Another tiring day in Beijing

I seem to spend all my time in front of my PowerBook and not all of it is spent productively. I’ve mostly caught up on my emails, but there is a never ending stream of them. I spent some time looking for and applying to jobs. I’m trying to be selective but you have to look at a lot of postings and company web pages just to find one job worth considering seriously.

Remember the dancing girls? I’ve been drafted by the lead dancer to help organize Tsinghua’s Finance Students Association gala/networking event. Apparently in addition to thinking I know something about Finance and Marketing students at Tsinghua are convinced I have vast amounts of personal connections or 关系 and legendarily persuasive powers. I’m not sure if Peter Chow and others back at Sauder would agree or not. I’m still waiting for further instructions and information but it appears I will be trying to find guest speakers and sponsors once again.

Speaking of guest speakers, I saw an MIT professor today. Back at Sauder the MBA students put forth a lot of effort getting guest speakers. Here at Tsinghua the guest speakers are largely organized by the faculty and administration. The Finance Students Gala seems to be an exception. I had a long conversation with my room mate Nan nan about the connections that Tsinghua, particularly the School of Public Policy, has with the Chinese government. These connections are so well known that foreign government officials apparently seek out School of Public Policy people to get introductions.

As someone who will soon be an Alumnus of the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management I hope to trade on Tsinghua’s good name myself in my job search and efforts to find financial professionals interested in exchanging ideas either informally or formally with Tsinghua faculty and students. Loyal readers will also recall that I’m also promoting and giving away free exhibition passes to Multi-Media Entertainment China 2005. I will likely be giving away passes to MMEC 2005 at Tsinghua’s “Opportunities in China’s Financial Market”. So if you are in Beijing in December and are interested in either multi-media entertainment or China’s financial markets, I can get you in the door possibly to both these events.

In other MBA related news, I had an informal meeting last night with the keenest Tsinghua MBA students on the possibility of going on exchange to Sauder. I also have received inquiries from undergrads at both Tsinghua and other universities in Beijing on the possibility of doing an MBA in Vancouver. While I’m doing all this, it appears the World MBA Tour came to town at the Kerry Center. Many of my American classmates were drafted by their schools or ordered to appear to promote their school. They thought Sauder and other Canadian schools were also present. Apparently the powers that be didn’t want Danna’s or my help, they didn’t even bother to tell us they were coming!

It was in the local news. Sauder hasn’t quite grasped the whole building the brand thing or even 关系 and their ability to choose poster children and even their admission policies have been questioned by more than one student in my presence. Their decision to hire someone to help with search engine optimization and online marketing would be a step in the right direction if me and my humble blog didn’t seem to be gaining on the official site monthly.

I don’t know where I’m going from here. Oh yeah apparently my blog has inspired several other people to start blogging. I’m not talking about Gary, Darlene, Chris, or even Dan. None of those people could even bother telling me they were putting up a blog, I had to find out second or third hand. Some of my Sauder MBA classmates are going to be facing some hard questions in the future and not just from investment banker HR people.

No I’m referring to several Tsinghua students, who after reading my adventures and trials and tribulations have decided to start blogs in the near future. When I get the URLs I’ll be sure to link to them.

Maybe I should stop writing about search engine optimization and instead write a self help book. I’ll title it “Don’t do what I do: The secret to success”.

This entry was originaly posted on November 18th, 2005, it was last edited on February 14th, 2019 and is filed under: Asia and tagged: MBA, Tsinghua, 关系.