Monday, July 28, 2008

back in the USA ... eventually

  • current

i've returned to dubai from paris. took a nap this afternoon (5 to 9 pm, whups) which has amplified my jetlag. wrote a paper for work tonight. [editor's note. as i finish this entry i am forced to point out that i am suffering the consequences of the light nap. it is 5 in the morning and i don't think i will sleep tonight]

still no computer. the service center here sent it to europe for repair, now it's there waiting for a part. the computer i am using is my roommate's and doesn't have the processing capacity to deal with pictures, so those will have to wait.

i've just a short time left in dubai, until i move on to my next destination (yet to be decided). the choices are jordan, pakistan, usa, and anywhere else. i have to wait a few days to receive my stipend and then i will start booking tixxx.

our final presentation is this wednesday, and our preparation is still in its infancy (honestly it's younger, still just a twinkle in my eye...) the head honcho, however, is now in paris and may not return in time for our presentation. this is frustrating because, the whole purpose of this internship is to instill a sense of business responsibility in academic youths. but if our role model (presumably the CEO) is not modeling good behavior, well then however are we to learn?

  • news

i think it will be easiest to share with you excerpts of my journal...from france. from here. whenever. I keep a journal and a blog because the process and product of writing are significantly more rewarding than the output of typing. i can reach more of you, however, via typing.

JULY 20
Sunday in Paris. Slept in LATE today. til 12 and didn't leave the hotel until 2:30. The hotel is at the Saint Paul metro near le Marais and la Bastille. It's a good neighborhood. Lots of restaurants, markets, and shops. It's on Rivoli and we can walk to Pompidou and the Louvre with no problem.

We went to the Louvre, saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, plus an open statue area that I had never visited before. We went to check email and buy tix for the underground train to London, but they were too $BANK$. We went to Pompidou next. I was worried because I was sick of it last time. But I walked thru backwards and it had some new rooms.
"Is that Jeff Bloomin?"
Basically it was more exciting that I expected. Then we came back towards St. Paul and had sushi for din-din. The maki was soso but the crab & mango cali rolls were delicious.

We came back to the hotel for a refresher and then walked thru the wondrously winding
streets of la Bastille (mostly w/bars and restaurants)full of young peeps - even @ 11pm on a Sunday!

It's a lot of fun being with Casey and Michael, telling each other jokes from the Office & Tim and Eric Awesome Show, checking out each others' newest fashion sense & whateva. Paris is to me everything that Dubai isn't - a city with history, museums, architecture, new fashion, very beautiful people, neighborhoods to walk thru, etc!

and the weather today was perfect.

JULY
22
u nvr axd me, "()"

I want some juice, with ice. My own room, my friends, a cinema, money, a bagel with cream cheese, turkey, spinach, and cheddar. SPACE TIME PURPOSE ACTIVITY POWER INFLUENCE ATTENTION


cramped


  • end
this is, in fact, jeff bloomin. in case any of you wondered.

i have more things to tell you, about Dubai and work today and some books. But I have a lot of morning in front of me.

Friday, July 18, 2008

family reunion

  • current

packing for france! trying to do laundry and take care of my travels docs before i leave for the airport at 10. also i wanted to post here and send out some emails, i won't be on the internet much while in paris.

  • news

still no working laptop. and since i lost my ipod, now i am using one of the shuffles. it's actually pretty convenient. the price for the nano isn't that much more, but you can't beat the minimal design of the shuffle.

this week we worked at ACE and one day with Marks and Spencers. At Ace we didn't have that much to do, but it was fun to see. We were hosted by a great guy from South Africa, who is currently the retail operations manager but before used to be the personal chef to the president of South Africa. intresting, huh? While at Ace we also went out to the Jebel Ali Free Zone and saw some of the logistics and SCM that Al Futtaim outsources. The company we met was by far the scariest of the summer. They are a huuuuge global solutions provider. They will transport anything for you, at a price. Their rep. was telling us about the live sharks, fish, WHALES, tigers, and lions that they are currently transporting into Dubai. Next up are penguins and polar bears. But shhhhh! don't tell everyone because a lot of the environmental people don't like that kind of thing. Other than animal transport, they mentioned they sub-contract to some other companies when they need *other* flexible transport solutions, especially ones that cross international borders. the nice aspect was that when we went to lunch, we did get to meet the group president. who woulda thunk it?

what else? I'm trying to coordinate with my cousin Maria to go visit her in Jordan in early August. She's actually in Wisconsin right now, visiting the rest of the family, but she will be back soon. Working on finding a place to live in Madison for the fall, the tricky part is that I only want to live on the East Side and require a pretty flexible lease. Any takers out there?

Last night we went out with another friend from Mac, Proma - Iwas her mentor this past year- and some of her friends from work (French folks). We were of different ages, so we had some trouble getting into the venues, but one place finally let us in and we found out it was one of the top 10 bars in the world! we had a littttttle bit of trouble finding out way around new dubai but it was fun to meet up with old friends and make new ones. also got the chance to bust out some French before I arrive there tomorrow.

Hmm Haider and I had a funny thing happen yesterday, as we were leaving our hotel room we ran into one of the AF group directors (soon to be chairman of Robinsons in Singapore, which AF just bought) in the hallway. turns out he is staying across the hallway from us!!! Butttt he didn't have his glasses on and it took him some time to recognize us, so it ended up as a pretty awkward moment.

Thenn today I woke up (relatively) early to drive 1.5 hrs (with ram, always an adventure) to Abu Dhabi to meet a friend of a family friend. He's Lebanese, but spent a lot of time in Cali, worked as an MD with our friend Mark, and just came over here to UAE last fall. We went for a lunch at the Emirates Palace and just talked. It was a lot of fun because we share so much and yet are so different. He's a competitive Bio grad from UC Irvine (neuro hotspot) who then went to grad school at USC. Now he's a divorced father of 5 (4 girls and 1 boy). So we talked about families, school & careers, and coming over to the UAE from the states. If I have the time to meet him again after France I certainly will. He hasn't made it down to Dubai yet, so I'll have to bring him down here (but I won't know where to take him other than the malls...)

  • end

short and sweet today. no pics and no cpu to put them up with anyway. i'm cerrrtain i'll snap some en paris. so stay tuned for updatesss

molson golden

Sunday, July 13, 2008

the office

current
this crap browser that i am using won't let me format, but if you look at my last two posts you can see that i was trying to start a trend.

basically, today was the best day of the summer because it was exactly like the office.
we met with the 'buyers' for one of the companies and sat in on one of their weekly meetings. it was absolutely mind numbing, and no one in the room would have disagreed with me. and then the buyers told us about their vendors. and how they go to trade fairs to keep track of the vendors' products. so basically the sales crew in 'the office' are the vendors and i was with their counterparts today, the buyers.

and thennn, during the meeting, the 40 something british man named ashley with frosted tips started flirting with the 30 something filipino woman with braces and gave her a chocolate. she kept saying "merry christmas" whenever he delivered good news.

as if that wasn't enough... the buyers' manager (yes that's michael scott,for those of you keeping track at home)started telling us his 15 rules of negotiation!!! the most insightful being "always think like a dolphin". i can't wait until tomorrow to try out some of my negotiation skills on him, like suddenly changing the location of the meeting, or refusing to speak first!!!

end
tonight i will spend all of my free time on wikipedia, learning the art of negotiation (and reverse psychology)

Friday, July 11, 2008

technical difficulties

  • current


my laptop is broken, again. it was broken freshmen year, stolen junior year, and broken again senior year. luckily i have most of my files backed up this time except, as i just realized, a lot of my pictures. so, this post will not have much in the way of visual support. however, if i am able to successfully navigate my last repair, apple care, and find an authorized repair center here, i should might be able to recover them.

with reduced cpu access i have turned my free time to books. namely, finishing off revolutionary road and starting shogun again. read this quote from revolutionary road. it comes from april wheeler, a young & unsatisfied suburbanite.

"i had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occurred to them to do anything less than perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic-super people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them I'd suddenly know that I belonged among them, that I was one of them all along, and everything in the meantime had been a mistake; and they'd know it too. I'd be like the ugly duckling among swans."

I enjoy this quote because I find it easy to relate to, in fact I was planning to spend my social time with those marvelous golden people once I'd returned to Madison this fall. Also the bit about never having to make the best of a bad job, at the moment I am considering not working this fall if I don't find a job that fits my requirements. But perhaps it would be better to have some experience rather than none?

as far as shogun goes, it's a much more entertaining novel. i am able to follow the tale of pilot blackthorne, an Englishman washed ashore in Japan in the ... 1600s? Forced to fit into their culture and survive, succeed,etc,etc. This choice was inspired by my recent stint in the Japan and is an excellent way to spend my time.

  • news


my brothers have made it to the spanish language village in MN. i think there was a bit of a fuss as they settled (liam y grady son mis hermanos) but hopefully they are having a better time. i think my friend from mac, tim, is working there around this time so maybe they will spend the 2 weeks together? i still remember when tim visited our house one fall break and we played monopoly with my little brothers. liam (age 9 at the time) landed on one of tim's properties and tim failed to notice, and did not collect rent. once the next player moved and it was too late to collect the rent. liam teased tim for being "stupid" in front of paul and nis and the rest of us. liam was little and excited to brag about having tricked a college student. tim is gentle and not usually competitive, so he was a bit hurt to be mocked. the game continued until a few turns later, when tim was able to pull the same trick at liam's expense. at which point he blurted, "WHO'S STUPID NOW? LIAM!" Hahahahahah. That's the same fall break as 'which seat in the suburban is the safest?' and 'scoop it out, matthew', stories some of you already know and the rest may hear eventually.

we spent the last week working in the IKEA in DFC. it was a good place to be, the people were friendly and the environment was comfortable. IKEA follows a very strict franchise model, so it is one of the places we have visited with the least obvious Al-Futtaim influence. We actually learned a bit about business practices, they were very open about the IKEA concept and the way the design every aspect of the store to take care of the customer and earn money. Some of the lessons might have been good to know during the StarBooks era ... Early on while at GMASCO we learned the AIDA marketing technique: Attention,Interest, Desire, and Action. All steps in the consumer purchasing process. IKEA hasthe best method to induce ACTION that I have seen, in the form of their Breathtaking Items (BTIs). They are the small things (this month scrub brushes) placed at the entrance and sold at prices low enough to only cover cost. This technique immediately turns the client from visitor to customer, and starts the spending process.

It was also fun to hear about the stores' founder, whose stubbornness and swedishness make me think of nis ...

we are putting together our .ppts for our japan trip & experience a little difficulty on the group cooperation end, but hopefully the troubles will solve themselves shortly. putting together a bizniz presentation is much different than aschool one. basically it has to be much more interesting and much less grounded in fact/research/anything...

  • morale


with the computer difficulties, just so-so. but i am having some fun spending time with haider and osmoon. and mail from the states (and france) is starting to find me here at sofitel, so i suppose things will be just swell. also the movie funny games is showing here in dubai (i have no idea why/how) but i look forward to seeing that when able.

  • end


next week is at ACE hardware (why?) that seems like too long to learn about a big box version of a familiar brand ... but they follow the a licensing model more than a franchise one, so maybe we will learn on that front.

wish me luck getting my cpu back -- i'll most certainly need it

-molson golden







Saturday, July 5, 2008

JACK REBNEY REPORT

  • current
some of you know about found footage festival. 2 classy guys collected a bunch of home videos and old exercise tapes and now present them to live crowds, with commentary. they tape the shows and then sell them as dvds to fans (meeee).

*the* classic clip is of jack rebney, the extremely disgruntled rv salesman. today i can relate to him, i quote "my mind is just a piece of shit this morning."

  • news - dubai
we just got back from japan yesterday and then went straight to the yacht to celebrate majid's birthday. we took the yacht to a club that was throwing a beach party ... it was straight from the movies but maybe more extravagant. at the same time, it wasn't particularly enjoyable. neither haider nor i drinks ... everyone there was rich or trying to go home with someone that was rich ... it was amusing to view for awhile, but no fun to be around for long. of course then the party moved onto the yacht and there was drinkingsleepingpassingoutgirlsandboys DRAMMA and we slept for a few hours and then took out the other boat to go fishing at 7AM. we caught some huge fish (hammour) immediately, it wasn't sooo much fun because the poles are electric reels and there are like 5 crew on deck to help us bring in the fish once the motorized reel is done pulling it in.

yes, we did eat our catch for lunch.

butttt on the plus side we did get to spend some more time around some of majid's friends. actually cool people. some of them study in the states (virginia and DC) and one was actually born there (vegas) and then moved to saudi and then UAE. the guy studying in the states was talking about a jewish history class he took - which was cool because of the way the UAE feels about jews/israel. it was the first time anyone on this trip has brought up the notion that something interesting has ever happened in a classroom.
  • morale
i could launch into a monologue about my general discontent with the culture here in the UAE but i'll spare myself the typing. to stay concise, i don't find this lifestyle rewarding enough to merit the cost (time, mental and physical and social effort, commitment, etc).

  • news- japan
i have gone on without even wrapping up japan
a) i suppose i need to interject and point out that KITKAT chingching was the unofficial sponsor of our japan tour.
b) we saw people walking around inside the imperial palace which is crazy because people are only allowed in twice a year (and this wasn't one of the days) so we saw divine people.


c) i nearly died at the tokyo tower because i was certain that i was going to fall thru the glass displaying how high in the air you are.

d)on our last night in toyko we went to a small sushi joint run by a husband and wife. it was me, the arab brothers (majid and hamad), the pakistani (haider), and our tour guide. the only other guy was an 80 year old retired biznizman. after downing too many rounds of octopus, eel, tuna, and fish eggs we were invited to 'an interesting place' by the geezer.

he said we would go to a place with beer and 'nice chinese girls'- but we wouldn't have to drink. i tried to steer our group clear by pointing out that none of us had enough cash on us to enjoy the facilities, whether we would be drinking or not, but the group as a whole was too determined to see the chinese girls to be dissuaded. the octopus in my stomach rolled as i thought back to my last strip club experience. while in montreal, my roommate of freshman year had insisted we go to the cheapest strip club in the city and for the rest of that night i was stuck trying to avoid the flat beer that was being spilled on me and instead focus my attention on the 45 yr old women on stage ...

so when we walked into this german place called 'Beer' the lighting was too good, the floor to clean, and the clientèle too sober to be, well it was simply a normal restaurant. we sat down and the 80 year old's fav. waitress came over to take our order, a 20 year old chinese girl dressed in full german attire. he laughed with her and pointed at us and i sighed in relief when i was certain she was going to keep her clothes on. the language barrier was pretty serious ... but he drank sake and ordered us a round of raw horse to eat as we talked about ... chopsticks, dubai, and chopsticks again.

e)after tokyo we spent a night in hakone and then left from osaka. hakone is an area in the mountains that used to be a checkpoint for those traveling to edo. it's a hot spring area, so it smelled just like yellowstone park. we climbed one of the mountains, at the top they hardboil eggs in the thermal water until the shells earn black and then serve them to be eaten. for each egg you eat, you live 7 years longer, so despite the sulphuric smell i managed to down one for longevity's sake.





we spent the night at a traditional japanese inn and spent all of our short time there either at dinner or in the hot springs. we dressed in trad. clothes too so check it out
majid isn't pictured here because he slept literally the whole time we were in hakone.
toooo many other pictures to share, hakone was the best.

the hot springs/sauna/cold tubs were super relaxing and akira san our tour guide snuck in to take nudie photos of us while we bathed. i don't have any digital copies of the photos, but he did provide us with a photobook including hard copies, so maybe a few of you lucky readers ..

  • end
  • back to the daily grind of dubai tomorrow. and then by the end of the week we have to give our japan presentation to mr. omar and all of the directors. really i think we have to do some serious work before thrs and i am struggling to find a theme around which we can frame our 'learnings' as brett would call them.
  • haider has a friend, osmoon, from pakistan in town. we had dinner with him tonight and he is cool.
  • i am trying to go to abu dhabi this week to meet up with a friend (amine) of a friend (mark) for dinner.
  • i just bought the oldiegoodie 'shogun' by james clavell. i think i read it in middle school but those 2 weeks in japan made me really want to read the one thousand page version of the last samurai...
  • paris. 2 weeks. doyleson family reunion. be there or be []
  •