Oxford - Week -1

Saturday was spent unsuccesfully trying to open a bank account and a mobile phone. As many people had suggested, neither is easy and we had no success in either attempt. That evening we had a lovely meal at Aziz, one of the more highly regarded Indian restaurants in the UK.

The next day we had a great lunch with James and Kristo at the Waterway in Maida Vale in London before Claud flew back to Amsterdam that evening.

As the week went on, I immersed myself in more social events as more MBA's arrived, including my first ever game of soccer on Thursday afternoon.

Soccer in the park with the MBA's


Beers at Copa with Ean, Barry and Juergen

Ha!Ha! bar with Christina, Daniel, Diliana, John & Eric
Beers at the Living room with MBA crowd

On Wednesday I attended some careers presentations at the business school. My notes are as follows:
Investment banking - pretty much reconfirmed that it's not my cup of tea
Management consulting - reignited a latent belief that this is perhaps the area that, other than some form of social enterprise, might satisfy my desire for intellectual stimulation, variety of tasks and projects and the opportunity to continually be challenged and improve knowledge

I joined the oxford union during the week and on Friday 29th I was privileged to be in the audience of President (General) Pervez Musharraf, leader of Pakistan. He covered off the following points in his discussion:
○ Recounted transformation of Pakistani economy during his presidency - liberalisation, privatisation, democratisation ;
○ Defended pakistani interpretation of democracy - the level that can be tolerated by the people of pakistan
○ Asserted that Pakistan partakes in war on terror due to their own steadfast belief in ridding the world of terrorism rather than being forced / coerced by the USA
○ Asserted that Pakistan were the catalysts for the end of the cold war by virtue of their defeat of soviet backed forces in Afghanistan
○ Summary: very interesting discussion, polished orator though at the same time very much self serving propaganda
President (Gen.) Pervez Musharraf @ the Oxford Union


The Oxford Union - the university's largest student society & home of Oxford debating

I attended my first rugby training session - somewhat awkward as everyone knows one another. The training went well though I am going to have to come up to speed quickly - particularly on line outs where there are approximately 30 odd line out calls!

Our first official MBA event with the team building event on Saturday running around Oxford looking for answers to a trivia based treasure hunt. It was a nice opportunity to meet more people and later that night, Claud arrived and so we attended early arrival drinks at the Pembroke MCR (very nice bunch of people - Ross, Ryan, Mia, Emily et al) claud can become an associate member of the MCR - quite cool . Afterwards we ventured to an old church hall turned into a bar called Freuds but it was quite terrible so we left pretty soon after arriving.

On Sunday we ventured to the Kings Arms and enjoyed a lovely Sunday lunch with Gabe and Katie.