Dear friends,

It is almost a week since I took the OM paper. It is a RESTRICTED open book ie. only the official textbooks plus any scribblings on the pages. We were however reminded not allowed to write on 3M page markers nor slot pieces of papers into the books.

What is the exam format? 10 short qustions of 5 marks each from all over the text books and a case study for the remaining 50 marks. If only I had a version of Google that could have help to search for relevant materials to answer the questions, things would have been easier. Example - How do we apply Heskey's Theory of Conflicts to the blah blah blah..? If you had the books, you would have some vaque memories. As vaque memories are not good enough to answer or if you had no idea and you can't bluff, you start the pages frantically.

Can you imagine 50 people doing that in the exam hall while to look cool and relax? Haha..

What is OM? Oh yes.. it is Operations Management..

Cheers.

Dear friends,

It was the first time in my life to take an open book exam for MBA. Prior to the exam, some of us wrote in to clarify the exact definition of open book. The response we got is anything textbooks and any written materials can be brought in to the exam hall.

So what did I bring in last evening? The textbook, of course plus my scribblings over past year exam papers with answers.

The outcome is that it was a really pleasant experience. How much did the referring to the textbook help? My frank assessment is about 5-10marks.

There was a particular 5 marks where I have to calculate the expected outcome assuming perfect information is available. I didn't know how to do but I remember I read about it.

For coming Friday, I will be having a limited open book exam. This time round I can only bring textbooks. No 3M post-its with scriptures written in minute words are allowed to be pasted into text books. I will let you know how I feel about that later.

Smile and chat later.

Dear friends,

Slept at 2.30 and woke up at 8 to a gloomy greyish morning. Soon after, rain. I have a meeting at 12pm and sitting here wondering what should I do first given the next 2 hours. For the afternoon, I know I have to be in the office. Many things to follow up and I want to give due attention to them.

I just checked the time for today's first paper. 6pm it is.

I guess I will take the first move of taking my shower before I plunged myself into work again. Till I chat with you again, take care.

Ed

Dear friends,

I have just completed 32 compulsory academic hours this week with my students. The rest of the hours were either with my clients, staff, eating or sleeping. Talking about sleep... I am working on getting a good sleep later with a glass of red. I really want to give myself a good sleep after so many days of 5-6 hours.

My first exam is due Friday 13th Aug.. oops and have I done anything about it? Nothing at all so far given tons of papers to mark, clients' work to complete, 2 lunches pending and a student's call for help for the coming exam. And of course, my family.

Thanks to the good Lord for confirming my new staff. She was in a dilemma between working with me or with some listed companies. Glad she decided to stay.

My fellow MBA classmates were in hyper mode this week when the results of our Operations Management paper were released. Some actually failed while my team passed with 55.2 marks. The tutor involved will no longer be around next term perhaps after our "remarkable" feedback on his lack of performance. He has reached a certain age and tried to project some credibilities by relying on his many years in polytechnic education and his involvement in governmental productivity programmes over the last two decades. Thus it is important to keep upgrading ourselves. It really convinced me NOT to be a full time academician. We need to be at the EDGE ie. be constantly challenged by market forces to stay in touch with reality. It is just not the same to be an armchair "practitioner"!

If you are reading this .. this is the end of July. Wish you the best always. 

Cheers to all.

Edgar

Dear friends,

Today I slept at 1am and woke up at 6am. A long week of deferred taxes and consolidation.. and ended with economic order quantity.

Currently in the midst of working to complete the 3rd assignment this term with a few classmates. Dedicated the whole of this wet wet wet Saturday to complete this. A wee bit hungry now while I wait for my classmates to complete the writing of their conclusions.

In the afternoon, we will have to learn to use this software called VISA in our attempt to perform multi variate analysis of the problem of maintaining sufficient blood supply in an imaginary hospital.

Last week, there was a big miracle for me as I managed to complete the 2nd assignment on corporate culture and its possible impact on performance. There were articles and text with thousands of words to read, interprete and adapt for use into the assignment.

Looking at my room of backlogs accumulating over the weeks, I see assignments, weekly tutorials and clients' documents to follow up. I do need help. Who can help me?

I wish you well. Please do keep in touch.