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/wimdebruyne/KrabiThailandApril2008?authkey=uG4PGggO44A

Counting down ...

I know I kind of promised that my next post would be one of peace, tranquility and happy thoughts ... but somehow I feel that I cannot write about what I've been through here in the last 3,5 months without adding this next post. So in case you only want to read happy and positive posts about travelling and such ... you better skip this one ;-)

It feels good to get it out in the open but I'm counting down the days to when this is all going to be over. And with that I don't mean that I feel like I have to return to Belgium ... I just need this Insead period to be over and done with. And really, I can understand that for Wim this is one of the most exciting years of his life, and I am really happy for him ... but everything evolves around Insead Insead Insead.

In the beginning that I was here and we went to a party, some people at first probably thought that I was a student ... imagine the look on their face when I had to 'admit' to them that I'm just a "partner" and also one that gave up a job to be here with Wim. They all gave me a look like ... wow, that's just 15 minutes of my life I have wasted talking to you. Then after a while when people started to know me as Wim's partner they started asking different questions like "what do you do to keep yourself busy all day?" ... waiting for me to say "after having my hair done, I went shopping on Orchards Road and got a manicure afterwards" ... well the truth is that I really did enjoy myself the first 3 months (besides having to deal with these idiotic questions all the time) ... I met a few really cool people that I hope to always stay in touch with, I traveled a lot, I explored Singapore, I even followed Mandarin classes. But now that everyone has left Singapore, and after visiting about évery single place in Singapore (it really isn't thàt big), and after running out of a budget to be doing more travelling and after realising I will never ever in my life be able to say three phrases in a row that any Chinese person is ever going to understand ... I am just really ready to go back home. And the crazy thing is that with home I don't even mean Belgium, I just mean away from this entire Insead environment. Okay I must admit, I miss my friends like crazy and would do anything just to see them again so I could go out to diner with them, or for a drink or to a club or whatever. But I also just miss the friends I made here ... so to be honest I just miss having a job, I miss having people that I can talk to about other subjects than about their job before, the jobs they want to apply for, their stocks, the courses they are folowing, the work they have to do for these courses ..... AAAAAaaaggghhh, really ... enough is enough.

I just came back from a BBQ tonight in the condo next door and I stayed there exactly 40 minutes ... after the usual conversation topics and a few shallow how-are-you-doing's (on which I always reply 'fine' but lately I've just felt like skipping fine and shouting or crying instead) ... I came back home and afterwards I feel terrible for Wim, that I left so soon, but I really can't handle it anymore. And I know I'm kind of generalizing here, there àre some students that I can talk to and that I really enjoy hanging out with ... the problem is that of the hundreds of students here I can probably count these people on both hands.

I sometimes even started doubting myself here, thinking that maybe I've suddenly become this asocial person that doesn't want to go out anymore but that's so far from my real personality ... I would still love to go out almost every night, and be busy and surround myself with friends, I love meeting new people and I usually get along with many people from different backgrounds, with different jobs, different ages ... but it's just the circumstances here. I want to have a job again, and have people be really interested in what I do and have them know that I'm not this stupid blond bimbo that likes to shop all day and talk about the performance of her maid and nanny ... I also went to university for 5 years, but here because I don't have an Insead MBA, none of that seems to matter somehow.

I warned you this wasn't going to be a pleasant post ... but one that I really needed to get off my chest.