Hard at work

Its been a busy few days, and getting busier. I am writing this at 1915 Trieste time, and many of us are still at school and anticipating being here for a while. We are drowning under the weight of group assignments, reading, revision and so on - and that is before we try and figure out the mundane bits - washing, ironing, shopping and so on!
The weekend did provide a little chance to let off some steam though as there was a party for 5 of the guys from my class who combined their Euros to organise a joint birthday party.

We had a great time, and it was much needed after the building pressure at school. The picture is of us at Luca, Alessandro and Massimiliano's house before we went out.
It was not all play this weekend though, I spent 5 hours yesterday studying finance with Luca from my class. He understands the subject well, and in the end, I think I did too. I am planning to get some more practice in before tomorrow if I can.
Our major project at the moment is a strategic analysis of an industry and a company. Hakan from my working group selected the industries for us, and I am relatively happy to be working on the insurance sector - having worked for Eagle Star (now Zurich); New York Life Insurance and Ace Insurance, I know quite a bit about the industry and its challenges and opportunities - at least in Asia Pacific. My individual company to analyse is Generali, based here in Trieste, so it is a good chance to practice my Italian too as I read through the presentations of the company to find out what they are doing. We are supposed to make recommendations about future direction and business opportunities - it is a bit like Free Of Charge consultancy I guess, but if the recommendations are good enough we might be able to do something with it to earn some cash! I am trying to cultivate links at Generali, just in case....