FIRST DAY OF CLASSES: Statistics at Light-Speed!

And what a first day it was!
It went by so fast, starting at 8:30 and finishing at 4:30. One thing is for sure: they treat you like adults, and expect you to be on time and they don't cradle you.

I asked the professor several questions about Excel after class ended and he said, bluntly, "Ask me tomorrow. Or ask someone else." So I just worked around it and looked for the answer to my question on the Internet.

Let me add that adding to my difficulty is using Excel in French (fortunately I had practiced using Excel in Japanese over the weekend, learning how to manipulate basic aspects of the spreadsheet). My computer didn't come with the versions of Microsoft Office, and the school installed it in my computer free of charge. (Some kind of academic licensing agreement with Microsoft.)

Some might interpret this as coldness, but I think it's also a way of creating self-independence, because you either swim or sink (yes, this inversion was intentional, I like to mention the positive aspect first.)

Half of the class are number crunching executives who had worked with Excel in this way before; the rest of the class, including me, was a group of people who struggled to keep up with the professor as he zipped from one topic to another. It sure helps to know Excel inside and out. And yeah, given some time, I think that I'll get used to doing the things I will need to do.

After all, how could the school certify me with an MBA if I don't become confident and able enough to manipulate Excel?

One thing is for sure: I'm learning a lot about the software that I didn't know before. I'm finding it's an extremely powerful piece of software and it'll be nice to be able to use it more assuredly in the future.

Another bruising day at EM Lyon

As it turned out, after the morning activities with our new groups, we had to put on a skit explaining (humorously or not) what we had learned over the course of our two days together. Our skit was rather serious, a Power Point presentation to the T; others opted for a more humorous approach with make-up, costumes and parodies of some of the schools' teachers and administrators.

That evening (Tuesday) we had dinner scheduled in Croix Rousse, an area just north of where I live, an area up on a hill full of small boutiques and restaurants. The food wasn't terribly exceptional, but the first course of saucisson chaud (hot Lyonnais sausage stuffed with pistachios) served on a bed of lentils was just heavenly. I'm really sold on lentils and bought some the other day to try to cook them. I'll try to upload a picture sometime.

The problem was, we started late, about 8 P.M. and by the time we finished, three courses and cheeses and bottles of wine later, it was about 11:30 P.M. and everyone was just totally exhausted.

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Today (Wednesday) we had two main goals: integrating our computers into the EM Lyon network and getting an overview of the program from the program director.

Our computers are connected to the WiFi network and allow us to work in the classrooms and anywhere on the campuses. There are also mailboxes and online storage which will allow us to store our work on virtual hard drives in case we are working on a case with other people in our work group. To imagine. Think of it as a bulletin board out in space somewhere where people are free to post their messages, and also, in this case, files.

We also got an overview of the program, which apparently will be aiming to build "entrepreneurial leaders." The two words seem almost antithetical but I'm sure that's because I don't quite understand what they're after. But from the explanation given by the director, I felt reassured that I will be working really hard but should come out one year from now with more leadership ability and business sense ... but who knows where that will take me? Stay tuned.

At the end we also had some information about formalities, such as the paperwork we'll need to have ready for the Prefecture when we apply for our student visas. I also found out some very important information about the CMU, or medical insurance here in France. Although I have overseas medical insurance, I'm going to try to get a medical insurance card here in France too, if possible, if only for the fact that it will make things easier when I go to the doctor. They will know how to deal with these social insurance cards; I'm less sure that they'll know what to make of my overseas insurance ...!

Tomorrow: 8:30 A.M. Statistics. And the race begins!

Second Day at Lyon

Still only half done, but this morning we worked in small groups again and hiked in the woods behind the school. Along the way were various tasks, such as finding the names of various animals or trees, but it was good working in a small group because each person has his or her own strengths. Taking on a task like this makes you recognize each person's strengths, take account of them, and step back when they are in their own element. I know that the other day mom joked that as a teacher I've become used to depending on myself and taking charge; but in just these two days I've found that for the sake of the group it's good to step back and let other people lead when they have the desire to do so.

I'm already getting ideas about what to do here. Initially I had thought about marketing, but actually now management or something in that vein sounds equally possible.

Tonight we have a dinner in downtown Lyon paid for by the school, tomorrow is a tour of the school and an integration of the computers into the school network, and then a bruising 30-hour course on statistics Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday.

First Day at EM Lyon

This past Monday was the first day of meetings for the MBA program. Technically, they were not classes but rather a chance for students from the full-time MBA and the executive MBA programs to meet, exchange information and make contacts which are supposed to be important over the course of the year. After one week spent with eight other international colleagues, finally the French -- but what a crowd! One person who was raised in France but worked and studied in Hong Kong and the US; a Brazilian of Polish descent (?!); a Cote d'Ivorien of Vietnamese descent (?!), and so on. Many of the French have worked abroad or here in American companies and speak fluent English, if not other languages.

One executive MBA who I spent four years in the Kansai area, and though he said he wasn't able to become fluent in the language he nevertheless enjoyed his stay very much.

After the self-introductions we had volleyball matches (although it was more like ping-pong then volleyball, with anything-goes rules) between makeshift teams of full-time and executive MBAs. Somehow, the teams I was on always lost; but then again, these matches were not terribly serious, after all. And yes, I did tape up my fingers before playing. Fortunately. My Chinese colleague had bruises all over her arm from the volleyball (I admit, not the best of ideas as a sport for those who have not played it much).

In the afternoon we divided into smaller teams and headed back down from the EM Lyon school towards the city center, to do a series of preassigned tasks. It was instructive, as we were given a list and told, "to go and do them." And so within the group, inevitably, some people took the lead, others decided to be followers, we divvied up the tasks and broke into sub-groups to divide the load, and finish the tasks. Some of the tasks: find the recipe for the trip sausage andouillette; take a tour of the traboules, the hidden passageways that connect opposite ends of buildings in the old Vieux Lyon quarter; find a statue of Bartholdi (also known for the Statue of Liberty in New York) in central Lyon.

As one of the old Lyon hands I took charge of half the group and led a couple of French executives through Vieux Lyon -- and how surprised they were when I found not one, but two, traboules!

We regrouped in the Place Bellecour plaza and headed back to the campus, right as it was about to rain. In the lounge where everybody met, everybody was falling asleep from the exercise in the morning, and the walking in the afternoon. More exercise than they had probably been used to.

La Rentrée

Apparently the French have a term for the back-to-work, back-to-school period of late August: la rentrée, or literally, "the return." When I arrived in Lyon on the 19th, the place was dead: many restaurants and boutiques had shut down for the annual congé, or leave, not to reopen until the 28th of August. Larger chains were still open but even as the week opened many stores in the area where I live remained closed. If no one is living here during the month of August, why bother opening? Impossible to make a living off of tourists who will never make their way to these parts.

Little by little, activity has trickled back into Lyon and yesterday, the 28th of August, there were large droves of tourists and schoolkids out for their last few days without school mulling about on the main shopping streets of Rue de la Republique and Victor Hugo.

Just like in the U.S., stores are having their back-to-school sales on all sorts of goods for school-bound youngsters. I decided to pick up notebooks and pens now, while the sales are on and companies are giving free extras. Notebook sets of buy 3, get 1 free. Pens with 2 extra pens, free. And so on.

At the Wal-Mart-like hypermarché (place which sells both perishable goods and non-perishables on a large scale) supermarket Carrefour, I found an extremely good buy on half-sized notebooks: four for 1,61 EUR. They're a good size, compact and fit easily into backpacks but also in to pouches. I hope to go back and buy some more before they run out.

Politeness of Some of the French

On many of the buses that I've ridden on, there have been several occasions during which people have given up their seats up to elderly passengers. This sort of thing is not unusual for parts of Asia but something that I rarely see in Hawaii. In any case, I was deeply moved by this gesture: here. as elsewhere, there is a mad rush for seats once the doors open and often it is the elderly who board later.

More often than not, the people giving up their seats are young, perhaps under or about 20 years old, which is an encouraging sign. As much of a bad rap as young people might get, this just goes to prove that there are some young people out there who are sensitive enough to care.

On the More Mundane Side ... Laundry

After a week here, I had a lot of laundry piling up and I picked today, Sunday morning to head over to the laverie to do laundry. During the summer, my homestay family did my laundry with theirs so this was my first chance to do it myself.

The nearest laundry is actually about 100 meters from my place but is under renovation, so I went to another one a short walk away (maybe minutes from my place). I carried the clothes in my blue IKEA bag that I got earlier (see an earlier posting) and headed over to the laundromat.

Effectively it's the same as any other coin laundry, except that you put the money in a central dispenser and not in the machines themselves. I remember the days of putting quarters into a washing machine to set it going, but that parts usually breaks easily and so the idea of taking the money in a central location is completely different and works very well.

I used a lessive detergent tablet (detergent exists here in powder, tablet, and liquid form), threw the clothes on top of it, put 2,90 EUR ($4!) for the wash and 0,50EUR for 5 minutes of drying time. Since I had already spent so much on the wash I decided to save a little money and ran only one dry cycle figuring I could dry the rest in my room.

The air is so dry here that my lips are always dried and cracked and a bath towel dries out in about half a day.

LIDL - Price Busters or Grocery Outlet in Lyon?

My Colombian friend from language school in summer told me about this supermarket where "you just won't believe the prices." He's a remarkable guy already in his fifth month here in Lyon, and -- don't let appearances fool you -- he knows central Lyon better than some Lyonnais. "Bus Line so-and-so runs from here to here, and you can get off here, then a three-minute walk," ... perhaps you get an idea? So if he says that he's found a store that he likes, then it's worth going to.

The store he showed me was Lidl which, judging by its name and the manner of the addresses listed on the packaging suggest, is a German company. But what a company!

You won't find the usual store brands here, and the provenance of some of the products is unknown. As the EU continues to expand, "produced in the EU" has taken on a slightly different meaning. No longer is it wine from France, olive oil from Spain or Italy, pasta from Italy. I leave you to imagine.

But so what does 20 Euros buy you? Like in Japan, generally not a lot of food. But at Lidl, which stacks food in racks and whose displays resemble the cluttered stackings of Grocery Outlet or Price Busters, prices are really remarkable. 1.30 Euro for a 1.5L box of wine? 0.98 Euro For a box of taboule? Very interesting indeed.

So to give you an idea of what's in this picture:
2 bags of curly fusilli pasta 500g (>1lb.) 0,24 EUR each
Ready-to-eat Taboule (just mix and refrigerate) 0,98 EUR
Canned Tomatoes 0,24 EUR
Olives stuffed with anchovy (recommended by my friend) 0,72 EUR
Red pump bottle with anti-bacterial gel hand soap 1,49 EUR
Giant 1L bottle of Olive Oil 4,79 EUR
Blue bottle of sparkling mineral water 1.5L 0,26 EUR
Toilet bowl cleaner 0,89 EUR
Liquid laundry detergent 3L 2,79 EUR
Vin de Table Rose (1.5L box of wine) 1,29 EUR
Ricotta and Spinach Tortelloni 1,49 EUR
Paper Towels 4 rolls 1,29 EUR
Cheese Fourme d'Ambert 1,24 EUR
Reblochon de Savoie soft cheese (recommended by my friend) 1,78 EUR
1 EUR = $1.3 US.

Of course, these prices aren't anywhere near Costcos, but in the absence of Costco this is more than adequate.

True to form, being a German company, shopping bags are not free. The bag pictured here costs 0.08 EUR, although of course it can (and should well be) reused.

LINK:

http://www.lidl.fr/fr/home.nsf/pages/i.home

UK Site

http://www.lidl.co.uk/uk/home.nsf/pages/i.home

First Days in EM Lyon

Although I've been here for several days now, it's been hectic but more significantly I've had to overcome severe jet lag from days of little sleep and crossing so may time zones in less than a month. My journeys have taken me from France, back to the US, then soon over to Japan, and then through San Francisco, and finally back to France ... all in the span of one month, and ... only now am I able to keep somewhat regular hours and not wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, NOT ready to start the day.

On Monday, I started a week of French classes at EM Lyon, and was put into a group of advanced students (four to be exact). I'm really glad that I did come early to Lyon to learn the language and to familiarize myself with how things in France are done. In comparison, many of the students in the beginner class are struggling with jet lag, a new language, lack of a support system, and a general confusion about how things run here in France. Watching them reminds me of my first month here, struggling to understand the bureaucracy and to make myself understood. What a relief to have some of both under my belt.

My French classes aren't French classes in the usual sense of the word. As the speaking level of the students in the class is pretty high, the class has become a loosely structured discussion class. That's perfectly fine, because for three hours we talk back and forth in French, and it's a continuation of the immersion that I craved when I first came here in May.

So who and how are the students so far? I can't really say for sure, but already I've formed some impressions, or opinions of some of the members. In the moments that I've managed to steal here and there, I've found something about the backgrounds of the two other Americans and two other Chinese who are here for the language lessons. Then so far there are also two Russians, one Chilean, one Indian from India and one from the U.K. An unusual mix so far (next week the French members and the others who opted not to take the French courses will join the orientation), but I can already see who might be a leader within our group (for the group work) and who might be a facilitator (equally important). I mark myself as probably doing a little bit of both, leading at times but also trying to get all members of the group engaged and contributing. Looking forward to working with these people.

The schedule for the next two weeks is quite busy -- three days of orientation, followed by five days of statistics and two days of immigration and administrative formalities.

The following week (mid-September) is a seminar on entrepreneurship and will involve group work. I'm not sure what it entails yet.

Sometime in October a "learning trip" (subsidized trip to some European country) has been scheduled and I wonder if I'll be going. I've heard the pace of the first few months is quite hectic, and it's quite possible I might just want to take it easy instead. We shall see.

THE VISA PROCESS: SIDE TRIP TO SAN FRANCISCO

Getting a visa isn't the same as it used to be. Once, I assume, you probably had to mail in your application and passport using registered mail months before you were actually going to travel or study, and you'd get your passport returned with a visa stamped inside. Time-consuming and low-tech, but effective nonetheless.

Today, however, owing to biometrics and computers and other sorts of technology, visas have gone high-tech, allowing students (like myself) applying for a visa to get their visa processed in literally hours, not days. That means greater convenience, but at the same time, also increases the possibility that you could miss out on getting your visa if you forget to bring the right paperwork. In my case, I gave myself an extra day to track down any documentsthat I might have overlooked in preparing my application; any of you who are considering applying for a visa would do well to do the same.

I chose to get my visa at the San Francisco consulate. If you live on the West Coast, you are obligated to get fingerprinted (biometrics) in this regional consulate, and that means you have to appear in person regardless of where you live. Right in the same room as I was were people who had flown in that morning from Washington or Oregon, equally jet-lagged.

People reading this might consider such travel an unnecessary expense, but before you draw conclusions, the U.S. also requires French citizens to appear in person for visa applications, not once but twice. For people not residing in Paris -- even for those in Lyon -- it's an equally inconvenient prerequisite to getting a visa these days. Generally, stays of up to 90 days are permitted, visa-free, but getting a visa for an extended stay for citizens of either country is equally inconvenient.

Preparing the paperwork is part of the process; making sure to have copies of all necessary documents and have ready the proper ones, is a task in its own right. Even though I had double-checked the documents list on the consulate home page, I was asked to provide copies of my travel documents and health insurance. Fortunately, there's a copy shop on Kearny Street only two blocks from the office where I was able to run to and get the job done without much lost time. Consequently, I was in at 10:00 and out by 12:30. By some people's standards that is a tremendous expense of time, but as my earlier writings in the previous blog reflect, I've accepted that waiting for things to be processed is an inevitable part of the way French organizations work. Accept it, and it ceases to grate on you.

One other thing that they forget to mention about getting a visa: although the application itself is free (available both in the lobby of the visa section of the consulate as well from the Internet), the visa fee is 99 Euros, or about $125 at current exchange rates.

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Comments:

The French Consulate in San Francisco is literally just steps away from the Bush Street gate to Chinatown. To find it easily walk up on the right side of Union Square and head towards Chinatown. Head left when you arrive at the Chinatown gate and you will find the office next to STA travel and the Goethe Institut.

NEW BLOG - Lyon 2006 - 2007

Welcome to the new blog Lyon 2006 - 2007.