Wednesday, October 30, 2002

Today I took my French exam.  This exam was the whole reason that I had to come to France this week; if I hadn't, Insead would have pushed my admission to September.  So in terms of pressure, it was pretty intense, since if I don't come up to snuff, I have some major rescheduling to do. I went to CALV just before noon and got to meet Bente Evans, with whom I had had a lovely conversation a few weeks before.  She has two children at Insead, and that knowledge combined with a friendly, almost motherly sense of caring makes her a saint in my eyes.  After I spoke with Bente, I chatted with the receptionist there.  Her partner was doing a Ph.D, and they were from Barcelona.  We chatted in Spanish for a while, but I stopped when I got a bit nervous because I thought I'd get confused when my French oral started. On to the test.  I met my instructor and she took me to a conference room a couple floors up.  We chatted in French for about ten minutes, and it flew by.  She asked basic questions like "Why Insead?", "How did you learn French?", and "What do you for a living now?"  Softball questions, by and large.  Much easier than the interview question that was tossed at me in Spanish, back in March: "What do you think of the currency crisis in Argentina?" The written test seemed relatively straightforward.  30 multiple choice questions, 10 sentence completions, 5 true/false and a short dialogue both from a short article, and a 200-word essay.  90 minutes total.  The grammar was fairly basic; I saw the present subjunctive used a few times, but that was it.  I tried to be creative on the sentence completions, using dependent clauses with multiple tenses ("I would never have gone to this film if I had known that she was coming").  The instructor told me to be creative, so I was. The essay topic had to be one of three options: Describe your career to date.  Describe a difficult situation and what you did to manage it. x Describe one of your favorite movies.  Who are the characters?  What is the plot?  Why do you like it so much? I did #1, which, like all MBA hopefuls, is the umpteenth time I have had to answer this question. I finished everything with a few minutes to spare, and reviewed the questions.  A couple of them were really confusing.  Here's one example: in the article, a venture capitalist invested 5 million euros into an online wedding registry service.  The question was: "Did Monsieur X think that there was some financial risk in the company?"  Since this is a business school, you would think that they would know that no risk means no return, so the answer could be "true", though since the article portrays his investment as a seal of approval from the French establishment, the answer is probably "false".  I might inquire about it tomorrow. I find out the test results tomorrow morning, and I might take the Spanish test tomorrow as well, though I have done almost no preparation for it.  We'll see; if I pass the French test, I might wait until January, because at €100 per attempt, it's better to make sure you only have to take it once!   1:58:18 PM    comment []

My trip to France has gone smoothly so far.  I ran lots of errands on Monday, most of which involved getting gifts for friends and family in Paris.  I was smart enough to order a car to JFK (I've forgotten many times in the past) and finished packing in time to order takeout from Republic before I left at 6:30p. The flight went fine and wasn't too crowded; I ended up having two seats to myself.  After we took off, I had a glass of water, ate dinner with some white wine, and took a couple of sleeping pills.  My next memory was waking up in time for breakfast. Since the gentleman at Hertz couldn't seem to figure out my compact rental, he gave me a new Opel Vectra.  I suppose that it is the European version of the Toyota Camry; it works great and doesn't complain when pushed.  I really like the smooth manual transmission, but the shift throw could be a couple centimeters less. After checking into the Hotel Victoria and watching French TV for a bit, I met up with two other students in my promotion, Paul Schultz and Vipul Tandon.  We had some drinks at the bar/cafeteria at Insead, named Freddy's, and then went out for dinner.  I can't remember where we went (Paul said it was the best French restaurant in town), but it was a stupendously good meal.  The setting had something to do with it, as we were in what seemed to be a wine cellar.  Every sound you made bounced around several times before clattering to a halt, and when everyone was silent (which happened, ok, twice), there was utter quiet in the room.  No background music, no made-up ambiance.  This place is for eating, pure and simple.  Apertifs, delicate smoked salmon, luscious maigret du canard, accompanied by a '97 St. Emillon, followed by a stack of profiteroles... it was heavenly.  About ten minutes into the meal we were all trashed and probably talking too loudly, because the table next to ours asked to be reseated.  The next couple who sat there did the same. Sitting behind us were two French gentlemen who, it seemed, were also busy living life to its fullest.  We talked to them the whole time we were there; actually, I spoke with them since the other two didn't speak French.  At the end of our meal one of the French guys, who had been a tennis pro in the late 80s, bought us a round of coffee.  I picked up a new expression from him: "Putain!  C'est top!", which I will be practicing frequently.  So watch out. 1:30:11 PM    comment []