I had a most unusual weekend.
Let’s start with the story of the chance encounter with a professor I’ve been yearning to meet for some time. If you’ve been following this blog or my main blog for some time, you might know that one of my passions is for social media.
I learnt that an INSEAD professor had co-written a book, “Throwing Sheep In The Boardoom”, which was on social media invading the corporate world. This was right up my alley, and I was proud that one of our professors had taken on this topic. ‘When I go to Fonty,’ I decided, I would drop Professor Soumitra Dutta an email and see if I could meet him.
Little did I expect how I would meet him, however. On Saturday, I attended a dinner thrown by a nice female Spanish professor, Lourdes Casanova, for her Brazil field trip class. As my housemate Sing Ai was part of this class, she asked if I could come along, and so I too was invited. All I knew was that she was married to an Indian professor. At first he didn’t mention his name, but he looked rather familiar. Later when I offered to help lay out the food, he asked me what I did, and I replied that it was mainly “social media’. He said, “I wrote a book on that.” I looked at him and exclaimed, “You’re Soumitra Dutta!”
My next comment was, “You’ve been following me on Twitter!” (I did, of course, return the favour out of Twitter courtesy.)
Needless to say we had an interesting conversation and I will meet with him again to discuss social media.
The second element to this most unusual night: Music. I noticed a piano in the corner of the living room and, being curious as always, lifted the lid to see what brand it was. Our Spanish professor noticed my interest and invited me to play. Since it was a dinner for the Brazil trip folks, I started with my familiar number ‘Girl From Ipanema’, which was well-received, Corcovado (Quiet Nights), La Vie En Rose (since we’re in France), Autumn Leaves, Music of the Night, a couple of Beatles numbers Yesterday and Hey Jude, and ended the night with Con Te Partiro. Since I haven’t practised in a while, I improvised. Along the way another Brazilian classmate, S, started singing. It was a magical moment!
As a result of my entertainment value, I have been invited to a second dinner. I would however like to get some practice first. Already I have found the grand piano at the INSEAD bar very tempting, and maybe one night when nobody is around I will sneak back in and start playing on it.
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