Chunky spinach soup

A tasty starter, ideal for a dinner in winter.

Ingredients:

• 50g salted butter
• 3 shallots chopped
• 1 pint chicken stock
• 300g spinach leaves chopped
• nutmeg
• 75ml creme fraiche
• 75g gruyere cubed

Method:

1. melt the butter in a large pan
2. throw in the shallots and cook gently for 10 minutes
3. pour in the stock and simmer for 5 mins
4. then add the spinach, with a generous grating of nutmeg, then season and simmer for 20-30 mins
5. take off the heat and allow to stew for a while
6. warm up and stir in the creme fraiche just before serving
7. add the gruyere cubes

Wine suggestion: a medium bodied red - a burgundy would be ideal

Scent of a lemon

While enjoying my very lemony shower gel this morning, I got thinking about the old "you know when you've been Tango'd" ads. Like this one...



So being a film fan - and believing that watching film at the cinema is the full flavoured experience - I came up with the germ of an idea for a series of ads for Tango to be shown on the silver screen. Here's the first in the series, for lemon tango.

'Scent of a Lemon'

It's the run-up to the tango scene in Scent of a Woman. Smart restaurant, milongas playing in the background. Lt Col Frank Slade (Al Pacino) and Charlie Simms (Chris O'Donnell) have just sat down at the table where Donna (Gabrielle Anwar) is waiting for her lunch date...

Lt Col Frank Slade: I dedect a fragrance in the air. Don't tell me what it is... it's citrus limon.
Donna: That's amazing.
Lt Col Frank Slade: Well, I'm in the amazing business.
Donna: It is citrus limon. My grandmother squeezed it this morning.
Lt Col Frank Slade: I'm crazy about your grandmother... so, Donna, d'you Tango?
Donna: I've never tried
Lt Col Frank Slade: well, Donna, I'm offering my services.

He offers his hand to her but a bright yellow lemon Tango dancer screams into view, pulls him onto the dance floor and tangos him to within an inch of his life.

Voiceover: You know when you've been Tango'd.
Lt Col Frank Slade: Woo-hah!


Tango is under threat. Visit http://www.savetango.co.uk/

Top 5 videos: cats don't make the cut

Well, it's that time of year... so here's my Top 5 viral videos of 2008. Enjoy!


The Laughing Quadruplets

So many videos of laughing babies. This one is really priceless with four wonderful quadruplets and their mum speaking for them "Do it again":

Where the hell is Matt?

The great thing about this video is the combination of the breadth of the globe covered, the choreography, the editing and the music:

Heavy Metal Farmer

Daveyboyz approached me a few weeks back saying he loves Zattoo, could he do a video for us? I said "yes, please! and I can give you some ads to your YouTube channel in return".

This video has nothing to do with Zattoo. For me, it's totally original content. Comedy, music, lyrics, editing... Great British humour:

Daft The Vote

There were lots of Daft Punk finger and body dances last year. This choreography is from November this year and encourages people to go vote. It didn't get many views. It deserves more:

Drunk History

OK, technically this one dates from 2007 but since it was posted on YouTube less than a year ago, on 23rd December, and I saw it earlier this year, I'm allowing it. I could have gone for, say, Part 3 instead but it was the initial episode that was most entertaining and, in any case, by the very nature of being first, the most original.

Caution: contains strong language

That's all, Folks!

Kerala-style Prawn Curry

So, here's a tasty little number, really quick and easy.

Time to prepare and cook: about 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• Tiger Prawns, uncooked, peeled 300g
• Juice of one lemon
• 100ml coconut cream
• Ginger, small piece
• Garlic, one clove
• Red onion
• Red pepper
• Crushed chillies, a good pinch
• Groundnut oil

Serve with basmati rice.

Method:

1. Put the prawns in a bowl with the lemon juice to marinade.
2. Set a pan of water to boil for the rice. Add-in the basmati rice as soon as it's boiling.
3. Dice the red onion, garlic and ginger; and slice the red pepper. Heat a pan, add groundnut oil until hot but not smoking. Toss in the lot, along with the crushed chillies, and stiry fry until soft but not brown. Season with salt and black pepper.
4. Pour in the coconut cream and heat for about a minute or two until hot.
5. Add the prawns along with the lemon juice and stir fry for 2-3 minutes until just pink.

Serve at once.

Wine suggestion: a good rounded chardonnay like a Sancerre or Chablis

Train surfing in Soweto

Instead of going to school, children living in Soweto, with absent fathers and other family problems go to the train station to jump on trains and perform daring stunts. They get limbered up by drinking alcohol and smoking weed. Then, urged on by their girlfriends, they get on the roof of the train and duck under high-voltage cables which the train passes at 40 km/h. One guy gets out of the train while it’s cruising along and hangs underneath it. One false move and he’d get killed. Kids do get killed. Sometimes they misjudge one of the cables and get thrown off the train. This was the subject of a documentary scripted, filmed and edited by a young guy from Soweto, Muzi.

Muzi, aged 23, showed us his film this morning. It was originally put together as a story for his class. One of his teachers put him in touch with George Mazarakis, producer at Carte Blanche, and the film ended up being screened on national TV. He was shy and nervous but was keen to share the story with us.

Everything is not as rosy as it seems on the surface. In some quarters there is a lack of hope and not a lot is being done about it. In Soweto there are no real opportunities for these children and a lack of role models. To escape their problems and to get a high, to feel good about themselves, they put their lives at huge risk. They don’t care if they die. Surfing the trains, they are the centres of attention, revered by their girlfriends when they succeed, insulted when they get injured: forgotten when they die. Muzi’s film has persuaded some children to stop and raised awareness of the issue but it still continues.

Soweto now has its first shopping mall, which we saw a couple of days ago. The development has encouraged economic activity and benefited the local people. Yet nothing has been developed for the youth and it seems nothing is being done to deal with the fundamental social problems that mean the children lose hope.

Muzi is now working on his next project, a film about gangland funerals and how the young, impressed by the image the gangsters give off, want to join their ranks.

European Business Schools Case Challenge 2007

It was an unlikely crew that stepped onto the train to Fontainebleau on 12th April. Ramyani Basu, Greg Davis, Fumi Ota, Henry Zhang and Alex Guest were simply picked out of the hat to participate in the ECCH European Business Schools Case Challenge. Some of the other schools, which included IESE, INSEAD and LBS, had gone through rigorous selection procedures and one or two of the teams spent half their time on the road at other inter-school challenges. Well, rumour had it that our classmates’ expectation of success were low.

We had lunch a few weeks beforehand with Benoit Leleux, MBA programme director, to get some advice on preparing for the competition. We were thinking about extra case study sessions in our ‘spare time’. His advice: “don’t prepare. Enjoy it. Be creative.” We took this fully to heart.

Getting to Fontainebleau around 11.30pm, we chose to walk to our hotel rather than wait for a taxi to pass, with Ramyani telling us how much she enjoyed walking. So a short trip took forever as Ramyani tottered along refusing to give up her amazingly heavy luggage to any of her companions.

We missed the class’s session at the UN on Friday. Instead, we were presented with a long case about one man’s dream to turn the car industry on its head. Hugo Spowers, who worked at Morgan, had come up with a concept for the ‘OSCar’, designed around a hydrogen fuel cell, with a much reduced weight compared with current vehicles, far fewer components, sold on a lease basis. All the time, the design was to be ‘open source’. We were to imagine that we were a group of investors with €1m to invest. How much would we invest in this enterprise?

While other teams spent hours working on NPV calculations 30 years hence, we debated at length about whether there was anything in fact to invest in. No spreadsheets from us, then. We just kept talking and talking, writing things up on the flipchart. With 45 minutes to go, we got started on our long report, sharing out sections amongst us all. We’d decided that we wouldn’t touch OSCar with a bargepole, unless some massive changes were made, including a new CEO. We didn’t know that we’d be meeting Mr Spowers the following day.

Saturday morning, up early and into the auditorium for a case teaching. Everyone’s heart was beating a little faster in anticipation of the short-listing at lunchtime. We’d have happily spent the afternoon relaxing before the evening’s party but IMD was called to the next round. Having shot the OSCar concept to pieces in our investor report, we now had to play the part of the OSCar senior management. In typical MBA class style, we had just 1 hour to prepare a press conference in response to a new (fictitious) EC Directive. This time we were all enthusiastic about the emissions regulations and Greg delivered a great tub-thumping speech.

Dinner at a chateau. Beautiful setting, champagne, canapés, exquisite dinner. Yet at the back of our minds, the whole time, was the result. Having put in the effort all the way to the end, it would be nice to get on the podium. That feeling would not abate while the photographer, the ECCH staff and some of the other teams kept telling us they reckoned we were on to a winner. The third prize went to Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany and we began to doubt our chances. The second to Smurfit, Dublin. So that was it, then. Until we heard first place to IMD!

We can’t say how proud we are to be the first IMD team to win the competition. We know that we were lucky to be part of the team that went there and we feel as though our success was that of the whole class against all the other schools.

Wrapping up February

At 5.30pm, I stood up from my seat and picked up my name plate. Tomorrow the class changes seating plan, as it does at the start of every month.

To close off the month, this afternoon we had two talks from distinguished businessmen, 'executives-in-residence'. One of them is the former CEO of Tetra Pak, Nic Shreiber. He was an IMD MBA about 30 years ago and a former partner of McKinsey. A very unpresupposing man, he earned the class's genuine respect, not just that of a captain of industry.

I took 3 lessons from his talk. First, harmony in your career. It's ok to work flat out 24/7, so long as you understand that 24/7 doesn't leave a lot of hours for anything else. If you want to have a family or any personal pursuits, bear that in mind.

The second lesson for me, was that power is increased inversely to its use. Or, if you like, using power diminishes it. The CEO of a $10bn company should rely on more subtle leadership - and we've spent a lot of time learning about that subject over the past 8 weeks.

Finally, in paradoxes lie opportunities. For example - and this is not one he gave - how can you save energy and increase the temperature of your home? Easy, insulation. Ok, now apply it to everything else in life. The paradox, not the insulation.

February made the course increasingly 'real'. Already we've had a number of graded projects and papers. The first was the Leadership paper, exploring the dynamics of the study groups we've been working in. Next, the Industry and Competition Analysis project. Finally, an individual paper on predicting, explaining and influencing the behaviour of individuals within organisations. With tight deadlines, it's hard to concentrate on devoting a lot of energy to our start-up projects - real companies in need of business brains.

Amongst all this, there's been a tiny bit of skiing and walking in the mountains. The first of a series of Sunday night films - Blood Diamond - screened in the auditorium. The broad theme running through them all is Africa in advance of the Discovery Expedition in June to South Africa. This coming Sunday we'll be seeing My name is Tsotsi.

Then there's the MBA Olympics. Well, the event, held at HEC in Paris, is not until May but I agreed to join the organising committee headed up by Ole (Danish), along with Tom (German) and Paul (Canadian). I'm responsible for sports. In other words, of the 90 people in class, plus however many spouses, I need to pull together teams for all the various sports. Sounds easy. You haven't seen my spreadsheet. But I'm grateful for the effort of the team captains.

What else?

Well, it's been a year since I left my job in Maidenhead. I'm still not regretting it. We had a session on power naps and other ways of sustaining your personal performance. I was picked out of the hat, along with four others - Henry from China, Fumi from Japan, Greg from Australia and Stéphane from Canada - to go to INSEAD in April for 3 days to compete in the European Business School Case Challenge. Careers planning is underway with draft number 783 due in soon; plus I had an online chat with a potential employer at the MBA Online Career Forum: he happened also to be an IMD MBA, from 1994. And... Perrine and I are still together.

Tomorrow is the start of the 48-hour graded integrative exercise, pulling together everything we've learned so far. Next week we have projects to hand in for Marketing and Economics. The week after we have a day-long Finance exercise. A few days later, the final version of our Leadership papers are due. There's also an Operations project; and an Economics 'quiz'. Then revision and exams. No doubt some surprises along the way, too.