Working hard, Hardly working

Hey peoples

Long time no see, right? Not that anyone cares though. For the last two weeks we`ve been pretty busy with procrastinating, we even bought an American football and started training in order to go pro next year. All jokes aside, our studies have really kicked off now and we`re still trying to juggle with the fact that attendance is pretty much mandatory, especially since I do not plan on selling my kidney in order to finance the books we need for the courses.

Most of this blog post will cover the courses we`re on and towards the end we`ll probably talk a little sports. This is also a pretty long blog post, so brace yourselves, walls of text are coming.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

Le serious business segment mandated by Aalto BIZ, aimed at any and all future le serious business school students heading for HEC (Buttherestofyouarestillwelcometoreadit)

Logistics – Now, seeing as I`ve always been a huge fan of FedEx, I thought this course would totally be my thing. So far, so good, even though I have to admit that most of the areas covered thus far has pretty much been stuff I already know… (TuTa, spring 2012, never forget). I don`t think logistics really needs much of an explanation, so moving on!

Economic Problems & Policy Analysis – Ok so I`m a finance major. Now I like to think there are two kinds of finance majors, those who know what supply and demand is, and those who don`t give a shit. I`d like to think I`m somewhere in between. I`ve always been interested in the qualitative nature of economic theories rather than the quantitative interpretation and, so far, this course has given a lot of thought on the qualitative side of economics and how politics and especially the forming of so called political platforms drive real world economic decision such as the redistribution of wealth and how they might end up causing deadweight loss and thus, for example, reduce total welfare.

Organizational Behavior – Now, since most of my bachelor`s courses have focused on finance, I have never been able to grab some psychology courses, a subject that I am very keen on. So I finally go out and enroll on one, and let me say this, I`M ON FIRE BABY! Memorizin` n` applyin` psych theories on real world work place cases baby, you ain`t got nothing on me! Needless to say, moving on…

Consumer Behavior – Hey, Mo` psychology, Mo` betta. This course has been the most “eye-opening” so far. By using different proven psychological / data gathering methods, we are able to see what consumers really respond to in terms of advertising, product placement etc. Moreover, even though the results of the study of consumer behavior might be common-sense to some people, some parts of the field still amaze me, such as tracking the eye movements of consumers to see what part of an advertisement catches their attention. I could write about this for ages, but I won`t.

The most valuable thing Ville learned: A marketing course can actually be fascinating and make sense as long as it stays near the applications in day-to-day business.

Strategic Management in Organizations – At first, I thought this course name was one of those, where professors put fancy business words in a hat, shuffle them and pick them out by random, such as “Creative sustainability in strategic corporate social responsibility”. Now, let me just say that I was proven wrong. The course itself is basically the teachings of Michael Porter. Now what makes the course interesting is not the endless memorizing of different lists of management theories (KRHM Aalto University of Economics, really!?), it is the fact that the course comprises of a simulation where we get to apply these theories to a company we manage in a simulated reality. The group with the highest stock price in the end wins. Now, being a finance student, I already came up with the best strategy for this game, some window dressing for reputational reasons and then just reverse-split the stock in the end. VICTORY WILL BE OURS!
The most valuable thing Ville learned: The professor prefers Colombian coffee.

Management skills

For a guy who was watched almost all seasons of the Apprentice (both US and Finnish variants) this one was an easy pick for me. After all, being a CSO (Chief Something Officer) in some sort of company, working in perhaps a field of business (even a sector) has been a life-long dream of mine. Jokes aside, this course is easily the most interesting one I have at HEC. The professor has made a career at L’oréal, is a hockey fan and provides actual insights stemming from a couple of decades of managing people. Has my utmost respect for telling things as they are, even though it might not be pretty to hear(e.g. telling us all that we pretty much suck for not being familiar with some of the most famous authors in the field of management science). The lectures are heavily conversation based but that keeps things interesting, it’s also fun to hear about the management cultures in other countries from the other students. Exercises range from written group cases to individual oral presentations and role play. Also a great pick for general career tips and tricks. 5/5, would recommend.

Most valuable thing learned: things WILL go to hell at some point of your career and text books won’t prepare you for it.

Int’l economic environment
I’m not a big fan of the course so far. If watching graphs upon graphs while facing the wall (the classroom sucks) and listening to socialists give their opinions on the world is your piece of cake, by all means, take this course. The course has one major assignment, a 25 page report on a country of your choice, which is actually the best thing about the course, as it gives you a chance to learn about a foreign country in more detail.

Most valuable thing learned: People who don’t share my political views are stupid.'

Int’l financial management

Nothing special really, the name says it all. Has interesting stuff for both those with a finance background and those who really don’t give a fudge about CAPM. A pretty cool professor, though the poor guy doesn’t always seem to grasp elementary school mathematics. No assignments, a mid-term and a final exam. A traditional read-the-book course.

The most valuable thing learned: In North America, making a reasonable contribution to the class discussion can actually result in getting compliments from the professor after class. Dat culture shock.

Ok that does it for our studies so far, now if some of you are wondering why none of this makes any sense, don`t worry, we usually make no sense whatsoever. Now, it’s time for some…

Sports Baby!

Football feat. Budweiser

Since the last time, a lot has happened in terms of sports. We went to see the University of Montreal football team, the Carabins, play against some team I don’t even remember anymore. To be honest, I don’t even remember the final score of the game, the only thing I do remember is that it was probably one of the best sporting events I’ve seen in my entire life. “CANADA HAS NOTHING ON U.S. COLLEGE FOOTBALL”, yeah I know, but still the atmosphere was incredible. It was like a party mixed with sports, where whenever the home team guys even touched the ball, the crowd went nuts. The only slightly annoying thing was this guy sitting in the row behind us honking some goddamn vuvuzela from hell all the time (not an euphemism, he literally had a this cheap-ass looking horn that made the worst noise)

Cheerleaders photo-bombed by the refs

Between the college football games, practicing throwing a football and watching Tom Brady tribute videos, I think the football fan in me is starting to emerge. 

Now for the king of sports, hockey!

Pre-season has started, and I’m over the moon. The New Jersey Devils managed to beat the New York Rangers, which is always the best feeling in the world regardless if it’s a pre-season game, a regular season game or the freaking eastern conference final (which, when I last checked, we won beat the rangers 4-2)
We also got our first experience from the famous Bell Centre, where the Canadiens squared off with…. wait for it…..the Canadiens! It was a red vs. white charity game, where the Montréal Canadiens team was split and they played against each other. It was an ok hockey game, nothing really special though, since it lacked almost all the intensity that makes for an excellent hockey game. Nonetheless, the atmosphere looked promising and we are looking forward to the 17^th of October so as to see an actual regular season game in person!

Montréal Canadiens (Too many men on the ice anybody?)

In the meantime, see you at Chez Serge for the season opener against Toronto on October 1^st!

Mandatory picture of our new beer pong table

                             

Midlife Crisis at 22

A friend of mine once told me that when you move abroad it is almost as if you develop a new personality. It’s a weird psychological phenomenon (Editor’s note: I only studied psychology for a single mandatory course in high school, don’t worry, I know I’m full of it) what being given a clean slate in terms of social networks does to you. Only a few weeks ago I was 100 percent sure that I could get through my entire life without ever purchasing a snapback or being genuinely excited about a “new, up-and-coming neighborhood with some cool places you probably never even heard of” (i.e. turbo hipsterville, population: douchehundred). Considering that the life I lead will likely end in an early grave, having a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of 22 makes perfect sense.

Though my life is beginning to eerily remind the Asher Roth hit I love college (here’s a link for the uninitiated, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0), there is luckily still more to the life of the Finnish frat boys than beer pong, Bud Light and listening to our official Spotify playlist (aptly named Douchelist, contains e.g. Kanye West, Blink 182 and some smash hits from the greatest movies ever: Top Gun and Rocky IV). We actually had a really good lecture on the history and culture of Quebec. It’s pretty interesting how similar the story of Quebec is to that of Finland. Both are bilingual, and Quebec’s special rights in comparison to the other provinces of Canada really remind me of Finland’s status in 19^th century Russia. In the latest polls the separatist movement had actually more support than the Let’s-stay-with-Canada-they-have-Tim-Hortons-I-can’t-give-that-up movement. Maybe I have some hope of actually learning something useful here. After all, I guess you can’t really list Beer and Local beer pong champion of Parc Extension / Outremont as your special skills on LinkedIn.

Speaking of learning, we had our first proper lectures last week. The style is very North American, completely different when compared to Aalto. The professors are a lot more passionate, the group sizes notably smaller etc. It might be too early to judge, but maybe Lonely Planet wasn’t completely off-track dubbing the school as “the French-speaking equivalent to Harvard.”  I think we’ll write about all our courses in a separate le serious business entry (because we have to or we don’t receive funding for our blogging effort from our prestigious alma mater, Aalto School of Biznis)  

What the Fudge?

Last week was somewhat exhausting, since we discovered a nice lil’ mold infestation in our wash room after a major plumbing fudge-up involving gushing piping and improvised home-made buckets. We also learned that no-one really seems to believe in any adverse health effects of mold here in Quebec. When we return home we will start a mold-exterminating company, charging 10k for swiping the surfaces with a little bleach. Because that’s the go-to solution to every problem in Montréal, apparently. Have a hangover? DRENCH YOURSELVES IN BLEACH, IDIOTS.  

Toronto, the road-trip destination of champions

After a long week filled with housing issues, raccoon attacks and having one of the authors fall into a ditch, we decided it was high time for a proper vacation. We hopped a bus, but not just any-goddamn-bus, a MEGABUS, to Toronto, Ontario to find out that roughly 50 000 others had the exact same idea (labor day weekend, who knew?). We had the pleasure of strolling through downtown Toronto in a downpour, consulting some dozen hotels for vacancy (reservations are for cowards, Swedes and little girls). In the end everything worked out, and we even got to probably the most Canadian bar in town, Loose Moose. Unfortunately no loose moose were to be seen. 

CN tower going all YOLO

On day two in Toronto we decided to go see America’s favorite pastime, a game of baseball. Now, upon entering the stadium we immediately searched for the closest beer stand. I buy a bud light and show my ID, clean and simple right? WRONG. We get the cavity search equivalent of ID checks, where they brought experts around the world to check if our Finnish drivers licences were fake. They even had a book on the ID's of the world that had more pages than the bible. After a rough start, we might have been sipping on overpriced Bud Light and laughing at the slow pace of the sport in the first 30 minutes but by the bottom of the 8^th inning all three of us were hardcore Blue Jays fans and true believers in the sport of baseball

Blue Jays comeback from 2-0 to win it 4-2

Ye olde T-shirt section

Of course, we had to buy a T-shirt from T-city. Here's a picture of my shirt. I thought it was just an old lady playing beer pong,  but I was told by a very creditable Toronto street figure that it is actually Woody Allen playing beer pong. 

Until next time,

Holler.

Its going to be a brutal 4-5 months....

 After multiple, surprisingly awkward, sessions of beer pong, we managed to find ourselves challenging our upstairs neighbors for the neighborhood title. Needless to say, after 6 hours of playing, the championship games was abruptly cancelled due to technical difficulties.  But here is the deal, in Finland we have this thing called "viinaturisti", which is pretty much used to describe finnish tourists around the globe. The morning after, me and Ville officially identified ourselves as "viinaturistit". We're supposed to be here for 5 months? we've been here a week and I feel like I'm 20 years older. Remember kids, studying is hard work.

The Ultimate Fratboy collection 

During the past week, it has become more and more clear to us, that the Canadian price levels were not as low as they were supposed to be. If we keep this up, in 4 months, we're either going to perish or we'll have to prematurely cash in Ville's 401k, whichever comes first really. On Friday we visited terraces bonsecours, a local club located in the old port of Montréal. Now, if you like paying $10 for a cup of beer and going through ceaseless airport security checks just to get your drink knocked out of your hand by some random stoner going apeshit on the "dancefloor", the place is for you.

Also during this past week, we've finished our research on Canadian beers. Conclusion: they're all horrible.

Now for the serious part....

So far Montréal has been an extremely friendly place, even the cashiers at grocery stores are nice, and mind you, nice is an attribute rarely found in Scandinavia.

The city itself is a beautiful place, a sort of U.S meets Europe, and exploring it is relatively easy, as the subway system is extremely simple. But hey, what can we say really? We've been here for what? 9 days? Its not like we know everything about the city. Funfact #1, In Montréal, the highest building (le 1000)  is as high as Mont Royal itself, the mountain that the city was named after. For me, that seems like a much better measuring stick to how long a building should be, instead of the typical Finnish 3-story concrete block from the 70's.

Le 1000 

View of Montréal from the Olympic Stadium Tower

Our studies start next Monday, until then, we'll keep on exploring the city and the culture in order to be actually able to write something relatively useful in here.

Good places in Montréal

- Restaurant/bar Les 3 Brasseurs, relatively cheap and good stuff. Poutine burger ftw right? This bar is also a microbrewery, which makes the dining experience unique.

- Montréal rapids ride, Saute-Moutons. A thrilling jetboat ride where you get pretty much slapped in the face by 3 metre tall waves. Nothing wakes you up better than getting 10 litres of water thrown in your face with extreme force.

Saute-Moutons

Dat Fashion

Since we featured the cat shirt on the first blog entry, we will have to continue to supply the readers with hipster-esque clothing. So here's a penguin shirt Ville bought....

Penguin Shirt from Urban outfitters

Bonsoir!

This blog is mainly about the experiences of two distinctive people from Finland taking an actual chance and going to Montréal to study for 5 months.

Hi, my name is Niko and I am a 21-year old finance student from Finland (Aalto university school of economics, or Aalto Biz, whatever they may call it nowadays). I have lived my whole life in Helsinki, Finland, and am now willing to share my "exchange" experience with the staggering two or three people reading this blog. Have a laugh.

...And my name is Ville, I'm the co-author of this blog. I've known Niko since high school and now we're both in the same faculty, living in the same flat. I've spent a good portion of the year living abroad even prior to this experience. I call myself an expatriate yet I dry my hands in a HIFK playoff towel. Go figure.

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Welcome to Montréal...

Ok so here’s the deal; I have this tradition of boarding trans-Atlantic flights hung-over as Fruit loop. So, as we say in Finland, it obviously was a “salee-ihan-hyvä-juttu” to stay up drinking until 4 AM on the night before. I guess Niko managed to get some sleep onboard the Airbus, while I listened to Kirka and Päivi Lepistö (=our collaborative Midsummer ’13 playlist) and watched HIMYM for the duration of the flight.

After an exhausting immigration process we exited JFK International, hollered an (almost) legit cab and headed for Manhattan. The mere sight of the impressive skyline makes a man humble. Long story short, we ended up discussing serious business with some Israeli UN mission guys on a rooftop bar, enjoying a warm New York summer night and mediocre US beer.

Dat Stock Exchange

In the morning we took the Adiron-duck (whatevs spelling) train to upstate NY, visiting exciting global party venues such as Poughkeepsie, Albany and Plattsburgh (Go Plattsburgh Penguins!) before entering the Great White North.

Our neighborhood in Montreal is “Portuguese-Jewish-Greek” (according to Lonely Planet). In my experience, it resembles New Jersey. Don’t take this wrong, I love the Garden State. It just looks a lot like Jersey, maybe a bit less tanning salons, but still.

On day one, still suffering from jet-lag, we visited important Canadian sights such as Tim Hortons, Centre Bell and the Dollarama Store. We also bought a flag of Quebec (landlady approves) and a bottle of Finlandia Vodka, as well as some fine Canadian beer (Sleeman Brothers, anyone?).

Our second day included e.g. more aimless wandering up and down Ave Mont-Royal, additional visits to SAQ and purchasing the most awesome cat-themed shirt ever (they really shouldn’t let me near any hipster-esque shops, otherwise I’ll come home a complete pretentious douche).

P.s. We also came up with a game to play in Montreal: At any point of time, when standing at a place with a good 360 degree view, if you can’t see a church tower, something happens. We have yet to come up with an outcome, as we are still looking for a place in Montreal that does meet this criterion.

Peace, I’m out (Here’s also a pic of my most awesome shirt)