UNICEF bombs the Smurfs

You may have heard about this commercial from the Belgium branch of the UNICEF. It shows the Smurfs (Schtroumpfs in French) village being bombed from the air. The objective is to shock people and motivate them to give funds for UNICEF projects in Burundi, Congo and Sudan.

UNICEF discuss about the commercial here and the few versions that I have found (digitized from TV) are of low quality since they refused to publish it on the Internet so that kids cannot have access to it. That's the best I have:

Ultimates internships

Want to know how good is your internship compared to others? Well, Forbes has an article about Ultimate Internships with top law and consultant firms and investment banks. In addition to compensation ranging from $15,000 to $18,000, the interns are offered a lot of perks such as social events in top bars and restaurants or week-ends retreat at top class hotels.

If you are lucky enough to be offered all those perks, take the advice from the article: "Enjoy the perks now. After all, these same industries known for wooing talent are the same ones that require employees to work long after even the Big Apple has gone to sleep"

Finally, if you still don't know what to do with you bonus this year, why not buy a submarine...

This company is manufacturing and selling luxury submarines for the ultra-high net worth individuals. The top of the range (photo above) is a 65 meter submarine capable of making trans-Atlantic trips. No mention of the price...

World Cup and other

I must admit my days are not so busy right now. However, they are now going to be filled with football, although there is so much you can take and I'm not going to watch games such as USA vs Czech Republic... (No offense intended here). France is playing Tuesday vs Switzerland and it is the evening my future employer has selected for a networking event... What to do? Watch some football or go network with future colleagues?

Actually, when I say I'm not too busy, it's because I'm probably not doing enough for that Accounting class. Last week, the Professor put a poor girl on the spot by asking her a question that probably less than 20% of the class understood. Then he watched her for 5mn while she was trying to mumble an answer. That was funny (well not for her) but then I though it would be better for me to start paying attention and put the newspaper I was reading aside and concentrate on the class. But this is sooo boooring...

Some links from my days of surfing on the web: http://equityprivate.typepad.com/ep/ from an Associate with a NY based PE fund. It's quite well written and it's sort of Monkey Business on-line version. Also DealBreaker is quite good for readers interested by the banking industry. I did not find many blogs from Management Consultants (except Angel Angie) but send some links if you have some

With regards to the summer break, tickets for Bangkok have been booked. In the end, we are not going to travel through Singapore and Malaysia but our trip should take us to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

And to finish, here are a couple of shots from Venice where we went 2 weeks ago for the week-end:

Final term

So we are now well engaged into the last and final term of the MBA. I'm taking two classes this term and although the Project Finance class is quite interesting, my other elective is an Accounting one and I'm wondering why I choose it.

I know I wanted to have a better understanding of Accounting issues before graduating but when I’m seated in class, listening to the teacher talking about IFRS something and the pooling vs the purchase accounting methods, I cannot help but think taking this class this was a bad idea. I’m not going to use much of this stuff for my job as a management consultant and therefore, I will forget most of it in a few months. Further more, no matter how many accounting electives I attend to, some people have CFAs and have been in the job for years so they will be in charge of the most delicate accounting issues during consulting projects. The value I can bring to the table is not in accounting; it’s more in… well… not accounting…

Talking about jobs, I’ve been recently contacted by a headhunter. Being a curious person, I went to meet with him and we discussed an opportunity in a global Private Equity fund based in London with investments to make in France. I don’t exactly meet their profile so I don’t think this will move further. In addition to this, I already signed with my future employer so I would have been in the delicate position of potentially reneging on my initial offer which is forbidden by the School. But still, it feels good to be chased.