Enjoying my classes!

Think one distinct difference between the past year in UK and this year in US is that I've got more flexibility in my choice of classes. For those who are utterly confused, these are the classes that I'm currently taking: Introduction to Ethics, Financial Markets, Principles of Marketing, The Legal Environment of Business and Entrepreneurship for Small Form Businesses.

Had my first entrepreneur class yesterday - found it very enriching, but tiring though, 'cos it's a 3 hour class and by the time it ended, it was 9pm at night, and had my marketing class earlier on, back to back. It's not enriching in the sense that I'd be more confident of starting my own business, but it's enriching in the sense that we talked about alot of facts and case studies; a lot of real life experiences. The class is quite small; there's 37 of us, and interestingly almost half the class is made of exchange students. The Austrian guys are quite good looking, there's around 5 of them. One of my Austrian classmates worked as a fitness trainer over summer, hee, so he's got a good bod.

During class, we shared about the entrepreneurs we know eg. The Austrians sharing the founder of Red Bull, (yep, it's an Austrian drink!) . And interestingly, the worldwide web is actually created by a student in UIUC - Marc Andresson. Knowing he's not cut out for business, he teamed up with James Clark and launched Netscape Navigator. They later teamed up with Microsoft but the programme was dropped off after Bill Gates came up with his own internet explorer that comes free with Windows. It gave me an awakening; that the right people at the start may not be the best people later. Fully grasped the meaning of "chuang4 ye4 nan2, shou3 ye4 gen4 nan2". By the way, Marc Andresson later became a bankrupt.

Heez, another thing I thought was interesting was that a lot of times, entrepreneurs are not the ones who invented the process that made them wealthy, but they were able to make use of the opportunity. Once again, a classic example would be Bill Gates. He did not come up with MS-Dos, but he was able to "swindle" the guy who came up with it to sell him the copyright at US$1m, and eventually landing him at where he is now.

We also spent 15 minutes talking about luck - how unlucky people are usually too focused, leading to "inattentional blindness" while lucky people have broad perspectives, which lead them to be able to spot opportunities more easily. Our tutor cited this example: in South America, the natives carry an lucky charm with them and are able to go through forests without getting bitten by snakes, while non-natives, despite arming themselves with all sorts of paraphenalia and keep staying on high alert would still end up being bitten. This is because non-natives tend to be more nervous, and this causes them to secrete an odour which actually attracts the snakes. Guess I'm not a very good and convincing story teller, but I'm trying to bring the point across that sometimes being too focused on certain things will cause lead to a myopic perspective.

That's basically the gist of what we've gone through. Of course there's more, but I'm not going to type the whole lecture notes into my blog. =P Actually, I've got a feeling I've gotten some of my facts wrong, do correct me if there is. But the idea is there lah... Hope you all found it as interesting as I do!

P.s. The first batch of supersweet corn was genetically modified in UIUC!

---------------
By the way, over dinner that stupid Daniel said something today,"ni3 ying1 gai1 you2 (swim) duo1 yi4 dian3, ni3 de4 you2 (oil) cai2 hui4 shao3!" =S

Swam 40 laps on Sunday (25m though), shall swim 80 tomorrow to show him! *humph* Idiot...