Happy birthday Singapura

Today's Singapore National day. The country's 41 years old now. It's pretty sweet how there are national flags flying around and the brute capitalistic malls are making business out of the national day. No harm done - I completely support the business environment that's created here.

I managed to read Lee Kuan Yew's book - "From third world to first world". It's the story of transformation of a sleepy British outpost from a near nation of slums to what Singapore is today - a real first world country. In fact, in my opinion, it's ahead of most first world countries in a lot of respects!

So today was a holiday. I decided to work from school. When I was walking in school, it felt good to be back to student life. In the past month and a half I've been back in the corporate world. The comparison between school life and corporate life is striking. We have had the chance to sample both during this one exciting year in INSEAD. In fact Pooja's got to sample to two companies and a school!

Corporate life is the same old - lot of cynical people, challenging any new thought saying - "Yeah! what's he going to do that I didn't try earlier!". There are no real synergies between divisions, departments, regions and markets. School life is just the opposite. There are discussions and opinions floating around so much - everyone has a solution to every problem!