So classes have been going on as scheduled and we held our first ever at the IMBA NCKU University Professional International Case Study meetings. Since I was working in the IMBA office on Friday mornings 8-12n I was put in charge of the registration process for the morning events. Long story short, I sat in the basement under the stairs from 8am-12n with only about 30 mins of actual work of signing up people. I had to work on homework before my 6:30pm class, so I was not able to make it back for the afternoon Case presentations. That Friday for my MOM class we had a guest speaker Jason Liu who was the CEO of Mazda here in Taiwan. He has traveled all over the world and had many interesting things to tell us about. His topic of discussion was explaining Brand Value and how Mazda tries to strategically use it to increase sales, and retain customers by creating brand loyalty. Mr. Liu was a great speaker and since his profession was in the Automotive industry, I felt a quick connection in his presentation to home (thanks dad). Later in the presentation he opened the floor up for questions and I had to ask if he had ever been to a "NACE" convention in Las Vegas. Since I have been to a couple NACE shows over the years with the last one being in Las Vegas, I was hoping to hear his thoughts and comments on the show and the Las Vegas experience, but he had never been to NACE since it is mainly for collision repair companies and manufacturers of the products for that industry, but he said he has heard of it, and hopes to go in the future. He did say he has been to the show in Frankfurt Germany which is the largest of the Car shows in the world (not sure if I spelt Frankfurt correctly). Anyways his presentation was great and with a few advertisements he showed us, it made me think of getting a Mazda for my next vehicle (but still probably wont).
The next day was Saturday which was the night of our "Welcome Party" that the senior students hosted for us Juniors. Everyone dressed in their Traditional Countries dress for the event. It was really cool to see the diversity of everyone. The party was at a very nice hotel and we had over 250 students with their friends and family members. There was so much delicious food and of course they arranged a bar which everyone seemed to love. A couple of the Senior students performed a skit to really "break the ice" with everyone and someone it came out that I was known as the "cute/hot" new Junior, but I am too tan for some of the girls taste, haha and Raquel was also mentioned as being the cute/hot female junior of our class. After they made me stand up in front of everyone while my face was blushing and surprised that I have not heard all this commotion about me already. hehe. Well after the dinner, still in front of everyone (including our professors and their wives) the seniors wanted to have a drinking challenge against us juniors so each team was consisted of 8 students. The game was just to chug a wine glass of beer one at a time until the end of the line. Well "WE WON”, but one of our teammates drank his right as they said start without knowing he had to wait his turn, but we still won by more than one person so I don’t like to accept the disqualification. Both teams were a good sport and shook hands. The last part of the party at the hotel was of people from different countries performing a traditional dance or song. So we had to be out of the Hotel by 11pm due to our reservation expiring, so the after party was a bus ride to the club "Fusion" where we all danced and partied till about 2am then shared cabs home.
The next weekend was Halloween so just about everyone was excited to dress up and celebrate a Western Tradition. I still had a week of classes to get through with Homework due in BDM and MOM. My Chinese class was cancelled for that Thursday because the Chinese language center had planned a field trip on Saturday which everyone could have signed up. The trip looked like a lot of fun, but knowing previous Halloweens, there was no way I was meeting at 7:30am after a night of drinking to ride a couple hrs on a bus for another party. So Friday was the big day, and after work I spent the rest of the day up until class searching all over town to find face/body paint to create my outfit. Tony and Ulle searched around town on our scooters with me until we finally found an art shop with non-toxic face paint and we found some bamboo rice farmer hats at another store to create our outfits. I had MOM class where we had another guest speaker Bob Crowley, who is the HR Director for Ford in Taiwan. Mr. Crowley is from Australia and has worked with Ford for 29 years. He talked about what it takes to become a successful international manager and his past experiences. Mr. Crowley brought many gifts to pass out to students who asked good questions. Towards the end of class the topic of compensation came up so I had a question I felt fit the discussion. My question " As the HR Director of Ford, how do you deal with keeping a high morale and motivation among your employees, when in 2006 Ford lost around $12.9 million and the CEO was paid over $39 million while laying off thousands of jobs?" he said the key to keeping the trust in employees is clear effective communication. He continued by saying that finding a CEO is very competitive based pay and the majority of his $39 million was stock options which he most likely lost as the company lost money. Also by explaining the reasons behind certain decisions and the rationale behind it, employees will not feel left out or in the dark on matters such as these. He thanked me for the good question and gave me a ford racing jacket collection edition. It’s really cool and sporty looking just a tad bit small, but it will come in handy I’m sure.
So after the class I hurried back to the dorm to start dressing up and painting up my face with Tony, Ulle, and another friend from soccer Kyle from Ontario who has only been here a week. The night started at the "country club" then to the Armory bar. It was packed and everyone loved our costumes and took a lot of pictures with us throughout the night. Around 4am we went to the Orient club since they were no longer charging admission and danced for about 1 1/2 until we ended up having breakfast at a restaurant near our dorm and watched the daylight creep up on us. It was a lot of fun and I slept till 3pm the next day and then worked on homework.
Most recently or Last night, we have been set up in "Families" with local MBA business students at NCKU. I have 5 new friends; Elaine, Davis, Candice, Albert, and Beryl. We had a fun eating game we all played as a group (15 groups of 7 or 8) where we had a member of our team (4 at a time) go up to the front and eat a traditional Taiwanese dish (mine was oyster omelet) and one of the dishes had wasabi (green Japanese spice) and we had to pretend we had the spicy dish to convince the other groups to pick you from the person who had the real spice dish. If the groups guessed the wrong person then they had to drink a very bitter tea which I thought was disgusting and it gave me goose bumps. lol anyways after the contest my group joined up with some others and we all went to eat dinner (shrimp rolls which I have been waiting to eat since I have been here). They were delicious like I had expected and we finished the night we a few of us playing pool in a game place that was only a 100yds from my dorm and I had no clue it was there. So hopefully I can play pool more often and not be terrible when I finally get to come back home.
So my past few weeks have been fun, but of course I miss home and these holidays coming up. Thanks again for everyone reading my blogs.
Luv Always,
Logan
No comments:
Post a Comment