Who is Farhan Lalji?

During the MBA I liked to contribute in class. And now it seems like this contributing nature has got me a bit of infamy.I’m on the cover of the EMBA information brochure from London Business School! After hearing about it for a couple of weeks I finally managed to download it on the school website. Not that I mind, I never was one to shy away from a little self-promotion!

It’s kind of odd having my face on the cover now that I’m not at the school anymore.  Especially since my face never made it into any of the brochures while I was there!  Almost gave me a complex.  Oh well, better late then never I guess.

Judging from the look on Yana’s face behind me, whatever I said must have been pretty funny!

I’m going to try and make this the last post about London Business School and my MBA. With it being part of my yesterday and my new found belief that it only pays to focus on today and tomorrow, I don’t want to get stuck in neutral. But one more indulgent review of the last two years won’t hurt anyone, I hope.

With congregation/graduation/convocation (whatever you want to call it) complete and with the summer ball behind me – great times both – I’m officially done the EMBA programme at London Business School.

It feels like yesterday that I was hanging with Miss N on the steps outside Sainsbury reception, thinking about what a great experience awaited. And it didn’t disappoint.

I went in to the programme hoping to meet great people (solid group of people in the full time and exec programme who I definitely want to stay in touch with, so check), learn a lot (The FT was in Latin before, but now I understand a great deal, from arbitrage to leveraged buy-outs to zero sum games, so check), have some great experiences (hearing Bill Clinton talk about his legacy, consulting in Kiev, meeting great entrepreneurs and hearing about their journeys, so check), ideally come out with a great new job (check) and do it all while convincing the wife that it would all be different when I finished (and so far so good, so check).

It feels very real and very surreal at the same time. But I feel energized and ready to take on the world. But I need a nap to recover from last night first.

Fiddling around with WordPress – adding plug-ins, analytics, widgets etc - got me thinking about how much I’m enjoying having time to myself now. I’m rediscovering PHP, reading newspapers, magazines and books for fun and not for class.  I’m socialising and catching up with people all over again.

I was chatting with a couple of my fellow exec MBA’s last night at sundowners and discovered that I wasn’t the only one.  There’s something different about going to bed now, piece of mind is the only way I can really explain it.

I left work at the end of every day for 20 of the past 22 months and started immediately thinking about school.  I can’t explain how nice it is to leave work and think about absolutely nothing, to just take time and smell the roses.

Another side effect of the MBA is how much my TV watching has declined.  I used to watch an hour or two an evening and now I feel guilt just turning it on.  This has been to the wife’s delight.  She never was much of a TV person.

I’ll probably be even giddier next week, with our summer ball and congregation (not convocation, apparently we don’t get our degrees officially till August).  Then I’ll start looking for things to do with all the time I have now, I’ve got learning to play the guitar, learning Hindi, French and Spanish properly, taking golf lessons and going on holidays again on my to do list, but my own pace.

A friend of ours said the other day how much she like’s post MBA Farhan, and so do I, so do I.