Simon en France

no comment!

2008-07-30T22:26:00.002+02:00

next stop: Aix-en-Provence

2008-07-16T16:03:00.003+02:00

Hello again on my blog. Since I’m now on language course in France I’ll try to write my posts in French and in English. But first of course the french version. English follows below:

Bienvenu sur mon blog. J’ai fait l’expérience des tas de choses. Comme tu aurais vu dans le post précédent l’entier mois du Juin était consacré à la coupe d’ Europe en foot. Ce championat était organisé par l’Autriche et la Suissse. J’ai travaillé pendant les trois jours qu’on avait un match à Berne. C’était une expérience merveilleuse car l’équipe des pays-pas a joué chez nous. En même temps je continuais la recherche d’un emploi mais ce n’était pas un succès jusqu’ici.

Au moment je suis à l’étranger de nouveau. Maintenant au sud de la France, à Aix-en-Provence qui est près de Marseille. J’ai décidé de reste ici pendant l’ete pour m’améliorer en français. Je suis arrivé le dimanche passé et déjà jouis la ville et le beau temps avec le soleil, 25° et un peu du mistral. Aujourd’hui ma classe a commencé. Je suis dans une groupe qui existait déjà avec 8 professeurs qui sont originaire de l’Autirche, le Danemark, la Suède, la Suisse et les Etats-Unis. J’ai eu la possibilité de parler en français avec ma mère d’ hospitalité et pendant ma classe. On est même arriver à ne pas parler l’Allemand ou l’ Anglais avec les autres étudiants.

En question de culture et nourriture j’ai réalisé qu’ on a beaucoups de fruits et légumes ici. Ils utilisent beaucoups d’ hile olive pour cuir et le valeur de l’argent se mesure avec les baguettes ;) C’est ça pour le moment, je continuerai bientôt...

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Welcome again on my blog. A lot has happened since my last. As you could see in my previous post the whole month of June was dedicated to the European Football/Soccer Championship which has been organized by Switzerland and Austria together. I’ve worked on the three match days in Bern which was an amazing experience as we had the Dutch team playing here. Apart from that I’ve written some job applications but none was successful sofar.

Right now, I’m again abroad. This time in southern France, in Aix-en-Provence which is close to Marseille. I’ve decided to spend my summer here and try to improve my French skills in a language course. I arrived last Sunday and already enjoyed a bit the town and the marvellous weather with sunshine, 25° and a bit wind which makes it very comfortable. Today my class finally started as well. I’ve been put into a more or less existing group of 8 teachers from Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and United States. And I had already a lot of opportunities to speak French cause I’m living with a landlady, during my 4 hours of class and afterwards at lunch. Some of us, including me, even managed not to switch to either German or English although that’s our mother tongue or the languages we know better than French.

Concerning culture and food I only had a few encounters so far. I realized that they have a lot of vegetables and fruits here, they use a lot of olive oil for cooking and of course they’re counting the value of the currency in relation to baguettes ;) That’s it so far, more to come later on…

Euro 2008

2008-07-01T23:20:00.008+02:00

Memories from the last month!

I'm freeeeeeee!

2008-05-29T15:17:00.002+02:00

I'm just sitting here at schiphol airport in amsterdam in the lounge waiting for my flight back to beloved Switzerland. Out of curiosity and boredom I opened my laptop and tried to connect to wlan which worked. And then I check university systems and find out that the last grades have been published. Couldn't be any happier because I have not only passed but with a good grade, actually the best grade of the entire course, followed by one of my exchange friends! An those grades obtained here together with my thesis grade I got, allow me to maintain more or less my average. Which means, I'm done with everything and just have to wait until I'm officially done - but that's just a matter of time. So finally, I'm free from studies but still looking for a job. This means basically no studies, no job, no clue!

Time to say goodbye!

2008-05-26T18:49:00.004+02:00

These days we have a lot of goodbye parties, dinners etc. to attend. One after another is leaving Rotterdam and going back home. And as everyone has again some time for oneself the strange feeling of internal emptiness is rising again. I'm glad I leave soon because this place is not the same without my great friends. And I'm glad some are still here until I leave - so we can do some activities in the evenings... And then from next week on I'll mentally and physically prepare myself for Euro! ;)

Switzerland and Euro here I come (again)!

Het laatste nieuws

2008-05-22T18:53:00.003+02:00

A lot has happened in the last few weeks and I wasn't very active with postings. Too much was going on to remember and to tell everything. I try to summarize the most important events.
Concerning studies everything went more or less according to plan for myself. We had to write a huge group paper (almost a second master thesis), present it and finally an exam this week all for the same course. Troubles we had for the paper were more or less that at one point the rest of my group was unavailable (due to planned as well as very sad and unplanned reasons). This lead to the fact that a big part of the paper was written by myself in only couple of days. Afterwards I was quite annoyed (about the paper not the group) and was not very motivated anymore. Nevertheless I think we finished ok and most important thing is that I have finished my last course of my studies now. Today I finally got my grade for my master thesis as well and now I'm practically done with my studies and have to wait...
On the other hand apart from studies the weather has improved a lot lately. Two weeks ago we had one whole week of complete sunshine with around 23°C - we thus spent a lot of time outside in the park with organizing picnic or studying or sat outside drinking few beers (once even until 0430 in the morning). Due to my increased work-load I wasn't able anymore to travel a lot. The highlight was definitely queensday on 30. April where a group of us went to Amsterdam to celebrate the national holiday. It was amazing how everyone was on the streets, dressed in orange clothing and having fun - and so did we.
In the last weeks I started to set up my near future as well. I applied for some jobs but don't have any feedback yet (neither positive nor negative). But luckily I still have a bit of time as I wish to start on 1.10. Until then I will have enough plans to fill my time. First, I'll stay in Rotterdam for another week and have some fun with my friends here. After moving back to Switzerland on 29.5. I'll be Volunteer for Uefa Euro08 championship on the three match days in Bern. At the same time in June I'll try to apply for further jobs and hope that I'll be lucky soon. From beginning of July till mid of Septemeber I finally plan to go to southern France, Aix-en-Provence to be exact, to attend language courses in order to improve my french skills and visit some beautiful parts of France as well as visiting maybe some friends "close" to Aix. That's it sofar. It's nice to feel to have some time again - for the first time probably since I was in Croatia last summer. Je me sens libéré!

3 weeks left ;)

2008-05-17T12:36:00.002+02:00

Spring in Netherlands

2008-04-24T21:16:00.005+02:00

I let the pictures speak!

Busy bee

2008-03-28T19:16:00.003+01:00

Looking back at the last 1.5 weeks I really got the impression that they were really packed. First of all, I had to write an exam for my previous course called Marketing, Technology and Innovation. Although I didn't have the impression that it was too difficult and unfair it took my 2.5 hours to finish, which is kind of uncommen as I'm used to have uni exams which last between 1 and 1.5 hrs. You never know how detailed they expect you to answer, but I have a good feeling though. After the exam and partying in the evening I enjoyed doing anything for once. I went to buy some clothes and for a coffee in town and just made it home before it started to rain cats and dogs. In the late afternoon and evening I just stayed home and relaxed.
Friday morning I then left for the weekend to Amsterdam where I met my parents. We visited several places like the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum or the Foam Photographymuseum, walked around or just enjoyed the company over a coffee/dinner. Except the weather the whole weekend was amazing. Another reason for that was, that I met friends again, which I got to know in Stuttgart and haven't seen for almost 2 years. On saturday evening we partying like crazy with the result that I arrived back at the hotel at 6 am and only slept for four hours. And it's kind a strange when the hotel staff is yawning and you still feel energized when you come back :) On sunday evening I joined my friends again, but only for a beer. Later on I travelled back home to Rotterdam where I arrived at 2 am.
Monday and tuesday I spent mostly at home relaxing, except dinner and and some beers as we celebrated Nisha's birthday. On wednesday university continued and my new course (Event and Tourism Marketing) started. They decided to do a shock therapy with us - we had to research and write a group paper in 2.5 days and present it already before it was finished (and it contributes 20% to our final grade). As they only set the "framework" and the research object, we came up with our own research question which was "Can the Olympics 2008 be successful in branding China and Beijing?". I think we did a pretty good job in the short time we had and our professor said at the presentation this morning that it seems to be good but still gave us some tips for further improvements. We handed in our final paper 3 hours ago and now we'll see. Aaaand there we go, off to another weekend!

Half time

2008-03-18T18:10:00.004+01:00

On a rainy monday morning I stepped onto this pitch called Rotterdam and soon later I got to know my teammates for this game. We're not la squadra azurra or les onzes de france, no we're more like a club team, without any contingent for international players, which makes our team a tight group of the best players each country has to offer. We have the observers in our team which don't talk too much although they're around and they take their job seriously - they're perfect for goalkeeper position. Then we have those you don't see too much, are diving into their work and stick to their position - perfect for the defense. Then a big group of us is mostly around, keeping the pace up but knows how to vary the speed of the game - our midfield. Another group is travelling all the time, eager to see everything, literally running all the time all over Europe - a perfect match for the wing positions. And then of course we have the ones who try to score on every arising opportunity - our strikers.
After a short training camp we headed off together to our first 45 minutes, which contained back-breaking work as well as artistic masterpieces. It was such an intense game, that the first half flew by at the speed of sound and now they're already over. Tomorrow, is already additional time where we have to put all effort in it one last time before the first half is over. Then, afterwards everyone heads for the locker room to refresh, get the act together, get some time to relax. To drink a cup of tea and exchange the dirty shirt with a clean one. Everyone has his own locker room though. Some have it Italy, in Czech Republic and others in France. Me, I'll have it in Amsterdam where I'll be drinkin my tea with my parents.
The nature of the game implicates as well that there are usually some changes the longer the game lasts. We are having our substitutions already at half time. Some people have finished their work, are heading for there locker room but won't come back for the second half. Others who were on the bench for the first 45 minutes are going to substitute those who're leaving. It's gonna be exciting to see if and how we can keep up the pace. And especially who will be able to do that. And last but not least: how are the substitutes going integrate themselves into the remaining team...

The rise, the fall and back to the future

2008-03-10T20:16:00.004+01:00

The last couple of days have been strange somehow. Last friday everything was quite normal. Jacob, one of our dutch buddies celebrated his birthday on saturday and threw a party on friday at his place. After trying to be a friend for certain people at the party and help them overcome some issues, I woke up pretty early saturday morning after only a bit more than 5 hours of sleep. Still with some power left I wrote my part for our final report of a group project and went grocery shopping and all even before lunch time. Deciding that I already did enough for the day I started to relax, watch a movie and procrastinated my jogging to sunday. The evening was quite special as well as almost everyone just stayed at home - so did I and watched some more movies.
Unfortunately though on sunday it was raining. But I overcame my inner bastard and went jogging for 40minutes in the rain and it was quite fun. That's when I got soaked for the first time, but I didn't mind as it was intentional. Afterwards a friend wrote me that she's kind of bored and we agreed to go for a late coffee at around 5pm. When I drove to town it was still raining which was a bit more annoying as I got soaked for the second time, but this time with causal clothes. Anyways I still was in a good mood and it even got better when I came out at home in the evening and wanted to head to our regular happy hour at Concordia - and I saw the stars in the sky. But then after Concordia the fall begun. First of all I had some problems to open the lock of my bike. I felt it already the days before that it got worse but still, it always worked. Then today I had classes and when I wanted to leave I really couldn't open that damn lock - I had to try for almost 15minutes until it finally worked. I was late and so pissed that I didn't want to use the lock again - but of course the stores weren't open to buy a new one. So I somehow faked it at uni and put my lock around the wheel without really locking it. And I was glad and lucky that my bike was still there after classes. But then - of course it had to rain again and when I arrived home (after buying a new lock on the way) I was soaked for the third time in 24 hours! Anyways I started to study and now I feel quite good again.

Beside that nice little story I started really to think about my future. I got my last grade from St. Gallen on friday and it's getting more and more obvious that I'll be done with my studies in the end of may when I come back. So, huge question now is where to apply for a job. I'm mainly interested into consumer goods, technological stuff and highly marketing (branding, PM, online marketing) related stuff. And what annoyed me a bit some weeks ago was, that half of the companies represented at recruitment fair in St. Gallen were consultancies and banks. But as part of my process I decided to write an entry in the forum of an online community and stating that I'm looking for an entry position in marketing. Now, today I got a message from a company which is maybe interested. But the irony is: it's a strategy consulting company focusing on the sectors leasing, asset management, real estate and private banking...

Boring life?

2008-03-02T13:23:00.006+01:00

In the past two weeks, things have started to settle down a bit - finally. Most of us were getting more and more occupied with projects, assignments or readings for our classes. Others are still travelling Europe like crazy as their time here is limited. And everyone had gotten the urge to relax from time to time and just stay home once or twice a week, watching a movie, chatting with friends from home etc.
Nevertheless we were still having good times together and having fun during different kind of activities. Two weeks ago for example, was the ABN AMRO Tennis Tournament here in Rotterdam. Jacob, one of our buddy organized tickets for us. We were a group of around 30 people going together to see two matches on a tuesday evening. First there was the french Michael Llodra (who won the tournament in the end) playing against the dutch Raemon Sluiter who's orignally from Rotterdam. This made the whole arena crowded and everyone was cheering for him - expcept the Frenchies in our group of course. The athmosphere was even tighter as Sluiter annouced before, that he'll retire after the tournament - so we got to see the final match of his career. In the second game we saw top player Nikolay Davydenko winning against czech Jan Hernych. Although the level of the second game was better, the athmosphere sucked because half of the seats were empty again and no one seemed to care anymore. Although this experience was interesting for me, I have to admit, I'll never love to go to see tennis matches. You just have to be too quiet and not too much is going on...
Apart from that we've visited Utrecht on a sunday trip, been to museum night yesterday, spent regular nights at pubs or went once to dinner to Hotel New York, a famous restaurant at the spot where the Holland America Lijn started to take off in the early years for their cruises across the atlantic. Tonight finally we'll make an international dinner where we'll gather in a flat of fellow exchange students and cook typical stuff from each country. Gonna be an adventure for our stomachs. As you can see, still interesting stuff is going on.

Boring life? - Not at all!!

Travelling

2008-02-18T19:20:00.004+01:00

It's been already four weeks since I left Switzerland and came here to Rotterdam for my exchange term. Apart from getting used to the city, studying during the day, partying during the night, sleeping at unsual hours I was also travelling around on the past three weekends.
After two weeks of getting accustomed to Rotterdam, a bunch of exchange students wanted to go to Carnival in another city. First we came up with the plan to travel to Köln, but as it was too expensive for some of us we dropped this plan although few exchangers were already there. Instead we went to Maastricht where we spent the early afternoon watching the parade, then went to lunch in a Pizzeria before enjoying the party on the streets of the city. As we had the impression that we wouldn't be able to party the whole night because we didn't see any clubs, we decided to head back with the last train from Maastricht towards Eindhoven where we switched to another train to Rotterdam, where we finally arrived at around 3am. As I left my bike home I had the pleasure to walk back home for half an hour.
The week after our Maastricht trip, my dutch buddy Iris suggested to go for a dinner with all here international buddies. The plan developped further and further and in the end we decided to head to Den Haag for a day. It was one of few very beautiful and not too cold days here in Netherlands. We therefore decided to head to Scheveningen and go to the beach where we had some fun taking jumping pictures and enjoying just the nice weather. After walking a bit around in the city centre we finally went to dinner which was more a hilarious than a delicious experience. But even this couldn't change our mood and it provided us of course with some new material for jokes. After dinner and a desert we headed back to Rotterdam where very few party animals went out till four o' clock in ther morning. After only a couple of hours of sleep, a group of exchange students met again and had some relaxed sunday lunch before visiting Delfshaven (the only part which wasn't bombed during WWII) and the Euromast. Later on we went together to dinner before stopping at the obligatory happy hour in Concordia, the typical students pub for exchangers.
This weekend finally, some friends and I planned to go to Bruxelles. As usual several people backed out and we ended up being only 5. After visiting the royal palace, the Grand Place, Cathédrale Saint-Michel and the Manneken Pis we went for the first time to Delirium, which is the pub holding the Guiness Book World Record with over 2'000 different beers. After only one of them we went to restaurant Chez Leon for dinner before heading back to Delirium for some other beers, where we celebrated the beginning of the 30th birthday of one of the exchange students. Already at around 2am we headed to a hotel where all five of us squeezed in a single and a double-bed room. On sunday we visited then the Museum of fine Art and the European Quarter where we witnessed the auto-corso due to the independence of Kosovo. Our last stop finally was Parc Leopold where we spent some time relaxing and enjoying the sun before heading back to get our luggage and head home to Rotterdam.

Carnival in Maastricht

Beach in Scheveningen (Den Haag)

Rotterdam and the Maas

The beginning of the famous harbour in R'dam

Grand Place in Bruxelles

Back to the core business

2008-02-11T14:29:00.000+01:00

After writing about my first impressions and some stories about the social life here, I'll dedicate this post to the reason why I'm actually here - my studies. Studying here at Erasmus Universiteit doesn't feel totally different compared to my previous experiences in Switzerland, but still it's somehow different.
First of all, the studies here are of course affected by the fact that I'm on exchange. My (and as well those of other exchange students) are not the same like they were back home. It's not only about the studies but as well about visiting place, enjoying oneself, going out, meeting friends. Therefore I don't feel as dedicated to my studies as I was some months ago. Nevertheless, we all try to find the right balance between having fun and studying seriously. Although it's sometimes hard to be motivated I believe that we all manage to get on the right track.
Secondly, the approach of teaching is slightly different here. You concentrate yourself on less courses but those are more intense, time consuming and of course important after all because you'll get 10 credits for a master elective and not 3 to 6 like in Switzerland. The result of this is, that we're having around 12h classes per week, assignments to do in 2 days and projects for several weeks plus exam and all those in around 7 weeks and for only one class. And as we're only about 17 students in my class, participation and interaction is more important.
Another thing you can notice here is, that there's no bell ringing all the times. This means that's it's pretty much up to the professor and the classe when and how often they're taking a break. My lecture starts at 9am and usually lasts until 1130/1200 with only one break of 15min. In Switzerland you would have at least three breaks of 15min in this time. And - important to know - there's no academic quarter here. If it says 0900 on the timetable, it is actually 0900 and not 0915. I'm glad that I thought about that point already before the term started and took that into account on my first day of lectures...
As we get 10 credits for one elective I'm only having two courses during my exchange - the first started in the end of january and will last until mid-march and the second class will be from end of march till mid-may. As the course I intended to take for the second block was cancelled I had to choose a new topic, which means I'm now in a course called "Marketing, Technology and Innovation" and will afterwards participate in "Event and Tourism Marketing". Sofar, the topic of my course is pretty interesting. We're discussing topics like how new technologies and markets evolve, how you can use new technologies for marketing purposes etc. Along with lectures we're having to big projects. The first is Google Online Marketing Challenge where student teams around the globe compete against eachother. We're have to plan an AdWords Strategy on Google for a real-life company we had to find and will run our campaign for three weeks. The second project is a Product Development Concept where we have to come up with a concept for creating new products...

Food, drinks and the payment disaster

2008-02-05T16:30:00.000+01:00

It's time again for some educational input in here. In a previous post I already mentioned the excessive use of bicycles here. Now I would like to tell some other stuff in order to bring the country a bit closer.

Food&Drinks
Nederlands is not very famous for it's cuisine I guess. When we went out we rather picked a "foreign" restaurant. We went to maroccon or indian place, some even to sushi. But what is typically dutch in my eyes? First of all, lunch is not important to them. They eat sandwhiches or simply broodje met kaas (bread with cheese). A hot meal for lunch is very rare. But what I perceived is, that they eat a lot of smaller things here and there during the whole day. I read about that in a guide about NL and experienced it especially during integration trip where we had small things during the whole day but only a cold lunch. The only thing sofar which I discovered and like a lot are stroopwafels. These are small waffels filled with syrup out of caramel, very delicious but you have to watch that you don't eat too much of them :)
Drinks are not so different than back home. A lot of beers like Heineken, Amstel, Brand or Dommelsch, then wine or water. According to Dutchs, Sodas like Cola or Fanta are not so common but you can buy them everywhere. Apart from that Dutchs like to drink Coffee and Tea. Just make sure you don't go to a Coffeeshop for a coffee :)
Just to note here, coffeeshops are the places where they sell marijuana products. To straighten a prejudice: Although everyone thinks so, consumption of weed, marijuana etc. is NOT legal here. The dutch policy is, that they tolerate it in coffeeshops and at home in order to keep it out of the street and fight against hard drugs. If you're on the street a possesion of max. 5g is tolerated and not more. According to our dutch friends, this policy has led to a low drug abuse rate in Nederlands.

Paying in NL - A complete mess
Nederland is usually perceived as multicultural, open-minded and thus a good place for internationals to live. But if you see the payment system you could come to another conclusion. First of all, they have tons of different cards - everyone must have like a huge wallet to carry all of them. In the end though, everything leads to a dutch bank account, which, of course you can only open if you will be customer for more than a year. The two major ways of payment here are pin (regular bank card - but only dutch cards work) and chipknip (the chip on your banking card). Chipknip is supposed to be for small payments so you can upload cash on the chip and then pay with that. And of course you can only upload your chipknip directly from your dutch bank account. Or, you buy a pre-paid card. You pay 22.50 and get 20 cash on it - thats how they make money here :) To make the living for internationals even more complicated, they probably agreed to refuse credit card, cause you almost can't pay anywhere with creditcard - only pin and chipknip. And at university we were told that there exist even more cards for the same purpose but in different buildings. To show you how ridiculous this whole thing is, I give you the example of printing at university:
To be able to print you need a card (obviously) with a magnetic strip. Bank card and credit card don't work. To put money on your printing card you have to pay - but you can't pay in cash! Either pin or chipknip. Which leaves you more or less only the possibility to buy a pre-paid chipknip to the price already mentioned. The chipknip, obviously, you can't buy with credit card - only with chipknip, bank card or cash. Sooo, in the end, you usually go to an ATM, get money with your card, pay charges there. Then you buy a chipknip, where you pay charges again. The chipknip you can then use to get money on the printing card and now you're able to print your documents!

Ok, that's it sofar. Stay tuned for the next post, which will be probably about studying at RSM...

Too many things to tell

2008-01-31T20:46:00.000+01:00

There are so many things to tell but I kind of feel to split it up and publish infos and stories step by step when I have time and in the mood to do so. The first days here in Rotterdam have been a blast. Tonight is the second time I actually decided not to go out and get some rest at home. On the weekend we were partying all night long and even on sunday we went out for a couple of drinks to Concordia, sort of students bar which had had happy hour. After staying home on monday we kicked-off tuesday night with some beers at the bar in the university building (already at 5pm). Afterwards a Deborah & Nisha (two american girls), Andrew & Dave (two canadian guys), Fran (an argentinian guy who just arrived on monday) and me decided to go to an indian place for dinner where they had all you can eat. After stopping by at Dave's place I went home to finish the assignment we had to do for wednesday. Yesterday has been a huge party night again. First we started at Milena's place (bulgarian who lived for the last ten years in US) with some wine and cheese. After (ab)using happy hour at Concordia once again, we went to the international students party at a club called bikini (some club names remind me of the fancy names in Stuttgart) where I left at around 0430 am...

Classes finally started as well on monday. I just have one course which is called Marketing, Technology and Innovation but I'll get 10 ECTS for it. So it's pretty time consuming with around 12 hours of class a week and then assignments and projects. But over all the topic sounds very interesting and the next project coming up is the Google Online Marketing Challenge. Teams from different universities compete against each other in planning and implementing a search engine marketing strategy (Google AdWords) which we will run for three weeks. Although it appears to be interesting and fun, it might just be a bit too time consuming (for exchange) for my taste.

Apart from partying and university I explored a bit the city as well. Rotterdam is a city with a very modern centre and stylish architecture as the city centre was bombed during WWII. But if you go a bit outside of the centre (but still in the city) you'll see all those typical three story, brick-lined buildings. Striking is as well, that if you enter one of the houses you have to climb very steep stairs in the beginning. This might be due to the fact, that the city is located below sea level and this could be a little bit of protection against flood. I attached some pictures to give you an impression of the city...

The building i live in

A bit outside of the centre

Weena

View from university

Erasmusbridge and river Maas

First news from the Netherlands

2008-01-25T16:20:00.000+01:00

Hartelijk welkom uit Rotterdam! It's been now approx. five days since I arrived in Netherlands and I already had some time to adapt and get to know the city and some people. As a lot of things already happened I'll just pick out some things to tell here and now. More will probably (hopefully) come later on...
On monday and tuesday i got to know the city a little bit by walking and cycling - yes I already bought a bicycle (fiets). It's very common here to drive by bike and you realize that on the street everyday. As we were told there are around 20 Mio. bikes for 16 Mio. inhabitants in this country. As you can imagine, bikes are everywhere. On every pole you can find next to the street there is at least on bike locked to it. And there are special cycling lanes everywhere in town, which makes it very convenient and relaxing to drive even in the city as you're sort of secured and have your own space. And everyone - pedestrians, cyclists, motorists - is used to it and looks out for bikes so it's even safer. The only thing about bikes which is annoying is, that bikes are getting stolen. So you really have to lock it at all times and rule number one you learn is, that the lock should appear to be more expensive than the bike. But still, there are junkies who steal and then sell bikes in order to earn their money. One of our dutch buddies already told us, that he once bought his own bike back from a junkie for 5€.
In the evening of tuesday I finally got to know my dutch buddy Iris and some of the exchange students. We met for dinner in a maroccon place, which served very delicious food. After eating we went for some beers or drinks before heading home at around midnight (of course by bike through the almost empty streets of R'dam). As mentioned, everyone of us exchangers got a dutch buddy, which is taking part in the international exchange program as well and should help us to get along and get to know a bit dutch culture. Intersting fact about this is, that 2 out of 6 buddies are AIESECers who were P/VP in LC R'dam :)
After those first two days we went on an integration trip from wednesday till today. We were in a hostel (called "stayokay" :) in the eastern part of netherlands between Arnhem and Enschede close to the german border. We had some get to know, trust and confidence or just fun activities like bowling. In the evening we had first a dutch evening and then an international cabaret followed by some for me (and several for others) drinks. But it was cool and fun to get to know the other exchange students. We are a very multicultural group with eg. people from Indonesia, Taiwan, Spain, France and Norway as well as from US or Argentina.
About the university I can't tell you that much yet as I have been there only shortly. Confusing though are only the names of the uni. The whole university is called Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. This is not because people who are on exchange take part in the erasmus program, but because Erasmus was a famous dutch philosopher. Even some dutch people don't get that, as they think that the Erasmusbrug (bridge over the river Maas) is called like that because Erasmus was the architect of the bridge. In this Erasmus Universiteit are different departments and faculties. I'll be studying in the RSM, the Rotterdam School of Management. My first lecture will start on monday and it's called Marketing, Technology and Innovation. As we found out on our trip another exchange student is taking that too, Pavel from Prague. For the second course I have to look for a new topic as they just informed me that the one I was supposed to take had been cancelled. Well there are not so many options which interest me, but at least I have now the advantage that I know who of the exchange students will take which course and that might slightly influence my decision as well, as it's probably more fun to study together. Anyways, I didn't decide yet and we'll see. I still have time till monday to get to a decision. But now, we'll first go to dinner together and then probably for a drink or to a club. What a nice life it still is after handing in the thesis and before lectures start again...

3...2...1...done!

2008-01-18T21:00:00.000+01:00

It’s friday evening and I’m sitting in the train back home to Bern. Busy times are lying behind me and the tough days finally come slowly to an end. Time to relax a bit and enjoy life again is coming up. The new year started with studying for an exam, hopefully my last exam on swiss soil ever, which I had last monday. As you can imagine we went to out afterwards - a bit too much. The effects of this evening combined with not sleeping enough and loosing some tension already, made me feel sick the next day. I barely made it to the drug store to buy some stuff against my headache and then went to bed again. My plans of going back home around lunch time and use the day to work on my thesis were rolled over. Anyways in the evening, I still had to go back to Bern as I had a dentist appointment first thing wednesday. Wednesday continued busy. In the morning I finished my thesis and sent it to my dad who printed it for me. After picking up these paper versions, I tried to find a place to bind it. But regulations at university in St. Gallen are so stupid that no copy shop in Bern could do it. Only bookbinder (that’s the correct name although it sound awfully incorrect) would have been able to do it - but of course not in time I wanted it. So, I decided to call a copy shop in St. Gallen which I knew could do it to make an appointment for friday. After running around for that, I had a small interview for a volunteer job at Euro2008. It was quite nice, they have some interesting jobs to do and I think I could score some points;) Not only that with the teams of Netherlands, Italy and France playing in Bern I would have a slight language advantage but as well because the interviewer was a woman from Stuttgart. As I recognized her swabian dialect, I - of course - carefully mentioned that I have been working there :)) In the evening after that I once again met some friends to have a drink and to say goodbye.
Thursday was a bit more quite. I only took care of some small stuff and started to relax a bit. I even took the time to take a nap in the afternoon - I still like the concept of power napping a lot :) In the evening again I was meeting some friends - this time AIESEC oldies from Bern. Today now, I went for the last time to St. Gallen. Not only did I manage to get my thesis finished and to hand it in, but I met another AIESEC friend for lunch and to give her one of my books I used for my thesis - she happens to write her thesis in a similar area. And in the afternoon my successor in the flat finally arrived - Kamil a good friend from Prague who’s spending his exchange term in St. Gallen. After unpacking I showed him a bit around and he finally knows now where to go for the different things he has to take care of.
Now, as mentioned, here I am, in the train back home. Tomorrow there’s the last thing I need to do - transition for my NST job. I’m glad we found some successors and that I can finish that task as well. And it will probably be as well my last step within AIESEC - being finally a grown man and able to walk in to the future. Tomorrow afternoon and on sunday I will be hopefully able to wash my clothes and pack. Then, in the evening my next adventure finally begins: I’m leaving to Rotterdam for my exchange. Hopefully for my last term at an university - ever! The term starts already next wednesday - with an integration trip for all exchange students :) And then on 28th I’ll have my first lecture at RSM. Well after the last few weeks - studying for exams before christmas, writing the second half of my thesis in five days over christmas and studying for an exam again in the first days of January - I assume that I will feel relaxed even although I don’t really have holidays. Anyways, great times lying ahead and I’m finally starting to get ready to rumble!

Beginning of a new era

2008-01-01T16:12:00.000+01:00

The new year 2008 will bring some changes for me as you can see already from my blog. The new design is only a small, symbolic change - I decided to set it up already for my next few months in Rotterdam although I'll be still back home for the next couple of days.
2008 will be the beginning of a new era for me because I (hopefully) will finish my studies, which means that my life in the education system which I started around 18 years ago will come to an end. Therefore I will, once again have to make a important decision and face a challenge: find a job. But I have many other plans and ideas for this year. First I go to Rotterdam, to spend my last months on another university - the third one in my students life. The departure date is now set as well - 20th of January. Afterwards I'd like to enjoy the Euro2008 and for the rest of the summer and beginning of fall I have the idea to go to France to pimp my french before finally start to work by the end of the year.
So, in 366 days (yes this year we have again an additional day) I hope to look back and be able to say that it was a successful 2008, that I lived in 3 countries this year, that I found a job and of course that we had an amazing June and tons of fun throughout the whole year :) Let's see what it brings, but I'm optimistic for the next 12 months!

Happy 2008!

2007-12-29T17:12:00.000+01:00

Wish you all a good start into 2008!

Thesis Live-Ticker

2007-12-23T16:54:00.000+01:00

Short update this time. After partying twice till 5am on wed and thu, helping packing a friend who moved on friday and going back home, I finally managed to sit again on my thesis. I literally hit the keyboard and the output of this weekend has been 9 pages arriving now at page 44. So, only the part about IBM, the reflection of the methodology and the conclusion to go - on max. 16 pages. Finally seeing an end of the tunnel :) Merry xmas! Over and out...

X-am time

2007-12-17T14:36:00.000+01:00

One week is left till it's christmas. Two weeks are left, till 2007 changes into 2008. And one month is left till I'll leave to Rotterdam. And I didn't realize any of this yet. Isn't that strange?
Well that's probably how students life is gonna be in the future. You study before christmas, you study during christmas and you study afterwards. Anyway, I'm glad that's it's the last time for me. But I'm somehow glad as well that I have some packed weeks behind me and that I never had the impression to throw a "joss stick"-party, to put a candle in the wind or to go shopping on sundays together with all those "65+"year-old who never have time during the week :)
I finished the interviews for my master thesis last week, handed in my term paper last week, had an exam on friday and one today - no more exams left in 2007. But does that mean that I have time again? Don't think so. Tomorrow I have to finish our report for the praxis project, then in the middle of Jan. I have my last exam in St.Gallen and of course my lovely thesis. I already picture myself during the next two weeks. My best friend: my laptop. Family is trying (!) to sing xmas-songs - Simon is writing thesis under the christmas tree. After having drunk to much wine on christmas - Simon is trying to write on his thesis. New years eve - Simon is spoiling the glass of champagne over his notes and his laptop. Anyways, we'll see if this is gonna be reality. I don't hope it. But hey, there's a good thing to. Everytime when I get bored with celebrations or when there's some work to do I can try to excuse myself as I have to write on my thesis :)))

So on this note, merry christmas! Enjoy it if you can!

The post without a title

2007-12-05T00:20:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I wrote here, that there are some actions needed to make it a happy ending here in St. Gallen. Well there's some action going on indeed, but it's a colorful mix of ups and downs. For example in the last two weeks I conducted 6 interviews for my master thesis, I more or less wrote my term paper, we had our group presentation in the "sustainability" lecture, we progress with our practical project and I started last week with studying for my two exams in approx. 1.5 weeks.
The problem is that there are always setbacks. I called today 4 of the 5 clients Hilti gave me to contact for my master thesis interview. 2 asked me to send it by mail because they don't have time for an interview. One told me to call another day but not at 9 o' clock in the morning because they go to coffee break then. And the fourth one doesn't want to help because they don't have time. And Hilti didn't inform them yet that I'll contact them. Then I had a setback with my term paper as I couldn't find case studies. At least this is solved now, was successfull yesterday :)
Then there are group projects which sometimes drive you crazy. I especially liked my people who wrote in the document "we should do this and that" instead of actually making it. Or the one who changed small things in the first half and then wrote a comment that she won't do it for the second half as we should first take a group decision whether we want to change that or not! Aaargh!

Anyways, I have a bit more than a month left to try to finish things here in Switzerland. The ingredients for this time are:

1 thesis to finish
1 paper to hand in
3 exams to take
1 group project to finish
1 day moving my stuff to Bern
1 room to find in Rotterdam
1 nst-transition to make (if i ever get a successor)

and of course

22 days not getting burned by candles
5 days not getting hit by a christmas tree
3 family christmas events to survive
3 times not drowning during different bashes
1 time not falling between 07 and 08

And again at the end of the post, the complaining part is much longer than the celebrating part. what an optimistic person I am :)

Some things in life are bad,
They can really make you mad,
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you're chewing life's gristle,
Don't grumble
Give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best

Comedy? Horror? Drama?

2007-11-24T14:52:00.000+01:00

Let me tell you a story I experience since last wednseday. I'm not quite sure to which genre this story belongs to. Is it a comedy? Or rather a horror story? Or a drama?
Anyways it all begins in August 2007, when one of my flatmates moves out and fills in this form to forward his mail to his mom's address. By mistake he writes my name on it as well because he beliefs he has to indicate someone who will be living in this place afterwards. Then, 3 months (!) pass by and nothing happens.
Now last wednesday my ex-flatmates mom calls me and tells me that she always gets my mail and she can't give it back to the postman because he refuses to take it cause this is my new address in their system (and I don't get any mail since around 2 weeks). We agree that she'll send it in a new envelope to my address and I'll pay the post office here a visit. I did that on thursday and the lady there after some blablabla writes down my name, address and my ex-flatmates name on a blank sheet and tells me she will proceed that as a customer complaint.
Today, one hour ago I get another call from my ex-flatmates mom and she tells me that it has been sent back once again to her. Ok, already a bit pissed off I decide to go to the post office here again. And now the real story starts:
I explain the employee on the counter the situation and first thing she answers me: "that is not our mistake" - yeah, well sure but who cares, I don't give a damn about that, I was actually there to make it change and not to blame anyone. Ok, then I tell here that she needs to change that in the system: "oooh, we can't do that, that can be done only by those upstairs" (who are of course not there on a saturday). ok, then she says something that the postman has to get this info. I tell her that it must be a mistake in the system because my name is still on the mailbox. And that it was quite strange because suddenly my name on the mailbox was crossed and I had to put a new "name tag". "Ooooh, but postmen are not allowed to do that, I must have been someone else" - yeah sure, someone else, coincidentally scratches my ex-flatmates name (the one who moved out) and mine with the same blue pen and didn't cross the names of my other two flatmates - probably this mysterious "someone" was one of my current flatmates... anyways, what could we do. fill in a form, of course - that's what you always do in such situations. it took her ages to fill it in because she didn't have a clue about that form neither did her colleague from the next counter. And in the end she finally says "Ok, let's hope it's gonna work like that!" - Excuse me? Hope? Noooo, now it has to work otherwise it will definitely be your mistake :)

Now key question for students like me who study marketing and always hear stuff about alignement of words and action: Does this experience support the following, very nice statement Swiss Post has on their website?

We think and act in a customer-oriented manner

Customers are at the heart of our every thought and action. Our company recognizes their needs at an early stage and acts correspondingly.

Hopefully not to be continued!

Action required!

2007-11-15T16:53:00.000+01:00

These days it's getting dark outside at 5 pm already! These days it's snowing the whole day! If you have a look on a calendar these days, you see an 11. These signs are clearly indicating to me, that everythings coming to an end! The year, the term, the time in St. Gallen, the studies take a bit longer but the end is visible, the time in AIESEC as well. But on the other hand, I have the impression these days, that the time is running out! I see a mountain of work to overcome but the clock keeps ticking. Everything makes it clear, decisions have to be taken, action is required! Now!
This might sound, that I get somehow depressive, stuck in the winter blues with cold grey days and even colder dark nights. But nooo, actually I feel content right now. Why? Because I have the feeling that I'm making progress and acomplish something:

DO-IT
Do-it was last weekend and after some difficult days of planning and organising, re-planning and re-re-planning the conference finally took place. It was a special conference in different ways. First of all, It was my first (and probably only) conference as track responsible and faci. But the Alumni Track was running somehow apart from the rest of the conference. Ok, it a part was because of me, but some other decisions were not mine! And although I belonged to the faci team, I didn't feel like being part of it. I met some old friends from @ time which is of course very cool as well, but you get a bit ambitious over the years and if you don't really meet new people...
Concerning our track itself, not everything turned out as we planned or hoped but there have been developments during the track which I didn't expect at all. Alumni started the discussion where they could be involved and what should be changed. And they insisted to make this happen! On the first glance it looks like a lot of work for us (or better: for our successors:) and it sure is! But if you have a closer look, you can say, that they actually gave us, the NST Alumni Relations bargaining power. Bargaining power we need to negotiate with MC and LCs to finally get them doing something concerning Alumni Relations!

Studies
Concerning studies there is still a whole lot to do and if it doesn't happen now, I don't know when to do everything. For my exchange term in Rotterdam I finally made up my mind and decided which courses to take! Decision taken, acted as well! For the courses I'm taking this term there's still several things to do although we just handed in a case study today. There's a presentation about water problems for households in switzerland coming up in 1.5 weeks. And it's quite difficult for our group to have a presentation about that if guest speakers keep telling you that everyone else will have water problems except switzerland! Then, there is the report for our pracitcal project we have to hand in in a month - yes at the same time I'll have two other exams and all the courses are mandatory for our masters. What great planners those universities are...
On the other hand there's still my master thesis. I was worried the last weeks but now, I think it's getting ok. I have to shift my expectations and try to get all the interviews done before leaving to Rotterdam. But the interview with the first company I had last monday and the one with the second company I'm supposed to get next week. I probably leave it with those two and will interview only their clients but won't try to get another one and hope the brands of those two will outshine my work. I don't thank them yet as work is not finished, but I'm still excited to have Hilti and IBM on board!

busy days

2007-11-06T22:24:00.000+01:00

I'm quite busy these days with blockseminary at uni, preparing sessions, migrating data to my new laptop and of course now our internet connection is not working. i'm glad that there are still some unsecured wlans around:) the picture below shows my multitasking with aiesec-email and session preparation for do-it...

Questioning

2007-11-01T15:12:00.000+01:00

My life is full of questions at the moment. Some are more important than others of course but I have the impression all of them should be answered immediately.
Why is it impossible for some companies to maintain a proper communication management? I know a student who want to write a master thesis is not the most important task, but still, I think it can´t be possible that the head of a department for business partner in switzerland (of a very well known company) is not able to answer (himself or through an assistant) on an email in 5 weeks, a phone call in 3 weeks and a second phone call in more than a week. How should you be able to get in touch with such people?
Why do universities always say they want to encourage mobility for students but act otherwise? They introduce a bologna-system but let you prepare applications with tons of material if you want to switch, then tell you that you have to do additional courses and complain in the end that they have an additional workload. Or they adapt starting and ending dates of terms but only so much, that it´s not enough to go abroad without any problems. Then they complain that the profs. can´t go to fall holidays with their families anymore. And they won´t let you take an exam earlier if you want to go on an exam term. Question is now, should I stay till the exam and then go or should I go and have to come back to take the exam and then go again...?
What kind of courses should I take in my exchange term? Too many options for criterias: Rather the interesting ones? Rather the ones with not too much workload? Rather the ones with exams or the ones with papers? The ones which offer long weekends or the ones with classes on monday and friday?
And then there are other ones like how should you design an alumni track with mostly very recent alumni? how should you promote something very emotional like a screw? Is the questionnaire for the master thesis gonna work? Is the whole thesis gonna work? And so on. but for now it´s time to go back to work and figure the answers out...

Vocabulary

2007-10-29T23:47:00.000+01:00

I´m not really inspired at the moment to write something in my blog. I therefore collected some expressions to help you enhance your vocabulary in the meantime. Today it´s about words you definitely have to know if you´re working in an office... :)

Beepilepsy - The brief seizure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid-sentence.

Blamestorming - A group discussion of why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

Chainsaw Consultant - An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the top brass with clean hands.

Egosurfing - Scanning the Net, databases, etc., for one’s own name.

Glazing - Corporate-speak for sleeping with your eyes open; a popular pastime at conferences and early-morning meetings. “Didn’t he notice that by the second session half the room was glazing?”

GOOD job - A "Get-Out-Of-Debt" job. A well-paying job people take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit as soon as they are solvent again.

Irritainment - Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.

Salmon Day - The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed in the end.

Seagull Manager - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, shits over everything and then leaves.

Uninstalled - Euphemism for being fired. Also: decruitment.

Visiting Blacksocks

2007-10-19T14:50:00.000+02:00

Today me and a friend visited Samy Liechti founder and owner of Blacksocks in Zürich. We interviewed him for a case study in our course Leadership/Entrepreneurship. Blacksocks is selling a subscription for socks as a core business but extend lately to underwear. It was really intersting to have a chat with Mr. Liechti.
First I´d like to describe the environment. We arrived in front of the house, Blacksocks was supposed to be in, but there wasn´t any indication of a company. There was no sign, the house looked more like a detached house. But the number indicated that we were at the right address. We went to the second floor and even there was no indication or sign. Only because he told me beforehand that we should come to the reception in the second floor passed the door and entered. Inside it looked more like an art gallery than an office. But we were at the right place and the reception lady indicated us the meeting room we could go in. After he arrived as well in the room he offered us coffee and served it himself - in plastic cups, the ones you usually buy in the supermarket for family celebrations. It was a very sympathic ambiance!
Our intervied finally was about the innovation and how they founded a company, characteristics of an entrepreneur and so on. I don´t to reproduce everything but only some things:

They started back in 1999 to sell on the internet, at a time where only a small part of people already had access to the internet. There were not so many doing this already, that´s why Blacksocks and LeShop were the ones always mentioned as swiss examples for e-business.
In the first years they were very motivated and euphoric. Everything was going well, there was a hype for the Internet. On 10.9.01 they were almost celebrating, because they got a 4 min. coverage on CNN and they could see live how there sales were increasing. But the day afterwards it hit them as well like many others, but maybe even a bit more. There whole infrastructure for the US market was in the WTC...
The factors of success he thinks are passion, bravery, simplicity and not being status oriented but loving what your doing and doing it because you like to implement an idea. Simple they still are - most of the stuff they outsource or lease and rent, even the table and the chairs in their meeting room is rented and not their property!
His best moment with Blacksocks he says, was when they won the Copernican Award in New York and he was standing with this heavy, ugly thing on 5th Avenue (by the way Flickr was on the 2nd place:)

To summarize it was really interesting and I think it would be more fun for students to do more such things than sitting in classes... Aaaand next time you need socks or underwear check out www.blacksocks.com - they might have something for you!

Cheap Miss?

2007-10-19T14:14:00.000+02:00

I went today to Coop Ryfflihof in Bern and when I entered there was a huge crowd in the section of the beauty products etc. I wondered what kind of promotion attracts so many people, cause I only saw those 20% discount ceiling hanger. But when I passed I saw the real reason of the crowd: The new Miss Switzerland was signing autographs. But still the questions remains: Is she a cheap Miss or was it just a coincidence?

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

2007-10-13T00:14:00.000+02:00

The past

It´s almost a year since I changed university and came to St. Gallen. And it´s more than a year since a came back to Switzerland. In this year several things happened. I got used to studies again, I “got over” my time in Stuttgart, I met new people at a new university, I passed 13 exams, projects or papers, I got selected to go abroad again to Rotterdam for an exchange term and I started “my job” as NST Alumni Relations in AIESEC. Finally I spent 1 week in Slovakia, 1 week in Croatia and 3 weeks in the bunker. When you just look at it, it seems to be packed. But it didn´t feel as intense as my time abroad! Anyway I wouldn´t change the decisions I made...

The present

These days I’m not so much in the mood to do a lot for my studies. I do things for my different courses from time to time, I feel that I´m as well busy with doing other stuff but I get distracted easily and I have the impression of making no progress at all. And I´m certainly not good at planning at the moment. I don´t know where to start, I don´t know which should be the next step and I even don´t know where I´ll spend next week. St.Gallen or Bern? Somehow I´m stuck…

The future

A common question is, “where do you see yourself in a year”? Well, at the moment I see the following: I´ll have to finish my thesis and pass some exams here in St.Gallen. Then I´ll spend some months in the Netherlands studying and hopefully travelling and enjoying life a bit. During this time I should start to look for a job. But I still don´t know yet when I should start to work. There are several options. 1) Starting to work as soon as possible, that would mean on 1^st of June. 2) Have some holidays and enjoy Euro 2008 in Switzerland, this would lead to a starting date on 1^st of July. Or 3) the one I prefer at the moment is, enjoy Euro 08 in June, then go on a language course (would be probably French) for 3 months and start on 1^st of October. Anyway, answer to the initial question: In one year I see myself working my a** off, in a department related to marketing. But until then:

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

U2 - Stuck in a moment

The future is bright...

2007-10-05T14:54:00.000+02:00

...the future is orange! Why? I finally got my last grades today for the exams I had almost two months ago - and I both passed them without being brilliant. But this doesn´t matter at all. One of those was french, professional communication, a language exam. I knew from the beginning of my studies in St. Gallen that I have to proof two foreign languages in order to get my degree. But for almost one year I didn´t care at all, until, in June when I had to register for exams I somehow had the idea that I´ll take the french exam this summer. After being registered I knew that I should study a bit as well, and finally around two weeks before the exam I did that but I was bored very soon afterwards - so I didn´t study too hard. Anyway, on the day of the exam I felt completely unprepared. Not because I didn´t study. But when we entered the room I went to my place, took my water bottle, my pens and my markers out and sat down. Then when I looked to the right, to the left, in front and behind me everyone had this Micro Robert (which has around 1000p,) french-french dictionary with them. Back then I had the impression that I was probably the only one who didn´t take the french preparation course for this whole year. But as a joke I told one of my friends in there, that I will do a little freestyling and apparently it worked. So, I´m glad I didn´t spend a whole year learning french, when I could do it in around a week :)
The second exam I had to take was kind of strange as well. It didn´t interest me as it was business law, I couldn´t go to classes as I had master classes at the same time, I had to write it in the gym hall, the whole exam was multiple choice and the grade won´t count for my average. BUT, it was very important at the same time. Without passing, I wouldn´t get a degree and without passing it NOW I couldn´t go abroad. But luckly, I don´t have to worry about that anymore. The future is orange - Rotterdam here I come. Ik studeer nu en beetje Nederlands...

Time to laugh about yourself

2007-10-04T01:03:00.000+02:00

On the day I was born...

2007-09-22T00:08:00.000+02:00

... those were the top 5 music singles. No comments needed, just enjoy :))

No.1

No.2

No.3

No.4

No. 5

On the sidewalk...

2007-09-13T20:04:00.000+02:00

...around 20m from my flat in SG and I pass it everytime I leave home or go back!

Newbies!

2007-09-11T23:40:00.000+02:00

Today when I went to the library to bring back several books and to get another one. I passed a group of newbies. It´s their introduction week that´s why they had this guided tour through the library and I heard the sentence of the day when I passed! them The guide said:

"This one is the site plan. It´s really important when you´ll be looking for books!"

It was really hard not to start laughing because I realized I´ve never had a look on a site plan of a library since I started my studies in ´02! Hmm, how did I manage to get this far...?
Anyways, welcome to University Newbies! Welcome Class of 2012!!! *lol* or how did Dr. Kelso put it in the pilot to scrubs:

"Son, do you not realize, that you're nothing more than a large pair of Scrubs to me?"

Politics

2007-09-06T16:33:00.000+02:00

Look at earth from outer space

Everyone must find a place
Give me time and give me space
Give me real, don't give me fake
Coldplay - Politics

Do you recognize the person on the picture? No!? Well it´s me! It´s always about me (here) ;) No seriously. Elections are coming up so I did this questionnaire smartvote.ch some days ago and the result you can see above.

Here are some figures from this questionnaire: The maximum match I got with an candidate was 73.3%. The worst 39.4%. I can elect 26 persons for Nationalrat (with 400 candidates). From those 26 there would be 9 women. Average age of the wanna-be´s I should elect would be 33!! And the party I should support is JF or FDP... And my godfather is in one of the top positions! I´m glad we have a 65.2% match and I can elect him because of rational aspects :))) And what´s interesting as well is: First person of my really, really, really favourite party, the SVP, UDC idée suisse ;) is around position 100. And I´m wondering why this guy is on the J-SVP (young) list with an age of 40! I mean other parties have people on their regular list with an age of 21! Anyway, that´s just the figures! It´s a good indicator but I won´t elect according to this list only...
And while I was jogging today I thought that the following song suits the topic quite well :)

Let me apologize to begin with
Let me apologize for what I'm about to say
But trying to be genuine was harder than it seemed
But somehow I got caught up in between

Let me apologize to begin with
Let me apologize for what I'm about to say
But trying to be someone else was harder than it seemed
And somehow I got caught up in between

Between my pride and my promise
Between my lies and how the truth gets in the way
And things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that's worse than one is none

Let me apologize to begin with
Let me apologize for what I'm about to say
But trying to regain your trust was harder than it seemed
But somehow I got caught up in between

Between my pride and my promise
Between my lies and how the truth gets in the way
The things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that's worse than one is none
The only thing that's worse than one is none

And I cannot explain to you
And anything I say or do or plan
Fear is not afraid of you
But guilt's a language you can understand
I cannot explain to you
And anything I say or do
I hope the actions speak the words they can

For my pride and my promise
For my lies and how the truth gets in the way
The things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that's worse is

Pride and my promise
Between my lies and how the truth gets in the way
The things I want to say to you get lost before they come
The only thing that's worse than one is none
The only thing that's worse than one is none
The only thing that's worse than one is none
Linkin Park - In Between

Observing the library

2007-08-31T01:09:00.000+02:00

I started to write post earlier tonight but thought it was crap and didn´t save anything. But now, as I´m bored but can´t sleep I start to rewrite it…

I´ve spent quite some time at the library these past days trying to write my thesis, digging through several (sometimes 10 at a time) books just to get the proof somewhere for a thought I wanted include in my thesis - and of course to add another source to my bibliography… :)

Seriously, the main concept for this theoretical part of my thesis has been already in my head for some time. But putting it down is sometimes not as easy as it seems. And sometimes I know I´ve read something but I can´t remember where and I don´t want to write just without knowing that it´s true. Anyways from time to time I arrive at a point, where I know what I want to write next but I struggle with the phrasing - not like this post where I just write down what pops into my head - like the last sentence might indicate! Ok, while thinking about how to write things down I start to observe the library, which is quite interesting from time to time. And I don´t mean those countless shelves with tons of books, where I don´t know how many of them would be actually worth to read. No! I´m referring to those interesting characters sharing our lovely library with me. There are not so many left although it´s still exam period. But still, it´s quite fun to analyze them. So here comes a quick categorization - and of course a solutions as I am a solution-oriented person:))

Group A: Students spending countless hours in the library with their huge books. Maybe you should spend a bit more time to think about, whether law is the right thing for you and learning ZGB or OR by heart is a successful approach?
Group B: Students spending countless hours in the library but getting disturbed every 5 to 10mins by a) friends passing by or b) friends sitting next to them. Maybe you should start to re-evaluate your friends? Could it be that they just want to disturb and keep you from studying in order to be better in the aftermath? I mean, we´re here at very evil Uni St.Gallen where people stick at nothing…!
Group C: Students who try (or pretend) to write a paper a) without any book next to them or b) with a huge pile of books but not bothering to have a look at them. Ok guys, question: Isn´t there a reason why the library has so many books? And how can you explain, that there are actually people writing books about how to reference?
Group D: Students sleeping in a very uncomfortable position. The solution: Either change the flat if your neighbours (or flatmate) keeps u awake the whole night or start to study something which actually interests you!
Group E: Students - sorry to use stereotypes - but female and blond who are more interested in their finger nails and hair than in their books! Ok I can imagine that it must be quite tough for you that you´re not allowed to participate at Miss Switzerland elections. But are you sure that hanging around at an university is the right thing for you to spend the time until the application for next year opens?

Ok that´s it sofar, maybe I´ll observe some other characters soon. And don´t be bothered about the randomness of this post - it was intentional!

Update:

Group F: Students using library, research computers to do some "research" on facebook or studivz instead of studying. my advice: keep going, open new "if this group doesn´t get ..... members facebook/studivz will shut down" groups and if you´re luck you´ll get a social network responsibility award at ur graduation as a bachelor(-ette?) of arts in studiz- and facebook management!

I got it from my mama

2007-08-26T21:16:00.000+02:00

I really like sophisticated lyrics like this one! Is it possible that it can get even worse in the future?

Time flies by

2007-08-21T15:49:00.000+02:00

Strange thing happened last week. No I don´t mean the exams I had to write! I came back to Bern on wednesday and met a friend while passing through the mainstation and she asked me: "How was your holiday?" And my first reaction was (thinking) "Which holidays?" I mean, I was in Croatia about 3.5 weeks ago and spent an awesome week. But just after returning I had to start studying for my exams and I started to suppress my memories about that and now I´ve the feeling that it´s strange (sad, frightening whatever you´d like to call it) how much you can forget if you´re quite busy. And it´s the nice stuff you forget and the useless/boring stuff you have to remember!
Anyways, now I still have the feeling that time is flying by. I finished most exams last week (an oral one left this friday). But since my exams last week I´ve been busy with NST stuff and today I finally started to write the first pages of my thesis. At the moment I´m a bit tired but satisfied as well. At least I managed to write the first 3 pages of my thesis today - more than I expected. If I could continue like that, I´d be done with it in 3 weeks :)) But that´s of course only a dream but not reality! Let´s see how it´ll develop the next few weeks... My goal is that the theoretical part is finished by the start of the new term (mid of sept.) and to hand it in by the end of the year. But it really depends if I managed to get some companies willing to participate in the empirical part soon...

Random update

2007-08-06T21:22:00.000+02:00

I´ve experienced many cool moments in the last weeks. First I´ve been to

Croatia

for International Summer Programm organised by AIESEC in Split. We´ve spent an awesome week in Split, Trogir, Sinj, Imotski on the island Brac, in Krka National Park on a boat, different beaches or just swimming in the sea. The marvellous landscape, croatian natural beauties (that´s at least what the tourist guy called it) :), the amazing weather (days with approx. 35° nights with around 22°) and the nice people we met made this week a truly special experiences and a great week of summer holiday. There would be so many things to tell, my blog would probably explode… Just look at the pics on facebook or studivz and you´ll probably get what I mean!

The second amazing thing happened yesterday. I decided to go once again to a soccer game in Bern, watching my favourite team YB playing against Basel. And it was a hell of a game. One of the best I ever saw! In the end we won 5-1 and there was a I spirit I´ve never seen in Bern sofar. Hope it´ll go on like this…

Now I´m back in SG because I have exams next week! I´m trying to focus on my studies for the moment, but it´s tough. Still, the show must go on…!

Isn´t it ironic... don´t you think?

2007-07-10T23:41:00.000+02:00

My first exam period for this summer ended last thursday. So, officially I´m on holiday. It´s more like a time without lectures for me right now cause I´m not quite sure if i´m not doing more for studies right now than I did before exams... i´m trying to develop questions for my empirical part of my master thesis, i read like 50 pages a day of corporate governance, compliance and business law stuff. i should start to learn french again because i have an exam soon in that too. in between, while taking a break from studying i prepared the training for tonights swimming session, i think about ideas for the NST transition on friday and so on... isn´t it ironic? to have the feeling to work more on holidays than before?

On friday, my first day of "freedom" i helped my sister moving from St.Gallen to Zurich. As there were only three places in the van I went by train and took my sisters bike with me. But what happened? I drove to mainstation in St.Gallen locked the bike and went to buy a ticket for this bike. It took me like 3 minutes. When I come back there´s a flatfoot on the back wheel. I really don´t know why. I take next train to Zürich and try to figure out on the train ride which will be the fastest why to bring back a book at the library and then go to albisriederplatz with a bike you can´t ride. I decide to take the bike to central, leave it there go up and back with the tram, take it again into another tram. but is this a smart solution. friday around 4pm, some hours before zürifäscht starts? well i managed to find an empty spot for me and the bike in a tram. at some place i hear a voice announcing that the tram is not going to the indicate station but to another one. and people who wanna go there should switch to the tram which is just behind us. well, very nice to quit a crowded tram, move quickly through the even more crowded station and get in into another tram and all with a bike. i mean it was the first time i took a bike with me in a public transportation and of course they had to make this switch at this very moment...

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny way of helping you out

Priorities

2007-06-30T22:45:00.000+02:00

It´s saturday evening, 22:45 and I´m sitting at home on my laptop writing this just after watching a movie. But why am I here? Why do I do this? I could be at Openair St.Gallen listening to Kaiser Chiefs right now. I could be partying on a boat on lake constance at tanzschiff. And I could be in Bern together with many ppl partying at mc transition party. But I´m here, because I set my priorities. Because I have exams on wednesday and on thursday and my priority is to pepare myself as good as possible in order to be satisfied with myself after exams and to know that i did the best i could. My priority is in this very moment my grades, my studies, my future!
But why am I writing this? Yesterday we had the presentation of our term project at university. When presentations were over and after commenting on our presentations he asked us, why almost no one showed up last wednesday at barbeque for marketing master students which has been organised by the university for US. Well we told him that for some ppl it had been communicated too late and it was too close to exams next week. And what was his reaction? He got pissed off, told us that it´s something for us and there is apparently something wrong if THEY had to organise this. And that´s it´s about setting PRIORITIES!! Yeah right, priorities! So, what should be priority then one week before exams? Going on bbq or doing once something for studies? Am I setting priorities now wrong? Should I party all the time instead of focusing of what seems important to me in at the moment? Should I get wasted instead of believing in me and my experience i got in my past 7 terms at 2 universities?
I´m not really sure what annoys me most at the moment? Studying for exam? University itself? Or the fact that I´m not at the openair, transition party or tanzschiff?
A friend just wrote me lately, why I want to quit uni asap - it´s such a cozy life the life of a student. And I have to say: No! I´m getting fed up more and more. And that´s why I would set my priorities the same way I did sofar. And I will do it in august as well as for the whole next year! But only in order to finish asap without sacrificing the time afterwards...

Look - it´s a phone

2007-06-29T20:12:00.000+02:00

Is it the beinning of a new era in mobile phone industry or only a storm before the calm? Fact is, Apple is introducing today the new iPhone in the US market, AT&T the exclusive carrier refused their employees to go on holiday and temporarily hired additionally 2000 employees. Not many people have seen it sofar and even less could test it. But still, there are people queuing since the beginning of the week.

Experts are skeptical about the product. The camera is apparently not the best. There´s no connection to UMTS networks and the costs are relatively high (500-600$). And Apple denied AT&T to sell it with discount prices although customers have to buy a 2-year contract of the phone operator. Apple´s target amount of sold pieces till end of 2008: 10 Mio. Nokia sells this amount every 10 days...
Still, it might not be a superior product but Apple has enourmous competencies and knowledge in Marketing. And as the trend in Marketing is not anymore on a product or even brand perspective, but on a community perspective it could still be a successful product for Apple. Simply, because Apple products have at least since iPod a high social value. From my perspective, mobile phones are a highly publicly consumed good which supports the idea of a status symbol and symbolization of consumption. Or as our profs call it: the link is more important than the thing... in europe by the end of the year

Open Season - The exam period

2007-06-21T20:15:00.000+02:00

I´m preparing once again for the hunt. But once again I´m not the chaser, I´m the hunted! Soon professors start to shoot questions at me and I better be prepared.
Preparation means again being busy. Finishing our practice project and prepare for the final presentation in 1.5 weeks. Learning stuff about Communication management about communities, about brands. And about media and communication management in order to prepare for my exams in two weeks. At the same time proofreading my sisters master thesis and while doing that wondering what the "öffentliche hand" actually looks like and where she´s hiding (cause I never saw one in reality)...
Thus, I´m pretty well occupied. Won´t use the term stress because I´m writing a paper about work-related stress as well at the moment and know now a bit better what it is. Therefore I´m not stress, I only get pushed to my performance peek.

What keeps me happy at the moment?
While studying I enjoy listen to music on my ipod (connected to my stereo which makes the sound quality better). Keeps my mood up! I even started to do a song-diary last weekend, where I select one song per day. They can be stuck in my head, can catch my mood, a part of the lyrics which can be linked to an event of the day. Sofar there are the following songs:

Boten Anna by BassHunter for Sat 16.6.07
Forever by Papa Roach for Sun 17.6.07
Don´t tell me by Hoobastank on Mon 18.6.07
Running up that hill by Placebo on Tue 19.6.07
Raining again by Moby for Wed 20.6.07
In Between by Linkin Park for today, Thu 21.6.07

Apart from the music the fact, that I´ve been selected for NST Alumni for the upcoming term keeps me still happy as well. And of course making fun of people who were a bit too thirsty at unifest... :)

Swiss culture

2007-06-07T17:15:00.000+02:00

When I was preparing my „swiss-culture“ mini-session for the world-cafe at xps I found a very interesting book called "When culture collide - managing successfully across cultures" written by the british linguist Richard D. Lewis. In one part of his book he describes different cultures. About Switzerland he writes among other things the following stuff:

“In terms of cultural collisions, Switzerland is a prime candidate for polarisation among its inhabitants, since its citizens speak four languages belonging to four diverse cultural groups, which, during the course of history, have not displayed any particular affection for each other.”

“Switzerland is the most mountainous country in Europe, with the result that most of its people live in deep and often isolated valleys. They are suspicious of persons who live in other valleys…"

“Some may argue that there is no such thing as a Swiss - one writer described them as a collection of sedated Germans, over-fussy French and starched Italians, all square like their national flag.”

“Time is not seen as money, in the American sense, but as an important tool in organising your daily life and society. Swiss don´t rush you, but they don´t waste time either. Their accurate sense of timing enables them to predict and forecast events better than most nationalities."

“The Swiss are good at making you feel that you get what you pay for. If you try to bargain with them too hard, they stiffen as if you have made a shady proposal. They are straightforward negotiators who honestly try hard to see matters from an opponent´s point of view. One cannot call them inconsiderate – they are quick to make helpful suggestions when it does not hit their pocket.”

“The Swiss are rather heavy drinkers (ninth in the world) and inveterate smokers (sixth). They also are third in drug offences, although this figure may be artificially high due to the efficiency of the national police administration.”

“You don´t have to be exciting to make a Swiss like you; they are looking for solidity and reliability in the people they deal with. You should show that you are in good control of your emotions, private life and financial arrangements.”

Swiss Values
Polite, clean, tidy, punctual, cautious, worrying, over-serious, dull, hardworking, proper, law-abiding, god-fearing, honest, frugal, saving, environmentally sensitive, family oriented, disciplined, pragmatic, perfectionist, obsessed by security, neutral, keen on training and preparation, suspicious of all foreigners and anxious to control

Visiting your hometown

2007-06-03T21:11:00.001+02:00

Have you ever visited your own city? I mean the city you would call hometown? I actually did it on saturday, when I was showing a friend around. It was somehow a strange feeling. We arrived with the train from St.Gallen and I showed her the old town, the Bärengraben, Rosengarten, Mattequartier and via Kirchenfeld we went back to the city centre. She took pictures all the time, I was carrying my sports bag and we were talking in "proper" german together. It somehow made me feel like a tourist too. On the other hand I understood of course what people were talking. I knew how the city lives, how the patterns of bernese people are, how they behave. Together it was a quite strange experience... And maybe because I´m not living in Bern anymore, that´s what I´m becoming slowly, step by step: A stranger in my own home??

The wall

2007-05-25T10:36:00.000+02:00

In the last two months I´ve done quite a lot of reading and researching for my master thesis. Everytime I stumbled over something useful I wrote it down on a piece of paper in order to collect sub-topics, ideas and so on. To keep an overview and see the ideas most of the times I started to create a wall (seems that I got somehow internet-addicted and copied the facebook concept to real life ;-)

Anyway I start to like this way because each time I want to get into the topic (again) I just can have a look at the wall, if I remember that I wrote down something I don´t have to search for it in my messy pile of papers and if I have a new idea I just can add it to the old ones and it mentally says Simon wrote on his own wall ;-)) Still, I have to be careful that I don´t overuse it and write down everything without filtering it. Otherwise it just gets another post on the wall or a wallpaper.

My wall

Marina di Massa

2007-05-22T17:01:00.000+02:00

As already mentioned before, I´m quite busy these days. After Kick-off I spent only two days back in St. Gallen - one was for relaxing and the other for studying. On Wednesday evening me and some friends from my club left Switzerland and headed to Italy. We spent 4 marvelous days in Marina di Massa, a town in Tuscany between La Spezia and Pisa. On the beaches and in the sea we trained for around 6 hours a day our skills in Surf Lifesaving containing swimming, surf ski, surf board or running on the beach. As you can imagine I was pretty tired from the trainings and the travel back to St. Gallen when I arrived on sunday 11pm.

For all those who are interested in what you can do in lifesaving sports, you can check out these two sites:

Swiss Surf Lifesaving
Australian Surf Livesaving

Unfortunately there was no time for me to relax or even recover because the course which occupies me this week started already at 9 am on monday. The topic of the course is Emotions in Organizations and is an interesting topic. Though I´m facing classes from 9 am till 5 pm for four days in a row which is pretty exhausting. I´m just glad that it´s a mixture of lectures and case studies and not only lectures otherwise I might fall asleep...

Back from the OC

2007-05-14T16:04:00.000+02:00

A lot was going on the past few days and will go on in the upcoming weeks. Since last wednesday I´ve been in Fiesch for Kick-off where I worked again for the organizing commitee. It was again a lot of work, not so much time and even less sleep.
To sum up there was a mixture of different feelings and emotions. There were cool moments like most of the time together with the OC. There were annoying moments, like during official dinner and awards night. There were tiring moments like driving through the whole Valais and back to get some inkind. There were relaxing moments like sitting with the laptop and some music in the sun while waiting for people showing up for coffee break.
There were hurting moments like when you just woke up after only 2.5hrs of sleep and move still a bit sleepy to breakfast and delegates telling you (as a joke for them) that you should work and not sleep. There were challenging moments like setting up several external workshops at the same time combined with room reallocation and there were stupid moments like fixing beamer problems because the beamer was attached to one extension cable meanwhile another not linked extension was put to the power supply.
There were disgusting moments like cleaning up in the morning after global village. There were funny moments like playing CSI with some OC members. And there were just great moments like when a delegate honestly and directly acknowledged our worked and thanked for it! And there were of course some really amazing individuals around!

Life in Cartoon Motion

2007-05-04T12:46:00.000+02:00

Yesterday when I played around with photoshop I found out something I didn´t know yet.
After some learning about it I decided to do a post about some beautiful and / or important places I visited or lived in lately. And it´s somehow in cartoon motion...

St.Gallen, 2007

Bamberg, 2006

Venezia, 2006

Berlin, 2006

Stuttgart, 2006

Barcelona, 2007

Heidelberg, 2005

A part of my family story

2007-05-03T14:57:00.000+02:00

Today in an article of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about the election of the new federal canchellor one of the representatives of my family was mentioned. He - Johann Ulrich Schiess - was the first federal canchellor in Switzerland and the NZZ said the following about him:

Der erste Bundeskanzler, der Ausserrhoder Johann Ulrich Schiess, garantierte während einer Amtszeit von 33 Jahren Kontinuität im Wechsel der Regierungsmitglieder. Bereits in den Konflikts- und Kriegsjahren von 1847/48 hatte der damals 35-Jährige Kanzleiämter inne. Wie einer Dissertation von Simone Iten zu entnehmen ist, war es Schiess zu verdanken, dass sich die Bundeskanzlei zu einem mustergültigen Apparat der Bundesverwaltung entwickelte. Der äusserst exakte Bundeskanzler verlangte von seinen Untergebenen allerdings grosse Arbeitsdisziplin. Schiess stellte sich jeweils neben der Kanzleitür auf und verabreichte jedem, der zu spät kam, einen tüchtigen Klaps. So viel zur guten alten Zeit.

Apparently he had a very intersting managing style, especially when it came to management of his employees. I don´t know yet whether this style is in our genes or not. Probably I can say more when I got to a position where I´ll be responsible for some employees...

No friends? - !

2007-05-01T20:07:00.000+02:00

Today when I finally signed in in studivz as well (why do we need 2 platforms for the same thing??) I really got a shock! This anonymus, computer-controlled thing told me the following:

I´m really depressed and feel very, very, very lonely ;-). At least I have a laptop which is still my friend and does what I want :-)))

Under construction

2007-05-01T18:22:00.000+02:00

For the second time in around one week, the website where I uploaded pics for my blog-template somehow lost my stuff. Therefore I went back to a regular blog-template. And finally I managed to solve all technical problems which came along...

How much celebrity is in me?

2007-04-26T22:21:00.000+02:00

Among others, there were the following matches as well ;-)))

David Hasselhoff 63%
John F. Kerry 58%
Freddie Prinze Jr. 55%
Colin Farrell 54%

Try it out here

What a wonderful world

2007-04-24T21:18:00.000+02:00

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world

Random announcements

2007-04-23T02:15:00.000+02:00

Announcement 1: Participated in the Train the Trainer Seminar this weekend. It was a really cool, intensive but funny experience as well. My official press release can be read on AIESEC Bern Blog.

Announcement 2: I´m definitely gonna be at kick-off 07 (which is surprisingly my first and probably last kick-off at the same time). I´ll join once again the extended OC! Just hope I don´t have to put on my "Phorensics" Jacket again because of TSI - Trash Scene Investigation ;-)

Announcement 3: I´m a bit disappointed at the moment because I didn´t get the tickets for Euro 08 I applied for. I really hope that people who got tickets are real fans and not just fashionistas!

Master thesis - topic is set

2007-04-18T17:55:00.000+02:00

I just arrived back from a meeting with one of my profs here at university. We discussed my master thesis topic and finally decided to officially register it at the uni. For all those who are interested I´ll shortly describe what I´ll plan to do. And I hope I manage to write it in a way that people who´re not familiar with that business stuff understand it.
I´ll start with the title. Of course like each thesis, it needs one of those fancy titles ;-). My topic is called Brand perception in Business-to-Business: Impact and Instruments

Brand perceptions: Brand perception says something about a how a company, a product or a brand is perceived by it´s customers, it´s investors or the society for example. It´s what people think of a brand, it´s the attributes, the benefit they link to a brand. For example why do many people choose coca cola instead of pepsi? Because they perceive that coca cola is something different, something better than pepsi - btw. I did the test lately. There IS a difference and I could tell which one was which, but I couldn´t say that I like one more than the other.
Business-to-Business: B2B is that part, where one company´s customer is another company. This customer uses the products of the first company as components for their own products. One of the best known b2b-brands is probably Intel. Intel sells it´s chips to computer manufaturer eg. HP. HP needs those chips in order to sell their own product, a high-quality computer. Intel as an example is very famous to many end-user, because they did advertisement not only to computer manufacturere but to end-users as well. And those manufacturer can now use "Intel inside" as a quality label for their own sales.

Now, what I actually like to do in my thesis, is comparing the customer and the company side. To analyse what brand signals and attributes, values etc. b2b-companies are sending out (or how they like to be perceived) and what signals arrive at the b2b-customers side (or how they actually perceive the brand). And then combine it with an analysis about which communication instruments, channels they actually use for that.
At the moment I´m just at the starting point. I really have to start with basic work, because at the moment everyone is just stating that branding in B2B is important but "almost" no one did something about it. Then I have to find companies who´re willing to participate (if someone is interested or knows someone who might be interested please let me know and we´ll see...) and I have to think of a certain method to analyse that in the practice (as well here, if someone has a good idea about that please let me know).
So as you can see, a lot of work - but hopefully interesting work - lies ahead of me in the next months.

Proud to be Single?

2007-04-15T19:37:00.000+02:00

Are you one of the species "I´m Single and I´m lovin´it!"?? Then this might be something for you...

Of blogging and branding

2007-04-12T23:30:00.000+02:00

Lately I´ve been quite involved in a certain sub-topic of my studies: branding. I´m searching books, browsing journals and reading tons of articles because I´d like to write my thesis in a branding-related area. After I tried to storm my brain for some new ideas, I visited a blog called branding & marketing which I found through another blog called modern b2b marketing. On this branding and marketing blog I found an interesting post about marketing tips for recent college graduates, which was basically the start to this post here as well. The mentioned post has linked some posts in other blogs concerning branding yourself as a person and communicating this eg. through a blog. I dug a bit deeper and read some pretty interesting stuff I´d like to share.

Did you ever reflect why you´re keeping a blog? Is it because you want to entertain your readers, is it because you want to keep your friends updated about your life, is it because you want to keep a publicly available diary but basically just writing entries for yourself or do you even want to do sort of business with your blog? And how do you choose topics you´re blogging about, how much do you think about which picture of you or a friend of yours you want to upload? In the online world it´s pretty easy to stop by in your blog, read your posts, get to know you (or at least an image of you, you´re maybe unconsciously providing) and leave without being noticed. So, who - except the ones who´re leaving comments - is actually reading your blog then?

I raised a lot of questions now, but I think they might get important at one point or another to every blogger out there. And for me as a student who´d like to graduate soon maybe sooner than later. As stated in several blogs, companies are checking your online profile and perform web searches for your name in case you apply for a job. If they find positive stuff about you, it´s perfect but there might be some negative stuff as well and if they don´t find anything it might almost count as negative. Several bloggers write that you should actively use your blog as a tool to present yourself to the world, to create your own brand and to distinguish yourself. Some even go a step further and say that you should record a video of yourself and put it on youtube or the way you sign comments on other blogs affects your own brand.

I know, this sounds totally reasonable for people like me entering the business world from a marketing or generally spoken a business origin. And I´m convinced that people who want to apply for a job in this area, should actively check their online profile and keep a proper image. By proper image I mean the same image they´re providing in the real world as well. And yet, I believe that it´s not only important to people in the "business area". Although there might be less effects in other professions, I still think that the content of your blog or the way friends post about you, can affect a potential employers decision heavily. I mean if you´re always blogging about sun, fun and nothing to do and your friends upload all nasty party pictures they find of you, i don´t know if the company or organisation might trust you if you´re presenting yourself as a hard-worker at the job interview. And this is probably as true for companies as for NGOs or governments...

For those who´re interested to read some more about the topic. Here are some links for a start:

Snowboarding!

2007-04-09T20:57:00.000+02:00

Some impressions from a marvelous day. I was on Belalp near Brig for snowboarding. It was truly amazing. Sun, snow and few people (we didn´t have to queue!). Now I´m just tired but happy...

Easter special

2007-04-08T14:12:00.000+02:00

Ever wondered what the true story behind Easter is? Well, people believe that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus after being crucified. But where´s the link to rabbits and the easter bunnies? Why do people color eggs? Why has the easter basket to be hidden? And how got the chocolate industry into this?

There are probably more questions than answers around. But don´t worry, in case you can´t find a logic explanation to all this, you´re probably not alone. But now, I found some evidence which might tell the true story! It seems, that Dan Brown was somehow involved in this as well ;-)

Watch the evidence!

A beautiful day

2007-04-07T17:00:00.001+02:00

On such beautiful days like today or yesterday, I can´t just stay inside the whole day. So, there were two options. Either, grab a book (of course study-related), sit in the sun, read and doing something reasonable. But being bored and not able to concentrate comes along with it. OR grab my bike, put some music on and head in a direction and decide on each cross-road where to go next until you´re tired and decide to go home. I chose both days option two, cause I should do certainly more sport than the last months.
And it´s so nice at the moment outside. The sun is shining. We have around 15° C. Flowers are prospering. Birds are whistling. People are outside again, walking, cycling, inline skating or just sitting outside, maybe playing games with their family. And everyone is smiling.
And while I am cycling, I can let my mind wander. Remembering nice experiences and moments. Being excited about what´s coming. Getting new ideas. Making plans for the future. And at the same time listening to music I like. My playlist today was the following:

Fortress Europe, Ch-check it out, Crazy in love, Song 2, You know my name, Maneater, Invincible, Tubthumping, What´s your number, I want rock, Shake your tailfeather, Take a look around, Till I collapse, Femme like you, Sorry, Hot in herre, California, The seed 2.0, A little samba, Big city life, Say it right, What comes around goes around

Xpectations

2007-04-05T19:00:00.000+02:00

Today at university I got this graduate package which comes as a sort of announcement for Forum HSG (aka. Career Days). Well, I was pretty astonished when I took out a letter from our Dean and read the following stuff:
The term "HSG-graduate" is an academic seal of approval with international reputation (in German: ein akademisches Gütesiegel von Weltruf) - not only in business sciences.

And further down it said:
Carrier and ambassador of those values are you as a graduate. The HSG-Degree in your CV arouses certain expectations on your future employers side: You should perform in your occupation at a world-class level, indeed!

Well, I have to say, that sounds very interesting, but it gets better if you combine it, with what I just heard yesterday in my class about corporate communication. There we were told, that there should NOT be a gap between corporate idendity (that´s the picture you as a company really have at the inside) and the corporate image (that is, how your company is perceived by society). I don´t know, but for me, I´m really not sure about this point... Therefore I was really glad when I read the next statement in the very same letter:
Be aware of your value for the company, but evaluate yourself HONESTLY!

OK, to evaluate it honestly: for me it´s like sending out mixed signals through language and action. A difference between what you´d like to be and what you are. I don´t say it´s bad, really it´s a good level for sure, but still...
When I read this letter this afternoon, I associated it spontaneously with "pinky and the brain". At the end of each episode of this cartoon was the following tagline: "Gee, Brain, what'd you wanna do tonight?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky - Try to take over the world!"

Time goes by, so slowly! - or not?

2007-04-02T21:50:00.000+02:00

Do you think sometimes, that the clock is running faster than at other times? There are times, I really feel that it´s going slower. For example if I look ahead, I see, that it still takes me more than one year to finish my education (finally). And it takes almost a year until I´ll go abroad once again. And then, probably a lot of work-years are ahead...
But, on the other hand, I have the feeling, that life is sometimes running at speed of sound. I mean, we already passed a quarter of 2007 although it feels that it started just moments ago. I´m back in Switzerland already for more than half a year but my memories from the time abroad are so present, I can´t imagine that it´s already so long ago. When I look back to 2006 on one hand it feels that I experienced so many nice moments but on the other hand it feels like this year was like a dream - it was a nice imagination but didn´t exist.
When I look around me, I see people coming back from abroad, I see people going away for some time. I see people finishing their studies, looking and applying for their first job. And I even got an invitation today for a wedding of a friend, who´s just one week older than me.
Was Madonna right, when she sang Time goes by, so slowly, for those who wait - no time to hesitate!? Is there no time to hesitate? Is it better to take opportunities without hesitating? Just living and enjoying each moment and make the most out of it, because you can´t be sure what the next one will bring...?

Barcelona!

2007-03-26T23:30:00.000+02:00

Today in the evening I arrived back from my weekend trip from Barcelona. It was really an amazing but exhausting time (a lot of walking, partying and not too much sleep). On friday morning, I left Switzerland in the snowy morning and arrived in the spring of Barcelona with around 15° and sunshine. After a short stop in the youth hostel we went of course straight to the beach. Later on in the evening (after a siesta of course) we went first to eat paella and then met with my friend Jenny (former intern from Bosch in Stuttgart) and her flatmate. After some local beer from Catalunya we went to a club called Mojito.

The day afterwards we got up at 11 and went to Parc Güell - a park built after the archetype of an english garden - which is UNESCO cultural heritage since 1984. After this we went to La sagrada familia, the famous cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi. Although they started to build it already back in 1882 it´s still not finished and judging from the plans it will take a while to finish it. In the evening (after another siesta and some tapas for dinner) we met again Jenny and some friends and went to a club called baja which is situated directly at the beach. We partied all night long and due to the change to summertime and losing one hour we arrived back in the hostel at 7 am...

Still, next morning we woke up already at 11 again and continued our Barcelona tour. We went to Montjuïc, the hill in the southern part of the city where you can have a look at the city, the beach and the harbour. After taking a look at the olympic stadium we went to the Palau National, a huge palace which is situated just in front of the Plaça d'Espanya. After the obligatory siesta, another paella we went again to the beach for an extensive photo-shooting session of nightpictures and the for a beer in bar in the city centre again.

Today we then finished our trip easily with having some coffees before going to the airport. There we faced some problems - we didn´t have electronic ticketnr. because we had to reschedule our flight (Swiss cancelled our original return flight to Basel). At the same time we had to explain why we just need the flight to Zurich and we don´t want to have our luggage brought to Basel again (our connection to Basel would have left 6 hours after arriving in Zurich). Anyway we managed to get all troubles solved and even appeared at the gate in time for boarding...

Ps. For more pictures surf here

Happy End of Chapter I

2007-03-21T13:32:00.000+01:00

After I received the long awaited letter from university I finally can close Chapter I of my master studies. The grades arrived! It turned out that I did quite good in my exams. In the important courses (the ones with more credits) I performed slightly better than in the less important ones ;-) And with an average which is higher than in my bachelors or during high school I´m of course very very happy!!! Chapter one finished with a happy end!!! Hope to continue the same way...

New born...

2007-03-15T17:55:00.000+01:00

I feel like a new born at the moment. My last exam for this term is over. I´m glad I was lazy in the last days because otherwise I would have learnt too much. My mood is excellent although I´m still a bit sick.

Two weeks of holidays are ahead. This weekend I´ll finally go snowboarding for the first time this season (and probably the last time as well). Then I can enjoy some days at home doing nothing, sleeping in, hopefully with good weather.

And theeen, I´ll go to Barcelona for the weekend. Hopefully being able to go to the beach, enjoying the sun and stuff like that - a preview of summer.

Life comes back slowly

2007-03-13T15:41:00.000+01:00

Finally I survived the army for this year. But it was close... In the end of last week I got sick (flu) and didn´t really have that much possibility to recover and since friday I´m pumping drugs into me. At least since yesterday it gets better and I am only coughing around.
Besides taking care of my health situation, I should study for my next exam on thursday. But I´m really not motivated to do so. The topic doesn´t interest me that much which makes it even harder to pull myself together and study seriously. And the worst part: I´m sitting at home, sometimes outside but most of the time inside and the weather is so beautiful. The thing I really like to do at the moment is just hanging around in the sun or go outside and do some sport. Really it´ll keep until post-thursday where I finally will have holidays for 2 weeks...

CH Confidential - night report from the swiss alps

2007-03-08T03:00:00.000+01:00

We're in the middle of the night - 3am to be exact. At least that's what the clock on my computer is saying. We can't confirm that, as we're several hundreds of meters away from a place where we could see the sky. Yes, I'm still in military service, in a top secret place. I'm not allowed to tell you where it is. Somewhere IN a mountain in the swiss alps. We're running the nightshift of the helpdesk, in case someone has a problem with computer, radio units, beamers etc. in this facility. But as it's in the middle of the night for everyone else, there's nothing to do. We're 4 people in this room - one is watching futurama, one is travelling around the world with google earth and the other two are just surfing around. It's a boring time, and there are still 5 hours to go - that's why I decided to write something. Should I start the study for my exams right now? - No boring to, proabably more boring than just collecting webmiles.
We just got a call. Maybe there's something to do soon? - No, my colleague just told the other guy to come here. He's outside the facility. It will take him at least half an hour to come here. We have to wait. And then big action. Give him another battery for a radio unit and the work is done. Nothing new, nothing big.
Now all others went for a smoke. I have the room for my own. What a responsability!! ;-) Maybe the phone will ring? No. Maybe a big boss comes in? No but instead my colleagues are back and we're going back to the usual silence, the usual pretending of working, in case someone accidentally stumbles into our room...

Check this out!

2007-03-04T13:31:00.000+01:00

A former class mate from school and some others who finished like me in 2002 formed soon after we left school a band. After around 5 years, some changes in the lineup, switching the band name from Shunt to Karsumpu and many concerts, their debut album is coming out next month. The official PR text from their music label says:

Karsumpu kitzelt, kratzt und schlägt zu. Die berndeutschen Songs beinhalten Anekdoten und Schnappschüsse aus dem rauschenden Strom des Lebens und werden geprägt von frisch frechen oder melancholisch nachdenklichen Violin- und Mundharmonikaparts. Die Stilpalette ist vielseitig. Rock, Tango, Ballade, Pop, Reggae; die Mischung macht's.

If you like it, check out the website www.karsumpu.ch for further demo tracks and concert dates!

Good news!

2007-02-24T14:22:00.000+01:00

After a terrible first week of military service I got home and found this letter from university, which raised my mood immediately. I expected this letter, but still was surprised how fast it arrived - I hoped that I´ll have the news till next weekend. But of course the sooner, the better!

As you might know, I applied for an exchange for the fourth term of my master studies. If everything is going according to plan, it´ll be my last term of my studies, which will be between February and May 2008. So, still, a long way to go, a long time to wait and be excited about it and a lot to do in between!

And the news I got today is: My university accepted me to go on an exchange term to...

Erasmus Universiteit,
Rotterdam, Netherlands

Confrontation with strange feelings

2007-02-19T10:56:00.000+01:00

When I got the acceptance from Bosch to go to Stuttgart I was really happy in the first place, but the closer the day of leaving got, the more I had those feelings of insecurity. Somehow not wanting to leave the familiar to something unknown... After I came back for the first time (it was christmas break) it was even tougher. I really didn´t want to leave again already on first of january. This feeling was probably even harder because I knew that I´m one of the only ones who had to work already on 2nd and I knew that I won´t see my sister at least for half a year (she went to the US).

But then, it changed dramatically. I spent 3 monts in a row in Stuttgart and the next time I came back to Switzerland it was different. But the feelings of not wanting to leave were still there. But then on both sides. I somehow didn´t want to go back for a long weekend because I could miss something in Stuttgart and in the end of the weekend here I didn´t want to leave again because I´ll leave family and have to get back to work. Why was this? Was it because both places were somehow "home"? Or was it because neither of them was "home" (anymore)? I think for me it was because both places felt like home...

Now, since yesterday I have the same feeling again. I don´t want to go. But this time it´s different than the times I went to Stuttgart. Back then I knew it was the right thing to do, to leave. The feelings were just there because I didn´t know what I have to expect. Or because I was leaving family and friends here. But now, the reason is different. I know what to expect and I know that I don´t like it. That´s the reason for the same feelings. Today it´s not that I don´t want to leave HERE but I don´t want to be THERE! But anyhoo, it´s not a request programme. A man´s got to do, what a man´s got to do...

Carneval fédéral

2007-02-17T13:57:00.000+01:00

The time has come to...

After a week of relaxing (mornings: sleeping; afternoons: being lazy), my personal carneval is starting on monday. It will last for three weeks and will be in the surrounding of Krattigen, BE. What I will do? Like usual carnevals, put on a fancy costume and try to get drunk in the evening?! No, seriously, I hardly can remember from my previous times (already more than 3 years passed by since i was in this "club" for the last time). Probably most of the time some occupy-yourself-therapy. Maybe this is the perfect anger and stress management in between exams?? We´ll see.

And don´t be afraid if you see someone similiar to the person on the picture! We´re here to serve the country! ;-)

Over and Out!

Every morning...

2007-02-07T15:32:00.000+01:00

... in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle... when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

Since the beginning of the year I was exactly doing this. I woke up in the morning and knew that I should be running in order to be ready to DO lunch and not to BE it, in the end. I went to classes, worked on group projects and studied for hours and prepared and held presentations. Now Episode I is almost over (one exam left in march). And now, it´s not in my hands anymore - and soon neither in my brain :=)

Finally I have some days to relax. But only 1.5 weeks till 19.2! Because then, Simus is reporting for duty! And the following three weeks I will spend my time with stuff like that:

WOW - Windows Vista

2007-02-06T09:37:00.000+01:00

I´m getting bored with all those Windows Vista advertisment everywhere. So, first Video shows a functional test of it, while second one is shows that Windows didn´t steal from Apple!

Break needed? - Watch this!

2007-02-03T16:06:00.000+01:00

There are 3 new music videos from Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and a new hip hop song from George "Dubya" Bush feat. Lil´Dick Cheney. Afterwards you get 3 brand new episodes of CSI Las Vegas, Cold Case and Desperate Housewives. Enjoy, it´s very funny! ;-)

Christina Aguilera - Virginal

Britney Spears - I´m not a child

George "Dubya" Bush ft. Lil´Dick Cheney - Country Slammer

CSI Las Vegas

Cold Case

Desperate Housewives

Hilarious!

2007-01-31T23:44:00.000+01:00

Funny thing happened today. I got an email from Eidgenössisches Departement des Innern EDI, Staatssekretariat für Bildung und Forschung SBF, Ressort Allgemeine Bildung, Maturität. So far nothing special but you might wonder what it was about (so did I). First paragraph went like this:

Guten Tag,
Sie haben uns im Januar 2005 auf dem Postweg Ihre Bewerbungsunterlagen zukommen lassen und sich darin für die Mitarbeit als Aufsichtsperson bei den Maturitätsprüfungen interessiert. Sie haben damals weder eine Eingangsbestätigung noch einen Absagebrief erhalten, noch sind Ihnen die Unterlagen zurückgesandt worden - wir sind uns bewusst, dass dies schlechter Stil ist, und bitten Sie nachträglich, diesen unkorrekten Umgang mit Ihrer Bewerbung zu entschuldigen. (Unser Prüfungssekretariat musste zu jener Zeit bei gleichbleibendem Personalbestand substantielle neue Aufgaben übernehmen und war deshalb chronisch überlastet.)

Everywhere else they wouldn´t write anything anymore and hope that you forgot it, but not here! I´m lovin it!

Btw: What should I do? Write an email back with "Thank you for your immediate answer." or wait for two years and then tell them, that I was in military service two years ago...

Project: Memories

2007-01-23T21:06:00.000+01:00

While surfing on youtube lately, I had an idea. So, I invested some time and here´s the result:

AIESEC new years event, Kosice, 26.12.2006-2.1.2007

My traineeship time, Stuttgart, 8.12.2005-4.9.2006

TWIN in Finland, Tampere&Jyväskylä, 19.2.2006-26.2.2006

AIESEC new years event Praha, 28.12.2004-2.1.2005

Lifesaving Interclub World Championship, Viareggio, 19.9.2004-27.9.2004

Interrail trip in Scandinavia, Berlin, Göteborg, Stockholm, Jönköping, Koebenhavn, 22.2.2004-11.3.2004

Bern vs. St.Gallen

2007-01-20T19:14:00.000+01:00

My first term in St. Gallen is almost over - only the ugly part remains: exams. But it´s time to for a first conclusion, to answer some questions I´ve been asked connected to my transition and to compare Universities Bern and St. Gallen - now that I´m one of not too many who can really compare it! And I hope that all those strange reactions and behaviour a person gets (from both sides) when they say, that they switch from Bern to St. Gallen will change in the future. One side thinks, that you abuse the system and get easier, with less effort to the same degree than they did, and the other side thinks that you turn into an arrogant, money oriented bastard. I really can´t remember a first reaction which was “cool move”. It was more or less always “why?”
Ok, all of you who are reading this, I´d like to ask before reading further, what your picture about both universities is? And then ask yourself for how much of it you really have a proof and not just rumours you heard?

Now, here we go with my impressions from the first 3 months…

The students
Well there´s a common prejudice that all St. Galler students are arrogant, living on a different level than other students and thinking that they´re better than everyone else. My impression is that this prejudice is wrong on a general level. Most of the students are normal people, you can talk on a down-to-earth level and they face the same problems like me and you. It might be that sometimes they´re looking a bit more for their bests than at other universities, but still it´s not so drastic that you don´t help eachother out.
Like I said, this conclusion is on a general level. Like everywhere else, there are exceptions which prove the rule. You have them as well in Bern. Here, you can recognize most of them form their burberry scarfs (favourite color brown) or their draw-up collar of their polo-shirts. And another good indicator is a membership of AC (Ausländer-Club).

The lectures
The approach of my studies is more praxis oriented and more collaborative work in groups than I was used to in Bern (which was actually one of the reasons I decided to switch). The level of regular lectures is not really higher than I´m used to. Which proofs, that you can learn something at other universities as well and that St. Gallen is not the one and only. And the quality of professors is approx. the same. There are the ones who lecture very well. Then you have the ones who´s structure of thinking is very confusing - and if they express their thoughts in the same order, it´s kind of difficult to get their message. In the third category are externals which provide good lectures but are annoyed by all the regulations of the university. And finally we have the ones who are more a substitute of the central heating system than a facilitator.

The infrastructure
In this section I see the biggest difference to Business Administration in Bern. We have a nice centralized system where you can apply for exams and a central platform where you can get all your study material. In Bern you always had to do a hunting trip through the institute sites in order to get your study material. Apart from the systems you have quite similar infrastructure. Rooms are too small (or too many students are in there), too expensive cafeterias or a crowded library - we know this already.

It´s difficult to say what is better and what is worse and what the real reason is. Some effects are maybe related to the university, some might be related to a different level of studies (master vs. bachelor). To conclude I can say that I don´t regret my step and I don´t have to wonder how it would have been, if…

It´s 007!

2007-01-16T23:45:00.000+01:00

Oh, I travel... a sort of licensed troubleshooter, said JB back in 1965. Well, this could be approx. my year of 007. Travelling probably a bit less - troubleshooting a bit more. Some stuff I´d like to fulfill:

finished master thesis by the end of the year
get accepted for an exchange term for 08
do some more sport than last year
have as much fun as last year
have some time for holidays

007-Motto will be:

Cos only you can be your help
So darling listen
Listen to yourself

In the hope of a good year - shaken not stirred!

An experience from Kosice

2007-01-09T19:00:00.000+01:00

I just needed a study break, so here´s what I promised in the last post - an experience I had in Kosice. It was on the evening of the 28^th around 5 o´clock - it was already dark and it was snowing, the streets were almost empty. I walked from the city centre to the flat (which takes approx. 30min), alone, wrapped in my warm winter clothes, nice music of Lunik and the beautiful voice of Jael in my ear - basically in my whole head…
Walking through those dark, empty, snowy streets I started to think. And there were two major thoughts which went through my head. First one: human mind. I was really amazed, how the human brain has the abitlity process things very fast and learn immediately. I mean I arrived around 24 hours earlier in a place, around 1´000km from home. In a city I haven´t been before where they speak a language I don´t know. But still from a look on a city map and the memorizing of the near neighbourhood I was able to find my way home immediately - even with walking the whole way. I´m amazed how humans can absorb stimuli with their eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin, process the stimulus somehow, sometimes connect it to earlier experiences and store the information. I can´t imagine how life would be without this ability…

The second thought I had that evening is something completely different but still connected to Kosice: Friends! How great is it to have friends?! Why I had this thought in

Slovakia

? Simple: I met a Slovakian trainee in Germany - Ludmila. She´s originally from the area of Kosice and is studying there. When I found out that NYE will be in this city I dropped her some lines in an email and told her that maybe I´ll come to Kosice. She was so excited, you could already see it when you read her emails. In the end we finally could meet on 27^th although not for such a long time but still better than nothing. And she even gave me the keys to her flat and let me, Dan & Kate stay in the flat for the whole time. Thank you so much for that Ludmila!!
But the point is not, that it´s great to have friends, because you can stay in their places when you´re there! But because a friend is someone, you can share memories with, someone you can have fun with. But as well someone with whom you can talk seriously, someone who helps you even someone who realizes you need help although you didn´t say anything! A friend of mine once wrote me the following:

The most beautiful thing about friendship is not an outstretched hand,
It´s not a friendly smile or the human contact,
but it´s the substantial feeling to have someone who believes in you and who trusts you!

Making friends is sometimes easy, sometimes hard. But really keep in the touch with them seems even harder - but it´s possible! Some time ago, after around 2 months without hearing from most of the people I spent a lot of time with in Germany, I got an email from one of them, complaining a bit that she haven´t heard from me since I left. I thought: She´s so true, I didn´t have contact with many of them! So I decided to write to almost everyone instead of just replying to her. A mail-chain started and I was so amazed - because it wasn´t a chain with emails of the kind “send this to 15 friends, and…” but it was a chain of people sharing things with each other! And some people even wrote: Simon, thank you so much for this email! Therefore: The time is now! It´s a time to make friends! But most of all: It´s a time to keep friends!

Queen once sang the following:

Friends will be friends,
When you're in need of love they give care and attention.
Friends will be friends,
When you're through with life and all hope is lost,
Hold out your hand, cause friends will be friends
right to the end!

Trip to Slovakia - Part III

2007-01-07T02:30:00.000+01:00

Here´s the third and last part of my report about the happenings in Slovakia. Next post will be about a nice experience I had in Kosice. But first enjoy Episode III of the story...

31^th Dec - new years eve
D-day finally arrived. We planned to go bowling during the day but when we heard that it was booked out completely for the whole previous day, we didn´t even try to go there. Instead one of the slovaks - the one with the two apple pies in McDonalds three days before - had the idea to play pool-billiard. We wanted to have a nice lunch before, because we weren´t sure how good the dinner would be (based on what we heard and saw from the days before…). Therefore we decided to go once again to the place with the marvellous steaks. We even convinced the other swiss delegates to come with us instead of going to paintball. Kates convincing tactic was very funny - “you get blue spots all over your body and it´s gonna last at least for two weeks…” Anyway, when we arrived in the city centre we had to notice that the place was closed. Too bad, but hey what, we went to La bomba again and ordered there US steaks, which were even slightly bigger than the ones before. And there as well, it was delicious again.

After our at least 2 hours lunch we searched the place to play billard. Unfortunately we couldn´t find one which was still open, so we ended up in a internet café. Dan & Kate wanted to write new years text messages, I wanted to check my connection to travel home and the other three planned to go aqua-city in poprad-tatry and looked up some information about it… Half an hour later when we left the place again we realized, that the christmas market was open again (which wasn´t the case the previous days we spent there). So, we ended up there drinking silvester punch and hot wine. Even though it was already dark we realized that it wasn´t too late yet and that we should stop after the second one… Instead we went to Kaufland again to buy some important things for the evening and then went back to the flat or the dorm in order to prepare for the official dinner which started around 2 hours later.

The official dinner was in the dorm itself in a cold and unfriendly room. First they served some salad with bread and a drink for the toast which was quite ok. Then it only got worse - first we realized that the red wine we bought on our own wasn´t very good. Later - actually a lot later - the dinner was served and it was already cold. So we went back to the kitchen and heated our plates in the microwave again. Then, we opened our bottle of white wine, which was even worse. In the mean time they started with a game in the official program which was as funny as a power breakdown… At around 11 o´clock when we were pissed off enough we decided to grab our bottles of champagne and go to the city centre. We supposed that there was more going on as we already saw that they built a stage next to the christmas market - and there was more going on. So, we ended our year with candles and hot wine and music from the stage. It was sort of a cover band playing there which was ok - they seemed to like Queen…

We started our new year with some champagne, a nordic circle - those who know what it is can imagine how cool it was - and then another hot wine… All in all a great start to a hopefully successful year 2007! After some partying on there we went to a club where they played some turkish music for some time. Then we let the day/night die away in the dorm room of our swiss delegates before we went to bed at around 0430…

1^st Jan 07 - I´m coming home…
Already 4.5 hours later I woke up again. After showering and packing my stuff I walked with my heavy backpack for half an hour through the deserted city of Kosice to the mainstation where I had to catch the train at 1018. What followed was a 6.5 hrs long and boring train ride to Bratislava. The train stopped more or less everywhere on the way - I´m sure I saw the railway stations of each town which has more than 5´000 inhabitants… Anyway I spent my time with sleeping, listening music or reading Vodka (nooo, I´m not drunk, that´s really the name of the book I´m reading at the moment!). In Bratislava I had to wait for my connection for approx. one hour. So I rushed to the centre, took some pictures of the presidential palace on the way, bought some dinner in McDonalds (as it was more or less the only thing opened and I didn´t have much time) and rushed back to hlavna stanica where I boarded the train to Vienna.

After this nutrition I felt pretty good so I decided to start studying which I did for around one hour! Thanx to earplugs I even could absorb the noise of the grouching kidz from the compartment next door…

In Vienna I spent another hour waiting for my nighttrain with drinking coffee and reading in Vodka ;-) Then finally I went to the platform and searched my wagon. But I couldn´t find it. So I walked up the whole platform and then again down and finally I saw it, but strange, it was the first one! When I got in the wagon I finally realized why the ticket they sold me in Kosice was sooo expensive - because the incompetent woman from Slovakrail booked a bed in a two-bed room instead of one in a 6 bed compartment. Anyhoo, the money was already spent so I made the best out of it (as I´m a student I´m used to do such things). I ordered of course a full, 4-component breakfast because it was included - not that I´m a hungry person early in the morning :) My breakfast therefore included 2 orange juices, 1 coffee and one fruit.

At around 0620 on 2^nd in the morning I finally arrived in Zürich, means at 0730 I was in Bern and at 8 o´clock after almost 22 hours on the road I finally arrived back home, where I first took a nice, hot and long shower. Afterwards I went to sleep for around three hours and then started to study - I only had 8 days left till my first exam…!

To conclude I can say, that I´m glad I finally decided to go to Slovakia. Although some parts weren´t that cool, we spent a lot of great & funny moments together. Dan, François, Kate, Kathrin & Mirjam: It was great to spent NYE with you in the city centre of Kosice. Or as a kazakh journalist once said: “Niiiice, I liiiike!” ;-)

new year´s eve in the city centre

the presidential palace in bratislava

Trip to Slovakia - Part II

2007-01-05T01:00:00.000+01:00

Another rather long post about what happened in Slovakia. This time about 29th and 30th of December. I´m sorry for the mistakes in the previous post (it was already late when I wrote it...). Once again for this post as well: Whoever finds mistakes may keep them!

29^th Dec - first official day & global village
New day, new funny stuff experienced. Dan, Kate and me decided to meet around 1230 next to the hostel where we were supposed to stay and where all other delegates were. At the agreed time - no sign of the other two. So I waited and waited. After around half an hour I received the following text message: “Simu we need your help!! Find us please! We are hanging for half an hour around different Dom Mladezi but can´t find the right one :((“ As I was almost a local in the area (the flat was just 5mins away) I found them immediately - of course ;-) They weren´t too far away, but didn´t find the right dorm building. I guided the upset, tired and hungry Dan&Kate to the check-in and the flat we lived for the rest of our stay in Kosice.

While relaxing there a bit, we got a message from the three other swiss delegates - they missed the connection in Vienna and told us that they will arrive late in the evening. We thought, that this can´t be true and can´t happen because they had important stuff for our global village. Beside, Dan and me had the took the same connection from Zürich to Bratislava two days earlier and spent 3 hours in Bratislava and managed to be in Kosice before the arrival time they mentioned. So, we made some remote travel management: First of all, we told them to go Bratislava at least and take the next connection from there - they somehow didn´t come up with this idea yet. Then we told them which train they have to catch there and they did it - our stuff for global village arrived in time :)

After these issues were solved we went again to city centre. Dan and Kate wanted to eat something, then we met again with Tanya (one of the Ukrainian girls) and the girls wanted to go to a place where they have the “icecreamiest ice-cream” ever. Dan and me ended up drinking coffee and the girls eating ice-cream - somehow Ukrainians are more used to eat ice-cream in winter than swiss...

In the evening we went to Kaufland in order to buy some bread for our fondue at global village. I decided that I want to eat something so, we went to the food corner in this mall and I bought a pita kebab. The others didn´t want to eat as they weren´t hungry yet. Dan even said: “I´ll eat at the global village!” - yeah Dan, this was a very wise decision as we saw later on… ;-)

At around half past nine in the evening, the global village finally started. We had a nice fondue served with white wine, some chocolate and of course some swiss tequila and we distributed stickers with swiss cross on it to everyone - by the end of the evening almost everyone was somehow swiss. There were even people who came to us and asked if we have stickers left!

Dan´s condition started to get bad already at around 11 o´clock - somehow he couldn´t executed his plan - how surprised I was… Anyway Kate and me brought him to our flat and I went back to the dorm where the afterparty already started. When I arrived there again, two of the other swiss delegates told me that they´ll go to sleep, while the third one started an intercultural communication with Slovakia… Soon after I returned to the dorm I already left again, went back to the flat and got some sleep as well…

30^th Dec - the day before THE day
On Saturday we planned to go skiing/snowboarding in a place called Plejsy which is about 40km from Kosice. After one hour with train and a nice ski-bus (picture below) we arrived in the ski resort. But there were just two problems: First, long queues at the “ski rental station”, second one, almost no snow - well they were producing artificial snow with some snow machines but that wasn´t enough for the whole resort. Still we started to queue in order to rent snowboards or skis. After some time we heard that there are no snowboards left - we decided to ski again after several years without skiing ;-) But as efficiency was somehow a foreign word we could see any progress. We went to another place to rent skis but there was as well a queue which didn´t progress. After some time we gave up, bought a one-way ticket for the chairlift and went up. It took us around twenty minutes go up the mountain and when we arrived we were almost frozen - therefore we went to the restaurant first. After some thing to drink and some food (yes Dan was hungry for once:) we decided to walk down at least…

When we arrived back in Kosice it was already evening and after showering we went to have dinner. I proposed the place where I´ve been on the first evening because it was pretty close and had some nice Italian food. But this time another funny thing happened: First I wanted to order a salad. The waitress said “Sorry we don´t have vegetables anymore!” Ok, I thought, somehow strange but anyway, then I´ll just take a Pizza al Prosciutto. Her answer: “As I already told you, we don´t have vegetables anymore because of the end of the year we didn´t order new supplies yet. You can have this Pizza, but there won´t be tomatos on it!” Hmmm, ok, whatever I´ll take it without vegetables. Dan ordered Pasta - so no problem with that. Kate wanted to have a steak - no problem with that either. But then the waitress returned and said: “Sorry, we don´t have steaks anymore…” After we finally got our meals and eat the other two wanted to order dessert - but guess what, yes they almost had nothing left. Well Kate ordered something with coconut and Dan with chocolat - what he got was something like hot Nutella… ;-)

We thought that we had our fun for the day already after we left our dining place, but noooo, we were wrong. We didn´t take the other swiss delegates into account. When we got to their room and asked how their day was, they came up with the following story: they were caught in a tram without ticket. And they thought they are smart - the only slovak guy there pretended to be foreigner who doesn´t understand as well and they played stupid foreigner didn´t know what to do and how to buy tickets. Well, somehow it didn´t work. Then they thought that they´re even smarter and showed their swiss IDs to prove there point - didn´t work out as planned because the controller took their IDs away. So, everything ended up in a bit a mess and each of them had to pay a fee in order to get their IDs back…

After they told us their story we went to a pub to drink some beer. Then we returned to the dorm and joined topalky party which wasn´t very good. So we went to a room of some slovak people where - at midnight - we did a pre-run of new years eve in order to make sure that we are well-prepared and everything will go smoothly the day afterwards!

to be continued...

Fondue @ global village

(almost) everyone was somehow Swiss

the SkiBus which took us to Plejsy

Swiss delegates & Kate

Trip to Slovakia - Part I

2007-01-04T01:22:00.000+01:00

After some relaxing and already some studying, I´m now able again to write about what we experienced on our trip to Kosice, Slovakia for new years eve celebration. I decided to split the whole story in different posts, as it would be too long for one. So, here comes Part I:

The travel
It all started on the evening of 26.12.06 at around 9 o´clock in the evening when Dan and me boarded the train to Zürich. After we talked a bit about how we celebrated christmas, we already arrived and switched to the night train to Vienna. As we realized, that our beds would be in railway cars which were pretty far apart, we decided to go to a car in the middle. We spent the next hours with some chips and beer before we already went to sleep.

At 8 in the morning we met again the platform in Vienna where we switched to the train in direction of Bratislava. After crossing the boarder we finally arrived there. First thing which caught our eye in Slovakia, was the sign “Intim Salon - Happy-a-GoGo” which we saw from the train. Happy-a-GoGo developed to one of our running gag during the next days…

In Bratislava we left the train and spent 3 hours in the city. What we saw: beefeaters wearing sunglasses, the castle, McDonalds and Coffee&Co. There Dan ordered a hot chocolate and was very surprised when he got “melted chocolate”. We found out later in Kosice, that this seems to be very common in Slovakia. At around 13 o´clock we took the train to where we arrived at around 7 pm.

Ludmila, a friend of mine, which I met in Germany, and her boyfriend picked us up at the train station. After bringing Dan to the hotel he booked before we went to her flat, where I could stay during the whole stay (Dan and Kate joined two days later as well). The evening we spent with catching up a bit and talking about Switzerland and Slovakia. Unfortunately, my friend left already next morning as the had celebration of her sisters engagement…

28^th Dec - the day before it officially started

On the following day I met again around lunch time with Dan and Kate. First we went to eat something as they didn´t have breakfast yet. Afterwards we met two other ukrainian Aiesecers and went to a place called “La bomba” in order to drink hot wine. It was very funny there, because of the different discussions and question people had. Dan for example presented us his idea about toilet business in Ukraine - very interesting ;-) Then afterwards we were asked, very funny questions about Switzerland: “Do you have villages?”, “Do you have toilets on the street?” and “Do you have kangaroos in Switzerland?”

In the evening we went to have a really nice and compared to Switzerland very cheap dinner in a steak house - yummy, the beef steak was very delicious. After that we joined the other Aiesecers in a bar drank some stuff and then went to Mc Donalds because the girls wanted to have some ice cream and it was the only place still open. The boys ended up with eating apple pie - a slovak guy even bought two pies simply because there was a promotion and not because he wanted to! After that we all walked home and went to a well-deserved sleep…

Some pictures of the first day:

The castle in Bratislava

City centre of Kosice

Dan & Kate @ late night dessert

Happy 2007!

2007-01-02T08:41:00.000+01:00

Soo, finally arrived in 2007 and back home from Slovakia again. It was very cool in Kosice but right now I´m too tired to write too much about it. Therefore just: Happy new year from Swiss NYE 06 Delegates! - More to come later on...

Merry Xmas

2006-12-24T12:20:00.000+01:00

Since last week, when I weak up I always think, something is wrong. No, it´s not beacause the candle in the wind or the weather but because I feel powerless. But there´s really no time for that right now. The show must go on! I´ve to study, then I´ll go abroad on the day after tomorrow and when I return (probably on 2nd) I´ve to study again. Hope to be energized again soon...

Anyway I wish you Merry Christmas (for those who are celebrating). For the others I wish not too boring days. And then have a really good end of the year and a marvellous start into 2007!I will spend new years eve in Slovakia and be back again next year.

Until then, Good night and good luck!

Parlez francais!

2006-12-19T15:01:00.000+01:00

The Xmaszeit

2006-12-18T10:46:00.000+01:00

When the last Kalender-sheets
flattern through the winterstreets
and the Dezemberwind is blowing
then ist everybody knowing
that it is not allzuweit:
she does come – the Weihnachtszeit.

All the Menschen, Leute, people
flippen out of ihr warm Stueble,
run to Kaufhof, Aldi, Mess,
make Konsum and business.
Kaufen this und jene things
and the Churchturmglocke rings.

Manche holen sich a Taennchen,
when this brennt, they cry "Attention".
Rufen for the Feuerwehr:
"Please come quick to loeschen her!"
Goes the Taennchen of in Rauch,
they are standing on the Schlauch.

In the kitchen of the house
mother makes the Christmasschmaus.
She is working, schufts and bakes
the hit is now her Yoghurtkeks.
And the Opa says als Tester:
"We are killed bis to Silvester".
Then he fills the last Glas wine –
yes, this is the Christmastime!

Day by day does so vergang,
and the Holy night does come.
You can think, you can remember,
this is immer in Dezember.

Then the childrenlein are coming
candle-Wachs is abwaerts running.
Bing of Crosby Christmas sings
while the Towerglocke rings
and the angels look so fine –
well this is the Weihnachtstime.

Baby-eyes are big and rund,
the family feels kerngesund
when unterm Weihnachtsbaum they’re hocking
then nothing can them ever shocking.
They are so happy, are so fine –
this happens in the Christmastime!

The animals all in the house,
the Hund, the Katz, the bird, the mouse,
are turning round the Weihnachtsstress,
enjoy this day as never nie,
well they find Kittekat and Chappi
in the Geschenkkarton von Pappi.

The family begins to sing
and wieder does a Gloeckchen ring.
Zum song vom gruenen Tannenbaum
the Traenen rennen down and down.
Bis our mother ploetzlich flennt:
"The christmas-Gans im Ofen brennt!"
Her nose indeed is very fine.
End of the Weihnachtstime.

Videos of the week

2006-12-17T10:39:00.000+01:00

Cool U2-video:

Tactic if you want to watch your preferred tv-program:

Gossip reloaded

2006-12-14T19:30:00.000+01:00

Ok, some possible implications. Each implication is derived from the corresponding rule-nr. Should you take it serious? - it´s up to you:

Don´t trust anyone! Even the person you´re producing gossip with, could take out a camera and record the evidence for other purposes than just the own memory.
Nothing is what it seems. But the better the artwork the more valuable the information. In order to produce valuable information, better be creative.
The earlier you produce gossip, the smaller the potential damage - it takes longer until evidence is presented = gossip travels slower = less potential damage. Therefore if you intend to produce gossip, do it straight from the beginning on.
Always stand up in plenary and admit that the presented gossip is TRUE. It´ll count as extenuating circumstances.
If you realize on the next day that your gossip-partner is not fitting you´re perception, then you have to spread even more gossip about yourself in order to explain yourself.
You should help the FBI officers to get a clear picture of the gossip - otherwise someone else might get the credits.
Gossip needs all your resources. Although men and women are recording the evidence, they might set different focus and you don´t want to drop out because you only attracted one focus right?
Next time have a closer look on the FBI officers. They just want to hide something!
You´ll never see the most interesting gossip in plenary, because the victim might be present and per definition he/she is not supposed to see it at the same time you do.
Give your best while producing gossip. There are always competitors around who try to produce a better output.

As long as you love me...

2006-12-13T13:05:00.000+01:00

Another update about the time when I was in Stuttgart. Today it´s about Alp (Turkish Aiesec-Trainee in my departement at Bosch) on the left and Alex (Brazilian Aiesec-Trainee & my flat-mate) on the right aka. backstreet boys...

The cardinal rules of gossip

2006-12-12T21:12:00.000+01:00

During my hunt for a master thesis topic, I stumbled over the book "Rumors and Rumor Control" by Allan J. Kimmel. There he mentiones the ten cardinal rules of gossip. Here they come:

Everyone gossips. Even if you´ve just stood around listening, it´s tantamount to gossiping.
No one ever asks if the information is true. Everyone assumes that it is.
The greater the potential damage, the faster the gossip travels.
The more you try to tell people that the gossip is not true, the more they will believe it is.
Major decisions have been based on gossip. When the decision turns out to be bad, gossipy rumors arise to explain the bad decision.
Of all forms of communication, gossip is the most easily distorted.
Men gossip just as much as women, and gossip is filtered through socioeconomic strata by both genders.
People gossip to protect their own reputations. When the focus is on someone else, one receives a momentary reprieve.
The more demeaning or hurtful the gossip, the longer it takes for the victim to hear about it.
Gossip thrives in an atmoshpere of secrecy and competition. It tends to thrive most where there is too much secrecy and where advancement is based on overcompetition.

Deutschland - ein Sommermärchen?

2006-12-08T10:06:00.000+01:00

A long time ago, on an early december morning, a hick took his bags, packed with some of his belongings and went to the city. When he arrived there, he wasn´t confused, not even disoriented as you might suppose. No, he had been there many times before. But the city wasn´t his final destination. He boarded a vehicle and went in direction of the rising sun. Soon afterwards, around one hour later, he had to lift his heavy bags again, because he wanted to change direction and the vehicle didn´t want to. So, he took his belongings and searched for another transportation which went his planned way. Some time after he settled down, still on his way now in the direction of the region where the Vikings were believed to live, he realized that most people around him were speaking a different language. But as it was only slightly different he was still able to understand it. He lost track of the time but it must have been around 3 hours after he changed direction, when he reached his final destination…

It all happened 365 days ago, the final destination was Stuttgart, and the hick… It was me! I remember, arriving there at the mainstation, being picked-up by two people I just had contact to, through a couple of emails. I still see the dirty, sticky table in the living room of the flat (probably from a party from the evening before) in front of me. And what I still know from my first day is the time I met the first other trainee… I faced some problems to understand him. I realized that he was talking german, but still - it was more like turkish-german ;-) And he tried to talk while he was in his room and I was in the living room. Anyway, we got used to each other as we worked for 9 months in the same company, for 6 months even in the same department and spent many hours apart from work together with the other trainees…

It was really an amazing time in Germany. It was definitely more than a summer fary tale. A pleasure u can´t measure ;-) I had an interesting job. Beside work, there are great memories from my last year - Twin week in Finland with @ Bern, Tampere & Jyväskylä, Easter weekend with 7 friends in Venice, a whole month of party, good mood and excellent weather in June during world cup, a lot of great people I met and many, many other things. 3 months have passed since I returned. But still, I miss some things and I hope to see those people again (hopefully very soon). And when I think back to this time, I always get a smile upon my face…

Thinking

2006-12-07T11:44:00.000+01:00

A mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and imagination. It involves manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions. It is a higher cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is part of cognitive psychology.
The basic mechanics of the human mind reflect a process of pattern matching or rather recognition. In a "moment of reflection", new situations and new experiences are judged against recalled ones and judgements are made. In order to make these judgements, the intellect maintains present experience and sorts relevant past experience. It does this while keeping present and past experience distinct and separate. The intellect can mix, match, merge, sift, and sort concepts, perceptions, and experience. This process is called reasoning. (Wikipedia)

Lately I have the impression, that people are experiencing things like me. It goes like that: Someone says something and there´s a spontaneous reaction and afterwards, the topic is changed. But later, probably on their own they start to think about it and the topic keeps coming up and up again. As I mentioned, it happened to me this week - even twice. Once on sunday at do-it and once yesterday at university. Well i´m wondering and thinking about what I could and want to do besides the studies. At the moment, there are two things which could be interesting. And yes, there are rumours around - but only in my head ;-)

topic of the day

2006-12-06T20:39:00.000+01:00

can´t get it out of my head

2006-12-05T16:46:00.000+01:00

since I woke up today and heard this song on the radio, it´s following me...

Just did-it

2006-12-04T16:20:00.000+01:00

Sitting in the train between Göschenen and Arth-Goldau, looking out the window to the ugly grey, rainy sky, I have some time reflecting about the weekend and write down some things. Once again I was in Fiesch, this time for Do-it. But not as a delegate but as a member of the extended organizing committee. I really saw the conference from a totally different perspective. The first two times I was there I joined the sessions and workshop. This time the only one I attended was the closing plenary. I really had no clue about the content of the sessions the delegates where attending. The only information I had, was that this track wants to have a coffee break at this specific time in that location and the amount of delegates…

My sub-team - the logistics - was responsible for these coffee breaks, to set up workshop rooms and clean afterwards. This job really raised my awareness for trash handling. It´s really strange how the delegates threw there stuff away. They put packaging of coffee or sugar into the organic trash when there is a normal trash almost next to it (maybe 2 metres is two far away?), empty recyclable bottles into the normal trash when we had the bag for recyclables just next to it (is 30cm still to far away?) or they left half full bottles and half eaten candy bars just somewhere (not even throwing them away). And it´s really interesting what a mess people can make just with babybel-packaging.

Well, yesterday evening at around 6 o´clock the conference finished officially. My timetable since then:

1800-2000 cleaning workshop rooms and coffee breaks
2000-2200 oc dinner
2200-0100 cleaning the dirty sticky floor of the party room
0100-0200 cleaning the dormitories, some random stuff
0200-0500 sitting together with the oc and just talking about random stuff (eg. our future in @)
0500-0800 sleeping finally
0830-1300 travelling back to St. Gallen
1400-… Back at university for a meeting for our research project

Ok, for those out there who want to do a project soon I have some suggestion for topics:

The “latte macchiato” case: Process orientation in trash behaviour
The optimal allocation of trash bins
Consumer behaviour influenced by alcohol
The differences of organic trash, recyclable and normal trash from the customer perspective

Some awards I´d like to give:

Award for the Inkind, with which you can make the best mess (Nominees: chips, peanuts, party-kiss)
Winner: party-kiss

Award for the funniest thing in the early morning:
Winner: to see the faces of the delegates

Award for the funniest thing in before lunch:
Winner: Sue´s party concept with her “Emmi Gascho”

Award for the funniest thing in the evening:
Winner: Discussion with some OC members about the inhabitants of Bitsch (and some other OC members misunderstanding us)

Award for special delegate:
Winner: Yavor, for the support of the OC with tidying after awards-night and supporting after conference was finished! Thank you!!

Award for the best core OC:
Winner: The OCs of my beloved LC Berne, for the marvellous job they did in the past months!

Award for the best OCP:
Winner: Martin, for his outstanding job!!

Nuit gravement à la santé

2006-11-28T16:29:00.000+01:00

Q without A

2006-11-25T16:25:00.000+01:00

for two weeks now i´m intensively thinking about my master thesis. i realized that if i want to finish my thesis before a possible exchange term, i should start in february with it. therefore i really should start to get a topic...
but hmmm... what should i write about? what could be interesting? is there a blockbuster topic out there? is there an interesting topic which i could write about in a cooperation with a company? who´s a good prof.? sofar there are only questions here. i´m browsing institute website, websites of other universities, company websites, websites with topics of already written diploma thesis in order to find some answers, to have an input to think about, to get a solution in the end.
maybe i get THE idea tomorrow while taking a shower, maybe in a week at do-it after not sleeping enough? perhaps santa claus tells me a solution or maybe i´ll find it under a christmas tree somewhere?
anyways, it might take some time to come up with a topic and i´ll take my time to choose it. the first step in the right direction i made already: i have now at least 5% more brain capacity to use, because i cut my hair ;-)