Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Buy me a Benz!

Just got back from a trip to Stuttgart (Germany) and Basel (Switzerland). I'm so so so tired, but there's a party tonight and we're on the guestlist, so it's no-charge for us! woohoo! :) So yeah, poor exhausted little me is going to stay out tonight and somehow find the energy to drag myself out of bed tomorrow morning for class at 9

The trip was ok. The companies we visited were oh-so-boring and industrial. Ok maybe except for the Daimler Chrysler Mercedes Benz Museum visit at Stuttgart. There were so many models on display there. From the very first engines built by Benz and Daimler respectively to the F1 racing cars, from the vintage beauties to the Merc built by Giorgio Armani... The guys were all excited, and for the first time Weiming was scampering for me to take pictures of HIM. Haha what's it with guys and engines? Lots of eye candy, but for me (and for practically every girl there too), it all started to look the same after awhile. I was pretty impressed by the Merc driven by this pope before the late Jean Paul II. It is SO HUGE. Practically the size of half my room. Meng told me all cars carrying passengers in high standing and Presidents are built with higher sides and thicker shells to prevent assasination attempts.

The Daimler Chrysler factory was boring though. The work speed in the factory is so atrociously slow that I bet if they employed Asian or Latino workers, they would produce up to 5 times more cars in any given day. Even the machines and robots were working like snails. Made me so sleepy just looking at them. All these protective trade unions and worker rights aren't gonna be good for the productivity and the economy, that's for sure.

Spent a night at Basel in the crummiest hotel I have ever had to stay in. Euch! Sam and Weicheng even found termites in their room. Fabien (he's Swiss) was telling us that a lot of people don't like Swiss hotels because they're pretty rundown and the owners don't bother renovating, yet the rates they charge are typically Swiss- skyhigh. We had chinese food for dinner! Had vegetarian e-fu noodles with Clarinda at Mister Wong's. Yumyumyum! The party in TJ and Marco's room after that was pretty fun though the drinks were not.

Woke up this morning with a headache and too little sleep. The same crummy hotel served expired yogurt in their breakfast buffet. Expired for over a week and a half. Double Euch. And the rest of the day was just crappy. CIBA was just all about chemicals and fumes. And saftey goggles which did not fit. And the lunch they served was crappy too, the tuna steak tasted like rubbery pork. La Roche after that wasn't any better, cos they just went on and on about how established their company is, and fed us with statistics and profit and sales margins.. Bleah, I mean tell us something about strategic management at least?

Ok I sound like a complain queen. But it really got better on the way back. Talked to the Spanish couple in our class, whom I've never talked to before. Adriana's really nice, and she was telling me about the number of Zara stores back in Spain. She lives in the Canary Islands and they've got 22 outlets alone in that little island. Imagine. Celest will be let loose in Spain, most certainly. For now, she will just starve.


Laid bare at 8:54 pm
|