Yes?

Yes? Mustache Man, do you have a question?

...in your sleep? (in the middle of bird crap)

Sumatra

Warning - this is another long one, since I have a whole trip to catch up on. No pressure to read it.

The last five days were spent on the island of Sumatra - the northwest most island of Indonesia. When the tsunami hit, Aceh was one of the spots that we worst hit, and that is the most northern area of this island. You might remember hearing about it in the news.

Sumatra is the island where the Hildebrandt family lived from 1982 to 1984 - in the city of Medan. Fran and Tom were teachers in the international school, Matt was in kindergarden and grade one, and Mike was in pre-school and pre-kindergarden. Dan was in Fran's tummy for the second year.

We arrived on Monday night in the city of Medan - the third largest city in Indonesia. We stayed in a hotel in a village just outside the city. We really only were there for about eight hours, so we didn't get much of an impression. Tuesday, we woke up at the break of dawn to be on the road at five. We drove a couple of hours to reach the orangutan jungle of Bukit Lawang. This was our first major adventure.

I learned that Orangutan is really a Bahasa word (Bahasa means "language" in Indonesian and Malaysian, and it's sort of the name of the language they speak in those countries - and the languages are extremely similar to each other). Orang means people, and hutan means jungle, so orangutan means people of the jungle. Who knew??

We got to some random hotel at the end of a village - as they all seem to be, and the guy there asked if we wanted to do the jungle trek or just walk to the canoe to get to the feeding area. As many people used to "own" orangutans in Indonesia, they're still nursing some of the orangutans back into the wild, and they feed them twice a day. We chose the jungle trek, and boy was it a trek. First the highlights - we saw five orangutans, and they were amazing. They're bright orange, and they really look so much like people, and they have the coolest way of swinging through the jungle. It was mindblowing. One of our guides had passion fruit and bananas, and we handed them to the orangutans. You can see the movies and pictures. We even saw a mommy with her baby. Gorgeous. I could watch them for days. This was a highlight of my life. Really.

Now - the challenging parts - Fran had a hip replacement earlier this year, and there is no way they should have let her on that hike. There were many places with big steps down, a short steep climb at the beginning, and many places that had tons of mud that you had to either walk through and not slip on or walk around, and neither option is too simple. The trek that usually takes people 1.5 hours took us 3.5 hours. So...we know for next time. Luckily we all had a sense of humor about it(especially Fran!), and it was an enjoyable experience for everyone.

Back in the car and back to Medan...and past Medan to head to Berstagi - a small village in the mountains. We didn't see much of the village, but the surrounding areas were gorgeous - looked like a lot of SE Asia looks, and exactly what I love. Especially I enjoy the monkeys who sit on the road waiting for trash. The trash part is gross, but the monkeys are so cute. These were pig tail monkeys. They have pig tails.

Berstagi was our first experience seeing the Batak culture. The Batak people are the local tribe in the northern areas of Sumatra - below Aceh. They have super unique looking houses (see pictures when posted), and they live simple lives. Many are Muslim, but it seemed like more were Christian. Lots of churches.

When we finally got to Berstagi, I believe we had been in the car for seven hours, so I needed to walk. We went for a short walk in the village (we were staying outside of Berstagi itself). We were the whitest people to ever walk those streets. We got lots of "hello, mister!" s.

Next morning we woke up early to go up the Sibayak volcano. We drove up most of it, and then walked up the rest of the road. Finally we reached the near top, and we had a bit of a neat trek to the center of the volcano. There were tons of sulfur, hot springs, and one was even so pressurized it looked like it was shooting out water, and it might be doing that forever. It was loud. Then a girl puked. Our guide, Lily (a man) took us to the trekkier path, which we walked down - all we tried to do was not fall. It was super steep and really muddy. We all fell. Many times. It was quite a spectacle. Mike, Dan, Matt and I all loved the hike, though, and that was another highlight. My favorite part was when Mike did a 360 while one leg nearly slid out from under him - about five feet away, but he maintained his near-standing position.

Back in the car...visited villages, and other sites along the way, and we drove and drove and drove and finally we got to the small city of Parapat, where we could catch a ferry to Pulau Samosir. Samosir Island is in the middle of Lake Toba, which seems to be a volcanic lake, and it's HUGE. Apparently one of the five or ten biggest lakes in the world (can't remember. sorry). The views were spectacular. We got on a ferry with some outstanding LOUD music (which Dan bought the CD later), and we headed across to Tuk Tuk, on the island. At each point, Matt and I were figuring which side was closer just in case the boat didn't make it (which didn't seem like that far off of a possibility. You know those SE Asian boats...).

We finally got to Tabo, our hotel on Toba, and it was excellent. Matt and I had a little Batak house to share, with our own balcony and hammock. It was a super relaxing place on the lake. Oh, and the big bottles of beer were only $2 each. That's awesome.

Next day, back in the car, and we headed to the other side of the island to watch some super traditional, simple Batak dancing. Matt did a dance with them. He's a Batak superstar. There was also a HUGE banyon tree there. I love those. They seem really powerful (in Bali they think they have spirits in them!).


Back to the car, and we stopped in a village where women were weaving - that's one of the trades of choice up there. Really beautiful work with the loom. At another stop, I learned that the gecko is a sign of prosperity, and women's breasts are also, so there are literally buildings with pictures of geckos and breasts. Not women with breasts - just breasts. Also, the Batak put water buffalo heads on the top of their houses - on both sides - for strength. Apparently in the olden days when they would kill people, they would also put their heads on the four corners of their houses.

Off to some nostalgic places for the Hildebrandt family, and then ended up at the market downtown. We bought a beautiful woven piece from a woman with beetle-nut juice red stain all over hear teeth, face, chin, gums and ALL over. The piece we bought was nice, though.

Matt, Mike, Dan and I walked back to the hotel. A nice walk. Matt carried some lady's pot of soup for a while. No joke.

Settlers that night - I won twice and Dan took the third. Close games with a lot of beer.

The next morning was relaxing, and I basically read an entire book (Sarah's Key) - and then we got back on the boat to Parapat. We saw a little Piston's jersey for some reason in a shop there. My mouse exploded in my bag - it was annoying that it got all over my clothes, and now everything smells like coconut, but more annoying is that it's super expensive, and we can't even get it in Singapore! I am going to have to travel without curly hair until I get to the states next.

After driving and driving and driving (mom, I didn't complain - I swear) ...we finally arrived back in Medan. Matt and I went for a walk in the village we were staying in, just outside of Medan, and I don't think anyone white had ever walked there before. Nearly everyone (usually it's just the kids) stopped what they were doing and smiled and waved. It's so cute. Like we're celebrities. This one man talked to us for a while. He said he grew ubi, but I can't find what that might mean. He even showed us the plant, but I'm not familiar with it. He said they eat the plant and the roots. He was divorced, and he had a son, and he invited us into his house. We politely declined and walked on.

A highlight of our hotel outside of Medan were the frogs. For some reason, both times we stayed there we saw tons of frogs all over the dining room. Big ones, too! There was one, while we were having breakfast the last day, who was up on a table, and then he jumped onto the back of a chair, and he straddled the chair and just chilled for a while. While we were the only ones staying there the first night, this night there was one other room taken - a local guy with his "girl." Like he's married, and this wasn't his wife. Yuck.

Our day in Medan was a day of nostalgia for the family. We started by going downtown to a shop near a minimarket that they used to shop in. Toko Ben wasn't open, so we visited Toko Dahlia instead. They got their soy sauces, nasi goreng mixes, and everything else one can't really get in the states to make Indonesian food. Then we headed to the international school. The guy who worked in the office when Fran and Tom worked there had just retired last year, and he showed us around. Matt seemed to remember everything being much bigger. They all found their classrooms, and we saw the pool where Matt became the International Swimming Champion of the World (in Medan). It was super interesting to see that these kids learn the same stuff that we learned in our school (with a WAY more global perspective), but they're in some city in the middle of Indonesia. Pretty crazy. The man, Karina, said that there are now 80 students in the school, and it goes up to grade nine. Pretty small, but apparently Mobile Oil pulled out years ago, and they were the big company when the Hildebrandts lived there, and there just aren't many people coming in. After the school, we found the two houses that they had lived in (each for one year). One looked almost the same (after 25 years!), but it was now an office, and the other had been torn down and turned into an office building. An ugly office building. Both streets had apparently been much more residential before, and now they were definitely both busy business streets. Indonesia super developed in the early 80s until the crisis in 97, so the place had exploded...

We ate at the ex-pat restaurant in town - Tip Top (which had excellent food!), and we headed to do a bit of shopping, visit the Sultan's palace and then the grand mosque. Both gorgeous. Finally - after some hours in the one mall in town, we headed back home to our Kitty.

Overall, we loved the trip. It was to gorgeous places, eating great food, and seeing so much. It was only my third Hildebrandt vacation, and I also appreciated the time with Dan and Mike - whom I don't usually get to spend too much time with. Good guys.

To see more photos, click here.

Two more notes - I lost one more reader. Congrats to Lauren and Mo who bad a baby girl this week! And...I went to get my hair cut today, and Cedric, the hair designer (who has very great arms) said I have gray hairs that he hasn't noticed in the past! In the middle of my head. Matt has a few too...I guess we're getting old!

Where is Mike?

We have had an eventful few days. The Hidebrandt Clan arrived on Sunday night. After a wonderful weekend of cleaning, getting beaten in Settlers, seeing friends and relaxing, they arrived from Detroit, LA, Seoul, and finally to Singapore.

Monday I tried to hang with them, but I was unable to, because Matt's phone wouldn't receive my phone calls or text messages for some reason. I sat and waited for two hours, and finally I had to go home and cook. They, in the meanwhile, went to Bedok Centre for a bit of shopping, lunch in Holland Village, and a relaxing afternoon in the Botanical Gardens including the Orchid Gardens.

Monday night we had Gal and Ohad, Tali and Alon over for Hanukkah. We had latkas and some other food - including excellent desserts. Tali somehow found real sufganiot (jelly donuts). Excellent. Excellent.

Today was the Hildebrandt tour of Little India and Chinatown, but before that, I went with the mommy and daddy Hildebrandt to the wet market in our neighborhood. I was super white. I got the hot coffee in the bag (two, really), and I dropped on. On the floor. Hot, wet and all over the floor. The guy gave us a new one and just told us not to pay. As if to say, "just get out of here before you do anything else WHITE." Oops.

Then, we made it to Little India. We went to Mustafa Centre, which is NUTS (and you might remember it from other blog postings). We lost Mike. He wandered off in the biggest, most crowded (with people and stuff) store in the world. What was he thinking? He just wanted to look at the shirts downstairs. We looked for him for over an hour. He had no idea. Finally, mommy and daddy Hildebrandt had to pay $5 to have him paged. We found him.

I was hungry. We ate a big meal at Raj. Yum. Then we hit Chinatown. Then dinner in East Coast Park - satay and laksa. Yummy.

Nothing and Loving it

I haven't updated my blog since I finished exams, because there is absolutely nothing to write. I have done the cleaning that should have been done for the last four months...I have had the lunches with friends I should have had in the last four months...I have slept until 10:30 everyday (which I really don't deserve all the time)...I went to an okay museum, spent a lot of money on good food, new keens and tuna (it's hard to find in water, I swear), and played tetris. And I have loved every minute of it.

My life is filled with babies. For example, yesterday morning, I woke up, and I saw an email that our friend Laura, who lived below us in NYC, had a baby. I called to say mazal tov. Then I talked to Liba for two seconds. She just had her second baby a couple of weeks ago. Then I talked to Cristine (a long lost blog reader) who also just had a baby. I talked to Jo who is due somewhere in March or April (she seems to be not sure). Then I met Lauren for coffee. She's due next week. Then I had lunch, and spent the afternoon with Gal. She's due in March. It really feels like nearly all of my friends just had a baby or is pregnant. Then I got an email from my friend in NYC, and he said he and his partner are expecting (surrogate). It's out of control. The world is populating itself quickly, but at least it's with good people!

Done P2

It has been a rough ride, but the ride ended today. I won't mention that I was THROWN from the vehicle, I had my face driven over, and the vehicle backed up and went forward again and again just driving me into the ground. Whatever. It's all done.

I don't remember exams in college ever being this hard or this intense. I felt like we didn't have enough time to study, and somehow, at the same time, the exams went on forever! Six classes is a LOT!

After not studying that effectively this morning (and not studying at all last night...), I took my last exam - Operations. It was hard. I have never really left an exam early. I feel like I can always go back and check calculations, review answers, improve...something. Today, though, at twenty to four, when I still had twenty minutes left, I had to leave. I couldn't go through any more answers, and I left...

And then I started to drink. We had an ice sculpture that said INSEAD and something else, and it was a vodka luge. It was like a bar mitzva. Our dean did a shot on the ice luge. That was a personal highlight. Our very own class band played, and we drank. And drank, and it felt so good. I couldn't stop smiling.

After that, and a quick visit to a party, my group went to dinner - the last time we were together as a group. We went to Korean barbecue. I ate a lot of pork. The pork was so good. So tasty. All the little dishes were superb as well. It was really nice to hang out with them, and in the end, we were so good together. I will see them all again, but I'll miss our dynamic and all of our times together. For P3 Brian will be in Fonty, for P4 I will be in Wharton (unless I have to retake any of my P2 classes!), and P5 Luis will be in Fonty.

After that we went to the INSEAD party, and though I really don't usually like these, it was so much fun. I loved dancing to Vanilla Ice and "Push It" and just feeling so happy.

THEN - the weirdest thing happened. It was about 12:30, and I was walking by the pool to our door, and there was this couple sitting having a beer. It turns out that the guy is starting at INSEAD in January! So random.

SO HAPPY!!!!!!!!!

Update: Why Finance is way Harder than Gemara

It's confirmed.
The exam was way harder than anything I have ever done in Gemara.
Done deal.
Finance is way harder.
My brain hurts.
Only one more!

Why Finance is way Harder than Gemara

In Gemara, you have Jastrow and Frank to reference when you're lost. In finance, you're supposed to have the FT or something else, but I still don't understand those!

In Gemara you can have multiple answers. You're almost always right. In finance, there's one answer, and I never seem to find it.

Gemara is best studied in a loud room - with a partner. Finance is best in a super quiet room with absolutely no distractions - otherwise you don't even understand the question.

Three exams done three to go. Tomorrow I have marketing and finance. I haven't studied for marketing for more than an hour, but for some reason I'm not nervous about it. Just finance - where the exam is 100% of my grade. I heard last year the average was 17%. What a knock on my confidence.

Finals

They stink. In all the rest of my life, if you go to class, and you understand the material, you do well on the test. INSEAD is different. They ask you to apply the material in sixteen different hard ways that are sort of related to one think you may have learned in class. You're never asked the name of a framework or the details of some guru's dissertation. It's all case based, and it's all application. Well, that's hard. AND they need to make a distribution of our scores, so it's REALLY hard - otherwise we would all be stuck in the middle, and if you made a silly mistake you would fail. It must be spread out.

Yesterday was strategy - and we had to write about Toys R Us in 1992 - analyze the industry, their competitive advantage, how their competitive advantage changed from the 80s moving into the 90s, what course of action they should take next. I wrote 13 pages. My arm was honestly sore afterwards.

Today is managerial accounting and leading organizations. MA is probably the most important class we have taken yet. It's all about how to allocate costs appropriately - and it's really not obvious. In fact it's really hard, but really good to know. The exam will be a killer.

Leading Organizations will be a group exam (the last time I am working with my group...but only one is going to Fonty for next period, so the rest of us will be around). We will have to analyze a case from three different perspectives - political, cultural, strategic design - and then giev recommendations for them to move forward.

I will have EIGHT hours of exams today. Ouch.

But...then I'll be halfway done with P2 exams, and I'll be more on my way done with the hardest part of INSEAD.

PSA

Last week I went to the Singapore Port. I learned that it deals with 27 million cartons (those big 20 foot ones) per year. It's the busiest port in the world (though I have heard that argument elsewhere). It is a logistical nightmare...I mean challenge. It was really cool.

I also realized that the back of trucks are sometimes actually made out of shipping containers. That's cool.

Two weeks ago my club (really Robert and Miguel) organized a trip to Singapore's Newater Plant - it's where they make clean water from piss. Yup. They take toilet water and what not, and they clean it through reverse osmosis and uv rays and other things, and then it is even cleaner than normally cleaned water. Apparently Singapore has four sources for water. 1- Malaysia 2- desalination (which is super expensive) 3-capturing rain water 4- Newater. Apparently people have an issue with drinking their old piss, so this water doesn't actually go to homes, but industries use it, and some of it gets cleaned AGAIN to go to people's homes. Pretty cool.

I got a seal at PSA, and I gave it to the kitty. Please enjoy her meeting the seal. She has spent many a minute since then throwing it around the house and throwing it. Literally. I think this is how she loves it.

INSEAD Dash Pictures

These pictures are from the INSEAD dash - where a bunch of people got dressed up and ran from the apartments that most people live in to school. At 8:26 am. It was funny.














































The second to last photo is my group: Brian, me, Anna, Luis and Won. The last photo is sitting in class after the dash. It was marketing. A bit distracting.

Adoption

Since Mustache Man has come back to Casafina, he has spent a lot of time with us. He sleeps on our porch (in funny positions), and he comes to say hi at night. He is especially interested in checking out what our house looks like inside. When he comes in, for some reason he immediately runs and jumps onto the bookshelf among all of my b school course packs. Not sure what the draw is...

Yesterday Matt gave him flea treatment so he can come in and hang. Last night he slept with Matt on the couch for a few hours. Kitty doesn't love it, but she seems to be getting used to it a bit. Before she would pounce on him, and now she just sort of watches suspiciously. In fact when he was on the couch, she jumped up to see what was going on, and she was staring at him, and he just got up, shifted so his face was in the other direction and went back to sleep. It's pretty funny. I still think that he's her dad, and he knows it, but she doesn't.

Anyway - if he adopts us, we will take him, and it looks like he's on the way.

In other news in Casafina, I was doing some finance on the porch yesterday, and a very cute Jelly looking dog came by. Apparently the dog was abandoned, and he showed up at Casafina, and the management asked this family if they want him. They took him and they love him, but apparently they do NOT know how to care for dogs. They were asking why I liked cats, and I tried to explain that I didn't really like cats, I just like these two cats, but I really want a dog or two. I told her that I didn't feel like we could have a dog, because we go to work all day, and we wouldn't be able to let him out. When we have kids we will have dogs. She then got a worried look on her face, and she asked if it's okay that she only lets her dog out once per day - at 8pm each night. I told her that it is NOT okay to do that. I asked if she could let the dog out in the morning, and she said she is always late, and she doesn't have time. Maybe she shouldn't have a dog, then. Oy. Then our super neighbor Victoria offered to take him out when she gets home from school, but it's still 8pm until 4pm. So unfair for this poor dog's bladder!

Not much else going on over here. I have finals starting on Thursday, so I'm trying to learn what went on in classes this period. Yesterday I had a date with Starbucks for six hours focusing on managerial accounting and finance. Today I will revisit finance and have a chat with some operations.

Great News!!!

1. Christian and Lee Fong had a baby boy on Monday!!

2. Liba and Ethan had a baby boy today!!

3. The Stache is OKAY!!! Matt reached the shelter, and apparently today was his last day alive. Matt left work and went to the shelter and rescued him. He said that Mustache Man (or Mr. Mustache as dad calls him) was really scared and freaking out, but after a few minutes being back at our condo he was eating and playing. YAY!!! Now we just have to figure out how to keep him alive and near us without living in our house...

The Stache

Mustache Man has been captured. Matt and I feel so sad. Mustache Man is our friend from Casafina, where we live. We met him last year, and he grew to be one of our closest cat friends. He always tried to come inside our house and steal Kitty's food, but we mostly stopped him and limited him to our porch where he spent many hours. He was a super wonderfully tempered cat - we got to pet him and play with him a lot (though his nails were sharp...), and he was so friendly.

Last year he disappeared for two weeks and came back skinny with a big limp and no balls...and his ear clipped. So he got neutered and returned home. This time he apparently walked into a trap. We noticed he was missing on Sunday or Saturday, and Matt called and found out that he was indeed captured. He is calling the shelter today to see if they haven't killed him yet.

We are so sad. We loved the Stache.

Burping

I had two burping experiences today - which is too much to just ignore.

My Taiwanese groupmate (whom I love to pieces) burps. I think it's just what they do there - just in the middle of class, a conversation or whatever. Well - today in class we were actually talking about cultural assumptions and managing across cultures (since all of us speaks three languages, and we have almost all lived abroad at some point, and we will most likely work in an international environment...). In the middle of that discussion, he burped. Loud. People turned around, but it didn't bother him.

Then - on the way home tonight, in the taxi, the taxi driver burped literally at least once every ten seconds. It seems like every time he breathed out, he burped. They weren't just clean, airy burps. They were really icky sounding - liquidy, junky and just gross. I felt really sick by the end of the ride. I asked him to stop right when he got off the highway and I walked the rest of the way home. I thought I was going to throw up. I mean literally every ten seconds - AT LEAST!

Is it culturally insensitive of me to ask him to stop burping for the twenty minutes I'm in his car?