My life in a blog

Testing

2009-05-31T09:47:00.001-04:00

Just trying to see how this works. I am back on the blogging scene.

These are some great tepaniakki prawn shrimps i had today. The guy was peeling them off with a knife. Wow!

-- Post From My iPhone

Write Chinese, 写中文

2009-02-18T00:14:00.002-05:00

我今天发现了，我的博客有几个月没有写最新的信息了。对我博友来说，可能只有一个或者两个人，真不好意思。今天我们班的老师强迫我们写一篇文章，放在我博客上。真好...她给我一个好机会：继续跟大家谈谈我最新的历险记。我现在打算每周写一篇。

是这样，你们已经理解：不是我没经历过新的情况，就是安排时间的问题。

我现在在新加坡，是新加坡国家大学的交换学生。我准备今年五月底毕业南卡罗莱纳大学的MBA。还差几个月，我还没决定我以后要做什么。我不紧张，慢慢来。。。

It's been a while since I last wrote a Chinese or blog entry. I planned to start again, but somehow I never found the right time, resources or inspiration. When I had inspiration, I didn't have time and so on... Today, our Chinese professor pushed us into keeping a blog in Chinese. I though this is a good chance to get back into the blogging mood so here I am. Sorry to all the readers out there, one or two of them, who still read this... I am back and plan to write once a week at least.

Latest news: I'm in Singapore, exchange student at NUS, bound to graduate from USC in May with an IMBA degree. Still unsure where the period after May will take me, but I am not worried as I know something good is going to happen.

Please excuse my broken Chinese or English for that matter.

Linux on the iPhone

2008-11-28T23:55:00.003-05:00

I was just doing my regular internet browsing today when I ran into a cool video about the iPhone. This very smart guy was able to run a Linux kernel on the iPhone 3g, by changing the bootloader and sending in commands from his old-school keyboard. Very interesting video, check it out here: http://www.vimeo.com/2373142.
Maybe one day, we will have this:

Happy belateed Thanksgiving to everyone!

The Change Has Come: Obama to write history

2008-11-05T00:25:00.005-05:00

Update 12:38AM: Great message for the American people, you can hear people on the streets in our small town here in Columbia, SC cheering, honking and screaming their support to the newly elected President. There is definitely something good in the air...

Great moment in American history, catch up with the information anywhere around you, around the world. A day to be remembered in world history...

Courtesy cnn.com

25 years of word

2008-10-23T12:08:00.006-04:00

I was thinking the other day about us, as grad students, and how much we are so depended on computer and new technology to perform our daily tasks. Suppose you take away my computer, my cellphone, my mp3 player, I believe that I will pretty much become useless without all these. How did our parents and our parents' parents manage to be successful before? What's the solution to become less dependent on the computer and technology nowadays?

Well, today one of the most important computer software has it's 25 years anniversary: Word! Started in 1983... and still living on most of our computers today. I was able to pretty much use it from 1991 until present.

During this time, things have changed somewhat but we are still using a writing software, inclusive of the tool that I'm using for writing this blog.

Ugly picture of first Word for Windows 3.0... remember this?

Newest version for windows, 2007. Changed quite a bit but some things are still same

My Internhip Experience (part 2)

2008-07-13T05:32:00.006-04:00

Journal Entry #2 - June 2008:

Sometimes, it is difficult for me to imagine that I live and work in China. For someone who has never been here before, it could sound a little crazy to go through this experience: a Romanian that went to an American IMBA program and ended up in China. Being here for more than a year has made it so that it feels very natural to call Beijing my home and it’s great!

My workday normally starts around 7:30 in the morning when I repeatedly hit the buzzer a few times until I finally get up 15 minutes later. Living ten minutes away from the office gives me the comfort to extend my sleep and morning preparations and still make it to the office around nine.

For most foreign companies in Beijing, an 8:30 or 9:00 AM to 5:30 or 6:00 PM work schedule is the most common. This includes a one-hour break that is generally from 12 to 1. This is when almost everyone goes out for lunch, generally in a group environment. Around the building I work in, one can find anything from typical Chinese dumplings or pancakes (a 5 yuan or 70 cents lunch) to hamburgers, steaks or pasta that run for at least 40 yuan or 6 bucks. And no, we don’t get a one hour nap time after lunch like other Chinese companies… bummer!!

I work at Apple Inc., where the official written language is English and it is generally not difficult to keep up with emails or any other written materials. I work in the retail development department where most of the other workers are Chinese so I do my best to use a combination of Chinese and English to express what I would like. For example:

“ 那个 performance 的分析，我觉得还要 update 用一些新的 data ” or "Na ge performance de fen xi, wo jue de hai yao update yong yi xie xin de data" Translates into:

"I think that performance report needs some update using new data" ( I’m sure anyone could understand what the sentence was saying with no prior Chinese experience.)

Generally, this is how typical office and meeting discussions sound like, so overall I can keep up with whatever is to be discussed because most of the time the key words are in English.

The culture inside the company is just like one would expect for Apple office place. It is an open, flat, relaxed working environment with very approachable people and the organization itself is non-hierarchical, which is not typical of a Chinese work place. The office has a good mixture of both foreign and local employees, most of them with previous working experience within a multinational or international environment. My team mainly consists of three people: Dawei or David, in English, who is the Head Business Analyst, Alice, my supervisor, as Director of Retail Development and myself.

My very first project was to try to adapt myself as quickly as possible to working on a Mac computer. As an experienced PC user, I thought that it would take me a little while to get used to making presentations on Keynote, use Mail or the Mac Excel. However, because of the intuitive functions and applications of my new computer friend, I was up and running in no time. All I could only think was “I should have tried the Macs earlier.“ After two or three weeks, I was already a “Mac guy,” foreseeing a future switch to a Mac as my personal computer as well.

The first project where I started to learn more about Apple operations in the region involved a thoughtful analysis of the Asian high end retail sector in order to support the senior management making decisions about possible flagship store locations. For this, I first had to go through some of our existing APR locations and understand what makes those places an attractive retail environment. Afterwards, connecting with country representatives and real estate agencies, along with my own research, I managed to get a good feel of the retail sector in the region. My final report was a compilation of the top forty cities across Asia with retail, market and sales data information as well as recommended locations for the stores. Dr. Philipoom’s Decision Analysis was a real lifesaver for my first accomplishment during this internship.

In March, a group of eleven class of ‘09 IMBA global trackers came over to China for the first time in the history of our program. Accompanied by Dr. David Hudgens and Dr. Hong Yen, they visited several companies in both Beijing and Shanghai where they learned about the company operations in the Mainland. One afternoon was dedicated to visiting the Apple office and learning from our staff about the company’s operations is Asia. Every department in the company was represented at the meeting, including our Apple Asia’s General Manager, who is a Moore alumni. Therefore, everyone present got to understand the different lines of business the company is currently pursuing and enjoyed a whole afternoon spent with the Apple team.

During their stay in Beijing, the Chinese trackers and other alumni got together on several occasions to show our Global classmates how the “locals” live, eat and party, turning them envious of not joining the Chinese track before. Hahahaha…

This is it for now. In my next entry I will talk about sports and work activities as well as more details about my internship.

再见！

My Internhip Experience (part 1)

2008-06-13T04:26:00.005-04:00

Journal Entry #1 - May 2008:

Three years ago, I never would have imagined that someone would end up here reading about my internship experience at the Moore School of Business. When I was deciding what I should do for the future, I was looking at the Moore School application and thinking how interesting it would be to go to China, Japan, Germany or any other language track for a complete cultural immersion. For many days, I was thinking about what to choose for my future, about what's best for me.

So, I decided to go for the most challenging of all choices, the Chinese Track, having no previous Asian experience, background or language knowledge.

My name is Adrian Rusu. I'm originally from Romania and will guide you through my experience in China. I graduated with a telecomm engineering degree in Romania therefore I had no previous business school experience whatsoever. During my five years of college, I had the chance to be involved with different working or researching projects for companies in the consumer electronics industry, including one major research project in the mobile technology industry. From there, I went to Moore, began my IMBA and then studied Chinese for one year at UIBE in Beijing.

No matter where you are in the world, finding a good internship is not an easy task. Searching for an internship in China is no exception, but it definitely had a good result. The Chinese track has one advantage over the other language tracks, as we have a local company that will help us find an internship, try to solve any legal problems that may come up, and help us to find social and networking events in the city. This is a great relief especially for someone coming here for the first time.

On the one hand, this company helped me and my fellow trackers to find some internship opportunities both with Chinese and multinational companies. On the other hand, our school has excellent ties with some of the multinational companies in China and therefore was also very helpful in the internship search. This was the case with Apple. Even though this was the first time the company established a partnership with the Moore School, our Apple alumni have helped Moore students find internships in the past.

The Apple office in Beijing houses both Apple Asia, which includes all Asian countries except for Japan, and also Apple China, which are some of their most important operations in Asia. The office is located just across the street from the Silk Market in Beijing. In my apartment search, I succeeded in leasing an apartment just a ten-minute walk away. This situation is not very common for a city like Beijing, where a 45-minute commute to work is considered normal nowadays. I was definitely lucky.

The Apple APR (Apple Premium Reseller) Program is quite a new initiative (about two years old) within the company and helps bring the newest Mac and iPod products to customers in cities all over Asia by delivering on the promise of the Apple brand at the same time. The APR stores know everything about Mac and are the best places in town to test-drive all the Mac or iPod products. I am part of the Apple Asia APR Team, working as a Business Analyst, and this is the story of my internship.

In my next entry, I will talk about my internship in its initial stages and life in Beijing before the Olympics.

Chinese funnies

2008-05-28T23:34:00.003-04:00

Last post and generally last few weeks were weeks of mourning for China. This truly sad event even put the before very famous Torch Relay in the very back pages of the newspapers and news agencies.

Changing topics now... on a regular Sunday, while entering Dong Dan Sports Center 东单体育中心, I saw this Nike sponsored ad on the main door. How can that happen? Nike?! Enjoy it...

The Earthquake: 地震 (Di Zhen)

2008-05-12T09:21:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since my last post on the blog and probably would've been another few days to my next blog. When you think that you've experienced everything in China, there is always something new that will surprise you. Today was one of those days... I wrote this on May 12 right after the earthquake has struck but not published it until today!

I was sitting at my office trying to figure out the best way to do some automatic reporting and after working on it all morning, I suddenly felt very dizzy, tired and uncomfortable. Suddenly, I was feeling like loosing my senses. I looked over at my co-worker Sarah and saw that she also looked very uncomfortable. I tried to focus on feeling my feet, both feet were shaking because the ground was shaking. I got up and looked around at my other co-workers and nobody seemed to say much at the beginning. We were just kinda looking at each other. With every millisecond, everyone was coming out of their office, growing more and more impatient, getting ready to do something. Soon after, everyone went directly to the emergency exit, didn't really matter if the shock was gone or still present. We just experienced an earthquake.

People outside of our office building minutes after the earthquake

Update (May 29th)
Now, two and half weeks later, all the world found out about what happened in China on May 12, 2008 at 2:28PM. Basically the whole country, and it is not a small one by any means, was shaken for almost 3 minutes.
Before, in my life, I had the unpleasant experience to be in the middle of three other earthquakes which are all pretty vivid memories.
Every once and a while, sitting at the 10th floor of the office building at my desk, after a harder day at work, I can still feel the same feeling that the earthquake gave me on May 12th. But this time I only feel tired...

dust storm

2008-03-18T05:23:00.004-04:00

On the way to work this morning, I experienced one of the famous Beijing sand storms. Basically, during some springs, the wind is increasing in speed and it bring sand from the Gobi dessert and then spreads it around the city.

Walking on the street during this kind of weather is not a pleasure, as one feels eating dust and hard to breather. The picture from my office is self explanatory.My buddy Jeff F. sent me also some pictures from his side of the town, up North West in Wudaokou （五道口）. Thanks Jeff !

Beijing sex shops, 北京成人店

2008-03-09T23:50:00.004-04:00

From the start... the Western idea of a sex shop and the Chinese outcome of one are totally different. I remember when entering the first time in a Chinese sex shop, I was impressed that it was more than half filled with flowers and sporadically some sex related products. Therefore, the store's clients were normal couples that would stop by and buy flowers and just check some condoms out in the same time. TIC = This is China! The translation of Sex Shop in Chinese also reflects its different nature: 成人店(Adult store) or 成人保健(Adult Health Protection), the products sold inside are Birth control pills, condoms and some toys.

Now, from that time until now, this place has definitely increased the number of so called Sex Shops. On my way to work, about 10 minutes of walking, I had three small sex shops, one being open 24/7. I never paid too much attention to them until yesterday.

As I was coming back home from a haircut place, on a normal Sunday afternoon, I noticed some 20+ Chinese people gathering together. Chinese really like to gather around where something is happening, such as an incident, accident or any abnormal happening.Therefore, I went closer and noticed some men of law (police, military, etc) were tearing down the sign of a local store. Well, it wasn't any store, it was a "sex shop." After they got done with it, they went to the next one, where, with no prior notice given to the tenets they confiscated all the products and took the people in charge of the store with them. This whole operation took only about 20 minutes to complete.

Late last night, this other venue that was not affected by the incident, was closing down and going out of business as well. It used to be a very small place, opened 24h, and late afternoon yesterday, already all the signs, posters and products were gone. Things can change over night in here, one day everything is there, the next day nothings there. My true belief, is that the Government doesn't want to show this side to the foreigners who are going to be here for the Olympics, therefore saving "face". Time will tell this...

From people at work, I learned that this kind of experience is not new to China and not new to the foreigners as well. It is just one of those factors that somehow you have to embed in your business model as a possible risk. In the meantime, if you want to buy something from the Adult Shops, hurry up because you might now find it anytime soon.

Update: One of the Ex-Sex Shops just overnight converted into a legitimate small food place.

Ever wondered what's the women favourite thing?

2008-03-06T10:53:00.003-05:00

It seems this Chinese coffee shop here in Beijing solved out the world's greatest enigma. Check it out:

internship early stages, 实习很早的时候

2008-02-25T09:28:00.006-05:00

From the moment I joined the Moore School of Business, I knew that I will be spending 1 year and a half in a country where I never though I ever live, China.
I spent already one year of my life in China and must say that I can now officially add Chinese to my spoken languages. I can pretty much explain what I want to say, but I am always using a pretty simple way of expressing what I mean. I am not able to read nor write well anymore, so the only things I still have are my speaking and especially my listening.
The other part of my Chinese experience, the 6 months, I was scheduled to spend them doing my internship in China. From the beginning, I knew that a Chinese company might be too much for me, as I would not be able to handle it, because of the complicated language barrier. Also, there is always the risk that one would work there and get to be used just because of the English speaking abilities.
My internship search started late October last year. Being in a new big city, apparently is hard to make good contacts but, by attending a lot of social events, you really get started in meeting a lot of well connected people. If only time would allow to do this every time, one could become a very good People Connector. I tried using my personal contacts, people and friends who I had in Beijing. In the same time, I attended different meetings aimed at helping expats to find a job in this large crazy city. Another very useful channel was AbroadChina, the company that always helped us to have an easier life here in Beijing. Last, but not least, our University has good contacts in Asia, particularly active in Shanghai and Beijing.
Because I really wanted to stay in Beijing, I considered the location more important than the actual function or company itself. Why? Simple, my life is here now, Mandarin is widely spoken and friends are also here.
I think it turned out that I made the right decisions at the time, but I guess waiting some more time will ultimately tell me if I took the right decision. More to come...

see the doctor learn new things, 看医生学新的事情

2008-02-11T03:35:00.001-05:00

Recently I've been infected with a bacteria, so I've developed acute bronchitis. Realizing that, I scheduled a doctor's appointment. It's been a few days now and I feel a lot better.

In Beijing, as a foreigner there are just a few choices on where to go to the hospital. If your Chinese is very good and you trust the Chinese doctors, then you can go to a Chinese hospital, but if you don't master Chinese, then is a lot better to go to one of the Western hospitals or clinics.

In here, you can bargain for almost anything, from purse to food in the restaurant, but I feel that when it comes to doctors or health, there should be no bargaining involved, rather a lot of transparency and good communication can give the patient a lot of confidence. Since the doctors at the Western clinics are very well paid and have good command of English, the price you pay for the service is as such, very high!

Today though, me and Dr. Tony Z., the physician that took care of me, had a very entertaining conversation after the consultation. As most of Chinese en vogue, he is up to date with all the development of the country, the region and the world, has interest in Domestic and Foreign stocks and is planning to correct his nutritional and exercise habits in the future. Does that sound like a Western plan? Maybe... but as he further explained, in China, still right now, before the age of 30 or 40, the parents still somehow look after you, but after that you start to look after them. He also seem to like Singapore's policy on child birth control, the more educated you are, the more kids you can have. In China, it is somehow the other way around, people in the countryside can have many kids while in the cities, families are limited to one. The penalty for having the second child is 100,000 RMB or more (about 15,000 US$) and it goes lot higher if you are a famous figure.

From him, I learned that Japanese people "eat with their eyes" (many colors, pretty food, but when you mix it with the sauces it all tastes more or less the same), Chinese people "eat with their tongues" (things need to taste very well, and have many different flavors and spices) while Americans “eat with their brain" (they think what to eat, how many proteins, carbs, nutrition, etc.) I thought it was a pretty good comparison on the three habits. What do you think, isn't this true?

After the hour spent there, the bill was still very expensive but at least this time, I found out some new interesting things about China.
Still, after one year, China can be a new experience every day!

chinese funnies

2008-02-08T23:51:00.001-05:00

This post was just outside of our University last semester. You be the judge...

Financial Times Global MBA classification: 金融时报万国 MBA TOP 100

2008-01-28T00:21:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder if at the time when I decided to join my IMBA program, if it would be worthy or not. It is very difficult to say even now after two years have gone by.

Every once in a while, some famous famous business newspapers around the world, make their own classification for the world TOP MBA programs. This year, the UK's leading business newspaper, Financial Times, published it's Global TOP 100 for the year 2008. The schools were audited by KPMG on a 20+ categories and here are the results for the first 5:

Rank in 2008	Business school name	Country	Weighted salary (US$)
1	University of Pennsylvania: Wharton	U.S.A.	165859
2	London Business School	U.K.	144918
3	Columbia Business School	U.S.A.	165123
4	Stanford University GSB	U.S.A.	167225
5	Harvard Business School	U.S.A.	162316

This year, the University of South Carolina, Moore School of Business's IMBA program was rewarded the 55th place, 17 positions higher than in 2007.
It is something that makes me very proud, that the school was ranked 1st in the world in the International Experience rank, basically the main reason for why I've chosen the school. Great to know that such an impressive financial institution is saying that. It makes me very happy!

This is how our school scored in the rankings:

Alumni career progress
Salary today ($)	95,417
Weighted salary (US$)	95,417
Salary percentage increase	117
Value for money rank	56
Career progress rank	82
Aims achieved rank	41
Placement success rank	74
Employed at three months (%)	87 (70)
Alumni recommend rank	72

Diversity
Women faculty (%)	24
Women students (%)	35
Women board (%)	12
International faculty (%)	21
International students (%)	25
International board (%)	3
International mobility rank	22
International experience rank	1
Languages^[2]	0^[2]

Idea generation
Faculty with doctorates (%)	90
FT doctoral rank	62
FT research rank	58

For more information please check: http://rankings.ft.com/global-mba-rankings

Beijing is changing, 北京改变了

2008-01-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

I've been outside of Beijing for more than a month now and coming back yesterday and I can strongly say: it is changing!! It seems it's been a while, but it also feels it was just last week that I left the city.

The weather is still cold, but now I've had clear sky in these last two days. You can actually see stars at night.

Just when I came out of the airplane, I could see that things have changed right away. Inside the airport, there were more signs that would direct your to your proper direction, there were special waiting lanes for Olympic athletes and service was quick. Outside, the taxis don't wait in huge lines anymore, but asked to park on the left side and wait for clients to pick them up from there. It seems more efficient and is more foreign-friendly especially for those coming to Beijing for the first time.

As I was going by subway today, I noticed that inside, on the TV screens the Olympic Committee is educating the people on all the Olympics sports. When I was traveling they were showing Field Hockey and explaining all rules and regulations: how wide is the goal, how are the players equipped, how to play, showing a combination of live action and computerized graphics. They want people to know what they will be looking at.

The cab drivers, today I got to meet two, both were asking me on how to say "Left" and "Right" and other basic stuff joining the Olympic spirit that is building up in here.

Something has not changed yet... the Chinese food, I forgot how good it was and how badly I missed it. Beijing, I'm back!!

out for vacation

2008-01-04T00:47:00.000-05:00

I am currently out for vacation with my friend Anand across India. I will come back with details when Internet will allow!

Happy New Year!

back in Europe 回来了欧洲

2007-12-16T06:19:00.000-05:00

It's been almost a year in China already. It sounds crazy to say and to think about it but it is very true. What happened in all this time?　What did I manage TO DO?
- learned a new language, at least basic situations
- extended my friends network by adding Asian friends and other expats living and working in China
- studied at a Chinese University
- worked full time for 2 months and part time for another 2
- eat a lot of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Thai food
- learned a few expressions in a few Asian languages
- accustomed to drink a lot of tea and learned about the Chinese teas
- ride the bike a lot
- got used to see millions of people all around me
- visited a few cities in China, including Shanghai and Hong Kong
- find a good internship for next year in Beijing (still pending the official answer)
- realized that there are a lot of opportunities in China by itself and also in cooperation with other countries
- realized that China is not what most of the people think of it, just a poor country with cheap labor
- realized that there is no Christmas and winter celebrations that at home
- blended very well with the Chinese culture, the mix between indirect and direct communication
- worked with a bunch of classmates from the US, over the Internet, to put a project together for our University
- realized that Beijing would be a good alternative for a well paid job in the future (hm?!)

What I DID NOT DO:
- not study as hard as I should've and such, my language skills are not as high as they could've
- didn't understand the basic of import/export mechanisms and procedures
- didn't do a lot of individual research to find a job
- didn't volunteer for the Olympics Games
- didn't realized when and what I really want to do with my life
- didn't visit any other Asian countries
- didn't understand completely the Chinese point of view

This is just a quick list of what happened and what could've happen in this past year. Overall, it was a great year.

Romanian National Day: eat Korean! 吃家里做的韩国菜

2007-12-03T02:24:00.000-05:00

On December 1st, as part of our Romanian tradition, we had a few guests at our house to eat and learn how to cook a few Korean dishes. Haha...

It was a very different December 1st with a lot of Asian culture involved and very little Romanian language being used. Everyone got to wear a Romanian pin as a sign of respect though. Here are some pictures:

Good Korean food!

Stephanie, Su Jing, Adrian, Sarah

Our little Korean chef

Please observe the Romanian pin

Magic Korean ketchup that is not ketchup

La Multi Ani "Romania" (罗马尼亚的节日）

2007-12-01T21:20:00.000-05:00

Just because I didn't keep up with my blogs, it doesn't mean that the life here in Beijing ever stops bringing new experiences.

Yesterday, it was Romania's National Day and here in Beijing, it was celebrated with style. The Romanian embassy put together a luncheon at The Beijing Hilton where Romanians, Chinese and other nationalities toasted for our country. There were a lot of Chinese officials, mostly military and party members. This was a sign that the Chinese-Romanian relationships are still very strong, but are based mostly on tradition and not on strong economic primacies yet.

Before this event, I didn't know any Romanians that live here in Beijing, so it was a great opportunity to meet people and find out about their reasons of being here. Moreover, I meet our ambassador, Mr. Viorel Isticioai, who is a great Chinese Language connoisseur, a well respected in the diplomatic community here.

I asked him how come the economic relationships are not as good as the traditional relationships between our two countries. He told me that now, every month there are over 1000 Chinese people that go to Romania, mostly for business, but there are not even close to this number of people that reciprocate the visit to China.
Why?, I asked... He frankly said that Romanian people have not opened their eyes to see the Chinese opportunity as vivid as the other countries see it already. Romanians still think that China is some sort of North Korea, with a communist government where the advantages are cheap labor and crappy products.
Well, it is not like that... one can only think about the news that are related to China nowadays. Think about it...

Well, Happy Birthday LuoMaNiYa!

chinese blocking websites

2007-11-01T10:32:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows about the Chinese Government policy of controlling what kind of information is restricted in China. Anything that has to do with freedom of speech is basically blocked, I'm talking about thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Internet domains that are blocked here...

Just recently, I discovered a way to have access to the Internet as I would be in the US and basically be able to see YouTube, wikipedia, BBC and other restricted websites that allow freedom of expression and access to high quality information.

It's nice to be able to see the blogs again, it's like a come back to the real Internet life!

Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T01:40:00.000-04:00

Today is the D-day... Blog Action Day, the first initiative to have all the bloggers in the world raise their voice and let people know that WE have a problem and WE can also solve it.

I'm not talking about governmental programs ment to force citizens into protecting the environment but about you, yes... you, reading these lines right now... can do something to help. I will give you some small examples of such ideas:

1) Take yourself off bulk mailing lists.
2) Reuse food jars for storage; flour, sugar, pasta, etc.
3) Have one day a month in your house where you try to make no garbage.
4) Put on a sweater before you turn up the heat.
5) Bike to places that are close by.
6) Use eco-friendly cleaning supplies.
7) Eat one meatless dinner every month, try one every week.
8) Use cloth napkins for meals
9) Stop buying paper towels and buy reusable kitchen cloths.
10) Buy cloth bags and keep in the car for shopping trips.

I must say that except for options 2, 3, 5 and 9, I haven't done any of the other ones. Some of these are very easy to take care of and if I can do it, you can as well.

Have you tried any of these alternatives lately ? Try to implement one or two see what happens ?!

beautiful cold morning 一边漂亮，一边冷的早上

2007-10-09T04:48:00.000-04:00

Recently, the temperature in Beijing has been dropping to less than 10 degrees Celsius in the morning. Also, still recently, during the Golden Week all the Beijing factories were closed as everyone took one week of vacation visiting families.

Supposedly, this was a test for the Beijing authorities to see the impact the closure has on the quality of the air. I'm not sure what the test results were but here is a beautiful morning sky that woke me up just the other day... ENJOY IT!

By the way, Blog Action Day 2007 is coming up soon, so on Oct 15th prepare to write a blog entry about the environment... maybe good things can happen. Check out this video...

Bank of China experience, 中国银行体验

2007-09-27T04:36:00.000-04:00

Back in Beijing now for what it is coming to be real autumn, colder weather, less green and clearer skies.

I came from home with some cash that needed changed and also had to pay our landlord a big chunk of money for our rent. Like always, I go in, take a number in the line and then wait. Like always there are over 100 people in front of me, but only about 30 present - who takes the other 70 tickets?

In the meantime, I had lunch, had a tea and still after coming back to check on the line I had more than one hour to wait. After the actual payment occurred, I must say that it took me 2.5 hours to complete everything making every trip to the bank like a nightmare.

Just as a information systems curiosity, even though I use Bank of China online banking, you can't make a payment to another account outside of Beijing. Isn't that crazy? Plus, the whole system is still in Chinese, making it very hard to navigate.

Hey, but this is China. It's fun...

outside of China, in Romania

2007-09-15T09:19:00.000-04:00

The Romanian Flag

Back in Europe for a week... one the one side to see friends & family again and on the other to attend my cousin's wedding ceremonies.

So go to be back home, people are so nice, sky is blue and the food is wonderful and the access to information is not restricted (I CAN SEE MY BLOG, wow!).

Wuxi, 无锡 (Wúxī)

2007-09-06T23:56:00.000-04:00

Downtown Wuxi at night

Downtown Wuxi in the evening is very colorful, animated and lively but nothing is more interesting in Wuxi than a visit to a local famous street food street. The street is very narrow (about a car-wide) but loads of cars, scooters, bikes and people still somehow manage to cross increasing the general street noise over acceptable levels at first.

More scooters in Wuxi than any other city I've seen so far

Great video of the ways of the street... couldn't get the street noise to blend in

There are a couple of stands with ready to be made skewers. One has a large variety, from sea food, vegetables, all kinds of meat, tofus to things that I will never understand what they are.

Different from what I saw in the past, all the food from these 2 or 3 stands goes to common line-up of grilling chefs. The result is good street food accompanied draft beer. It can only be very good…

The chefs barbecuing the meet and veggies

Wuxi friends and a Chinese begger

The city silently becomes asleep, with fewer and fewer people on the street. The lights are still and somehow you can see a star in the sky. This is rare for China… what a good night!

Better air，空气好一点儿

2007-08-28T22:47:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know again about October 15, the Blog Action Day when all the blogs in the whole world will focus only on Environmental issues. Hope the bloggers voice will be heard...
If you have not done so, add your blog to the participating list and get ready to post something about the environment on the 15th.

Blog Action Day

Recently, the air in Beijing has been a lot better. On a sunny, clear sky day, Beijing feels so much more different.
With pollution in the air, you feel like living in an enclosed bubble and it seems like taking your breath away (not even considering the real health issues that are connected to this).

This picture, taken this morning is a view over The North 4th East Ring Road, with fluid traffic and clear sky.

Recently, at night, I am miraculously able to see some stars, including the moon which was not a privilege a while ago. Few days ago, while walking around at night in Beijing, I realized again how big the sky is and how pretty are the stars at night. It is hard to describe the feeling but it's like anything you take for granted and then you realize you don't have it anymore...

Good old South Carolina

2007-08-26T11:32:00.000-04:00

This post really has nothing to do directly with my life, but it reminds me old good old South Carolina girls. Very nice girls by the way. Check it out! Get a map too before watching...

Small discovery, 小发现 xiǎo fāxiàn

2007-08-21T23:06:00.001-04:00

If you spend a lot of time conference calling on Skype like I do right now, but sometimes you feel you want to turn off your microphone to sneeze, burp, eat something or maybe just sing for a while, this is the right post for you. In the conference breaks I am able to do some work for my own...

1) Skype has a nice advanced feature to help you put in a short-cut to mute the microphone at any moment.

Tools -> Options -> Advanced Feature (not difficult)

2) Sometimes, after you enable and start using this function you really forget if the mic is on or off. Unfortunately, Skype doesn't come with a build in Always On Top function so you can always check the status of your conference.
Luckily, I ran into a small freeware software that allows you to make any window Always On Top, minimize them to tray, put them as a floating icon on a desktop or changing widows transparency settings.

The name of this nifty software is: DM2, and more information can be found HERE.

Blog Action Day October 15, 2007 - 1st post

2007-08-20T11:04:00.000-04:00

What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day?
One issue. One day. Thousands of voices.

Now, really what would happen if every blog publishes an article that discuss the same theme, on a specific day, all around the world? I don't really know, but I am willing to find that out and SO SHOULD YOU.

What is more important in the world nowadays than our environment? Living in a city like Beijing, really gives you a different view on the environment. It's been weeks, maybe even months... I don't even remember since I last seen a sky filled with starts. Unfortunately, it is something unheard of around here...

A while ago, I've published an article about the terrible Beijing pollution and show you how a polluted day looks like (Beijing problems: air). Nowadays, Beijing municipality is experimenting a trial period where even and odd numbered license plated cars can be used in alternative days. In this way, the government is trying to see the effect of reducing by half the number of cars onto the environment.

I will commit with all my possibilities as a blogger to create awareness among the people who read my blog and see if all together we can make a difference on October 15, 2007 the 1st declared BLOG ACTION DAY.

Internet Earthquake: Skype is down；上网地动: Skype有问题

2007-08-16T21:50:00.000-04:00

For the first time since I can remember, Skype is down. The multi-million dollar company, aquired by E-Bay a few years ago provides free and paid service for millions of subscribers all around the world. So, when the service is down, a part of the world stops revolving.

This little table says it all about the importance of this program (from Wiki):

The repair time announce by the team, 24 hours, seems to be make a lot of people unhappy, as the blog was instantly filled with complains. This issue today brings back once again the idea that internet is not all that safe, nor 100% reliable and companies should always have a backup plan, especially for communicating with customers or suppliers.

Grrrrr...

From Beijing to Wuxi, work day 从北京到无锡, 白天工作

2007-08-16T02:48:00.000-04:00

As planned, I managed to get a ticket from Beijing to Wuxi to visit my friend David, who works there for his internship. While trying to do this, I managed to come across a very good, but expensive service in Beijing to have tickets delivered to my home for 50 Yuan. Given the information gaps in Beijing’s railway system around our house, having this service handy can be a good opportunity.

The train from Beijing to Wuxi was not bad. I meet a couple of interesting guys, got involved with some discussions about money and habits of spending them by the Chinese people and soon went to bed.
The next morning in Wuxi felt like a summer vacation, hot, humid, sunny, blue skies, no noise, mild breeze… all these elements made me think of a summer vacation in a sea resort. Very good feeling…

David and I spent the day working on a filed project visiting two Ingersoll Rand facilities (one office in ShangHai and one in SuZhou) doing surveys and preparing future sign replacements.

Even though the jobs were the same, conduct a survey with the company for a future replacement of the signs, the in-city office didn't want too much trouble and left us to do our job.

The Shanghai office of IR covers 3 floors of a high-rise office building and kinda ignored us as we were doing our work. The Thermo-King factory in SuZhou was very happy to have us on site and immediately asked us if we intend to hold a meeting (simple example of the company’s inefficiencies in communication). We were assigned a chief engineer that took us around the factory and did our job in a professionally.

The lunch break was very interesting as we ate at Hooter’s in Shanghai (with Chinese girls of course). Most of Hooter’s customers were foreigners and the only Chinese people there were the ones foreigners would bring in for lunch. The girls try really hard to keep the franchise up to the standards, but they somehow fail to produce the lively environment foreigners are used to back in th US.

Must love the siesta

2007-08-14T03:50:00.000-04:00

Very common after lunch, are Chinese long siestas taken on bikes, streets or standing.

Another funny sign

2007-08-14T03:46:00.000-04:00

What does this exactly mean?

Sex Necessities

2007-08-14T03:36:00.000-04:00

China has still many signs that have errors or just look funny. This one was seen in Shanghai and makes me wonder what kind of products are sold inside. Anyone knows? Whats are the ecessities for a good sexual health?

Beijing Guo'an Vs. FC Barcelona 北京国安队 Vs. 巴塞罗那队

2007-08-06T11:32:00.000-04:00

Ever since I know, I had the passion for the real game, for football. Whether it was driven by hanging out with my friends as a kid, or just influenced by my father, the passion is still active and very often hard to describe to people who don't understand the phenomenon.

Like every other kid, I dream of being able to watch my favourite team play and win against another top European football team. I also dream of being able to go to Camp Nou or Santiago Bernabeu in Barcelona, Madrid and watch live what I believe is the most amazing clash in the history of sports (FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid).

I still dream of that moment and I will have to wait a couple of years until try to make it happen. In the meantime, never would I've thought that by coming to China, at least I would be able to see FC Barcelona playing. Even though it was in Beijing, with a local Chinese team, the match drew large media interest and crowds of people to the stadium.

In China, football doesn't benefit of large audiences like basketball does; but for the Olympics, the government is trying to pre-organize a series of events for all kinds of sports in order to test its facilities, capabilities and get people' interest.

Most of the people came to the game to see Ronaldinho (小罗 or little Luo how Chinese people nicknamed him). His brand name in Asia worth more than then whole club put together. Is that the real message FC Barcelona wants to promote in Asia? Real Madrid did the same with Beckham and the story didn't have a happy ending. But, profit comes first, and even though announced as injured, little Luo played the second half, scoring the third goal.

Beijing tried to manage the game as good as they could. The result was unsatisfactory for a city that will manage the 2008 Olympics.

- the entrance to the game was only though one single gate

- security was poor, I was able to sneak in cans of beer

- bathroom was terrible and it became nightmare at half-time, how can you have transparent windows in the first place? - 5 minutes communist speech, communist pictures with the team delayed by 10 minutes the beginning of the game

- the scoreboard was powered by Microsoft Windows' Paint program (no licence)

- the sprinkler system started in the beginning by accident all over the field, pushing players and reporters away

- taxis and public transportation was insufficient once the game was over

Overall though, it was an event that marked 1 more year to go to until the Olympics.

Word of the day: 北京2008年奥林匹克运动会 (běijīng 2008 nián àolínpǐkè yùndònghuì) = Beijing 2008 Olympics

Great Wall number 3

2007-07-17T11:50:00.000-04:00

Freshly published, the new 7 wonders of the world will most probably attract a great deal of visitors now. The Great Wall, seems like the only one that one can visit multiple times and every time see something different and unique.

This weekend, for the 3rd time now, i visited the great wall. Every time was a completely different experience. This time, organized by the AbroadChina company we went to a wild, non restored side of the Wall. We started early with a stop in a small Chinese village, which reminds foreign visitors how china is perceived before arriving: rural and dirty but interesting.

Considering the piles of dirt accompanied by new solar powered light poles, one got the right picture.

We had a good lunch with a Chinese family, time to socialize and talk about the cultural differences and worldwide languages.

Just after a short siesta, we started our climbing. Like no other part I've visited before, this one had no real walkway, but was just a chaotic set of stones put together with vegetation forming a 1m wide path, dangerous fall on left and right and beautiful landscape.

For an experienced hiker, this trail would be basic, but it took us some time and energy to get to the first watch tower. From there to the second watch tower one should've used a rope to go down and then climb a wall and that was considered too adventurous and was kept as secret by the organizers. As always the way back seemed to be even more difficult than the climb was.

The day ended at the same family's house with a Chinese BBQ good chicken and lamb kebabs assorted with Chinese beer.

The word of the day is: 睡觉(shui jiao) = sleep; go to sleep

Back to some business

2007-07-05T11:21:00.000-04:00

After spending time learning Chinese and getting accustomed to my new home, friends, place and language, there comes a time where you have to go back to business thought. For that reason, articles are a good way to catch up with the world and so, I ran into a very interesting article from The McKinsey Quarterly titled "Ten trends to watch in 2006"

Here is the link if you want to read it:
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=1734&L2=21&L3=114&srid=246

As part of the article, they put together a series of statistics, facts or predictions that will scare you, make you think or just provide an interesting read.

Total world cross-border trade as a percentage of global GDP1990: 18%2015 (estimated): 30%
Number of regional trade agreements1990: 502005: 250
Change in Germany's population over the age of 75 from 2005 to 2015: 33%
Increase in tax burden needed to maintain current benefit levels for Germany's future generation: 90%
Change in Japan's population over the age of 75 from 2005 to 2015: 36%
Change in Japan's population under the age of 5 from 2005 to 2015: -13%
Increase in tax burden needed to maintain current benefit levels for Japan's future generation: 175%
Computational capability of an Intel processor, as measured in instructions per second1971: 60,0002005: 10,800,000,000
Multiple by which e-mail traffic has grown from 1997 to 2005: 215
Number of US tax returns prepared in India2003: 25,0002005: 400,000
Combined market cap of top 150 mega-institutions1994: $4 trillion2004: $11 trillion
Total capital under management by private equity firms in 2003 in the United States and Europe: $1 trillion
Market cap of the NYSE in 2003: $11 trillion
Growth rate of the total wealth controlled by millionaires in China from 1986 to 2001: 600%
Estimated number of Chinese households to achieve European income levels by 2020 (assuming real income grows at 8 percent annually): 100 million
Total number of workers in China: 750 million
Number employed in China's state-owned companies: 375 million
Year when the income gap in the United States between the wealthiest 5% and the bottom 10% was the widest ever recorded: 2004
Part of national GDP spent on the public sector in the United Kingdom in 2004: 20%
UK public-sector spending as a ratio of GDP when transfer payments (for example, pensions) are included: 40%
Proportion of Latin Americans who would prefer a dictator to democracy if he improved their living conditions: 50%
Muslims as a percentage of the global population2000: 19%2025 (estimated): 30%
Number of major violent conflicts1991: 582005: 22
Number of coal-fired power plants China plans to build by 2012: 562
Estimated year China will overtake the United States as the number-one carbon emitter: 2025
Estimated year CO2 levels will hit 500 parts per million: 2050
Years since CO2 levels last hit 500 parts per million: 50 million
Average years it takes a CO2 molecule, once produced, to degrade: 100
Global CEOs who think overregulation is a threat to growth: 61%
Probability that a company in an industry's top revenue quartile will not be there in five years: 30%

Today's word is: 做生意(zuò shēng yi) = Do business

English Translation mistakes 英文翻译错

2007-07-01T11:15:00.000-04:00

As the whole world knows, China is filled with really funny English translations. When you arrive here for the first time, you start laughing at them immediately, but soon after they are just part of your life and your amusement.

Today, I put a quite a few hours studying Chinese... but when looking at a menu, I still check the English translation first, if existent.

So, while I was trying to decide what to order... I definitely tried to avoid THIS!! :) (the photo was taken inside with my cell phone, but you can still get the gist!)

Check out this one guy's website for an crazy translated menu: http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order/

Today's word is: 翻译错（fānyi cuò ) = Translation mistake

computer problem 电脑问题

2007-06-30T00:41:00.000-04:00

In a computer era where everyone is using Internet and the computer for almost anything, the worst it can happen is to have your computer crash when you don't have a back-up to it.

Well... this is what happened to me and kept me busy for the last three days. But I guess there are worst things in life than be data and information naked. Life is still good and now I've recovered about 85% from the old configuration and personalization.

The word of the day is computer : 电脑 (diànnǎo)

Beijing problems: air (北京的问题：空气）

2007-06-22T02:11:00.000-04:00

Beijing has been terrible lately. When you move into a new country, you are firstly absorbed by a multitude of new information and experiences. And when it comes to Beijing, China that statement is even stronger.

The new views you get used to fool your brain in ignoring other kinds of information such as the bad aspects of a place or deeper meanings of the daily life. One of these is weather... mostly the air quality. It's now worldwide known that Beijing has a big problem with the quality of the air inside the city.

According to “that’s Beijing” magazine the authorities are investigating a solution to this problem, as they’ve started the “Green Olympics” program. It sounds crazy, but according to the same source, a recent study revealed that much of the pollution in the city primarily comes from Outer and Inner Mongolia and Western Siberia and only secondarily from coal factories and cars in Beijing. This whole new research will make the problem even more difficult to be solved by authorities.

This picture was taken yesterday morning and reflects the air quality and non pleasant landscape in the city. During such days, the atmosphere inside the smog bubble becomes hot, dirty and difficult to bear at mid-day.

Even with this huge problem, Beijing remains a very interesting place with every day the Olympics come closer.

one night on the Great Wall 在长城上睡觉！

2007-06-11T11:09:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday started like any other day of the weekend, tired after going bar hopping on Friday night. I did my weekly practice of badminton with the local Chinese people, had Sichuan style food and returned home late in the afternoon.

What made the day so special was our decision to do something different this weekend and go outside of Beijing. Best place to go.... The great wall to sleep overnight. The trip was planned by Joe, a French friend and together with Mourillio, from Brazil, Malte and Sarah started our adventure.

We had a driver waiting for us just outside of the east gate.
We started very late, close to 5pm and got to 司马台长城(SiMaTai Great Wall) around 8 o'clock. Once there we found out that the wall access is permitted only until 5 pm. Also found out that sleeping is out of discussion with no exception. At first, a little deceived, I tried to call my Chinese friend and try to get some indirect negotiations through the phone. Failure, as the authorities said we can't get in. As we were heading back to our car, I asked the driver if he could try to talk our way in. More indirect communication started and bingo... We just paid our first direct bribe in China on our own. (Sorry to the authorities who might block my post but is true)The funny part is that we still received tickets for entering at 9pm :)

We were in, starting to climb the Great Wall as the dusk was already set in. As it got darker and darker we got to a check point where a flash light accompanied by a man stopped us. More negotiations started. First that we can't go any further cause it is illegal and then as we started the chat we started bargaining over 5 cold cans of beer in the night. Finally, we talked about Chinese and foreign women and went on with our journey.

We managed to climb for two hours in complete dark and reach the highest eastern accessible point (Tower 13) just using a book light.

There... Oh my God, complete relaxation. No noise. Just stars open sky. Wine. Food and friends. And chill out music. In the morning we woke up to see the sunrise and them had some Chinese visitors to jump over our sleeping bags and shout around.

We slept on the Great Wall. What a Unique experience!!

Long Time No See... 好久不见！

2007-06-11T10:59:00.000-04:00

Originally a Chinese expression, it was completely adopted by the English language "ad-literam" even though it is not grammatically correct. The Chinese expression is grammatically correct: 好久不见！

So, it's been a while since my last post... but here I come back with new stories.

kunming videos

2007-05-06T10:21:00.000-04:00

We were going down a street when a whole crowd of people from a restauran were doing some sort of team building by running down the street. Very funny!

This buddhist temple we visited in Kunming had a collection of turtles sitting on the side of the little lake that was around the main temple praying hall.

we are on vacation

2007-05-03T07:09:00.000-04:00

Oficially the whole China is on vacation right now... it is called the May Day Golden week and an estimate of 150 million people travel around the country.
It is a period of maxium profits for airlines, bus operators, hotels and tourism in general. According to 'China Daily', this vacation contributed more than 86bn$ to the economy in the past 19 years and it is one of the three major weeks of vacation in China.

Together with Stephanie and Malte, my two friends and coleagues from the Moore School, started a one week adventure to the South of China's Yunnan provice, home of most Chinese minorities such as Bai and Naxi.

The trip didn't start very well, because, once on the train we found out that instead of the expected 24 hours of travelling, we spent 48. Just of the many Chinese surprises that we found.

Guangzhou... doing business in China

2007-04-17T10:43:00.000-04:00

the fair building
Today meant my first visit to another city in China. I flew over to Guangzhou, in Guangdong province South East China.
Here, these days hundreds of thousands of people come to see the famous Canton Trade Fair which is the biggest Import/Export Fair in China. This is represents the 101th anniversary of the fair.

First impressions:
- people from all over the planet and all the continents want to do some sort of business
- three different huge expo complexes that hold different products
- people all over the place
- different vegetation here, humid and hot temperature with lots of rain and clouds
- people speak mostly Cantonese which is very different from Mandarin, but you can get around if you speak Mandarin
- the hotel complex that we live in is like a little city itself and it is said to be the property of the richest man in China

Tomorrow, we start visiting one of the pavilions, being highly interested in importing Chinese appliances to Romania. Hope we are going to have a good day.

latinos... try something new

2007-04-04T01:28:00.000-04:00

Time runs definitely different in Beijing than in the US. It seems that there are different time flows all over the world...

Yesterday, we decided to start doing the homework (作业) earlier and try a new experience in the evening. "That's Beijing" magazine represents an important guide for life in Beijing, so we decided for the first time to follow an event.

The announcement said: Every Tuesday night, free salsa lessons at a club called "Latinos."

Even though we arrived too early, we had the opportunity to know the manager of the club and set some initial guanxi with him. Not only there were some free beginner lessons there but also because of "The Ladies Night," all the girls got to drink for free for the time being there.

The place was a very good experience, very good music, good Chinese dancers and probably for the first time in my life, I experienced a live salsa/merengue/bachacha band (most probably one of the best in town).

Who could imagined that in a hidden spot in Beijing there are Latin hearts pumping on the dance floor??

Jasmine plant home delivery

2007-03-28T11:24:00.000-04:00

Today was supposted to be a normal day... and it was for most part. We did go and signed up for the gym, found a really nice new restaurant, spent some time studying in our favourite caffe, shopped for groceries at WuMei (chinese version of WalMart) and bought lamb kebabs on the street.

While heading home late afternoon, we (me and Stephanie) saw these two guys that were carrying arround bikes with platforms filled with flowers. We were talking back and forth that a flower in the house should be good and here we see these two guys. We looked at plants for a while and liked the jasmine flower. Price went down by 40 yuan just looking and then leaving and after some 5 minutes bargaining, we got the plant down to 120.

The funniest part is still to come... since they told they can deliver it to our place, we were very happy and accepted. We found ourselves immediatelly walking down the main street with two huge bike platforms filled with plants. It is just not something you see everyday, it was definitelly a very funny view and feel for all the other Chinese people: 2 foreigners walking down the road followed by plants!

Update: once we got home, I realized we can again see blogs. BLOGSPOT has been unblocked. Thank you China!!!

blocked blogging

2007-03-23T08:23:00.000-04:00

This is a test blog post to see if it actually works. It seems that ISPs here in Beijing have blocked access to any blogspot.com blog. Also other websites seem to be blocked, such as Wikipedia...
DOES IT WORK? CAN ANYONE UN-BLOCK?

we are back

2007-03-18T11:42:00.000-04:00

Ok... I'm back on the Internet. At least for a while...

This morning, the CNC (china national phone company) person came over to install an ADSL connection. The connection that we had was as slow as a dial up connection so we decided to go and try a new one.

For different bureaucratic reasons, we had to also accept a new fixed phone line on top of the one we had already. Together with the other internet that we still have, it can be said that we now own 2 Internet connections and 2 phone lines but we only use one of each. It sounds confusing, but that's China.

I guess things have to be in complete harmony, so One Internet goes with One phone line and the others match together.

After 5 hours spent trying to hook up a Chinese ADSL modem with a Chinese Wireless Router, we are back on the Internet full speed (Chinese speed anyway).

one to ten

2007-03-14T11:18:00.000-04:00

As of today, I can proudly say that I can write from one to ten, actually until 99 in Chinese and pinyin. This is big news...

Today, for lunch we tried one of the many Chinese fast food type place, we spent about 11rmbs per person (just about $1.3) including the famous Coke. It was not wonderful, but it was OK.

Ordering at the Chinese restaurant is almost impossible for me if the menu has no pictures... so I try to be around people who can speak or understand some menu items. Normally, a lot of the foods have a poetic description so unless you know what that is... you can have surprises.

Therefore, ordering from a restaurant is always a challenge.

school started

2007-03-13T11:31:00.000-04:00

I am now a student at a Chinese University. All the schedule was written in Chinese, together with the building and the room number where the classes are. Luckily, my name was written as Adrian Rusu so I can recognize at least what section I am in.
So far, I have started a spoken and written basic Chinese class. We start with the basics: initials, finals and then tones. It doesn't seem difficult because we are repeating what we studied in the US already but as time goes by, going at a face pace... it will seem overwhelming.

The first day felt like high school: a lot of people, chaos and noise everywhere, small classes and new students. In my class, we are 12 students: one from France, Russia, Germany, Japan and a couple from Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia. We are pretty much around the same level: maxium 3 months of Chinese study.
I still can't read the class schedule so I take all the books and notebooks with me all the time, but it's fun and I can now write Ni3 Hao3.

eating little sea horses...

2007-03-12T04:38:00.000-04:00

I feel very bad for these sea horses, they don't taste that bad, but not that good either.

eating a weird bug on a stick...

2007-03-12T04:30:00.000-04:00

I promise I will not try stuff like this in the future because looking back at it is kinda sick... but enjoy it anyways!

different views of Beijing

2007-03-11T12:12:00.000-04:00

Today, we decided to try the subway out... because we went out again last night, we managed to go out of the house around 2PM. We found a subway station after a 15 minutes drive with a taxi in a very strange area. All the subway stops outside of the main line seem to be in remote areas.

We ended up in Wang Fu Jing market, east of the heart of the city. The area can offer the visitor within seconds completely different views on Beijing. One can spend the whole day in a 7 floor story high Book Store, or pay high prices on all the "hautte coutture" fashion shops in the various department stores. Just minutes away, there are side streets, which can show the visitor the old city, busy streets and some crazy food being cooked. I have to brag about eating some strange insect and sea horse... yuck!!! (look what peer pressure does to people)
Barbara, Sarah's friend visiting from Korea, tried every single weird thing that we found... from scorpions to locusts.

I have actually seen the real Nike, Gucci, Adidas and other brands who are highly hunted in the fake markets. As you are in the stores, very few accept International credit cards so people will always have impressive amount of money to pay with.

Tea drinking experience video

2007-03-08T20:58:00.000-05:00

Even though the internet really hurts me, I was able to upload this video in the night.

worst thing in china so far

2007-03-08T12:08:00.000-05:00

There are so many amazing things about China so far that it could take me a long time just to organize my thoughts in a concise way.

I can talk strongly about the worst thing that China has to offer so far. It is not pollution although it is a part of our lives not, it is not traffic nor scary taxi drivers that almost run into other cars, trucks or bikes. That's all normal for day to day China!

IT IS THE INTERNET!

We just got Internet installed today, after a long waiting time.

The Internet man seemed really nice from the few words I can understand in Chinese (I probably can get one in 20 so it's not the best opinion). Anyways, he put in the Internet, told me the IP settings, downloaded some weird authorization software on my computer and voila... Internet came down the pipe. Here is the problem... Internet is basically dripping on this pipe, it is so slow that if we all 3 go at once, it's basically like a clogged toilet. It is sometimes driving me nuts. I don't know how this situation will evolve as we paid 6 months in advance already...

On the other hand, I manage to update the wireless router menu from Chinese to English and with the help of Stephanie, we might be really close to finding a hookah buying place. That is another story...

this morning at the police station

2007-03-06T09:48:00.000-05:00

Tips before watching the video

The Chinese people have these working out machines just outside of their work place and while waiting in front of the police station, we did our morning exercises just like a normal Chinese. People thought we were silly and we probably were... enjoy!

(C) Stephanie

The apartament

2007-03-06T09:44:00.000-05:00

A beautiful tour of our apartment directed and presented to you by Stephanie B

the crazy carrefour experience

2007-03-06T09:42:00.000-05:00

This is Carrefour crowd on a Saturday afternoon. Never do this!!! Only for pros

the tea houses

2007-03-06T08:33:00.000-05:00

The tea room

The menu

Tea houses in Beijing so far have been fabulous. As I am writing right now, I'm in one of them.

They are generally a lot of decorations in big room filled with private rooms, just perfect to bring your date out for a tea. Tea in China is considered to be like the wine in the rest of the world: it ranges from few cents to thousands of dollars.
One would think that drinking tea is all about breakfast, sitting a table and enjoy most probably a cookie with it. Well, maybe... but not here!

Tea drinking is a ritual, just like fine wine again. All the glasses must be well heated and then the tea pot has to have the same temperature on the outside as it has on the inside.

The tea glasses are really small, you smell the tea, feel the tea and drink is little sips. It is a wonderful experience.

1st day in Beijing

2007-03-05T02:35:00.000-05:00

First day in Beijing...

After an 18 hours bumpy trip, I finally reached Beijing. The process of going through security at the airport was very easy. For the next time, one should know that it requires 3 different forms to fill in and the overall process takes about an hour, but it is very easy.

I easily meet Stephanie and the other people from AbroadChina, changed 300$ in the airport and I was ready to go. Just for future information, the Travellers Cheques change for a better rate compared to cash.

Beijing is a big, busy and interesting city at the first sight. In the same time, it looks polluted but is not something I'm not used to. My home town is the home of the Aluminum Factory and the city if filled with Fluorine.

After setting in at the Beijing GuiZhou Mansion, a 3-star hotel (about 35$/night), Stephanie and I started to walk the streets and ate Chinese food on the street, saw where UIBE is, entered a Chinese store that was only for hair combs and finally drank a tea in a Chinese Tea house.
Also, I was very happy that my PDA with GPS is working and took us to the school and can show with a certain precision where we are.Tonight, everyone will go out to have some food, of course Chinese food.

Pre-China adventure... here we go!!

2007-03-05T02:28:00.000-05:00

I haven't even started the flight and began the adventure already. The strangest thing happened in the Vienna airport.First, I meet a Romanian sailor who will be working in Singapore for some time, then I meet this Chinese girl, whom name I already forgot who was speaking fluent French... wow! She had a problem with her cell phone and wanted mine to send an SMS. I experience my first communication problem...

What was really strange came after that... after an unknown delay, I got through the boarding line heading to the airplane through the tunnel. I reached there, but it was a huge queue, of people waiting to get in as the airplane door was closed. What?? Yes, the airplane door was closed, there was no one there with 100 people waiting in the line... I should have taken a picture.

After waiting for 10 minutes, I went around to check how things are and noticed that now people were taking another entry door in the airplane. Even crossing the exits was forbidden by a sign, I asked some people where they are going and found out that this is the right way to Beijing.

Just realized that is the beginning of my adventure... luckily the seats in the airplane had individual displays.

ready to start the journey?

2007-02-25T17:54:00.000-05:00

Am I ready to leave or not? This is the question...

Well, weather I am or not is not an issue now that I already bought the tickets, done packing and said hello to friends and family.

This week in Romania was very busy and enchanting in the same time.

Mon-Wed - I did a lot of formalities, applied for a new ID here, did all my medical checkups, spent some time at the dentist, played tennis and saw most of my family

Thu As it was my dad's birthday, I spent the day with him... we went to the gym in the morning and played squash and meet some family friends late at night. I also had the chance to see a lot of my friends from the Rotaract Club this day. On the downside, both Bucharest teams lost in the European Cups, but it's not a tragedy!

Fri I started the day very lazy... but managed to hopefully do something good for China: put the Beijing GPS map on my PDA. Hopefully it will work in Beijing so that I know where I am all the time. The rest of the day was dedicated to my English teacher and my friends

Sat, Sun Started packing and organizing for the upcoming trip. I'm now ready at least ... I hope I am.

Just as an update, I hope all my friends coming to Beijing that lost their flights to Chicago today come there as soon as possible so we can have dinner!! Next post... CHINA (I hope they will let me do that)

Back in Europe

2007-02-19T17:47:00.000-05:00

I'm finally sitting in a more quiet place in the Frankfurt-Mein airport.Believe it or not, this is very difficult to find...
I can swear that ever since I landed here, I have been surrounded by people everywhere. It is by far the busiest airport I have ever seen. Well, probably being around 8:30Am didn't help out either.

There are a couple of things that have changed since my last visit. First, the most obvious, is the presence of so many Indian people. I can't believe it... you go in every room of this airport and you will find people from India everywhere. I'm sure you can get by today here just by speaking Hindi. Secondly, it is so busy that even the Business Lounges have a small line to get in, the bars, the shops and restrooms are filled with people. We are only in February... I don't understand!
Lastly, now with Romania being in the European Union, i just realized that there is no more a duty free status with our country. Before, going to Romania meant going outside of the Union but now... NOT ANY MORE.

As I'm writing this post, a Chinese movie won the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear for the best movie award. Wow!
Next stop... Bucharest, Romania

2007-02-18T15:31:00.000-05:00

It has been a fun 8 month is South Carolina. I've been through a completely set of new experiences. Coming from an engineering background and studying business is was not very easy.

To be honest, before starting this program I didn't realize how business is actually part science and part feel. I more than always saw it as mostly gut or just a chain of good decisions.
Being in a foreign country, studying, living and communicating there brings so many advantages.
+ meet new people = it is wonderful to meet people different from you, who have other backgrounds, experiences and ideas. Most of the times, you get attached to these people, share your ideas and connect faster than you think you would be capable to.

+ it was a great time of learning and studying. The immersion into new subjects, new discussions and new perspectives on business issues was new to me. For once I could change my point of view from a simple consumer perspective to a more analytical, focused on why, what price and where companies promote and sell products.

+ started to study Chinese is still one of the areas that is very new. Even though I had 1 month worth of training, I am able to understand some basic simple phrases, and hopefully able to reproduce with good clarity the five tones. In the same time , I realized how different can be speaking, listening, writing, reading and communicating with someone else in a completely new language. It has never happened to me before to study a language that I have completely no idea about. Everything has a start...

+ in the meantime, I realized that I don't have a great business idea yet, but I have an angle, an orientation to find one and hopefully be able to implement. I am also lacking the experience to start a business right away, I need to work more, to gain more experience so I can limit the risks. Sometimes I just get a new business idea or something that is not there yet. Unfortunately, I can't asses right away if it would be a profitable one, implementable or how to do it and what it is its final use. I just have an idea and for a minute I believe in it. During the Lufthansa flight, I was thinking of a website to categorize different flights and airlines based on the service they are offering so next time someone would go online and buy tickets, they know what to expect. But would this be helpful? Would it be profitable? Would it be a good idea? Who knows...

It's been an intense 8 month and even though I don't know what I want to do yet in life, I know some things I don't want to do.

Now, moving to Beijing seems to be a crazy step. And so it is... I still can't believe I will be living in China for the next one year and a half. I think one doesn't realize it until you are in a flight as I am right now. Anyways, for these couple of days, I will be busy in at my home to get ready for the next big step... CHINA.
The time in South Carolina had an end, Romania time will have one and China will follow with another end. I still don't know what to do in life, but I am opened to explore and ready for a new journey...

Travelling ... or how to get light suitcases

2007-02-05T22:49:00.000-05:00

As many, I struggle a lot when trying to keep my luggage within airline boundaries. Normally, across the ocean the limit is bearable (2 suitcases @ 23 kg + 1 carry-on @ 8-12kg), but even then, I go over the edge.
Normally, I don't even think of the suitcase's weight and only consider the total weight (luggage + stuff).

Just lately, I was constraint to think of this aspect more. I will be flying to China in 3 weeks and, for various reasons I have chosen Austrian Airlines as airline to take me there. While being a very reliable airline, it is expensive and made me think about my luggage weight. Why?
This is their free allowance:
* 1 piece of luggage of maximum 20kg or 44 pounds that can't have the sum of all dimensions more than 203cm/80in.
* 1 carry on of 8 kg/18lbs maximum with limited dimensions, not more than 55x40x23cm (21,4x15,5x9in)

Wow! I'm leaving for 1 year and a half and this is all I can take with me??? So, you can see I spent a great deal evaluating options, different suitcases, possibilities and this is the result.

I think the best website to find luggage that was used during all this time was http://www.ebags.com/. I also considered several other websites, including Ebay and Amazon as well as local shops as Tj Maxx, Marshall's and Ross.
Basically I looked for the lightest, cheapest and in the same time largest luggage and carry on that will not exceed the capacities mentioned above.

And the winners are
1) Carry-on: International Traveller Equator 19" Wheeled Expandable found at TjMaxx for $40

Material: Polycarbonate ABS
Size: 19" x 13" x 9" + an additional 2.5"
Size including wheels: 19" x 13" x 9"
Linear inches: 40"
Weight: 5 lbs , 8 oz (wa wa wi wa)
Warranty: 5 Years
Comments: It is super light weight as seen above, great material and very chic if I might say.

2) Luggage: Skyway Sigma 2 29" Vertical Expandable Overseas Case found on www.ebags.com for $55 with free shipping.Material: Polyester Fabric
Size:29" x 20" x 10" + 3.5" expandable (sweet!)
Linear inches: 59"
Weight: 9 lbs , 13 oz (superb!!!!)
Warranty: 10 Years (I will correct the website, it has 15 years warranty but it only applies for limited situations)
Comments: Anyways, given the weight and the price and its total volume, there is nothing more to ask. The material seems durable and it comes with a strap to help you out drag other suitcases.

Less than 100$ spent overall and I think that I got the best options that are on the market. I evaluated around 20-30 different pieces and I feel comfortable to say that if you want to fly light, you have to get these two.

Brazilian trackers in the news

2007-02-04T11:56:00.001-05:00

I was thinking today on what to write on my blog when suddenly I received an email from our Brazilian tracker, Andrew.
The video which is part of a news feed on the local TV station in Curtiba describes in short the Brazilian track and the goals of the language program there.
The report shows Ben, Chris, Andrew and Chad in class but the main focus in the video is our classmate Christina who, as the only girl in the group, speaks good Portuguese and impressed the audience.

It is also worthy to mention that Christina and her host are both very pretty, just to give you another incentive to watch the video.

Update: Andrew told me that the video with the group was shot at the InterAmericano, the school where the language program in Portuguese is held. Christina's footage was filmed at the Botanical Garden and in the classroom as well. The school our classmates are is FGV (Fundacao Getulio Vargas) and according to Andrew is one of the best business school in Brazil, having a lot of contacts.

Thanks Andrew for the video. To view more videos from him, check out his youtube website: http://www.youtube.com/user/boba05

Chinese Vs. American counting until 10

2007-02-02T14:06:00.000-05:00

In a battle for winning the world supremacy of counting from 1 to 10 the fastest, two experts are fighting. In the right side, Sarah, representing the US will face the Asian champion, Na who represents China in the battle.

Even if at the beginning, US lost the first round, it came back and the battle ended as a draw. More battles to come...

Chinese class speeches

2007-01-30T11:00:00.000-05:00

Just 3 weeks ago we've started beginner Chinese class. It is tough and now we got to this level where we can actually hold a kindergarten type speech, saying
"my name is.... i have 2 people in my family... my mom is doing this... my dad is doing this... "

It doesn't sound very difficult but for people like me, who started from very scratch, it was very tough.

This is me trying to read my complex paper:

Me again explaining what I tried to sell. Good luck understanding...

Sarah's turn to talk about her and her family

Adam's turn for the first Mandarin speech

Malte is from Germany so he is presenting his family

Finally, Brock is an example for all of us with his Chinese speech

Charleston part 2

2007-01-22T22:59:00.000-05:00

One of the most beautiful days of this month, me, Paco, Orlando and his family (Cecilia and Gabriel), Lourdes, Sarah, Zack and our friend Pekky were lucky enough to decide to take cars on small trip to beautiful Charleston, South Carolina.
This time, as it was my second, I experience a different feel of Charleston, the city, the people and its culture.

The pictures will be soon uploaded on the My Life in Pictures blog. They are beautiful!

Chinese Language - first class

2007-01-18T00:09:00.000-05:00

The Romanian post took me a while to start and to write. It is still not done, but I want to take some time and acknowledge some of the experience in the first Chinese Language training class that happened today.
After 1 week and 2 days of hopes that the class will actually start, today the magic moment happened. Dr. Ye came to class and started the class like nothing was out of the ordinary.
Ok... so we find out a little bit about the class. Not big news, but once again we are reassured the class will not be easy, there will be a lot of work and a lot of things to do on our own.

The rest of the class was spent rolling our tongues in many many ways in order to be able to pronounce the letters or the group of letters that we were assigned to. I really enjoyed it because it was like back in primary school or even kindergarten where the teacher would say something and then everybody else has to repeat the same sound. We spent time drawing tongues and mouths on the table and also laughing at the weird positions our lips were having.

There is already a Quiz coming up on Friday and there is a preparatory class today for it.
Overall, I can say that even if the class schedule is more relaxed than last semester was, there are still a lot of things to read, to work on in groups or more individual study this time.

Zai jien (or at least that's what I think you spell bye in Mandarin)

Romania

2007-01-11T18:34:00.000-05:00

Holidays in Romania were great!! It is wonderful for me to be able to go at home for Christmas and New Years celebrations. I was able to spend time with my family, my friends and travel in the same time. WONDERFUL!!
This time was also very special because I had a special guest with me. My ex-roommate and lifetime friend, Anand.
I tried to show him a completely different way of life, my way, the Romanian way. So, in order to accomplish this I tried to expose him to different events:

Day 1 - Welcome to my country
As he arrived we spent the first night in Bucharest with a couple of my friends over to a famous local Romanian restaurant. Overcoming the challenge of finding good vegetarian food in an all meat-Romanian cuisine, we started to enjoy the crowd.

Day 2 - It's all about the food (and drinks)

Got up late, slept well and started the journey to Slatina, my home town down in the South of Romania. There is where my family lives.
As traditional for this time of the year, my parents prepared the sacrifice of a pig that we ate for lunch together with the extended family (including cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents and other close family friends). The pictures from Day 2 are available on my picture blog.
It was all about the food, unlike the corporate dinners in the US. It was all kinds of traditional foods mainly made of pork, not very healthy but as we say... it's only one time a year we get really crazy. Anyways... there was enough food to feed a regiment of people. And no good food in Romania comes alone... there are always drinks that accompany it: first, when we were outside hot "tuica" (a strong plum brandy) and then later continued with hot red wine and then cold red wine. (Good assortment I guess)
By the time you end the lunch (if you can call a 3 and a half hour long event), you need to have some sort of medicine for digestion, so you don't get sick. You can't imagine how sleepy you get after such a meal... (just like the Spanish siesta)

Day 3 - Christmas

After going out of different occasions in my small home town with different sets of friends or just people I know... Christmas came. In my family, we celebrate Christmas at night on the 24:

- first is again... the dinner, which this time is again mainly based on pork and cooked vegetables as well. The table has to look beautiful and usually we start with some brandy (preferably Metaxa and finish up with desert).

After dinner it's time for presents. Apparently Santa left stuff under the Christmas tree... how did he managed to do that? WOW!!!

Everybody is happy... even my pet Bony got 2 gifts and loves them.

Day 4- Long buddies

Already giving up on the struggle to eat less, we proceed with my grandparents to visit some old friends of theirs. (the kind of lifetime friends I might say, I don't even know if I will be able to say: "I've known this guy (Anand for example) for 50 years or more!"

As we drove to this other city, my grandfather told Anand stories about old Romania, our Kingdom, World War Wars, communism, relationships with India, dictatorship, economy and democracy. Keep the IMBA spirit up as we discussed the issues on a global perspective. As in most cases, I would act as a spontaneous translator...

Day 5 - Church

As any good Orthodox, at least 2 or 3 times a year I go to church. I'm thinking it's not very much, but I don't think I need to go more.

This was a special occasion, for Christmas. This complex dates back to 1600 and went trough tough times in the history of our region but managed to stay in good shape. It is beautiful and the paintings inside are very profound and impressive by their age.

We had a clash of religions: orthodox vs. Hindus. Ultimately there must be some common God above both of them.

After visiting the new part and the old site which is now a museum, we were invited by the nuns, which were friends of my mother, to spend some time with them. We ate Romanian traditional Christmas deserts and as a beautiful surprise, they enchanted us with traditional Christmas carols. It was beautiful and spiritually recharging.

Romania part 1 will end here. In the next post, there will be information of Romanian parties, drinks, people, foreigners in Romania and more... so come back again soon :)

back to romania

2006-12-24T13:11:00.001-05:00

It is soooo good to be back home especially when you feel it's been a long time since you last spent time with the family. Food, drinks, fun, nice people will also be always associated with home.

Now, Anand and I enjoy being in Romania! It is ALL ABOUT THE FOOD AND THE PEOPLE :)
So far, it's been great being home... I will post the pictures in my blog soon.

Until then, read this funny letter I just received in my mailbox
"Dear All,I wanted to send you a holiday greeting. Then I realized that, starting2007 after Romania's integration to EU, new rules and regulations apply. Moreover, we will be part of the European community of people. Because it is so difficult in today's world to know exactly what to saywithout offending someone, I met with my attorney, and on his advice I wish to say the following:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress,non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday,practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion orsecular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secularpersuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscallysuccessful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognitionof the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not withoutdue respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whosecontributions to society have helped make Europe great (not to imply thatEU is necessarily greater than any other country/union) and without regardto the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference.By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freelytransferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes forher/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocableat the sole discretion of the wisher.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of oneyear or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichevercomes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.Disclaimer: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, asignificant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced in order to present you this great Christmas Tree!"

the past, present and future

2006-12-15T00:31:00.000-05:00

Isn't it incredible that 5 months and 11 days ago we were in our first GCMO and Dr. Roth's speech in Lumpkin auditorium. Here we are now 8 hours before the last final exam, Kettinger's Information systems.

Some interesting facts that speak for our past in the program:
- our class mates total is 95
- unfortunately 4 of them left the class already
- 13 different nationalities: US, India, China, Bosnia, Germany, France, Belgium, Romania, Hungary, Peru, Mexico, Thailand, Barbados
- 9 different tracks that we will all be involved in (calculating Mexican and Spanish as two different ones)
- we took a total of 13 different classes, taught by 16 professors which come from 4+1 distinct countries (Explanation: India, US, Hong Kong, Bulgaria and Boston :)
- 25 credits worth of studies
- 9 physical text books, 1 online text book and millions of cases from our friends from Harvard
- attended 4 CEO speeches (Wachovia lectures)
- eat 2 times per week for free at the International House of Students right across the street
- we spent about $70 worth of parking tickets in 5 months
- estimated 264 bottles/cans of beer consumed by us
- estimated 76(Anand) and 23(Adrian) Starbucks caffeine drinks purchased
- 24,000 actual minutes spend together in class, paying attention

These numbers are only part of our estimates. The actual number are difficult to estimate. It has been a great time, we made a lot of friends and enjoyed a rough sail but it was interesting. Everyone in our program had a great story, everyone added some unique value to our program. Though we had different cultural and ethnic background, different functional experience, varied interests and priorities but we all had the same quest for knowledge, interest in travelling, learning about life of people. Business knowledge is just a bi-product, we gained more than what school can teach us from our fellow cohorts. It is this rich experience will help us sail smooth through our life journey.

Anand & Adrian

The last 100 meters or the last mile?

2006-12-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

The first is the Romanian expression and the second is the English translation! Basically they all show the same issue: the CORE is almost over. There are 3 major obstacles in the way:
1) Finance - Dr. Kwok
2) Managerial Accounting - Dr. Jackson (he promised to bring us doughnuts and coffee before the exam to make the paper sweeter)
3) Information System - Dr. Kettinger (hmmm... I rest my case here)

Anyways, I'm now looking back to the Finance subject. Before I didn't even know how Finance looks like, I didn't even know what to expect from it. Basically, all I knew is that it was all about money $$$$
Q: What do I know now? A: "Not so much" (quoted from the famous Borat movie)

Actually, I realized that compared to 1.5 months ago I found out quite a bit of things: like to diversify your portfolio to minimize risk, the relationship between risk and return, CAPM, WACC, evaluate cash flows, Net Present Value... The second finance class taught me (hopefully) to take into consideration risks (Exchange rate, Economical and Transactional), how to asses them, how to pick the weapons to defeat them and finally implement the changes.
We learned also ways to make money by means of speculations (risky stuff) or arbitrage (not risky, but not available to us, mortals). OK, so you can't make money that easy, but you can hedge future receivables and payments. The final part dealt with International Capital Budgeting (you are a multinational company and you want to evaluate international projects... so you put a lot of work into it and bang bang ... like "black magic"... you get the answer).

It was an interesting class and along with a couple of others I truly believe it will impact my future career decisions.

two more weeks left

2006-11-28T17:18:00.000-05:00

It is truly amazing how time goes by. There are two dimensions of it though:

1) There are so many things to do in life and there is virtually little time to be able to do everything. This is the feel of a day to day basis, or week-planning when acknowledging that IS is due Tuesday, Quiz will be Monday, Finance will be Monday, we need to meet in different teams... etc

2) The second dimension is when looking back in time. We heard the expression "time flies" a million times. On the one hand time passing by very fast is considered to be good, showing that you are busy, you are working or just enjoying. On the other hand, slow time is considered to show problems/issues in one's life. Looking back at these 5 months spent in here, it seems like it's only been a week. WOW! We've all been through some tough times and it now almost over.

Should we be sad or be happy? How can we have both feelings in the same time?

There is a saying in Romanian which goes like this: "Cry with an eye and laugh with the other"

Let's hope for a good last two weeks!

heads up

2006-11-16T11:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a tough week and the bad news it is not over yet. Time is becoming very expensive as it is getting less and less. It seems that I just don't have any time for things outside school now, that's why Thanksgiving will be a well deserved break. I will try to re-iterate what happened this week:

On Monday, 1 case due for Managerial Accounting (MA)
Tuesday, start working for Economics and quiz (4 chapters) for Information Systems(IS)
huh... Wed it was time for MA quiz (4 chapters + many problems)
Today, Cisco project was due for IS and tomorrow is the final EXAM for Econ
In the same time, it was also work involved, other subjects, readings and the final meeting for the Speech class which was last night

Now, don't get me wrong because I'm not complaining about this. I feel fortunate to be able to study here in this program and this is just part of what the MBA experience is all about. Be able to work, work, work, study and be productive at any time of the day.

blogger gets a new soul, hopefully so will I

2006-11-09T00:26:00.000-05:00

Being here, anchored in the MBA program almost 24/7 it is very hard to find any good time frames in order to do anything else than school and work. After a long time, today, I started to realize again that a long term investment that will not let you down is good health.
Speaking from a Finance point of view, the maturity date might be very big (hopefully some tens of years), the yield is somehow inconsistent and very low but for the future value it provides (having good body and mind sanity) it is worth all the present value that it might ask.

Therefore, I decided today to try to stick to my old gym schedule again! How will I do that with concerns on the timeframe? I yet don't know.

In other news, Anand will be leaving in early January to Mexico, leaving me alone in my house without a roommate. So, we decided that we'll try to sublease the place to some other people while I will try to find a new IMBA house (highly probably my mexican's friend Paco)
Here is my announcement on Craigslist: http://columbia.craigslist.org/apa/230861738.html

2006-11-01T00:03:00.000-05:00

Get a feel for what Bahamas boat trip was and see all the other pictures on my Photo blog!

NSHMBA 2006, Cincinnati

2006-10-30T15:48:00.000-05:00

After a very difficult 9 hour drive from Columbia, SC to Cincinnati, OH, through massive rain and aggressive truckers, free Starbucks coffee and un-healthy food me and my roommate arrived in Cincinnati. Missing the right exit, we found ourselves in the downtown area not knowing where to go. Anyway, the story can go on but let me get back to the point...

NSHMBA = National Society of Hispanic MBAs This is one of the largest career fairs for MBAs around the US. This year it was in Cincinnati, OH. So many companies, graduates and students were there trying to fit all the corporate jobs available.
Before this event, there are days of building self-awareness: finding out about the wanted companies, their positions and whether they have or not positions available for China. Next, it was printing resumes on special paper according to the positions and interest for the companies. Additional research about the companies, the position of their stands at the fair and the most efficient path to reach them all was also needed. Finally, the 90 seconds self-presenting speech was to be developed and practiced.
The D-day was Friday... Thousands of people, huge facilities, slow start, nervosity... It was all there. Talking to corporate people was not an easy deal. But before talking waiting in line could build up additional emotions.
Finally, to sum up it was a very good experience for me: my first US career fair. I learned a great deal about US corporations and managed to be invited for Microsoft/Intel/Dell party at the Hilton in downtown Cincinnati. IT WAS GREAT!
I will surely go back again whenever I can and advice everyone to go to and take on every possible opportunities.

This is NSHMBA 2005 from Atlanta:
Total Attendance: 6,700+
Corporate Sponsors: 241
Academic Sponsors: 79
Total Sponsors: 320
Job Postings Online: 6,429
Professionals: 30%
Students: 70%
Students from top universities*: 27% (Us News Top 25 U
Interview Booths: 408
Scholarship Recipients: 195

Larry Kellner, Chairman & CEO for Continental Airlines Inc.

2006-10-23T14:19:00.000-04:00

Just back from the beautiful Bahamas and attended today one of our Wachovia lecture series.

The speaker today was Larry Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines, the world's fifth largest airline. He is actually a magna cum laude with a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina, earning numerous awards.
He now manages 43,000 co-workers world-wide and strongly believes that the world is getting more and more global.
Before 1995, Continental was a lousy company, as he said: from its first meeting with its former CEO he understood the problem; it was the worst airline in everything from on time to losing bags. They were heading for another bankruptcy. He transformed the company overnight, turning it into a successful business.
He advised us:

"Spend a dollar to make a dollar!" - the secret in the world of business. "CFO has to make sure you don't make only 90 cents."
"The companies that are successful are the one who make people go together!" (they shared the rewards from being on time - everybody has to win if they worked together).
There are four parts to every business: people plan, product plan (make reliability a reality), marketing plan and financial plan (fun to future). They should not be ignored and the result should be crisp and clear, in the same time easy to communicate to the rest of employees.
"Believe in a product, a quality product: whatever you promise the customer, you need to do!"

After 9/11 they went through not un-hurt, they made tough cuts in employees and flights. They faced reality, sent this message to the world and won the race.

out on vacation

2006-10-19T03:50:00.000-04:00

The first part of my experience here in Columbia with the business school is now over. It is high time for analysis, increasing the self-awareness and also traveling. I will do all three in the same time heading during this Fall Break to the Bahamas.
There will be a few of us coming along in what I hope to be an exciting vacation.

I will come back with pictures and impressions. In the meantime you can find me here...

CEO of Fortune 500, Jack Welch

2006-10-17T00:07:00.000-04:00

It seems that GE (General Electric) is different than what I thought: although it is still largely believed to be a multinational American company focused of manufacturing, over 60% of the revenues comes from services. "The opportunity for growth in product services is unlimited," Jack Welch, GE's symbol and brand said.
Born in 1935, he completely changed GE's stragety serveral times during his 20 years position as CEO thorough innovative management strategies and leadership style. He is seen to be the success behind the GE profits for all this period.

Some people argue that he was given to much credit for the sucess, showing that actually individual managers made this possible (example: Gary C. Wendt, chariman of GE Capital contributed with 40% of the company's total earnings). I believe that, but then there is no proof that this would've happened if it hadn't been for Welch, which my friend Anand is comparing with Alexander the Great.

There is another research I quickly conducted today, while I was waiting to get my haircut in "Great Tips", showed that about 95%(roughly, with no calculations) of all Fortune 500 CEO's were unsuccesful in their personal life. Filled with divorces, kids splattered everywhere due to multiple wifes, they were not able to balance business with family. Welch, having 3 wifes and more than 4 children, fits this pattern also. Does that make them unsuccesful ? Well... to some cultures, the answer would be YES. To others, like the American, it would be "the dream". SO... WHAT TO DO IN LIFE?

My dream would be to learn from these succesful guys and manage to balance family and business in life to become sucessful according to my books.

What a night: violence and reptile invasion

2006-10-11T23:43:00.000-04:00

Consider a normal Wednesday night... You might think there will be nothing special to differenciate it from another one but... Read on! I was actually planning to blog about Operations, International Management and Marketing II but a sudden list of events changed my plan!

First I was in this underground, isolated room from the library studying in peace and tranquility while attacked and distracted by two unidentified aliens: one Indian Tamil guy and a Mexican cabron. They came and distracted me from studying and started to shoot these questions at me.
Then, to show the violence of the night, I hit my elbow several times on the door knob resulting in a multi-language speech of swear words.

Soon after that, when the adrenaline was chillin' again... something amazing happened. The beginning of reptile invasion in Columbia, SC. Just as we were walking away from the freshly parket car at our house, we got attacked by a highly venomous reptile, called the "S" snake. It seem to be an American snake as it didn't show any particular preference between Indians and Romanians, both countries well know for their IT capabilities.
The battle with the snake was long and aggressive. He always

kept his head up trying to fight us with the look while we would fight back with thoughts. Finally, after some minutes of struggling, we succeeded and the snake went away, eliberating our parking lot.

What a victory for Barnwell Colon

y... What a victory for Columbia and South Carolina!!! Viva Mexico!

Below you can see the course of action is pictures during the fight:

Exhibit 1: The beast up close

Exhibit 2: Spotting the beast in our way

Exhibit 3&4: Romanian - Indian men alliance to fight the parking threat

Not a good week start

2006-10-09T08:36:00.000-04:00

This is definitely not my best time of my recent times. Let's take things and analyze the ups and downs of whats going on: - today seems to be "Columbus Day" - some national celebration that is silently respected; the only way one finds out about this is at 7:20 am while waiting for the Post Office to open its doors - because of the bad weather during the weekend, the Skydive trip got cancelled and I don't know when can we do it again
- I haven't head in a while from a friend who left and that makes me wonder what is happening and what I did wrong
- I just spilled coffee on my shirt while writing this... It is kinda white shirt too
- by this time, I haven't send my visa paper and it kinda makes me worry about this (why... I'm just stupid, that's it and I don't do well time management)
- I don't know what decision to take in whether going or not going to Cincinnati for the National MBA Career Fair; I need to talk to some seniors to clarify my mind
- I just realized that I spend more money than I forecasted; it seems that about 30-40% of my expenses go towards unimportant things, not vital
- it takes me about 2 weeks to update the blog - this is also bad
- there are 2 exams coming up next week

On the good side, because there is always one, I can mention:
+ Wonderful discussion with the director of Solectron Guadalajara who challenged me to think once again of my decision to join the Chinese Track
+ I still stay strong on my decision after that discussion as I know what I want to get out of it
+ Did some work this weekend, but not a whole lot
+ Anand, my roommate will probably come visit me in Romania for winter holidays

Well, I guess I should pay more attention to this wine discussion with Jerry Baxter, VP of Sales for The Charmer Sunbelt Group, in our Marketing II class.

Parts Emporium, Operations Case = pain

2006-09-19T22:55:00.000-04:00

How can a two page case in Operations Management can screw us as hard as this one? WOW!
The case seems very simple when read first as it seems to be very straight forward. Actually, it hides behind a very complex framework and implications.
It took my team about 10 hours to figure it out. Much like the Leadership case, with the only difference that with 80% of our efforts we will be able to pull probably less then 20 points worth of grade for this case (following the 20-80 analysis method).

By the way, this is the definition of this law: "The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many phenomena, 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes."

This guy, Pareto, obviously Italian observed that 80% of income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population.

Here are some life, day to day applications of this guy's law:
1. Work: Twenty percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of the results.
2. People: Twenty percent of the people you know (friends, colleagues, family) provide you with 80 percent of nurturing support and satisfaction.
3. Business: Eighty percent of the sales are made by 20 percent of the sales team.
4. Focus: Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your success.
5. 10% of wikipedia users make 80% of all edits ->>>> UHHHH... this totally contradicts the whole Operations Management class
6. Look at this Pareto chart :) now this is life under operations analysis!

For the ones who don't know the case I'm talking about, check the link in the title.

Time is money... Entrepreneurship

2006-09-11T14:41:00.000-04:00

What an interesting day we had: tons of business idea presentations. Just today, in only one room the total value of the business idea presented worth at least some 4 or 5 million US$. In one room, 25 business plans that will make history in the future.
We had Wall Street bar (a place where you go and pay the drinks according to the demand and supply rules), Electronic menus for the restaurants, where you can order without having a waiter, Family Planning and counseling for Chinese people, ordering cheap Online Sandwiches, making books from user's blogs etc. Amazing ideas, good entrepreneurs... Here is a video from an innovative idea by Team 10 who can make your dreams come true, even if you want to become a rap star:

Back to classes

2006-09-04T22:53:00.000-04:00

Holiday is now over! Back to classes as of tomorrow. No more long night sleep, no more nights on the beach, eating out and having fun with friends at some Irish Pub in Charleston... fun is now over... LETS GET BACK TO BUSINESS

Operations, Marketing, Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Economics = this week is just dedicated to you guys!!!!

Hard decision: study vs play vs sleep?!?!?!

2006-08-29T00:20:00.000-04:00

Managing time at its highest... Let's take an example(any resemblances to reality are pure imagination). Say its a Monday, evening to be more precise, you spent some 5 hours from 1pm to 6pm at work talking and doing some research, spend the whole morning in class feeling a little sick with a cold. You get home, feel very tired because of a long weekend where you didn't do a whole lot of studying, feel like taking a nap and actually go for it and take it.
You wake up, around 8pm, eat something, then realize that there is so much to read for tomorrow that you don't know where to start from. Should you do the readings in Leadership where every day you have a quiz and class participation? Should you read for Operations Management where it seems to be a hard class? Should you prepare for Marketing to keep up with the professor? Hm... Tough decision. Say you start reading Leadership and then, half way through the reading, someone comes and tells you that the schedule has changed and there is no Leadership for tomorrow. Even more, there is a lot to read for Global Economics instead.
OMG!!! It's already 9pm, you have so many things in your head, what to do first???

Operations Management seems to be ranked number 1 as priority so you start this but realize 1 hour and a half later that it requires more time than you've thought. So what do you do?
Then you find out there are more important things to think about and your head start spinning again. What do you do?

This moral dilemma has a simple answer: always when in doubt whether you should study or not... GO PLAY THEN GO TO BED!

But as I said, it's a hypothetical example, this can never happen in reality... so go ahead and study, study, study.

First IMBA soccer practice

2006-08-27T16:27:00.000-04:00

From left to right Top:Alex, Adrian, Jeff, Joe, Zack; Bottom: Josh, Sarit, Anand, Hernan

Missing from the picture, but played, are: Angus, Josh, Andy and Kirch

Saturday August 27, 2006... a day that will make history! The first IMBA soccer practice for the Class of 2008-09. We met at the Hand Middle School field around 5:30 pm on a hot, sunny afternoon. There were a lot of people who showed up.
Given this was our first meeting and most of us are still out of shape, playing was not an easy deal, but we all had fun and we got back home happy that we all met.

This is a picture we took in the end, after some of the people went home. (Thanks to the nice lady with the dog who took this picture)
Also next time, we will be waiting for more people to join our team for another afternoon of fun!

STEAUA: We are the CHAMPIONS!!!! (We're back in high life)

2006-08-24T00:12:00.000-04:00

I feel soooo bad that I haven't updated my blog in a week now. There has been so many things that went on: FA final exam, grades reported back, parties (I will come back to this) and finally today one of the most amazing days in my recent history.

Why? Steaua, my favorite football club team, has qualified for the Champions League group stage. Why this might not mean anything to you, I will try to analyze the situation and explain it.

1) Steaua Bucuresti is a football club team founded in 1947. It's the most succesfull and popular football team from Romania and the first in Eastern Europe, to win the European Champions Cup in 1986, having also won the European Supercup in the 1987.

2) The UEFA Champions League (known colloquially as the European Champions Cup, changed in 1993) is an annual club football competition organisms by the UEFA for the most successful football clubs in Europe. It is one of the most prestigious club trophies in the sport. It has a global audience of more than 4 billion viewers in 227 countries.

The competition is basically opened to all the football clubs in Europe, which, at first they have to win their internal national league and then play some qualification rounds in order to get there. It's a long road especially if you come from a country which doesn't have the capabilities to invest tens of millions of dollars in this sport. Plus, the format of the competition is such that if you do bad this year, next year will be harder to get in and the situation is getting more complicated as years go by.

3) Steaua is the only Romanian team who has ever made it to the Champions League groups but that was 10 years ago. Since then, no other Romanian team made this performance. It was harder and harder for a Romania team to make it, but as of yesterday Steaua (by winning over Belgium's Standard Liege) has qualified again for the competition making history. I can't tell you in words what this really means: football is like a religion (you ditch your family, money, life, everything just to be there and cheer and live, people go nuts, go crazy on the street and would do anything just to see their idols). This qualification will bring huge advantages: more $$ for our team and country, more tourism, more sales is media and advertising, huge foreign coverage. The benefits can't really be quantified. Share the joy and happiness I felt yesterday by watching these moments after the game:

Being in the business school, I see myself in need to talk about this part of the whole picture. Champions League is all about money, power and fame. UEFA Champions League is a highly profitable competition for the clubs that reach the group stage; it distributes part of the revenue obtained from television deals between these clubs. For example, the payments for the 2004/05 competition ranged from Â3.8m (Sparta Prague - who didn't win a point) to Â30.6 million (Liverpool who won the competition). UEFA estimates the amount of money to be given to the 32 participants of the 2005/06 group stage at Â430 million. Clubs make additional money from ticket sales, corporate hospitality, merchandising, advertising and so on. For a team like Real Madrid or Manchester United who make millions of $ just from selling t-shirts, being in the Champions Leagues is a must in order to financially survive. For these clubs, the UEFA money is pocket change but for small clubs like Steaua, which has an estimated yearly budget of 8 million $, getting a pie of 4 million euros is huge.
Here is some data I found on the impact of a game played to the stock market:
The following table relates stock price variations the day of the champions league game followed by the result of the game after the markets have closed.

Date Variation Game Result

15-Sep-04 + 0.59% Olympique Lyonnais 2-2 away
19-Oct-04 +0.40% Sparta Prague 0-0 away
3-Nov-04 +0.84% Sparta Prague 4-1 home
23-Nov-04 +1.42% Olympique Lyonnais 2-1 home
8-Dec-04 + 0.91% Fenerbahce 0-3 away
23-Feb-05 -4.08% AC Milan 0-1 home
8-Mar-05 -1.40% AC Milan 0-1 away

This is just a day to day result. The conclusion is that a good run in the Champions League can help teams stay financially sound while early exits can spell trouble. Furthermore, unlike national leagues, the consequences of a bad result are immediate. If you lose a game and then draw one at the beginning of the season, it can be overcome, whereas a misstep in the Champions League can be fatal near term. What a business model...

First take-away quiz ever

2006-08-15T22:10:00.000-04:00

In my entire college, high-school and middle school history I have never come across a take-away (to home) quiz. I hope I did a good job, because there was plenty of time to spend on it and I really want to gain some points that I lost on the other class quizzes.

It was an interesting experience for me, considering that all our quizzes in Romania are highly monitored by teachers and assistants so we can't cheat. What a difference!!!
Let me tell you about cheating a little. Below is just one of the new methods to cheat on quizzes and tests. In Romania, during college, we tried them all: cell phones, palm pilots, invisible ink, Bluetooth transmissions, audio emitters anything you can think of (I studied engineering, can you tell?).
Now, going back to business and thinking bizniz, this can be a very good business idea but it doesn't conform to the social and moral ethics; it might also be illegal. (darn!)

"How much did you get on question 1? Reply: I didn't do it yet!!! How did you do number 3?"

Speaking of cheating, check this out: Cheating Tables (they help you find innovative way to cheat your tests, friends, business partners, life and society). What a nice invention! How much do they cost?

It was a joke. :)

Quote of the Week

2006-08-14T00:51:00.000-04:00

"I think everyone I know is very horny right now, to be totally honest :)"
this anonymous awesome girl I know

How was your weekend???

2006-08-13T23:22:00.000-04:00

These weekends... they should be recharging you with energy to make you get prepared for the upcoming week. I don't know about you, but most of my weekends wear me out of energy; I really like going out and partying until early hours of next morning, but I just have to find the right mood.
Anyways, the weekends wear me off completely and not to mention that I also have to do some homework or work on some other projects as well. This is not a relaxing weekend, no battery recharge... it's battery discharge, sleepless nights and some drinks.

This is my dream (angel) theoretical weekend:
1) Get off from school Friday; eat something and sleep for 2 hours
2) Wake up and do homework for next week until 8pm
3) 8:30pm gym or some other outdoor activity
4) 11:30 pm dreaming
5) Saturday morning - early studying 2 weekes ahead from 9:12 am to 9 pm (with a lunch break)
6) Go out hand have 2 drinks then come back by 11:34pm and dream about some girls
7) Sunday - wake up at 8am and work 3 or 4 weeks ahead

Wanna study??

This is my real weekend:
1) Go to Greenville on Friday; have fun; eat junk food; stay up late
2) Wake up late in the morning (11 am); eat more junk food; go shopping at the mall
3) Come home late, Walmart shopping, sleep
4) Sunday late wake up, some accounting stuff, some time i forget what i did and then sleep.
THIS REAL WEEKEND IS VERY NICE AND LOTS OF FUN AND PARTYY

Wanna party?

Greenville pictures will be posted here: http://akillianopix.blogspot.com

So... coming back to the original question: How was YOUR weekend ?

T.E.D.

2006-08-08T15:40:00.000-04:00

There was nothing really important about today's classes: we got back the results from the GL AIDS case and then had a discussion about Monsanto's "terminator" seeds; DA didn't bring too much happiness in our lives either, so time went by slower than in other days.

This being, said, today's post will move towards something more interesting and probably more important for our lives. It will be about TED!! Who is TED? Today I came across this video, which I had seen before, but I wanted to find out what this is all about. I will explain this to you.

If you wonder how it would be possible to live forever in heaven without being bored and thought that being able to speak with smart people and see cool things would be entertaining, I can tell you that TED is as close at it can gets to this dream. It's a place where one can speak with the most amazingly smartest people on the planet. This conference is the very pure essence of technology and design as you will see from a promotional video from the conference in 2006.

TED is a 4 day event in Monterey, CA which brings together just the freshest ideas from not only in the T, E and D but also in in Business, Science or Arts or any other subject that has something to show off. The best professors, the best speakers, the best ideas in every field that requires imagination... eveything is there in one place, one a year; THIS IS AMAZING!

The bad part is that in order to participate, you will need an invitation which might not be as hard to obtain but you will have to pay $4,400 to attend a conference. People say it is worth all the money in the world! WOW Hey if you just thought that you might want to attend the 2007 conference, please notice that it's already sold out :)
I am not going to tell you more about TED, please visit the website http://www.ted.com and you will not regret it. If you are a blog person, you can also check http://tedblog.typepad.com/ (the TED blog).

This is a little movie I posted today so you can get an understanding of what is going on over there. While this is very interesting, it is only one of the few things that happen in there. Check it out:

This technology basically tries to revolutionize the way we use devices and I think it will definitely change our way of living in the future. Amazing isn't it?

And, by the way, if you like this video check out this web site: http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/. It presents some of the guy's research innovations.

Micro and small business

2006-08-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

Here we are again. New week, new thoughts!
We have just started a new class today, called GENT (Global entrepreneurship). Let me tell you from the start, that it sounds like a super interesting class.

Definition: An entrepreneur (a loanword from French) is a person who undertakes and operates a new enterprise or venture, and assumes some accountability for the inherent risks. (wiki)

Cool stuff:
1) We got to chose drinks at the beginning of the class (Some strange gingseng tea, water, Starbucks mocha, gatorade)

2) He gave us an awesome presentation on the world trend: micro and small businesses are getting their voice hearted more and more these days. The innovation comes from this area now.

3) We have to come up with a business idea in our 3 or 4 people groups; not only that, but during the last class, we will present our business idea to all of our class mates; they will be the one who will rank the business projects and the winners will actually get to have money back

1st place $500

2nd place $250
3rd place $125
4th place $75
5th place $50
... this says it all for class competition

4) We'll get to meet with one of the most prolific entrepreneurs that graduated from the IMBA program: http://www.gtis.com/index.cfm. Impressive product that sells now for some tens of thousands of $ and is a global business (actually, as global as it gets).

In the meantime, we have to think of a business proposal idea, so if you read this blog please support me by commenting on a innovative business idea that you think it can work. I would really appreciate it!

DA Midterm and Mondavi again

2006-08-02T16:28:00.000-04:00

We had DA test today... big thing, the midterm. Yesterday, everyone was studying so hard to try to do their best for the exam. We just had the longest exam in our short history at Moore: a little over 2 hours. Our professor, Dr. Philipoom (no picture) gave us an easier mid-term simulation than the actual thing this morning. Anyways, we are already half-way through the "hell week" and guess what, we are surviving, we are good.

Speaking of hell, we are done with Mondavi !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This news deserves a fully line and some page breaks!

Good job team!

Haier America

2006-08-01T08:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we had a guest speaker for our GSM class. Here is his picture (I didn't take it, but that's him). Mr. David Parks, Senior VP of Haier America, was debating with us a case that was talking actually of his company, Haier.

He is a very good speaker and was able to give us the story of how Haier America came to exist. We found out that Haier in South Carolina has a bandwidth of manufacturing that is three time greater than any other supplier in the US and how challenging is to work for a Chinese company in an international environment or how fun is to sign a contract with NBA and get free tickets to the all star game :). Haier's core competency are: the flexibility to adapt to the consumer's needs and the design of high quality products. Haier's overseas strategy was different than the one all other Chinese companies had: instead of going with cheap, low quality products and local staff and board targeting easy to penetrate world markets, Haier hired all local managers and started by promoting its products in one of the most important markets in the world, USA.
The class finished with a 30 minutes of Q&A.

What a way to debate a case, having the case subject in the class and talking to it!!! I wish all classes were like this!