Being Flavius Marcus

Someone asked a Fisherman from Romania to go to ESMT for an MBA and he did and he became Flavius Marcus to us. It is not easy to get your company to nominate you for an MBA but E.ON, one of ESMT’s founders, nominated Flavius ahead of his more favored colleagues and I guess they saw in this finance whiz a large potential.

I had the fortune to be in the same group with him – Group Florence – You will read about this later – for the first module. Full of energy and jokes, this man would not keep his energy or laugher down. He cracked us – Ambar, Stefanie, Casey and me – up with his many jokes and we understood a lot about the relationship between Hungarians and Romanians. Hey! His mentor is a Hungarian – now that would be interesting. He is a virtual superhero with the computer and could churn out web pages, photo shop images with absolute ease and be on top of all the courses. He would volunteer for all the assignments and I guess must be the only one who worked on all the assignments that we have ever done in Module 1. He cracked JP Molasses ( Decision Making – Assign 2) within a couple of hours while others spent days on that and drew the whole tree for Gillette. He was always bursting with ideas. You cannot ignore him when he is in the room. He is Flavius “The King” Marcus.

Cut the scene to the classroom and you meet Flavius “The Invisible Man” Marcus. He attributes this to being cold called during day 1 session 1 by Francis Bidault. He says that it upset his balance and he was never the same again. He usually had the case study handouts in Marketing and OB highlighted in all shades of color indicating he had actually read them (can you believe that?) and would infact explain the case studies to the rest of the group before the start of the class. But in class, he had no answer to say when a question was posed to him – This mental whiz and human dynamo switched itself off in class. The best was when he was asked a question by Michal (MicroEconomics) who later explained that it was the first time that he had ever cold called anyone. Sitting directly opposite to Flavius in class, I observed him take a deep breath, rock back in his chair, eyes rolled to look at the ceiling, lowered the gaze back to meet Michael, lean forward and reply “It depends…” While the class waited, he made a long pause. Michal followed “…and…??”. Flavius replied “….and ….” and explained something that made no sense. He later explained that he had switched off for 2 minutes while listening to Yury, and Michal thought he had to cold call for the first time in his life, picked the one guy who went into a trance for just that minute. As Flavius later remarked to me, people may forget the grades they ever got in the MBA but one thing they will definitely remember – the “It depends” of Flavius and I am doing my bit to record this for posterity.

I have one more week with this bubbling genius. Then we part company to move into our new groups for Module 2. This is a program where you make friends and I know I have one in Flavius. Hopefully he will figure out a way to untie his tongue in class and watch out guys, when he does that – the class will not be the same again.

Love Lifted me

Yesterday when we came for our refill of coffee during the short break of the afternoon session of accounting, two large boxes of apple pies were on the snacks table alongside the usual cornucopia of fresh fruits. Thanking the benevolent soul who deposited these for us, I dug into the delicious pies. I have a special weakness for pies. I remember all the varieties of pies that I had during Thanksgivings with the Harrissons in Haw River (NC, USA). Hmmm… Lovely… That was when someone read the writing on the cover of the boxes “Thought you should not have just a break … Tobias” (That is the best that I remember now of the actual writing but it contains the gist). Tobias??? Someone identified Tobias as our classmate Dorothea’s boyfriend. Hey, How thoughtful of Dorothea and Tobias to think about the whole class!!! So we turned to thank Dorothea for the pie we had devoured but she had no clue what we were talking about. This was a surprise to her also. Wow! A romantic gesture from Tobias to Dorothea and he spread this love to embrace the entire class of ESMT MBA 2008

Just a few hours before that, I had my usual tussle with T-com. They could not provide me with DSL but still wanted me to pay 45 Euros (for just the phone) as I had a 2 year contract with them. It required a lot of negotiation and persuasion from Fabian who was speaking for me to T-com, to get me out of this bind. There was no way that I could succeed in getting my way with my (lack of) German language skills. As I sat and watched him talk in German, not understanding a word, my eyes drifted to my watch as I saw the passing time and thought of the volumes of reading that I had to do. Fabian had his stuff to do as well and he was spending his time for me. Fabian was diligent to his task and kept moving from one operator to the next to sell my story for a contract cancellation. Here was someone who was taking up his precious time so that I could get my personal stuff done. Fabian had every right to feel grieved and had enough opportunities to hang up but he fought till the end and succeeded in cancelling the contract and he replied with a genuine smile when I thanked him, “Sure, Anytime”. Thanks Fabian, That was a love and friendship that is altruistic and the smile rested my concern if he was unhappy about his wasted time.

I returned home late at night and saw my wife, fighting a battle with her morning sickness that continued throughout the whole day. As she wearily smiled at me, weakened by the emptied stomach, I knew that she was bearing through all this in anticipation of our baby, our first baby. The pain that a mother is willing to suffer so that a baby could see the light of day, a love for a creature who has become precious even before it has stepped into this world – a mother’s love

As she smiled, wondering how my day was, I knew that I loved her and loved her a lot – a woman who would be by my side through thick and thin and I knew that she loved me and loved me a lot – a deep love that exists only between a husband and a wife. This is not a love that can be explained.

I have truly been blessed to be able to see these dimensions of love in a single day. These are experiences that make each day special. In the tempest of what a one year MBA program is, these experiences work to build a well rounded personality.

Kenny Rogers croons in his famous song
“Love lifted me,
love lifted me
When nothing else would do
You know, love lifted me”

How True, I need all the love to support me as I move through this year.