It has been great to get back on campus after a week of cancelled classes. The last week with its snow days and a whole week of missed work and MBA classes has affected most of my classmates in the same way: we slacked down. It was obvious when professor in Global Perspectives asked a question about the case that we technically had two weeks to prepare for because of the snow. Not a single person was able to answer a pretty straightforward question about some fact from the case.
I was quite upbeat about the extra time to study in the beginning of the “snow mini-vacation” too, but my enthusiasm did not last for long. So most of my preparation for classes was done on the last day. I talked to a couple of students about the snowstorm time. They were relaxing too. OK, we’ll call it “forward-looking time management” and “pacing” ourselves before the hectic next two weeks of finals 
Anyways, as I said, it was great to get back to classes and return to study mode again. In Managerial Accounting class we were discussing the case that we had prepared in groups even before the snow storm. The case was devoted to Management Control Systems. We were analyzing the incentives and how they affect employees’ behavior. On a side note professor told us another story about how the employees may try to manipulate the system, given the incentive.
In Shanghai in the 80′s all taxi cabs were mandated to have taxi meters installed in the cars. The meters were connected to the rotating wheels, as they are probably designed that way until now too. So, the more rotations the wheels made the more rotations the taxi meter would make, and the more kilometers the customer would have to pay for. That’s why ingenious cab drivers came up with an “out of the box” solution: they mounted wheels with smaller radius than was originally installed by manufacturer. According to professor it was a ridiculus, but quite common sight in those days to see a relatively big car with unproportionately small tires.
Speaking about China, its ingenuity, and ambitions. This year they missed by just a bit becoming the second-biggest economy in the world by GDP. Japan managed to keep its second position after the US with $5.1 trillion, and China had $4.9 trillion. With China’s growth rate much higher than Japan’s it is quite conceivable that China will surpass Japan in GDP already in 2010. I probably should check out Chinese language classes at the GW University to enhance my marketability after getting MBA degree
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