The Journey

I’m just coming back from an awesome Easter weekend with my family in London. All my 5 family members came to visit me on the island - I really appreciated! Actually we have visited not only London but also spent some time in Cambridge and Brighton (see image).

Full of energy I came back to Cambridge and was able to finish also my second assignment yesterday ;) The next one is a group assignment. In a group of five we have to work out a business plan for a multilingual day care. The more I get into it, the more I get enthusiastic about opening a day care with my international team members ;)

Since the last post I have also spent some days in Switzerland in order to dissolve our flat share in Fribourg.  A rather sad story… however everything is ending once and as an optimist I tend to believe that with every ending a new opportunity is emerging. Thanks to the best flat mate ever for a great time and thanks to the numerous assistants who helped to dissolve the flat.

Phhhuuuu… first assignment is written. On Friday I was able to finish the last part of my assignment in International Marketing analyzing the outward foreign direct investments of Chinese companies. I am very happy that it is done know as I spent quite a lot of time on it after our Scotland trip.

Scotland? Yes, last weekend we have been on a road trip to Scotland. On Thursday morning we got the car and drove to York. There we spent some time for Lunch and to visit the castle. Although I was a little bit disappointed of the castle (see picture), the historic city center was lovely. 

Then we drove further to Glasgow where we spent the first night. Our target for Friday was the visit of Loch Ness. So we drove up to the North of Scotland, passed gorgeous landscapes like the Loch Lomond (Loch = Scottish for Sea) and arrived at 15h00 at Loch Ness. There we could unfortunately only be amazed about how a region can be so successful in promoting a fairy story. However all that counts is that we have been there :) From Loch Ness we went back to Edinburgh where we stayed for the rest of the weekend. 

Edinburgh (speak: Edinbarra) is the capital of Scotland. I got to know it as a town with a lot of charisma. The old town is still in a very good shape and I liked the visible division of the old town and the new town. Edinburgh is therefore definitively worth a trip.

On our way back we made a stop in Newcastle where we became witness of an emigration: it seemed like the whole city would go to see the match of the local team in the stadium which is located just next to the city center. So we had the whole city left for us ;) The small part I’ve seen was quite nice. But as the name says it there where no old monuments to see, all was very modern = NEWcastle.

After the trip I also got in touch with the British fine payment system (we got one in Edinburgh and one in Newcastle…). But again I was impressed how far government in UK supports Internet Services. All my fines I paid online via Paypal - isn’t that wonderful (not the payment, but the service ;)

Today I also had my first official football (or for US people: soccer) game in England. Was quite cool, but a little bit too intense for my body which is actually not in its best shape - I had cramps everywhere at the end of the game. And now I will start with my second assignment for International Accounting - so you will hopefully hear again from me in about two weeks ;)

No news are normally good news and that’s how it is. I’m sorry about my silence. The initial motivation of writing a blogpost everyday is unfortunately already gone ;) and additionally I began with the literature review for my first assignment last week. So there was not much time left for writing blogposts… I know, I know, it is always a matter of prioritization and that’s why I am actually in front of my computer writing a new blogpost.

We are already in week 7!! (of 12) of our semester here in Cambridge. Time is passing so fast. Fortunately I had my bad consciences telling me this again and again and I finally decided to start writing (actually I am still reading about the topic) with my first assignment. As you probably know from one of my former blogposts I have to hand in 4 assignments - one for every subject I attend - till the 11th May. So I set up a little “assignment writing plan” because there are indeed not so many weeks left. 

The first assignment I have started with, is the one in International Marketing. The task there is to analyze how global a brand is according to a theory of Quelch. The brand sample we were able to choose from was limited on Interbrand’s Best China Brands 2011 Survey. Surprisingly China does not have that many famous brands. As I already conducted some studies about Lenovo and Haier I decided to choose another brand. First I wanted to go with Mengniu, a Chinese company in the food sector. However I did not find enough resources about the company so I decided in the end to go with Alibaba.

Alibaba.com is a quite famous B2B online platform trying to help Chinese SME’s to get in touch with international buyers. A 20% stake of the Alibaba Group’s flagship alibaba.com is publicly traded on Hong Kong’s stock market. However the CEO of Alibaba Group recently announced that they plan to fully privatize alibaba.com again. It is quite an interesting case to analyze as Alibaba Group was very active in the last 10 years.

I hope to get a good part done till the end of the week and will post again as soon as I start with my 2nd assignment ;)

I know, it has been a long time since the last post. I was quite busy with writing internship applications, being a good host for my visitors (thanks again for your visit!) and of course learning Spanish :) Today I would like to write about how I am looking for internships in the field of finance and audit in Latin America.

Besides one or the other personal contact with people working or that have recently worked in Latin America (*) I rely mainly on the AIESEC platform myaiesec.net in order to find internships. Think of it as a big job platform like monster.com. But instead of jobs myaiesec offers internships from all over the world. This morning there were around 8500 internships opportunities available on the platform. The offer is very broad and contains internships in social work, tourism, arts, marketing, finance, etc.

Of course not every single internship of this 8500 attracts me. I focus primarly on the area of finance and audit. Furthermore my preferred region would be Latin America and then I would like to work for an international company. Quite a lot criteria which narrow the choice down on about 10 internship offers - there is a new one popping up approximately once a week. Currently very attractive internships in my area are:

• Assurance Audit at PwC Mexico City
• Finance at Dell in Panama
• Private Wealth Management (EMEA) at Morgan Stanley in UK
• Financial Controller at Alcatel-Lucent in Norway

If you are now also interested to join AIESEC just go to aiesec.org, then search for your local AIESEC team and write them a mail. 

(*) If you know people from Latin America that could support me to get an internship in my preferred area I would be very glad if you could help me to get in touch with this person. Thank you very much in advance!

Actually it is my fourth week in Cambridge, however for everyone here on the campus it is semester week three. In order to give you an overview of what I’m doing all week long here is a print screen of my calendar:

My week starts on Monday morning at 09h00 with a lecture about International Marketing. Our professor Jonathan Wilson is fascinated by Asian business culture which is why the practical examples usually consists of an UK company going to Asia or a Chinese company coming to Europe. The assignment for this module requires to analyze how global a Chinese brand is according to a theory from J. Quelch (Global Brands: Tacking Stock, 1999). 

After this lecture I have a one-hour break which I use normally to check my mails, to organize my week and to buy a snack because I have no real lunch break on Mondays. The morning continues with a lecture followed by a seminar in Intercultural Management. This module did not really convince me yet. However it is more how it is presented which I don’t like than the content. Because analyzing the differences between cultures with your colleagues from other countries is quite interesting.

The module Entrepreneurship and Innovation it is all about writing a business plan. This is a well known topic although I have to admit that it is the first time that I am actually forced to write a business plan, which is surely not bad. This professor again does not really give great lectures, however he is totally fascinated by the whole field of entrepreneurship and loves sharing his experiences. So I got to know for example Dragon’s Den or Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of Start” both of which I like very much. 

The last course on Monday is the seminar lesson in International Marketing. There we normally discuss a case study. After this class I plan some time for blogging (… I know it is Saturday morning ;)

At 17h15 then, I have private Spanish lessons and they are really cool. Spanish in UK? Yes, when you read my about me section, you will see that I’d like to go to Latin America in the second half of 2012 and if I want to survive there I absolutely need to know some Spanish. And now, as I’m not working this year, I really do have time for such things. Additionally I actually like learning languages very much because you not only learn a new language but you also get in touch with a new culture. And there is a third reason: by doing the classes English-Spanish I also work on my English.

That’s it for Monday. Tuesday is quite easy. Two hours of Spanish classes at ARU, then I usually read the next week’s case for the International Marketing class and at 16h00 there is a drop-in English session. This means you just turn up and you can get help if you need. The last three weeks I went there to get my application profile revised (cover letter, cv, etc.)

Wednesday is then again a little bit more exhausting. Following a language morning I have International Accounting at 14h00. There we look at differences in the accounting systems all over the world. The assignment of this module consists of a comparison of the different accounting systems of America, Cuba, France, India, Saudi Arabia and Poland. After the seminar of entrepreneurship (where we can mainly use the time to discuss our individual business plans) I again have a private Spanish lesson.

The group meeting of the Cambridge University Hispanic Society incorporates the start of the weekend :) Some of our “Swiss group” joined this society as they offer a free Spanish lesson on Friday afternoon and lots of other cool stuff like salsa courses or discount for different club tickets. And of course you can practise your Spanish in all the group meetings.

The ones who think now that we are slackers are not totally wrong. We enjoy our student life (yesterday we organized a film evening with fondue - mmmmhhhhmmm) here in Cambridge. However I used my free time to update my application profile in English and I’m now ready to actively look for an internship in Latin America. Yesterday I applied for a job at PwC in Mexico and I had a phone call with our dean of the university in Switzerland to discuss the opportunities of studying in Brazil next semester.

Yesterday we met at 07h45 at the train station in Cambridge. At 8 o’clock, also the last ones arrived and we could start our trip to London.

Only one and half hour later I took this picture showing our group (fltr: Michael, Yves, Stan, Gaby, Margarita) next to the Tower of London. In the morning we visited the main sights by using public buses instead of the tube. We saw the Tower, the Tower Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square. For lunch, we went to London’s China Town next to the Piccadilly Circus. China Town presented itself still in the Chinese New Year costume:

After our Chinese buffet we decided to go to Camden Town. I’ve never been there before, however the different markets were really nice. At around 5 o’clock we were back at Oxford Street and had some time left for shopping till the shops would close at 8. It was at this time also when it began to snow lightly. As we had another 3 hours left (our train back was scheduled at 22h58) we went back to Leicester Square and had dinner in an Italian (or rather Italo-English) restaurant. 

At 22h10 we left the restaurant to go back to the train station at Liverpool Street. However we were not aware that 10cm of snow could tie up the whole city of London. Arriving at the metro station at Oxford Circus we saw that the station was closed. The next station (Green Park) was 20min from there. We were running and did it in 10min. Finally sat down in the metro we were happy that we would still make it on our train. But in Holborn where we would have needed to change on the Northern Line we had a queue of at list 300 people in front of us. The snow caused problems so there were only two more trains going to Liverpool Street. We managed to squeeze ourselves in the second train but then the speaker announced that the train would not continue its way and the line would closed. 

Stuck at Holborn station we had missed our train from 22h58 and we had only another 45min left to catch the last train leaving London to Cambridge (additionally we had no tickets for this train) and to find the train station at Liverpool Street of which we had no clue where it was. We decided to try our luck by foot as taxis where either no more able to drive or where already full because we where not the only ones got stuck at Holborn station. A man told us then that we should follow the High Holborn Street to St. Paul’s Cathedral an there ask further for the way. 

A little bit stressed (because we were all scared about missing the last train) we stumped through the snow to St. Paul’s. There we had just another 15min lefts but luckily we found someone who guided us to Liverpool Street station. On the following image you can see our travel (green = metro, red = by foot):

But honestly, at this moment I already gave up because the man showing us the way said that we would need at least another 15min to get to the station. Finally we did reach the station and it was already 23h59 (the train was supposed to leave at 23h58). The train was still there but gates were already closing. We all ran to the gate but only two of our group managed to catch the train… I was one of the two.

With a bad conscience because of not having been able to stop the train for the others we looked for some place to dry our clothes. Although it was for a longtime not sure if the train could leave the city (it waited 20min before the next station at Tottenham Head) we arrived in Cambridge at 02h30:

As answer to my sorrowful SMS if the others would have found their way home safely this morning, my friend wrote: “Yeah, we arrived at 8h20 in Cambridge :) What an adventure!”

P.S. ah, I almost forgot: They don’t have any snow removal machines in UK, so the status quo regarding the snow problems will probably last some more days ;)

One of my subjects here in Cambridge is “Entrepreneurship and Innovation”. The assignment for this course consists of writing a business plan. So I had a look on my “this-idea-will-bring-me-100-million-dollar-list” and found the following business idea I would like to present you and which could maybe serve as basis for our business plan:

Imagine the well known situation when you start writing a paper. The most exhausting task is right in the beginning: the literature review. How many books you touch in order to get just one sentence out of them for your assignment. As a born optimizer every time I was in the described situation I thought about how one could save time during literature review.

Then there was a time when the NZZ am Sonntag added abstracts of well known Swiss literature to their editions. The abstracts were all produced from an US company with a subsidiary in Lucerne called getAbstract Inc. Quite useful if you need to get yourself an overview about literature in a specific field in a short amount of time.

Having the business model of getabstract.com in mind I had the idea for readitforyou.com (most probably the name will change slightly as the domain is already taken) during my last assignment about the Zurich IT Cluster. How great would it be if someone would read a book for you and provide you at the end with a text file containing all notes to all important passages in the book?! These text files could either be directly used for writing your paper or you could load it on your Kindle and extend it (“my clippings” concept).

Thinking further one could build a web platform around this text files. User can share the text files, can rate the text files or even buy/sell text files (just recognize that we need a sounding name for these “text files”). When you next time think about starting your literature review you visit first readitforyour.com, check out what is on the platform referring to your research topic and probably you have already done 90% of the review!

Why am I sharing this 100-million-dollar idea with you? I am convinced that as long as you keep ideas for yourself they will never be realized. That is like new shoes you want to protect and you therefore never wear. An idea can only thrive if you spread and constantly refine it. At the end it doesn’t matter if I earn the 100 million with the idea myself or someone else does it. What does matter is that I loose less time during the literature review ;)

I would be glad if you would provide me with some feedback about this idea. With the help of your feedback we can than elaborate our business plan. And depending on your feedback it won’t be the last idea discussed in this blog ;)

Between: Is someone interested in sharing the costs for an account on getabstract.com (Gold Subscription £249 for 12 months)?