The AIM Blogger

A quick post: Things are getting crazy here in the AIM Campus as it is in the middle of a big public protest action against the Arroyo Administration's corruption here in Makati City. But the reason why things are more unsettled here in campus is because senate star witness Rodolfo 'Jun' Lozada is here! Reporters, media folks and protesters are filling up the main lobby with cars struck in traffic jams all over the place. Outside is just loud with car horns, sirens and people with megaphones. Totally crazy... in a good patriotic way, of course. UPDATE: I decided to attend the big rally as an observer along with other MBA students, three of which were Indians. As we walked to the Ninoy Aquino monumebt Paseo De Roxas Avenue, I got to know more about the Indians' view of "rallies." They said they were apprehensive to go with us because in India, a rally connotes rioting-- more like mobs burning cars, breaking windows and looting. One of the Indian students jok...

The AIM MBM Class of 1988 along the classes of 1973, 1978, 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008 are hosting the 40th Foundation Anniversary and Grand Alumni Homecoming Night in an event entitled " Asian High at Boni High " on March 7, 2008 at the Bonifacio High Street in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City. The event will start at 6 o'clock in the evening. Based on the preparations of the Alumni Homecoming 2008 Committee, this is going to be HUGE event-- there's just no reason to miss it if you're an AIM alumnus/alumna. Here's my list of Five Great Reasons to Attend "Asian High at Boni High" : Musical performance from recording artists Rachel Alejandro, Cookie Chua, the Sold Out Band, and revival music from AIM's own MBM ‘73 Band The festivities are going to be BIG that the whole west block of the Bonifacio High Street complex has been reserved for it Prizes will be aplenty as gifts will raffled off, door prizes to special guests (early birds, biggest class ...

I've planned to write something about the film " American Gangster ," starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington, since I watched it last month. The film is set in the 1960's and it is about the rise and fall of an American drug dealer. Apart from enjoying the film for its artistic and creative merits, I've learned to appreciate and pick up a few business insights that aren't too different from what I've been learning in the MBA program. People have picked up business lessons from movies like "The Godfather," ( Here's one and here's another ) so here's my take on Business Lessons from American Gangster (there are some spoilers though): Master the supply chain - In the movie, drug dealer Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington) was able dominate the Harlem drug market by finding the right supplier and finding the right means to get the goods to the market. Lucas traveled to Asia and found quality contraband and used U.S. military...

It's Admissions Season for the incoming MBA and MM students for the W. SyCip Graduate School of Business in AIM and that means people getting invited for interviews and group discussions, people taking the AIMAT and plenty of questions! I've been getting emails and messages as of late on the topic of AIM MBA admissions and I'd like to devote some space in this blog about these inquiries. I really like answering emails, so I'm creating a little section here called "Ask The AIM Blogger." For the first question, I got this message about interviews (I edited the message to omit some specific information): Hey I am to be interviewed by [AIM Faculty Name here] . Can you please give me some info about him... ...Could you please let me know more about him, like what kind of person he is and what all qualities does he talk about(or what all qualities he likes or dislikes) when he is in class? Thanks (I know i am asking for more... but if u can please help I shall be ...

I'm organizing a charity event for my walkabout ! The event is called " Corporate Communications 2.0: Corporate Blogging " and it is a seminar/workshop about corporate blogging. The seminar will be held in March 7, 2008 at the AIM Campus. Corporate Communications 2.0 is intended primarily for: Business executives who recognize the promise of blogs for viral marketing, crisis communications and corporate culture development Managers who want to tap blogging as a collaboration platform Professionals who are interested to learn how blogging can be an effective means of communication in the corporate setting There is a seminar fee is PhP 500.00 but all proceeds of the event will go to the GILAS Project of the Ayala Foundation . Interested folks may pre-register online at http://corpcomm2.eventbrite.com or email me at regnard@raquedan.com for more information. Agenda: Corporate Blogging: What, Who, When, Why and How - Jayvee Fernandez of b5 M...

It's our one week break from classes and this is our last scheduled break for the first eight months of the MBA program. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Personally, the stress of the increased workload for the past month was taking its toll on me-- again. I've been under the weather lately, with rains pouring every once in a while and the temperature has been dropping lately, my body has been flirting with the flu. It has been evidenced by my stuffy nose and very, very hoarse voice. People have been advising me to rest a couple of days leading to the break, and I think it's justified, although I'm not too inclined to get the tag "sickly" from some. Like any other "breaks" we have had in the past , school work still figures a whole lot. There's the walkabout projects , Action Consultancy stuff and the required work that will occupy in most people's minds during the one week. (Unfortunately, I'm one of them). But when you ...

Our major Marketing Management (MM) presentation is finally over! The good news is that our group got the best reviews for coming up with a marketing strategy for Starbucks Coffee . (Our section was assigned coffee companies which we will develop a marketing strategy and marketing plan for.) More than anything, I feel relieved more than I am proud. Our group still has not shed its "last minute, last ditch effort" mentality completely, and we were stressing over the presentation up to the moments leading to the Big Dance. I was part of the tandem that was in charge with developing the advertising and promotional plans and I was really tired by the time we presented because I was designing advertisement studies or prototypes and writing ad copy until 4 o'clock in the morning. It's a good thing though our concepts and ideas were set a couple of weeks back so it was just a matter of getting the message to the right ad. Reflecting on how things went, our group is really go...

When people say you are struggling in finance, they usually mean you're in debt or you are in a bad financial position. But here in AIM, that means another thing-- you are not doing well in the finance-related subjects. Our class is currently taking Financial Management 2 (FM2) under Prof. Maya Herrera , Prof. Gary Olivar and Dr. Grace Ugut , with each faculty covering the topics of the course relating to their expertise. I saying this right off the bat-- I'm having difficulty comprehending the subject. We are already in our 11th session and I could say with honesty that I'm lost as the guys from, well, " Lost ." My difficulty with finance could be traced back to my Language of Business (LOB) days a few months back. If you sift through my blog posts around August and September 2007, you would see my initial troubles and "hanging by a thread" moments in Financial Accounting. I painstakingly coasted by Financial Management 1 (FM1) and here I am getting...

The Asian Institute of Management joins the Ateneo Graduate School of Business , De La Salle University Professional Schools , University of Santo Tomas Graduate School and San Beda Graduate School of Business in the 2008 Inter-MBA Friendship Games, a friendly sports competition between business schools based here in the Philippines. The sports events for this year are badminton, basketball, bowling, chess, pool and volleyball. This year's campaign for the AIM sports teams is bannered by the rally cry " AIM for the Win! " Last February 17, the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Inter-MBA Friendship games was held at the De La Salle University Sports Complex in Taft Avenue in Manila. The host school prepared a nice program that featured the Philippine Mount Everest team giving an inspirational talk. After the traditional parade of teams, there was the competition for Best Muse, a standard fare in sports competition opening ceremonies here. Julie Ann Chua of MBA 1 represent...

I'm turning 28 today and this may be known as my "AIM Birthday" as this is the only birthday celebration that is within the 16 months of the MBA program. The day started with a learning team breakfast with set-up by our team's mentor, Prof. Jun Borromeo . Well. the breakfast wasn't a set-up because it was my birthday, but rather it was a scheduled breakfast meeting with Capt. Bobby Lim , one of AIM's pioneer faculty and former president of the Philippine Aerospace Development Corporation. The pleasant meeting was filled with his insights on life, his experiences in World War II (yep, he was an officer during the war, thus the title "Captain") and of course, business. The big surprise happened in our Human Behavior in Organizations (HBO) class. As I entered the ABS-CBN Caseroom* and proceeded to my designated seat, a batch of presents surprised me. Here's a photo: I guess somebody in our class pulled a prank on me by leaving Valentine's day-r...

Excellence is something MBA students often aspire for. But the problem with high performance is the setting the bar high too often that you can't keep up. I'm kinda experiencing this little problem in our classes lately. As I've mentioned before , class work and group deliverables have increased for this week. The good news is that our group has responded well and we have risen up to the challenges from our requirements in Human Behavior in Organization (HBO), Financial Management 2 (FM2) and Development of the Enterprise (DE). For some, there's the Walkabout to worry about. However, there's pressure to meet the high quality of work we have been churning out and the result is exhaustion and, of course, fewer sleeping hours. There's also the desire to outdo yourself and perhaps other groups in the requirements. I just hope that we'll get it easier as the week winds up-- it will be my birthday then. :)

I've mentioned in a previous post that I'll be spending time writing about the Walkabout, one of our major projects for our Human Behavior in Organizations (HBO). If you look search for "Walkabout" on the web, particularly Wikipedia, you'll see this definition: Walkabout is an Australian pidgin (or perhaps quasi-pidgin) term referring to the belief that Australian Aborigines "go walkabout" at the age of thirteen in the wilderness for six months as a rite of passage. Our Walkabout project was inspired by this rite of passage and all of the MBA students in our class are required to through with it. But as opposed to going to the wilderness literally, our Walkabout is about going out of AIM and do something that will help us grow. That's why we make our own projects based on areas we feel we need to improve. We set the targets and we set the timelines (there's a major deadline for this though) and we set to achieve something more than a grade. Eac...

I follow this forum site called Pagalguy and it is one of the best resources in researching for your MBA program if you're a prospective student. One good thing about these kinds of forums is that when a person not familiar with a topic, particularly AIM, poses a controversial question, people with a better vantage point could bring clarity. A good example is one thread in the discussion boards where one prospective MBA student posted this : One of the negative feedbacks that I have received about AIM is that Phillipines is not a safe country to reside with coup attempts often. I had attended the AIM Open House in Mumbai and this issue had been raised during the Open House as well after it was mentioned that the coup militants had tried to occupy the AIM building since its one of the tallest buildings in the area. I have two questions: 1. How safe are the student during such coup attempts? 2. Doesn't such political instability repel recruiters? The questions were posed to Prof...

I'm live blogging at the Bridges: Dialogues Towards a Culture of Peace forum at the SGV Conference Room at the AIM Conference Center where Nobel laureate Prof. Finn E. Kydland is giving a talk on globalization and economic development. Bridges is a series of talks organized by the International Peace Foundation and this talk today is the first of a few talks here in the Philippines. This event is part of our Asian Business Systems (ABS) class and counts as one class session. The audience is filled with prominent business and political figures, such as Senator Loren Legarda, AIM governors Washington SyCip, Luis Cuisa and former AIM president Dr. Roberto De Ocampo. Also present is International Peace Foundation founding chairman Uwe Morawetz. The forum kicked off a welcome remark by current AIM president Francis Estrada and followed by the introduction to Prof. Kydland by WSGSB Dean Victoria Licuanan. Our Human Behavior in Organizations (HBO) professor, Prof. Jun Borromeo, is the ...

I haven't blogged much about schoolwork and class load, and there's a pretty good reason for that: things have been pretty manageable for the last two weeks. But this week seems to be different. There has been a steady increase in deliverables and group work that it looking less like a spike in the workload and more like a deluge of deadlines. To give you an idea for what we have lined up this week: a quiz on Financial Management 2 (FM2) on financing defaults and restructuring, argumentation sessions in Management Communication (MC), group case analysis in Marketing Management (MM), another group case analysis in FM2, requirements gathering for a project in Development of the Enterprise (DE), and the finals for our Management of Cost and Profit (MCP). And if you're taking care of extracurricular activities (like me) and coordinating for your Walkabout* and arranging your Action Consultancy (AC) or internship, this week is really a heavy one. Sleep may once again become a lu...

For the last two weeks, our Human Behavior in Organizations (HBO) had us talk about "authentic leadership" and we had three cases to discuss this matter. The last activity had us create our Johari Window , a tool to see where our vision of ourselves intersect with our external relationships. So, you could imagine people sending emails to everyone asking them to fill-out his or her Johari Window. Here's how my Johari Window looks like: Arena (known to self and others) clever , confident , idealistic , intelligent , knowledgeable , witty Blind Spot (known only to others) able , accepting , adaptable , brave , calm , caring , cheerful , complex , dependable , dignified , energetic , extroverted , friendly , giving , helpful , independent , ingenious , introverted , kind , logical , loving , mature , modest , nervous , observant , organised , patient , quiet , reflective , relaxed , religious , responsive , searching , self-assertive , sensible , sentimental , trustwo...

The W. SyCip Graduate School of Business (WSGSB) recently updated its website-- a fresh new design, updated and more relevant content and, in my opinion, better information for prospective students. Prof. Ricky Lim gave me a heads up on the new site and he has been very upbeat of new features of the site, particularly the multimedia integration. One of the nice features is Prof. Lim's brainchild, AIMTube , which shows some AIM videos. I'm also proud to point out that the "Life at AIM" section points out to this blog . Sweet! While the new site is big improvement, Prof. Lim has said that the site is still in its Beta Stage and improvements are still in the works. So check out the WSGSB website!