Mindblowing East Java

As you may have noticed, I haven’t travelled as much as in P2 as I did in P1. I had Mom and Dad in town, as well as a few such as BCG Olympics that I did not want to miss, and I was trying to save some money. I was hesitant about travelling this weekend, but thank god I did.

                                                                                                                                                                                  

I came with five friends (Chantal, Helena, Daniel, Martin, and Al) on a hiking tour in East Java, Indonesia. We arrived at Surabaya airport on Thursday night and took a 3-hour van to a hotel/ motel in Cemara Lawang, just below the Bromo Mountain. We slept very briefly to wake up at 3:30 am, and let the adventure begin. For less than one hour, we took a Jeep ride up the mountain, among many other Jeeps and motorcycles – quite a chaos for such an early time in the day. We then arrive at the top of Tengger mountain around 4:30 am, and waited for the famous and glorious Bromo sunrise. We waited, and waited, and froze, and waited, and all of a sudden there was light out but we saw no sunrise. It was so cloudy and rainy that we took our asses out of bed at 3:30 am for nothing. All we could see was this:

By then, it was around 5:00 am and we were up, so we decided to move on to the second milestone of the day: walking up Bromo and checking its amazing views. So we did. We got ourselves in the car again, drove for a few minutes, and went for a hike. It was still cloudy and grey when we arrived at the plain land below Bromo, but it was already gorgeous enough. We hiked for a bit while lazy Chantal rented a donkey (or a horse, or whatever), and then climbed quite a few stairs to the top of the volcano crater. G-o-r-g-e-o-u-s, as you can see from the pictures below.

Around 8 am, although it seemed to us that it was midafternoon, it was breakfast time back at the hotel – Indonesian fried rice, fried noodles (for those who eat gluten), and omelet –, followed by nap time. At 9:30 am we left the hotel again to do rafting in Pekalen Water River. Guess what? It started pouring rain right before we arrived at the venue, and rafting got cancelled. Lucky day, uh? But we did not give up. We then decided to keep travelling towards Mount Ijen – where we would hike in the following day. We stopped for a (poor) Java lunch on the way, and just slept a lot and woke up every once in a while, for gorgeous green views and chaotic traffic.

By 5:00 pm we were at the hotel, “showered”, had a very decent dinner, and chatted a bit before going to bed around 9 pm. Bed at 9 pm??? Yup, our alarm clocks were going to ring at 00:50 for an incredibly early wake-up call!

We did manage to leave the hotel at 1:00 am, as planned. I am not sure for how long we drove until Mount Ijen, as we all slept like babies, but I would say it was around 30 minutes and 1 hour. Before 2:00 am, we started hiking up, down and straight, with lights in our heads and masks in our mouths, without seeing much more than a meter in front of us. We passed through a sulfur mine, “blue fire” (as they call here the blue smoke that comes out of some kind of sulfur reaction), the most acidic lake in the world, and more. By 5 am, the sun was up – or at least there was day light – and we realized how beautiful all the places we passed through were. It was absolutely magical (and tiring too). At 8:00 am, we had hiked around 12 km for 6 hours, and we still had the full day ahead.

We had delicious cooked bananas and fruit chips, sat in the car, and slept for a few ours, on our way to Mandakaripura Waterfall – one of the places we were not able to visit the day before due to heavy rain. If we were not in love with this island already, the waterfall by itself would make us fall for it. What a beauty!!! Imagining arriving at a small food market, grabbing a motorcycle with a motorcycle driver each, drive through the greenest forest you’ve ever seen, interrupted now and then by even greener rice fields, up to this huge green rock walls with a strong waterfall in between. Then imagine leaving the motorbikes behind, hiking for around 15 minutes and putting yourself below the waterfall. It was unforgettable and (literally) refreshing.

To finish the trip well, and as we were going to sleep close to Surabaya airport on Saturday night, we decided to treat ourselves with a nicer dinner and drinks. We nailed it at the Domicile! What a great weekend! And what a great group. I am super ready to study like crazy during the next two weeks. Yup, the next time I get on a plane will be to fly home for Christmas. Can’t wait! <3

Robin Hood Campaign

This week was Robin Hood fundraising Campaign, a student-led initiative that has been held for many years by successive MBA cohorts at INSEAD. Through the Robin Hood Campaign, each cohort creates a need-based scholarship that is awarded to one student in a following cohort that fulfilled all the criteria for admission at INSEAD but does not have the means to cover the tuition himself/ herself.

Since its creation, 24 students have benefited from this initiative. And how have INSEAD students managed to raise significant amounts money for future candidates? The previous INSEAD class raised over €29,000 for 2 scholarships! For a week, many activities take place of both campus. There's a huge English-style, open-bid action where many people (students, professors, and staff) put their skills for action, there are sports tournaments, there are a few lectures, there are goodies for sale, there are concerts, there are pure donations, and even there is the opportunities to send roses and cards to secret crushes (or to friends you would like to play around with).

It was a very fun week, and overall another very strong bonding event. To give you a taste of what was actioned this year, let me give you a few examples:

• Dinner and drinks with our most fun professor ever: Pushant (Prices & Markets)
• Bart's, our Financial Market Valuation professor's, vest (he used to wear shirt and vest everyday)
• Business seat in class, i.e., one week at the best seat in class, with the power to say whatever he/ she wants to Professors and classmates, one empty seat on his/ her side, and the chance to arrive 5 min late to any class
• 30 min neck and shoulder massage by Mikey, a classmate of mine
• Discovery of the French vineyards with a professor in Fonty
• Brigadeiro cooking class with the Brazilian girls
• Bavarian breakfast with Jonas, another classmate of mine
• British Sunday Roast with our Brit classmates
• Shot marathon with 5 girls for 5 guys
• $100 auctioned by our superstar Professor Pushant - sold by $360
• Workout class with me (actually more than one)
• And so on, and so on, and so on

All in all, we raised around ~$30,000 just in Singapore. I raised some money myself. I spent the Sunday afternoon at Shu's apartment baking brownies. Just by selling brownies, cookies and cupcakes, we made over $900. On top of that, I auctioned a private workout session online for $65, and a group core workout live for $300. Not bad, uh?

Oh, I heard I received some roses, but I left campus before they were delivered. And I sent a rose to each of my housemates too.

BCG Olympics

Being a BCGier, I had the chance to organize one of the coolest events of the entire year at INSEAD: the BCG Olympics.

The BCG Olympics is a one-day event for all INSEADers in Singapore. It's a battle of honor between sections, spent at the beach, playing competitive and fun games. Each section nominates 2 captains, a man and a woman, and a mascot - which can be a kid, a person with a costume, an object, whatever. Throughout the day, each section participates in group tournaments of the following disciplines: dodgeball, beach volleyball, beach football, swimming, and tug of war. On top of that, there are individual games (e.g. pushup competition) and extra challenges for extra points (e.g. mannequin challenge, group pyramid, weird photos, and so on).

This amazing bonding event took place over a week ago (20th November) in Sentosa Beach. It was organized by all INSEAD 17J BCGiers (Helena, Marcelo, Chantal, Willemijn, Marcelo, Nicholas, Constantin, Paulo, Pawel, Batu, and me) and sponsored by BCG.

The day started around 12 pm with a buffet lunch at the beach, and lasted until after the sunset, with a buffet dinner and drinks, still at the beach. It was one of the most fun days we had so far - a great opportunity to spend time with everyone, not just people from our group or our section, almost all together. There was about 140 of us there. It was a true success - to such an extent that even a Mckinsey classmate of mine told me "such a cool event that I wish it was Mck organizing it". WINNNNNNN!

As mostly everyone know, I have been quite sad at BCG lately but organizing this different and successful event made me be proud of being (or at least having been in the past) part of it.