Week 4 Trinity & MBAT

Last night I returned from the MBA Tournament held by HEC in Paris. I had an amazing time!

To those that have been reading this blog/done an MBA in Europe, MBAT is where all the top business schools get together for a four day sports competition.

About 90 of us started on Thursday morning at 5am, catching the 08.12 Eurostar. We were in Paris by lunch time and proceeded to invade Monmatre. The remainder of the schedule is as follows:

• Thursday: Travel, Hotel Check-in, Opening Party at HEC
• Friday: Sports during the day followed by a barbeque/party at HEC
• Saturday: Sports during the day followed by dinner and a party in Paris
• Sunday: Sports finals followed by the closing ceremony and journey home

As a whole Oxford did very very well, winning the recreational sports category and coming second in team sports. We came 5th in the individual sports and so finished 4th as an overall result.

Some personal highlights for me were:

• Winning the rowing (I am a very proud captain!) with the Cambridge crew getting 3rd place (which is retribution for them beating us during the varsity day last month)
• Playing rugby (7s) and coming second (we lost to London Business School on a very wet Sunday morning)...I ache all over,
• Playing ultimate frisbee (we came 2nd) and
• Being a quarterfinalist at petanque...we was robbed

In addition to the sports, there were also the parties, helped along with the rugby beer pong, compulsory left-handed drinking (punishable by the fine of completing your beverage), a ban on pointing and using the words "drink", "drinking" & "drunk" (all punishable by the fine of completing your beverage).

All that went admit that it is a weekend that we will not forget in a long time and added a new dimension to the whole MBA experience. We met new people from different schools and got to know our own colleagues even better.

Just before the big event
The rowing squad
Basic rule of rowing: the winning cox always gets wet...Sorry Robin

Us beating London Business School's 2nd TeamThe Oxford MBA rugby squadThere was some other good news this week; the company operating the SCP (summer consulting project) that we really wanted accepted our pitch and offered us the positions. Kaysa, Mark, Swapandeep and I will therefore be spending the two months over the summer at the Diamond Trading Company (part of the De Beers group) in London. We really are very excited about it.

So that is it. Week 4 of Trinity 2007 sent to the history books...What a week.