Singapore!

After a fifteen hour flight, a run through Hong Kong airport, a suspected loss of the aforementioned guitar and a three hour flight we got here.

In the HK airport after a 15 hour plane ride

Last night we stayed at Klapsons The Boutique Hotel. The hotel is amazing, very design-y. The bathroom actually has a light colour changer for in the shower - so you can switch the colour to any colour of the rainbow.

We got up early this morning, about 6:30AM with the intention of re-setting our internal clocks (Singapore is 15 hours ahead of Vancouver) and combatting jet-lag. Today is a national holiday in Singapore, so many nationals are on vacation. As a result there is not too much work we can do today though we were successful in setting up a few meetings.

After a delicious breakfast at the hotel and some administrative work we headed out into the city - walking through Chinatown, along the river and through a park. It is 30 degrees here today and a bit grey though we've had some periods of sun. As a result our walk felt much longer than it would in Vancouver.

Today we're moving to our home for the next twenty days - the Hotel Bencoolen. More later!

@YVR

After a twelve hour flight delay due to Hurricane Irene, three of our team are sitting at YVR waiting for our flight to start boarding.

We met up this morning at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station and after a quick check for passports and cash, a detour home and a quick guitar jam session we headed for the airport. Turns out that Peter and I were both being somewhat competitive in terms of trying to bring the least amount of luggage possible. I ended up with two bags partially because I've packed promo items from SFU's Beedie School of Business that we'll be giving out - big thanks to the school for those! So I hope by the end of the trip I will have firmly won that competition as my luggage will be reduced to a hiking backpack.

After checking our bags at the airport we opted for a food court lunch of the most North American meal possible - hamburgers and fries from Burger King. Eva told us after we'd ordered that Burger King was in Singapore too, so we've been somewhat thwarted.

At duty free there was a sampling of apple ice-wine, so we did toast to ourselves and enjoyed.

That's all for now!

Here we go!

In May 2011, the four of us were deep in MBA-land, working on courses, searching for and applying to jobs, and writing a project proposal for Contact Singapore's Graduate School Projects@Singapore. Our topic of choice was doing a benchmarking survey and case study of best environmental practices of hotels in Singapore.

In late June, we were contacted by Contact Singapore for a follow-up interview asking specific questions around our proposal, and on July 1st, we were notified of our success. Naturally we were absolutely thrilled - this project promised to be a wonderful application of our MBA skills as we neared the end of our program.

It is now late August, three of us are days from departure with the fourth joining us in Singapore in early September. This blog will detail our journey from our four perspectives as we complete our project, explore Asia and put our skills to use on the ground.

Below are some links to media coverage of this project to date:
http://beedie.sfu.ca/blog/2011/07/mbas-push-singapore-hotels-to-go-green-with-winning-business-pitch/#more-2940

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/students+land+Singapore+study/5094259/story.html