Party | The NANYANG MBA Blog

The eight participants of the Nanyang-Waseda Double MBA Program take their first two trimesters on the NTU campus together with the full-time Nanyang batch. Upon completing trimester two, the Waseda students head off to complete the third trimester in Tokyo, Japan, at Waseda University while the rest of the full-time cohort will complete their coursework at Nanyang.

This year, Double MBA participants come from a number of countries including Japan, South Korea, America, the Philippines, and Singapore. Many Double MBA students wanted to return home to see their families before the start of the Waseda coursework, so an early farewell party was set for February 17th.

As an exhausting Ultimate frisbee game has been a staple of stress relief for many, everyone started off the day with a quick match in the intense Singapore heat.

In the evening, a huge barbecue with plenty of drinks and food to go around was hosted on the ground floor just outside of the Graduate Hall buildings. Most of the MBA students and staff were in attendance and spent time reminiscing over the past eight months. After everyone had plenty of food, Professor Nilanjan Sen, the Associate Dean of Nanyang Business School, and Sancho Causay, a member of the Nanyang-Waseda Double MBA cohort, gave speeches and cut the various farewell cakes to close out the night.

Many chose to stay around for an afterparty, the last chance to be together as a single student body before the Double MBAs begin to head off for Tokyo.

Having made enough memories to last a lifetime in just the past eight months, it’s safe to say that the Double MBA students will be missed. The cohort has become like family through fun times, the academic rigor and stress, and the mere time spent together, so everyone is sure to meet again in the future.

students at the farewell party

„Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. From now on, our troubles will be out of sight!“

On the last weekend of the year, the NTU MBA batch of 2016 came together for an early Christmas party. Midway through the second trimester and with the upcoming winter break approaching, everyone was excited to not only celebrate the birth of baby Jesus according to Christian tradition, but also a successful first half of the MBA.

The Social and Culture Club jointly with the Beer, Wine and Liqueur Appreciation Club had invited for an end-of-year Christmas party and put in a lot of effort to make the event as authentic as possible by setting up a Christmas tree, playing modern arrangements of traditional Christmas songs and ordering an abundance of mouth-watering food, including traditional festive dishes such as stuffed turkey and gingerbread cookies.

The long queue at the buffet speaks volumes about the exquisite taste of food on the buffet, which was washed down with hot mulled wine and chocolate mousse. „I have never had hot wine before. I don´t know why, because it is so delicious“, said one of the participants who celebrated their first ever Christmas party.

Having fed the crowd, Santa fulfilled its duty and distributed the presents that the many „Secret Santas“ had placed under the beautifully decorated Christmas tree. The newly elected Santa Clause, Yuji-San(ta), did an excellent job in helping everyone finding their gifts, and his voice even over drowned out the rustling of wrapping papers as the presentees unwrapped their tokens. The many voices yelling „Merry Christmas“, asking „Who is my Secret Santa?“ and even more „Thank you´s“ were perfect evidence that giving gifts, as small as they may be, truly spreads happiness.

The wave of excitement over identifying everyone´s Secret Santa only came to an end when the organiser crew called for a final activity of the evening: a gingerbread house competition.

The crowd split up in three groups to build houses of gingerbread cookies, which were judged by its stability and the creativity of its decoration. During the next thirty minutes, the teams were busy mixing sugar paste and stacking cookies in the most efficient way. What a tricky task!

The winners clearly stood out of the masses: only one of the three house stood against all shaking test, and even resisted the crash tests carried out by competitors. „This was certainly more difficult than it looked“, the struggling teams claimed while removing remains of powdered sugar from their hands.

While the looks of the edible houses differed, all participants left an equally delicate mess of sugar paste, gummi bears and jellybeans. Still, nobody minded cleaning up the sugar-covered event venue, as Christmas really is all about sharing the joy and moving troubles out of sight. Might as well cover them in sugar.