Group work, group work, group work

Woke up at 9 0'clock today, started working on Technology management group work 15 minutes later. Finished around noon, ate something little, started working on Corporate social responsibility presentation. Finished around 4 o'clock, took a little break (prepared for meeting..), had a Skype session with few group members related to Knowledge management project. Really pleased with the progress we made on that. Finalized the model we created, prepared document, sent to all group members. It was already more than 7 pm.

Like WTF?

Took a girly 15 min shower. Realized that I haven't eaten anything proper whole day, made a quick dinnerish kind of food. Ate.

Really braindead.

Actually totally braindead.

Went out to walk in the foggy weather with a good friend. Came back after 2.5 hours. Now feeling good.

Sunday studying

After really fun few days it was time to get back to business today. At least on some level. So, today I was studying some Russian, writing report for Corporate social responsibility class and also finished my part on the first part of Knowledge management group work (midterm report). Not that big things but I am still quite pleased that I have been able to do some studying today. Tomorrow is going to be quite an intense day, school from 9 am to 6 pm. After that, the usual homework stuff and working on group projects.

I feel I have to study a lot for Russian class since I have not studied that much during the last few weeks. Other courses have gotten priority over Russian classes, but I will definitely put more effort on learning the language on next few weeks.

Actually, yesterday I tried to get my very first black taxi by myself. I managed to stop something like 10 cars and asked how much does it cost to go from Nevskiy to Marinskiy theater were I was supposed to meet some friends. Well, the attempts failed miserably in a way - I was prepared to pay 100 rubles for the trip because I knew it wasn't that far away. The cheapest price I heard was 200 rubles... Of course they noticed that I am not Russian so probably the drivers were just trying to get some easy money. Hah. As if I would pay them. Since I knew where I was heading, I just walked to meet my friends. The trip took only something like 15 minutes by foot. Quite a boring story actually :D But yeah, now I can say that I've tried getting a "taxi" also. Lets hope that soon I am actually able to ride in one to correct place :)

CSR, thesis stuff and World bank

Well, I haven't updated my blog for a while it seems. School life has been quite normal. On Thursday we had this research seminar for our thesis's where every MITIM-student had to present their topic for their thesis. Which was basically total waste of time, because basically no one knows at the moment what is their topic, do they write it as an assignment to some company etc. But well... I guess this has something to do with the Russian educational system and the fact that all master students are expected to start their thesis process in the beginning on master program. Luckily, it doesn't have that much weight on anything - just something that needs to be done. My topic was "Internalization challenges and strategies for SME IT-company". The idea would be to first identify the challenges for expansion to foreign markets and then create a strategy with the company on how to execute the expansion. Quite an interesting topic I think, but it requires whether or not I would be able to find a partner company or companies. Let's see.

I spend a couple of days with my parents here in St.Pete. They came here on Thursday and left on Sunday. It was nice to see them, it had been almost two months since the last meeting.

Today we had our second lecture on Corporate social responsibility (CSR). It's quite an interesting topic, but for whatever reason I've had really big problems on concentrating on those classes. We learned about ethical decision making. Also, all the students made a quick 10 minute test to determine our levels of ethics. It seems that I am "ethically challenged" :D Oh well.

After CSR lecture was a quest lecture from World Bank. It was quite interesting overall. Basically, they presented the idea of 3 D's (Distance, Division and Density) that explain to extent the economic growth. The idea is that these big clusters (usually in big cities) help the developing countries to grow and gain some international stature in the business world. Mobility of the workforce and removing artificial barriers are in key role in here. The speaker demonstrated many examples so it was easy to understand what she meant. It just made it more clear that world is really coming more and more urban and that people living in rural areas likely have to relocate if they want to be part of the growth and get the benefits from it. Which kind of makes the Finnish areal development seem futile.. And to be honest, it pretty much is fighting against the windmills - I don't like the way it is going, but sometimes you just have to accept the facts and adapt.