A variety of spice

Tattoo was fabulous!!! I had such a great time. It's meant a celebration of the diverse cultures at London Business School and it truly was. I had Israeli, Portugese, German and African food, heard a great band, saw a Latin American parade, took part in our Indian dance performance (went well) and had salsa lessons. And ended up with a tattoo (won't say where). It was a great party, definitely one of the highlights of my time here so far. If you want to get a little taster, have a look at KV's weblog, he's put some great pictures on there.

We're in our third week now, and people are starting to get really stressed (and although I'm not particulary stressed, I'm getting stressed out by the thought that maybe I should be stressed out since other people are.... weird, I know, that's the odd way my brain works). With the truckload of individual and group assignments due, the club activities and extracurricular activities (the consulting club seems to eat a lot of time, but since I'm not actively looking to go back into mainstream consulting, I haven't taken part in any of the activities yet) and the busy social life, it's easy to get sucked into the whole maelstrom that is called fulltime MBA experience. However, I'm working on a few basic rules that work for me: (a) do what I like doing (which sounds easier than it is, cause I like doing lots of stuff) and not because I feel I should be doing it; an example for me is going to consulting club events, which I don't really like but feel I should go to, and I end up not going! (b) do what will help me in building a network; one of the big advantages of being a fulltime student is that there are a whole host of activities available to help you find out more about a particular industry and build a network. Since what I want to do post-MBA is something very close to my heart, for me (a) and (b) usually collide, making my life a bit easier.

One of the things that are going on in the London Business School community is the Women in Business Conference, which is on this coming Friday. I'm looking forward to that, and I'll definitely report back on it. Plus, this weekend the India Club is organising a Diwali party and that should be good fun too, again, expect a report back next week.

Edit 1: There's an event that I haven't even talked about, it completely slipped my mind, but I just opened my calendar and really want to mention it, since I'm pretty psyched about it. This Thursday, the Centre for Creative Business is organising 'An evening with Sally Greene', who owns a number of theatres in London, including the Old Vic. This should be interesting!

Edit 2: I found an interesting read on creativity and innovation on Businessweek, written by a design guru of Ideo. Talking about Ideo, FastCompany also had an article by the same design guru (these guys are good at pr!), check this out.