The future is bright...

...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

On the day I was born...

... 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...

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

Newbies!

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

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

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

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

Time flies by

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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