QBR results online

Today I saw that the results of QBR (Qualitative methods of business research) are already online! That was quick from the teacher. To my surprise, I got a good grade on the exam and was ranked among the top of the class. For whatever reason, I did not get an A from the exam, even though my rank should justify it. Oh well. I am already happy with the grade so no need to start a war. Especially since there seems to be something a bit off with some of my friends marks compared to their rankings. Let's see whether or not something happens with that.

The funny thing is that when I handed in my paper I thought I did quite a crappy job and just wanted to get it out of my way. Well, no complaints :)

QBR done. Now winter holidays \o/

...it took like few hours to write that shit. Hopefully it is okay.

The last exam of the GSOM semester

I am currently "doing" the last exam of this semester. The topic is Qualitative methods of business research. I must say, that I could not care less about this topic even if I tried. We got an assignment online that we must analyze before handing it in before noon tomorrow. For me, the case is to analyze the approach on how to re-brand tea. An approach is presented in the assignment and I should say whether or not it is a good one or not and why so. Based on literature of course.

Please, kill me now.

The wrestler was a great movie. Check it out!

Grading in GSOM

I got the grade for MIC yesterday. I got 93/100.... and it resulted in to B. A classmate of mine got 98 and still got only a B!

Hahahah, the grading system in GSOM is totally fucked up. I am happy to get rid of it.

I also got the instructions how to make our last exam, Qualitative methods of business research. It is an online exam and the deadline for it is 28th of Dec at noon Russian time. Not that easy peasy it seems, since in the instructions it says that it takes about 4 hours to complete it... And of course they do not support Mac, so I have to find another computer to work that shit on. Luckily, that should not be a problem here at home.

I am so happy to get rid of all this bullshit in few days....

In Finland after EPIC FAIL

I have been in Finland now for a bit more than one day. I arrived to my home town late on the 23rd or early in the 24th, depends how you look at the situation (it was about 1 a.m. on 24th). The trip from Piter was quite interesting one. First we took a gypsy taxi from the dorm to Finnlandskiy vokzal because we had quite a lot of bags with us. The ride was okay, even though it took a bit more than one hour because of the traffic. But no problems on getting in to the train in time.

In the train we had a bit of a MITIM meeting in the restaurant car. There was 8 of us from LUT side of MITIM program. Very cool way to spend the beginning of the trip :)

What was not cool about the ride was that after we left Viborg the trains exhaust fumes got somehow sucked in to the cars for a while... Breathing diesel is not that funny it seems :D

In Vainikkala everything was okay, just a brief passport control and that's it. From there I got a car ride to Lappeenranta where I was supposed to jump in to a train to my home town. Supposed to. Here comes the epic fail part of this story. So I was there sitting in the railway station for like 45 minutes before the train was supposed to leave. It being VR, it got delayed for 15 minutes. When the train arrived to the station I took my bags and walked on the platform for like a bit more than one minute before getting in.

But I didn't get in! Just few seconds before I tried to get to the train the conductor locked the doors.... I guess he/she did not see that I was still on the platform walking. So the train left just in front of my eyes. I was left standing there with 30-40 kilos of baggage's and no way to reach my home during that day by public transport.

Luckily there is family and my cousin who lives in Lappeenranta was nice enough to pick me up and start driving towards my hometown. At the same time my brother and dad came from other direction to meet us halfway. So after some hours in car I reached home. Family really is the best :)

GSOM is "the best business school in Russia"

Yeah, right. Then the level is not that great.... Here is the link to the news.

Leaving St.Pete behind soon

Traditionally, when a time period is coming to an end people tend to reflect what did they learn and experience during that time. That is what I am going to do also during this week regarding my semester here in St.Petersburg.

I will start with the things that I will definitely remember from this semester

• The people. Z, my flatmates, some exchange students as well as Russian students and of course the giggling girls.
• Dormitory, both in good and bad. Hate the kitchen, hate the room, the bed, the Internet, the crappy (and smelly) water coming from pipes. Like the fact that you never know what is going to happen each day.
• Beautiful St.Pete. This truly is a magnificently beautiful city and there is so much to see in here.
• Marshrutkas. The minibuses whose drivers tend to be crazy.
• GSOM. All the open book exams, the crappy administration etc.
• Cheap food and beverages. For a Finn, this really is cheaper place to live in. On top of my head, I'd say that food and drinks in the stores are about 30-40% cheaper than in Finland. Then again, I can't say that much about the quality of those ingredients...
• Baltika 7.
• Moustaches on babushkas.
• My birthday party. The unforgettable presents (26 cans of beer... classy :D) and the overall feeling.
• Limo-ride with MITIM-people on E's birthday.
• Snowball fight and the snow in my pants :D
• The lamp.
• La president hanging out of our window
• Estonian L drinking Pepsi on Coca-Cola factory
• что это? Кто он? Меня зобут Йоона. Как тебя зовут? Пиво.
• My roommate L. Legendary dude.
• P's 5 kilos of pasta.
• Second floor lobby...
• TM presentation by our group.
• Trips to Helsinki and Viborg
• Achtung baby as well as Dumskaya ulitsa
• Shawermas
• The collection of fridge magnets
• Oktober-fest party with T
• Arnold imitations
• That's what she said -jokes

Actually, that list is just a short proportion of memories. It has truly been a cool and memorable experience. Highly recommended!

MIC exam done. Not perfectly happy with my answers, but I guess it should be okay.

Done with Russian studies in Piter

At 12 o'clock today, after coming from the shower I saw an interesting message on my laptop. Shot had written that the exam starts at 12, not at 1 like we assumed. So, I knew that I will be late at least 35-40 minutes which was the case.

Luckily, the teacher is a friendly one and let me in the class so late. I wasn't the only one late, I think 4 out of 6 were not there on time. Again one of the situations where information did not flow freely to all relevant parties at GSOM...

The test itself was multiple choice (phew!), with 40 questions I think. Then there was 4 sentenced that needed to be translated from English to Russian. On top of that an oral exam! I got a bit lucky with the subject, which was food :) "Eta kapusta, pomidoor, luk..." The multiple choice wasn't that big of a success - I think I had something like 10 wrong (I saw my graded paper, the teacher was very quick with them). From the oral part I got 5- and from translation 4+. Overall not that bad I think.

Giggling girls

Okay, this post has been long overdue. Since the beginning of our life here at Karabli we have had the joy of having 5 17-year old Russian girls living across the hall. When we open our door, their door is the first thing we see.

As many teenagers, especially girls, they tend to be giggly. Hence the name giggling girls. Actually I don't know how to describe them, but I'll try. Loud - yes. Giggly - yes. Friendly - yes. Young - yes.

Their speciality has been making blinis that they offer to us also. The coolest thing is that they do blinis shape the first letter of our names - it has not been only once when we have gotten blinis shape like P, P, S, L and J :) Those have been lifesavers sometime in the morning hours when crawling back to the dorm...

Giggling girls - thanks for everything. I can't say I miss you, but I'll definitely remember you :)

Russian test in about 2 hours. Can be interesting with this preparation...

Finnish food

Today while shopping for groceries I got an interesting proposal by phone. Mika called and asked if I want to eat some peasoup and eat some pancakes. So, off I went to enjoy a little bit of Finland in the Russian winter. He also had näkkileipä and hapankorppu (sorry, its quite hard to translate these) and of course Finnish mustard.

Made me remember that we also have some cool food in Finland :)

Booking master

I booked some tickets yesterday for the next couple of weeks. First off, I am going to Finland for Christmas which is not that surprising but definitely a good thing. Somehow a Christmas here at the dormitory would have been quite depressing I think. So yeah, my train leaves on 23rd in the afternoon after my final exam here at GSOM. There is a lot of other MITIM-students in the same train, which is nice.

The other trip that I booked is to Budapest, Hungary! :) I'm going there on 3rd of January and will stay for one week. I am really looking forward to this trip, since I've heard only good things about Budapest and their fooooooooooooooood :) The food is awesome, at least based on the stuff that has been prepared by the Hungarians. And also, it is really fun to have the chance to spend some time with a lovely resident idiot in non-dormitory environment :D

The funny thing is that it took longer to book the traintickets than the airline tickets to Hungary. In the trainticket office, it took something like 10 or 15 minutes from the lady to make the tickets to me and Lauri. She asked do we want to take the morning or evening train, and of course gave us the tickets to wrong one... So we had to ask her to correct those, which took another 10-15 minutes. Also, it is a bit.. ummm.. Russian that in the international ticket office (where they sell tickets to go abroad) the ladies do not speak English or any other foreign language. How on earth can a tourist leave this country if he/she is not able to speak Russian? :D

Camera

My camera was broken some time ago due to accident, hence the lack of too many new pictures. Okay, in any case there is not that many pictures in this blog :D

I finally managed to contact my insurance company about the camera. It took some time to get the estimation of fixing costs, since I am not in Finland myself while the camera is. I gave it to my parents to take it with them when they left St.Petersburg.

Let's see whether or not I will get some remuneration. And when will it happen. Having a camera is quite cool when abroad :)

Exam over, so is the QBR stuff

The Managerial economics exam wasn't as bad as I thought. Actually, it seemed surprisingly easy for me. Other also commented that it wasn't as hard as they had imagined. Well, lets wait for the results to see how I did. At the moment I feel pretty confident I did okay.

Funny situation came few minutes before the time was almost up. One student took her cellphone out of her pocket and started typing something. At first I thought she was using it as a calculator for some simple maths that we had to do (like 5,03 x 3) but apparently it was not the case. She was using it as a dictionary.... To find out what "assemble" means.

Surprising.

Apparently other Russian students also had problems with that word and they did not know what it means. How is this even possible considering that the average Toefl-score for MITIM-students is quite high (something around 100 out of 120 or so).

I bet some of the Russian students will have some problems when we go to LUT, since you are not allowed to even take cellphones to exams and getting caught on cheating is heavily punished. After all, the cultural perceptions are a bit different when it comes to cheating in exams...

After the exam I started working on the individual project of Qualitative methods of business research. Shitty project, but now it is also done. From the moment of having no idea what to write about to the moment when 5 pages (3 was minimum) was written it took about 3 hours. I am a bit surprised I managed to deal with that crap so quickly. After all, I had no motivation at all to write anything....

The next exam is on Friday, it is the final from Russian. I guess I will start preparing for it tomorrow. Today is just for relaxing :)

Preparation for Managerial economics

Tomorrow.. umm, today.. in the morning we have the final exam for Managerial economics. I am so happy to get rid of this course after that exam. Hopefully..

I've been reading the course book today for like 5 or 6 hours, read all the slides one time and also checked some example exercises. I guess I am as ready as I can be.

So far I have 26/40 points (course maximum is 100) which is average number withing the classmates. It seems that the most likely grade will be C in case if I dont over- or underperform drastically (10% get and A, next 25% gets and B etc).

Let's see how it all turns up.

Oh, there is something that Lauri can not do!!

And that is playing the guitar.

Pre-christmas party aka pikkujoulut

Yesterday we had a pre-christmas party here at the dormitory. There were about 30 people partying, which was a good number considering the easiness of preparations, the facilities and so on. Because the party was arranged as potluck, no one had to work their ass off for the party.

Of course Santa, actually two Santas, joined the party with full sacks and left with empty ones. Unfortunately I didn't get the pony I had sooooo hoped for. But still, I am very pleased with the hairyballs throwing game that I got.

Fun night overall :)

Knowledge management exam

We had an exam on knowledge management on today. Well, yesterday... I spent almost the whole Monday on reading the stuff for that - 5 or 6 articles, 8 slide sets etc. Luckily I had read most of the course articles (10 out of 15) during the course so the challenge wasn't too overwhelming.

The exam was pretty much the kind that I expected - few mini-cases and then 10 smaller questions. We had 2,5 hours to write the exam which was quite generous, especially compared to Technology management... Once again it was open book exam.

Which I can not understand.

These open book exams are in GSOM are totally useless for most part, because a lot of the questions are directly from the slides. So when a question is asked, you just check from the right slide set and write down what you can see. Basically, with good index and all the course material you can cope with all these things without that much preparation.

And because of these stupid questions almost everyone will get exactly the same points from these questions. Which is ridiculous and just leads to situation where most of the people has something like 90 points from 100 and missing two points can mean two grades. Not nice at all.

Well, lets see how are the results. We should get them during next week. Lets hope for good grade.

Visit to Viborg

I went for a brief visit to Viborg on Saturday. Kind of a shocking place to visit actually, especially being a Finn. It was my first time in there so I didn't know that well what to expect - I guess I didn't expect anything. But still, it was a bit of a shock.

The thing that was shocking is how beautiful the city could easily be if just some effort would be used. But no. It has been let to rot and crumble which is a shame because it really would have a lot of potential to be awesome city.

But I guess I had to see that. Now I've seen St.Petersburg, Moscow and also Russia - the way those not so glamorous cities are...

Happy independence day Finland! It has been deserved.

Language studies... очен плоха

I attended my first Russian class in more than one month, I believe it has been something like 5 weeks since the last time. Why has it been that long?

Well, there is an interesting answer. The way GSOM has organized the language studies is not optimal at all. We have 4 classes of language per week, 45 minutes each. For almost every group those are during the same day. This means that if you miss the class for whatever reason, it immediately results in quite a long break from your studies. And with this kind of rhythm you are doing your homework only once a week. So one class + one day of homework means you study the language twice a week. Which is way too little in my opinion.

It would be so much better to split the 4 lessons in 2 pieces, one class on Tuesday for example and another on Thursday. With this split, you would have to do homework also twice a week. Which equals to 4 times a week which is so much better than only twice.

Grade from KM report

Today we received the grade for our knowledge management report. 100%! :) Our team rocked. Once again thanks to my lovely teammates :)

Next Tuesday we have the final exam and then this course is done.

Knowledge management presentations

Today we had the knowledge management presentations at the school. Those were the biggest presentations of this semester, so our group was preparing thoroughly. And apparently it worked - we were given the students award of best presentation. Now we have an certificate of that :D Hah. Funny shit. The good thing is that we got extra 10% to our grade because of this award.

Our presentation was about knowledge management processes and challenges of Sberbank, the biggest bank in Russia. Others had somewhat similar topics but their approach was different and of course the target companies were not the same.

I am glad that this course is now almost over, only final exam is left.

The lowest point of the day was the presentation of our honored guests from Ernst & Young. It was by far the most boring presentation of the day, didn't offer that much insights and was overall irrelevant. And also about 25 minutes overtime..... I don't understand why companies send these kind of people doing these kind of presentations to universities - did not improve my image of E&Y as an employer a bit. Seriously. If you don't have suitable persons to send then do not send anyone. Perioid.