Submitted fees for CEIBS

Well after 3 long years, I am finally going to a B School. This is really an emotional moment for me. The most surpurising thing is the school to which I am going.

Its CEIBS - China Europe International Business School.

I had just wired 5000 USD as my admit confirmation and my heart is pounding. I am finally going there.

A lot of things went in between and that too very fast. Albeit after getting the CEIBS admit, life really seemed to be settled but alas it was just a moment of euphorbia as within the next second I realised that there are a ton of assignments to be completed before finally moving to Pudong ( East Shanghai where the school is located).

Most important among them includes

1. Arranging for funds....some how my wife is convinced that we wont be making our life hell by commiting to a bank loan.......

Options : parents, friends and well wishers.


2. Putting in my papers at HPCL - well there are a couple of issues for which I never bothered at HPCL, but now I am straight to it and want to collect out and juice out the last penny and knowledge from HPCL.

3. Going for a vacation :- Yes this also very important on my list of to dos..We havent gone for a long vacation for a long time. It has been more than one year down the line since we went to Singapore and Malaysia......Hence, I am planning for a good leisure trip

4. Fmaily :- Things are really not in good shape. Recesssion and couple of bad investments forced us to suffer heavy loss esp the Transportation business...
Really need to settle some of the thing including funds in the family.......at least that will gimme a piece of mind during my MBA

5. Chinese / CFP / Blah Blah :- God I m really scared, where i will find the time to pay attention to these otherwise important things......I mean i could give them only the 5th priority to my list....

In addition to this there are hordes of other things to do such as networking with people for internship and other resources in PRC. I wish I had more time with me before I am onboard to Shangai

How much time will I take to learn Chinese ?

This question struk me very hard as the only opinion I recieved from most of the people is that - " Chinese is hard and Learnign Chinese is more harder"

But then I came across one opinion of an expat who learned chinese....aka Mandarin

".........
I speak Mandarin quite fluently and am not too bad at Cantonese. The former is easier. The pronunciation of Mandarin sounds is not difficult. The tones take more work. Is is important to realize that even English is tonal, except that tones are used for emphasis in the sentence rather than to indicate meaning in words. As long as you ignore any and all grammatical explanations of Chinese and just work on listening and reading and getting used to the structure of the language, it is not too difficult except for one obstacle, the amount of time required to learn characters. There you need a system (I had one) and you need to work at it every day..even one day off it and you slide back. It took me 8 months full time to learn the language, be able to read novels, and translate newspapers in both directions.
........."

I was really inspired by his story of his track to learn chinese.........8 months to fluency is not a big deal buddy ......and I am really wiling to invest that much of time...

Now the next question is where to learn chinese from ...........i m currently exploring a lot of options

1. Some sources on net - I found them to be misleading.........
2. some native speaker - hard to find them in new delhi
3. some class room course - how to evaluate which one to join..........


albeit, on thing, I learned abt chinese is that its a phonetic based language......
meanings change with the emphasis of syllables........

so, I finally started a bit ..........so lets see if I can get close inch by inch.............

"WO" - means "I" in mandarin but the same can change with emphasis......