Update and Adventure “Down Under”

You haven’t heard from me for a long time – SORRY – but I will try to give you some recent updates.

I have travelled a lot in the past weeks. From the 30^th March to the 16^th of April I run a campaign in Cambridge and had enough time to discover “The Other University Town” a bit and it is lovely (I don’t have the pictures with me but we will update these section to give you some impressions). After a one day stop over in Oxford I went on Friday the 18^th April for the weekend to London to give a training at the University of the Arts London – Lovely located in the heart of London next to the Oxford street – a dream for every shoppoholic. ;)

Then I had another 2 days at home to do some washing and get prepared for my long journey to “the other side of the world”. For all of you that don’t know: I will be away from home for 5 weeks. I got the opportunity to work in Australia for 3 weeks and I took some holiday before the campaign starts to explore Australia and a bit afterwards to see Singapore for three days ;)

It is ok if you take some minutes to be jealous now – I can totally understand *hihihi*.

Back to the story: On Tuesday the 22^nd I took my lfight at 10.15 pm to Sydney via Bangkok. I started my journey with a beautiful sunset in London.

After a 10 hour flight we arrived in Bangkok for a short stop over of 2 hours – I only had the chance to see the airport and I took the opportunity to take pictures of the airplane that I travelled with – it was a huge one over two decks as you can see.

After another 11 hours I arrived at 6am local time (22 hours flight) in Sydney where I stayed for 3 days with my friend Daniela who moved last year to Australia.

I will tell you about my days in Sydney and the first experiences in Melbourne during the next days.

Bachelor Party in Germany

Partying is always a good reason for a trip home and this weekend there were two occasions.
Saturday morning Rafi invited to his birthday brunch and on the evening we celebrated Marc's "last free day".

We met at six and handed over the bachelor t-shirt which Marc had to wear the whole evening.

Subsequently we entered an old American school bus which is now equipped as a party bus

to drive to Duesseldorf where we spent the rest of the night going from bar to bar :-)

Duesseldorf is always full of bachelor and hen parties which gave Marc the possibility to practice his newly acquired dancing skills and us the chance to take some nice pictures ;-)

At four in the morning the night ended and I was pretty happy to be able to go to bed after being awake for 24 hrs (I had to leave Oxford at five to catch the bus to the airport...).

Love

Love ist patient,
love is kind,
it does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It is not rude,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps n o record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil
but rejoices in the truth.
It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes,
always preserves.

1 Corinthians 13 vs 4-7

Dubai trip day one

Our first day was great so far. Starting with a nice but quick breakfast in our awesome hotel I felt well prepared for the first meeting of the trip. Shell who is a sponsor of our journey invited us to their office to explore their business in the area. I really appreciated that they did not hold a long presentation about what the company is doing but rather split us up in three groups to learn more about the operations in a case study style way. In groups of six and seven we got individual introductions first into the LNG operations. Within twenty minutes we had to make our minds up regarding a business decision for a LNG unloading facility in India. Based on our recommendation we discussed challenges in the operations which was really interesting. My group then moved on to a more strategic issue faced in Oman, where the local government heavily advertised the existing gas resources and now face the challenge that the time they are fully exploited comes up faster than expected. We discussed the global influence of the possible solutions for the issue not only for Shell as a company but even for the worldwide economic environment. At the end of our visit we enjoyed a nice lunch buffet with the possibility to ask questions.

In the afternoon we visited the consultancy Bain which operates a Dubai office only recently. We were introduced into their regional field of activity and had the chance to discuss the company’s expectations for the region.

After coming back to the hotel I did some work on our Entrepreneurial Project. Unfortunately I was not able to finish my part before leaving for Dubai so I will have to spend some time on that during the time here as well – hoping that this does not negatively affect the experience here.

In the evening we went to a Lebanese restaurant for dinner and to “The Irish Village” for a pint later. Dinner was really good and the evening very entertaining. It’s a great and diverse group traveling together and we have a lot of fun ;-)

Tomorrow we are going to visit Abu Dhabi for the whole day. I am really curious meeting the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority...

PS: Shola has his passport back. The crazy guy didn't show up again - so everything is fine in the end...

Trip to Dubai

Today a group of SBS students left for a networking trip to Dubai. We took the 6:15 am bus to Gatwick to catch our Qatar flight via Doha in Qatar.

I have never been flying that nice. We got video on demand at our seats and the service was so outstandingly friendly.

Here are some pictures of our group of seven who travelled together. Overall we are 20 students on the trip. The rest of us arrive in Dubai from India, Jordan and other home countries where they spent the break so far.

When we arrived in Dubai our Nigerian classmate Shola was stopped by the police because a guy who set next to him on the flight from Doha to Dubai contended Shola hat used some voodoo magic on him during the flight, taking bones out of his neck and stealing him a kidney. Well, even though it sounds funny the local authorities had to pay attention to the complaint which ended in an hour discussion at the police station. Finally we could make our way to the hotel - but Shola has to go back to the airport tomorrow to get his passport back since the crazy man wants to provide x-ray evidence of the voodoo. That was a very interesting start in our networking trip and we spent some time at the hotel bar discussing how voodoo could help us all getting pretty lucrative jobs ;-)

Tomorrow at eight the official part of our trip begins with meeting Shell who generously sponsors our trip. So it's definitely time for some sleep now.

I hope I will be able to post more impressions of the trip soon.