Rome
More Hanoi photos are here. I’ll update this post tomorrow with more comments about Hanoi…
Photo: Women doing Tai Chi around the central lake in Hanoi (Hoan Kiem Lake). Thousands of people come out between 5-6am to do aerobics and walk around this lake before they start their day.
More photos here:
When I was researching MBA programs there was a lot of chatter about how important diversity of work experience was to the spirit of the program - how all of these matriculants were going to bring incredible experiences to the classroom, yada yada. Looking back after the first year I'm surprised at how little of this I actually saw in people's responses in class; people are (too) humble about mentioning their backgrounds and activities aren't really structured in a way that brings these experiences out. The class experience isn't dramatically different from business classes I had as an undergrad when nobody had any experience at all (the exceptions, I think, are the bankers who have crazy financial modeling skills and some of the foreign students who can lend a perspective about their home countries). I'm not knocking the students, just noting the disconnect between the admissions party line and the way that academic activities are structured.* When you do get people to talk about their past there are some absolutely amazing stories that come out - I wish we did a better job getting people to share this stuff in class. For example see this new Fortune piece on a friend who took a year off to serve as a Force Recon Marine in Iraq:
We'd go for six or seven days without sleep, and in the middle of some chaotic exercise, the instructor would say, "The guy next to you is down. You get him to that ravine." I'm 5-foot-7, and it took more than I thought I had to put some 230-pound guy on top of the pack on my back and run. Until Recon School, I don't think I ever really let anyone carry my weight. …. Elasticity of demand. That's what they talked about in my first class back at Wharton. That culture shock was more jarring than going to Iraq.
I wish more of my leadership class had been spent listing to personal insights from classmates like Jim (the Marine) and a little less time having people regurgitate facts from whatever journal article we were assigned. *Another way to say this: 85% of student participation in academic activities (as opposed to clubs/social events) is "generic" in the sense that anyone could have said it. Maybe 5-10% is unique because the contributor is a character actor - they have a theme like "greed is good". The balance is really informed by people's work experience, and we (the students) actually kind of make fun of people that do this too often - it's just not considered to be cool. I wish we could change the culture to encourage this.
One of the Red Dao that led us around Ta Phin when we visited. The women in this tribe wear distinctive red headgear - this is the more conservative (utilitarian?) style.