My stay in Shanghai, London, Milan and Hong Kong

Updated Picture Gallery

I simply had to change something on this website. Therefore you'll find different pictures when clicking on the "Gallery". The page will most likely take some time to load, so be patient ;-)

Happy Birthday, Diary!

My (new) diary is celebrating its first birthday today.

In fact on 28th May 2003, I began writing down my thoughts, impressions and believes. The first post was written a few days before my second trip to Shanghai. After this entry my way brought me to different places in the world - in fact Shanghai, London and Milan - where I did make exciting living and working experience. Additionally I had the great asset to meet interesting people throughout different places on the globe who became part of my life and more important, friends in some ways. Indeed with most of them, I am still in contact today which is not always a given fact.
Things and my mind-set have changed tremendously. Especially I am proud of having found a person, who became the most important part in my life. I am thankful for having you next to me.

Anyways I have never forgotten my good old friends at home, who were always reachable whenever I needed their support or help.

Although I've been experienced different countries and cultures within the past year, my journey is not yet over.

All things considered, today, 365 days after my first diary entry, I am now just three weeks before my next stay in Hong Kong.....weird, isn't it!

Anyways, it's time to celebrate this moment :-)!

First Final Exam

I just went out of the lecture room where I had my first final exam in Trade Marketing...urgh....hopefully my essay was enough to pass this damn exam. Results will be published on 03.06 ...fingers crossed!

SDA Bocconi

...the last days of the semester in Milan. Time to take some pictures around the campus...

Hong Kong Webcam

Final Exams

Once again time flew away in a very fast way though another semester at university is going to end very soon.
In fact we have our last lecture week with additional two weeks of exam assessment. Lucky me, my first exam will take place already this week (Wed.) so I am getting in trouble to learn and even more important to understand what they have been talking about the whole semester. A real challenge I can tell you.

Relaxed weekend

Once again a weekend in Milan is over. Why does this appear to end up so incredibly fast?! Nothing special happened in the meantime.

In Germany, Bayern Munich managed to keep second after the last match of the season which enables them to be directly qualified to the next year's Champions League tournament. Very interesting, right!? :-)

Among other things my flatmate and I, most of the weekend we tried to find our motivation to study for our final exams coming up very very soon.

Italian 5* cooks

Who is telling stories about students are not able to survive when leaving the mother's nest?

Bulls***! Here is the evidence that students are well able to develop themselves to 5 star Italian cuisine cooks.

Studying can be so challenging...

Flight is booked!

My flight to Hong Kong is booked! I will be onto my way to Asia on 17th June, so in less than one month...holy cow!

Accomodation in Hong Kong

It seems I found a place to stay in HK. It's located near the office and near all pubs and restaurants. I will be sharing a flat with someone else...anyways this news is kind of preliminary, since I still have no idea what to pay for the rent.

AC Milan - Brescia

As it was the last football match of the Italian Championship (Serie A) season, a friend of mine and myself, we simply went to the Guiseppe Meazza stadium in Milan and tried to get some tickets.

Luckily we were successful so we could enjoy an exciting 4-2 win of the AC Milan squad.
The atmosphere was great, the stadium was fully booked with nearly 90.000 spectators. Furthermore we had the chance to participate in Roberto Baggio's (one of the greatest Italian football players in recent years) last match ever since he was playing for the Brescia team.
It was an overwhelming moment when he was substituted four minutes before the end of the match. The whole crowd in the stadium stood up and applauded for him.
After the match a show was organised ending with a great appearence of all AC Milan players waving a huge flag expressing their 17th national championship win.

Gerda is flourishing!

After months of lonliness our flatmate Gerda is doing fine in the sense of showing us their beauty and love. It seems that she really do like our company in our small apartment which we obviously strongly appreciate.

Isn't it strange?!

There are moments in one's life which are very difficult and most likely you would like to hide your head behind a wall....

I know these kind of situations very well from the past, but hey, nothing compared to my present situation....I have to admit I am simply having a lucky strain at present for which I am truly thankful.

Feedback from Philips

Crazy!

I just had a phone call with the HR guy from Philips. He informed me about my individual evaluation based upon my appearance at the Financial Business Course with Philips in the Netherlands few weeks ago.

Are you interested in knowing more about their feedback? ;-)

Holy cow, where shall I start?!

Well he told me that based on my results in the negotiation and presentation sessions, personal appearance, including the formal, personal evaluation of my group members, they consider me to be one of the Top 5 candidates of that event.....wow....if you think of the fact that I was selected from over more than 500 applicants in the first place, then Top 5 out of the 36 students who attended the conference in the end. Weird...

It's simply unbelievable, isn't it?!

Arvid's Birthday

Ohhhhhhhh headache.... I feel terrible today and I hardly managed to get up or even managed to get to university to check my e-mails...

We've been celebrating the birthday of a student friend of mine here in Milan. We did have a delicious dinner before we continued our celebration party at "Hollywood", one of Milan's famous discotheque. We were quite a big group enjoying ourselves and dancing to Italian underground rhythm.

Weekend trip to Switzerland

This weekend we've been to Switzerland to celebrate someone's university graduation.

We did take the car of a friend of mine which ended up in a truly exciting trip. The exhaust did make such a noise that we had concern passing the Italian - Swiss state border. In fact we thought they won't let us pass with such a broken car...

Before passing the state border we visited the Como lake up-north of Milan.

Here are few pics from the place we stayed in Switzerland:

Let's go "singing" in the rain

It's simply unbelievable... being in Milan should usually mean enjoying Italian lifestyle, the people and the exciting weather condition.

Something seem to go wrong with the last mentioned one....it's silly raining for days now and weather forecast does not foresee any improvements.

So let's wait and see what happens...

It's going to be Hong Kong!!!

Finally - I couldn't hardly believe my eyes when I received the e-mail mentioning that I finally got the position in Hong Kong this summer!

Holy cow! Literally speaking, everything changed from white to black in just a second...the
impact of this decision is going to be enormous!

AC Milan Italian Football Champion 2004

With a 1-0 win over Rome, the squad of AC Milan did win the national football championship 2004 two games before the end of the saison.

You might imagine what happened in the city of Milan after the match. Thousands of AC Milan supporters went out on the street celebrating their team's win. The heart of Milan, the Duomo square was almost completely covered by red/black flags, people wearing the team's shirts. Cars were driving along the streets waving flags and using constantly the horn.

Form one second to another, the city did change its shape...since my appartment is based in the heart of Milan, we just had to get on the balcony to hear the horns, see the cars and the supportes passing by...amazing.
Thus my roommate and I, we had to experience this special atmosphere...we went on the streets as well right to the direction to Duomo square which is in fact just a 2 minutes walk away.

Here are the pictures we took...:

Summary of Philips European Financial Business Course 2004

When I arrived at Amerstam Schipol Airport last Monday early in the morning, I had to wait a couple of hours until a Philips representative did pick me and the other international students up. There were guys coming from Spain, Sweden, France, Belgium, England, Portugal, Germany. A very exciting experience.

Then we took the coach (a very luxurious one!) and drove along the highway straight to Philips Management and staff center, based somehow 2 hours drive away from Amsterdam.....

....

Arriving at the center, we were given our hotel room keys (every participant had his/her own single hotel room). Entered the room, every participant found a welcome package on the bed which consited of a Philips T-Shirt, Philips sweatshirt, rucksack, a business corse binder.

We had in fact 5 minutes to change our dress and put on the Philips shirt and our sporting outfit to be repared for our first challenge: to meet with all the already arrived dutch students and to do outdoor ice-breaker games by being divided in three groups.
At first we had to build a large house with straws which was a great challenge. Afterwards we did another stupid thing outside :-)

After that we all took a shower and dressed again in a bit more formal business suit and met all again in the auditorium (largest conference room in that building) where we were officially introduced by the host of this event.

On day two we heard many presentations about why joining Philips, what Philips is about...We did visit a Philips factory based in Belgium which was highly exciting. Afterwards we did some other fun and excitment by driving in-door go karts and Lasergame after that. Lucky me, I really won the gokart race :-) buthowever I acted very poor in the lasergame session :-(

In the evening we were introduced in the business case and got divided in the specific group.
My group consisted of four dutch guys (one girl), a Spanisch guy and myself.
This night we worked until 03:00 AM and did have to wake up again at 7:30 am....very challenging.

The next day we continued working on the case (taking into account the different due dates for several tasks). After each business decision, the share price of each group's business was published on the screen based in the lobby of the building. During the day we had to defend our decisions in front of two Philips people of the Management Board where we were individually assessed by external assessors (the bottom line of this event: it's a Philips recruiting event!). Got back from this "negotiation session" we continued working on the case until 12:30 am before our group almost fell asleep. So we decided to get some rest and met again at 04:00 am in the morning on Thursday to prepare the review and the presentation slides which had to be finished at noon.
Time went by very quickly and the tension within the group steadily increased until due time.

In the afternoon we finally had the group presentation which had to be presented to the two management board members we met the day before during the negotiation session. Back in the room, there were again several assessors who did take notes of every single group member's performance.
The presentation was very tough because the board members didn't agree (on purpose?!?!) on some of our group decision. So we had to negotiated, proof our decisions which was challenging.
After little bit of an hour, completely exhausted, we finsihed and moved straight on to the bar where the whole group began to relax from the former busy days....drinks were served.

After a couple of beers I decided to get back to my room to get some sleep for an hour (I couldn't hardly keep my eyes open - as well as my teammates) ... unfortunately I didn't hear the alarm I set before falling asleep, so I woke up half an hour late...but was ok anyway :-)

The one of our last official tasks was to evaluate each single group member based on a survey Philips gave to every participant. Very tough task indeed, since you only knew each other for two or three days. In the end Philips also takes these individual assessment into account for their decision taking process....weird isn't it!?

After filling out the form, we all met again in the auditorium where the group winner of the past days were presented....it was not my group though :-)...the winning group did get indeed a price, a state-of-the-art mp3 player...then surprisingly they told us that however every participant did get a present, so all the others did get a Philips mp3-player as well. :-) great since the one I bought in Shanghai last year doesn't work properly anymore...

This was basically the end of the formal programme. We just had a delicious dinner and then the final party took place. A stage was built up during the day. A DJ took control of the music and the bartenders were ready to serve beers and beers and beers and even more beers... :-) The funny thing about it that in the Netherland this was a special day...something called "Queen's day". Thus the whole room was decorated with "oranje" = orange stuff and everyone was given a orange hat. I wa sconfused in the first place but as far we kept on drinking I didn't mind wearing this strange and stupid hat :-)

The party was over at about 2:30 am and this was the moment I really had to get some sleep before we had to be ready again at 9:00 am to reach the bus which took us to Amsterdam airport again.

Back again in Milan

After an exciting week with almost no sleep in the Netherlands I arrived back in Milan last evening....the week was full of interesting events, international students and a tough business case.

Next week I'll upload some pictures and tell you more about the Philips Business Course.