Je ne sais quoi

Its 5am on a freezing December morning and as I sip one my last cups of coffee in this kitchen, I savour the thought that in a few days I will not remember what this uncertainty felt like.

As pre-froshers (I still like the term), I am sure most of us, have in our heads, this running video of what to expect. The drive to Fontainbleau on a bleak January afternoon, my first impressions of the house I have never seen but rented in Montigny, setting up my laptop in the house, strange images of what Le Shaker will look like on 9th Jan as the congregation of new students as they meet for the first time, orientation week and the myriad offers on the go – be it language tests, hunting club promotions, amphi theatres to fix laptops, a long list of fresher parties or indeed the very reason for our arrival at FBL – classes in Management. Beyond orientation week, everything seems a blur. There is some certainty in that I know where I will be downing cups of watered down coffee in the canteen, I know what the entrance to Insead looks like and can imagine myself bumbling into class at 8am, I know what the amphi-theatre feels like as you sit in there and someone pontificates on accounting or entrepreneurship (not a comment on the professors concerned) and I can imagine how wonderful the green lawns feel on a warm summers day.

I wonder what sort of people I will gravitate towards. The first day will involve going up to people whose names I can remember from the last 4 Insead meets in London, the rest of the week I am sure will be a speed-dating style of introduction – name, where you come from, what you did before insead; and I imagine/hope that I will eventually find my comfort zone with people I can enjoy a glass of wine with or those that are as keen as me on Indian food (on a different note, my kitchen is going to be a gadget freaks paradise with a breadmaker (leaving present from a dear friend), a George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine, a Mixer, a Coffee Machine, all travelling with me from London) .

My only two trips to FBL have been rather unusual visits to the continent. On the first one I was coming down with a serious bout of typhoid picked up on travels and the mock class seemed to whirl around me in a haze as my temperature heightened. The second was a mammoth 9 hour journey from London which meant that Open Day was once again a haze right up until the dinner at which point both Tom & me gave up and decided bed was better than the Insead Halloween party. And both journeys meant that we never got a chance to explore Fontainebleau, walk around the campus or drive through the forest to explore the area. So imagery to play around with is rather limited.

The nice people have Insead have offered me a ‘buddy’ who they say can answer all my questions, but do you really think I am going to ask:

1) where does one get their eyebrows plucked and how expensive is it?

2) will the supermarket have coconut milk and lemon grass incase I fancied cooking a thai curry?

3) I am told there is an internet box waiting for me, how long will it take to be up and running on the internet?

4) These classes – am I allowed to take a day off to attend an Indian wedding?

5) How often to people commute to London to go back to their lonely partners, desperate to make a long distance relationship work? One weekend in two?

6) How early during the orientation week will we get our class schedule for the period or even for the next six months

7) Are we really going to need snow chains for cars?

I could go on…

I wont as I only have 5 working days to complete a large transaction, pack my stuff up in cardboard boxes and drive down with Tom to FBL to find out for ourselves!

PS – To all those 10Js, 9Ds and 9Js who think we are naive, here is more material to shred to pieces!