ALL POSTS BY: Hweester

At this particular moment, I am enjoying the view of the rocky mountain on the plane as I am writing to you. I couldn’t tell the division between the clouds and the mountains, our plane goes in and out of the clouds; it is just so gorgeous…

On Traveling

For the month of August, I will have 3 business trips. 2 of them are related to Bus Dev. 1 of them is related to a training on business intelligence tool. The idea of a mobile lifestyle hasn’t bothered me at all. Part of it is due to the fact that I traveled a lot for conferences, consulting projects and job search during B-school years. I personally think that mobile lifestyle will be a dominant part of many of our graduates because more and more technical centric jobs will be outsourced, and we are continuing to see the job growth in consulting, business development, marketing etc.

On Business Intelligence

Here we go…Finally, after 2 years of B-school dream life, I am back to corporate America again. Today marked the 3rd day of me being employed full time again. It is too early to describe the experience in detail so far..but so far so good. The orientation is brief and to the point. I have met most of the people I need to meet and meeting more people naturally along the way. I like it this way. Hopefully I can paint a more complete picture in my head as far as how this co. run.

Hmmm, what has changed? For one, I have to discipline myself to go to bed at a reasonable time and sacrifice my most productive period of the night: 12am to 2am. Also have to pay more attention to wardrobe, can’t wear jeans everyday (FYI, they don’t encourage this at school, but hey I am a rebel). The hardest thing is working in a cubicle and not our beautiful courtyard–> have to try to keep my voice down. And finally, ha I will be getting paid! As long as I am doing most of what I enjoy, I can handle all this "sacrifice".

I had a playmate growing up. He is a cousin of mine. He grew up in Singapore and I grew up in Malaysia. We often played together during holidays. I was told that we were very close among all the kids our age. As we grew up, so did our distance. I thought he became a typical arrogant Singaporean who chose to be westernized over our own Chinese culture. I bet he thought I am a backward Malaysian who chose to be educated in a Chinese school.

Fate sent me to U.S. in 1998. He left Singapore to attend a University in Australia. I stayed in the U.S.; he found a job in Singapore and was sent to the co. China’s branch few years ago.

I called his mom for the 1st time in 2 1/2 years as I heard she just had a knee surgery. My cousin picked up the phone. Something very interesting happened: I spoke to him in English and he replied in Chinese. We understand each other very well, but we each chooses to communicate in the other’s first language. It is a wonder to me that my westernized cousin got to go to China and a proud Chinese like me chose to reside in U.S…