Testing

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

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

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

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

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)

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)

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.