samirabid.com

A great family time Christmas and I hope everyone is taking some time out from study (or work!) and enjoying themselves for a few days.

Thought I would share something a little different; a picture of the beach where we went on Honeymoon earlier this year – one piece of spam I did not mind receiving!

Now that I have a bit of time on my hands, I thought I would tweak the blog website a little.  I have added a “tag cloud”, a calender and your recent comments – this is to try and encourage you guys to comment more!

Feedback welcome and if you want to do this for yourself, my company entiatech will be happy to arrange.

Other blog type news is that we will soon be appearing on the Warwick Business School website – must be moving up in the world! Link here

Well I got my very first prize money as a racing driver yesterday!! … my share of this years sponorship fund!  Of course we are not talking about Lewis Hamilton money here but a very welcome present all the same, especially for a student just before Christmas.

Currently, I am developing ideas for the final project.  As with many things on the MBA it is a compromise between going with what you know and going with something completely different (and therefore more challenging!)  I have tended to so far go for the second option because, for me, that is the whole point of doing the MBA; to do things differently.  It is more risky but I feel it is really important to open yourself up to new ideas and new experiences.

Term 1 has now come to a close; an awesomely intense period with now being the first time to take time to reflect.  Finding the motivation for Economics was tough after the party weekend post exams, however in the end I really enjoyed it; just like most things this term.  Interestly it was on Land Rover and so from an Economics view point I had a fair amount to say, especially at the current time.

Subaru and Suzuki have joined Honda F1 in pulling out of motorsports and today Toyota announced that they will make a loss, for the first time in their 70+ year history. Of course the ‘credit crunch’ is to blame as, being a luxuary item, car purchases can normally be delayed or postponed. It is therefore  a tough time ahead for my many friends in the industry.

On a more pleasant note the snow has come in serious amounts to the mountains (gives me another excuse for a winter picture!) For all those going away for some ski or snowboarding action this season, you are in for some good conditions – you can now even get from Whsitler direct to Blackcombe without coming back to base (as long as you can get up to start with!)

Have a great Christmas and enjoy your few days off.

The exams have ended and the parties have begun. All in all, I think the general conscience was that the exams were slightly harder than expected or than in previous years. As they say though, there is little one can do now and so the focus shifts to completing the Economics assignment next week and to the festive period ahead.

I have had some feedback/comment about the amount of car based stuff on here! Well, I am kind of into it so that is what you are going to get … it is the Race of Champions tomorrow and so expect some comment on that at some point – a great event where the best drivers alive get together from all over the world to have some fun driving around in buggies against the clock, in the amphitheatre that is the new Wembley stadium. Great stuff.

In the mean time, here is a much more festive and gentile photo of some trees and snow!

Sofia??

Dave is a UK TV channel that is pretty focused on stereotypical bloke interests – car etc. It also happens to have the contract to show the World Rally Championship, of which Sebastian Loeb has just won his fifth title and today secured an exciting win on RallyGB; a fight right to the last stage with Latvala, who lead right until the end of the last special stage, losing out in the end by just 2.7seconds! Just what rallying needs in terms of excitment. One Valentino Rossi was also present while he balances the pleasures of 4 wheels over 2, as he has also done recently at (another) Ferrari F1 test … jealous? Indeed!

While on the Dave website I noticed their Davepedia … extracts below for those on a study break!

“The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.” – Terry Pratchett

“Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares? He’s a mile away and you’ve got his shoes.” – Billy Connolly

Facts:

1 – A “try” is so-called because the act of running over the line and touching the ball down originally carried no points and merely allowed the team to try for a kick at the goal.

2 – Research has shown that the scent of grapefruit on a middle-aged women will make her appear about six years younger to men. However, this perception is not reciprocal and the grapefruit scent on men has absolutely no effect on women’s perception.

3 – The use of animals as pub names harks back to times when literacy was rare, and pictures of swans, horses or dogs were used to mark houses where beer was brewed. The Black Horse became popular in the 17th century as it was the nickname of the popular 7th Dragoon Guards.

4 – Wall Street used to be an actual wall. The area was once a boundary of the original New Amsterdam settlement, and the wall was created by Dutch settlers as a defence against attacks by British invaders and Native Americans.

Thought I would break up my revision with a quick post. It certainly is a studious time at the moment for everyone on the course, as we get our heads down for the exam week ahead. There is a lot to get through but again I have been impressed by the superb Warwick Uni Library service; it is largely online (esp papers and journals) which is making sourcing the (what feels like 1000′s!) of referenced papers much easier.

Also impressive, especially for such a competitive lot that people doing an MBA seem to be, is the amount of study help freely offered by some in the cohort (that word again – almost natural!) Members of my syndicate group have been working together and prepared certain documents summarising parts of OB and then, without prompting, decided to kindly share them with the rest of us. Also, one of the major papers we have been told about but not give directly has been sourced in pdf and just posted online for everyone; no tasks were assigned to individuals for the gathering of this information, people just felt it useful to them and decided to share it with the rest of us. Great really and something you might not expect.

Honda have pulled out of F1. This comes as somewhat of a shock but at the same time not – for oblivious reasons concerned with the state of the world economy and the fact that no-one wants to shell out on a new car at the moment (40% down globally apparently.) Kind of feel for Button here as really this was (again!) going to be his big year. He must wonder what he has to do when the likes of Hamilton stroll into a top team and deliver straight away. Relived for Hamilton in some ways that he got it in the bag this year, next year I have a strong feeling the world order of F1 will be different, and uglier sadly. Kind of liking the merit in the Gold medal system being touted and in times past I wouldn’t have thought people would have been too interested but now, with the money markets as they are, I think it could be the best thing to happen to F1 for a long time – the money market collapse that is!

For those who have had ideas of ’20 things they didn’t tell you about Warwick’, I would like to have the list by mid-Jan so don’t panic if you haven’t sent me your thoughts yet – funny and good are also acceptable btw!

Right back too it .. Identity and Motivation ….. bring it on!

It is not often you see special things in life and today at Warwick was a special day. The last Economics lecture was again a pleasure and you got the feeling no-one really wanted it to end. When it did, the class gave a spontaneous standing ovation – truly awesome and a sign of utter respect from what must be one of the hardest audiences to win over; akin to some kind of northern stand-up comedy gigs perhaps?!

I never knew three UK football teams have swear words in there names until today!

Ben Knight was not the only one to recieve a standing ovation recently as it appears the McLaren CEO Ron Dennis also did a good gig in London last night (link here.)

Best of luck to all those revising hard … something that doesnt get easier with age I am finding!

After some serious disruptions, just before exam week, we are now all moved and set-up again.

Since I last wrote, we have sucessfully completed another project, for Operations Management. This was a challenge but I feel we come through good in the end, both for the presentation and the report. Other groups did well too and so congratulations to them.

It is head down now for the push into the exams next week ….