tour review- taiwan(sarah)

Do you want to feel orientalism?

 2 years ago, I went to Taiwan which is located nearly 150km apart from china with my family for a trip. There were many mountains, temples, and markets. If you go there, I promise you will absolutely experience oriental culture. I am going to introduce some tourist attractions of Taiwan.

 1.  Night market in Taipei

This place is a essential tourist point of taiwan. it is one of the famous night market in the world. You can eat various kinds of skewered stuffs made of fish, fruits, etc..also you should have a cup of milk tea, what it called bubble tea. it is truely tasty. i bought an umbrella here.
cos taiwan's climate is quiet oceanic weather that is frequently showering so their skills of making umbrella is awesome. i have used it since i bought it.


2. Jiofen, taipei

If you paln to travel or know about taiwan, you must go jiofen. it is the place which was motivated a famous cartoon in japan 'sen and chihiro'. in korea, jiofen is already kown as a 'on air(poplular drama in korea) film site'. therefore it is always crowded with many tourists. in addition to many shops and restaurants lined on the street. also red laterns hanged on the restaurants attracted your eyes.


3. taero gorge

when i came here, i couldn't close my mouth. i've never seen any breathtaking views like this place in my life. it's  known as flim site in my country and also it is called like asian's grand canyon.  there were many cliffs and valley so if you don't put safety hat on your head, you can be hit by rocks. actually this place is made artificially. in the past, many workers took effort to build a bridge in here.
as a result, many people were died while they were working. one thing you have to remind is using train instead of car. because sometimes there were victimes  of landslip.










in summary, i had visted china 2 times. i think these two countries have not only many similarities but also have differences. thesedays when i met chinese or taiwanese, they reminded me of good memories of those countries timely. if i have enough time and money, i want to go there again! :)

Polish People

I’m a Brazilian and I used to work as a nanny in a traditional South Polish family. As you might know, we Brazilians are warm and enthusiastic; we always want you to feel comfortable around us. So that is where we start: The Manners and how different they are. Polish from southern Poland are colder and a bit rude sometimes and it took me a while to understand that. Actually, just now in New Zealand I realised that because I've met a guy from northern Poland and he explained me why. Because of the sequence of wars they faced, Poles had a lot of problems relating to lack of food, houses, hospitals and others. They had a really thought life and are still trying to recover. What I mean is, they tend to be more ambitious and pay attention in what you are but also what you have. The most important advice is that you need is to show them that they can trust you before anything else. Soon as you have their trust, they will prove to be wonderful people.

They are really good drinkers. You will always find beer, vodka and wine somewhere in the house. Not forgetting of course about the POTATO! OMG, were packages and packages of potatoes. Besides that, they were healthy people, having the habit of eating organic salads and vegetables in every meal, 3 or 4 serves of fruit every day and chocolate only on weekends. 

Religion is also a good point to talk about, cause they follow all the catholic costumes, going to a Polish church every Sunday, praying before going to sleep and completing the catechism when they are child. In special occasions, they wear their traditional clothes.

This particular family that I lived with admire all forms of art and culture, specially the classic ones. They love to spend their free time going to ballet and classic music concerts, museums and conferences. They are very dedicated and prioritise studies, knowing how to play the piano and violin, two instruments that I consider magnificent.

I could stay all day talking about them, however these are the most important points that I wanted to share. Hope you all enjoyed. 

Saarbruecken

Saarbruecken

Today we went to a guided tour through Saarbrueken and the interesting part of this tour was not the city, it was the food. Before this guided tour, I didn’t know a lot of things about Saarbruecken (capital of Saarland, Saarland is a state of Germany), so I was really surprised what they eat. They eat quite a bit of potatoes in every kind. In the history of Saarland, there were a lot of mines. So the people have been worked really hard and they needed good and solid food. The tour started in the middle of the city. We visited three different restaurants. In each restaurant you got a part of the dinner. In the first restaurant the entree, in the second the main courses and in the last you got the dessert, but the dessert wasn't of potatoes. The most people of the group were from Saarland, so we didn't lern only about the city and the food, but rather we learnt about the people. How they life, what they like, what they don’t like. They like a lot of beer, a specific beer. It called "Pils" and it is really good. I like it too. The tour was great and the people were really nice and friendly.

EXPERIENCE IN THE USA

            

                                              EXPERIENCE IN THE USA

      When I first got to the USA around 3 years ago, I was so much awkward with everything. You know when you got to the place you’ve never been, met the stranger with the language that we not quite familiar with. Everything was so new to me even I’ve known many things about the America.  
                         

      I stayed there for 10 months with my host family and they were so cool people. My host dad really crazies about American football, actually almost every American love American football. Since I’ve never seen any of the American football before, I was so confused with all the rules but I got used to and enjoyed afterward.

                     

       My school there was a huge one, there’re around 2000 students there. First day of school was so horrible! I could not explain how bad it was and how scared I was. I got lose for the first day, I could not find my classroom and I was so confused about that because we had to walk from classroom to another one every the end of each period which is so different from my country. There were tons of kids in the hallway and they were so noisy but I like it after a while. I was a manager for my school softball team. It was so much fun! I went on the tournament with the girls, went around San Antonio. We sometimes lose but we could recovered it :) 
                      

        Since I was not a really good cooker, my host mom tough my how to cook a lot of thing. The one the I really love was mash potatoes with the gravy on it. The gravy was really cool, I can tell that it was a huge different from the one in Thailand. It was much more full-flavored than the one in Thailand.
                          

       Yeah, It was a really wonderful time there. By the time I have to go back to Thailand I was crying so hard. You know, when I was on the plan and about to take off I was badly frightened, everything that had passed for 1 years was just like a dream and I can never forget about the thing I had done there. I really with I can go back there, visit my host family and all of my friends again.

“ I don't like cities But I like New York ”

“ I don't like cities But I like New York ”   

 this is the lyrics of the song “I Love New York” by Madonna, and its my mind too. I just love NewYork, a few pictures at the bottom is I took in NewYork. I don't know why this small city has such attractive.

My mom has lived New York for over ten years, she spent her youth in there, also I've been there a few times that was always winter. Actually, I didn't used to like NewYork when I was just a child. The dirty road with melted snow, noisy night, crowded subway, and the people who are always in a hurry, these sights made me depressed, and one winter three years ago when I visit to New York again,  there are still not clean road, noisy night.. however that time, suddenly everything seemed to be different. 

I mean I was fascinated by everything in NewYork !

I think my first impression and impression today of New York are equal. Its kind of “chaos”,  there are people who came from many kinds of different countries,  the people each other has different position,  but its a great chaos as a huge art work, so i love this city. 

I hope that when I'm an old lady I'll still be able to visit New York for enjoying the chaos.

( yuka )

Explore Through Sydney

   Australia is such a nice place to visit. they are country and continent at the same time. Although a lot of the area is dessert, many people from all over the world still want to visit this place! I spent about one month in the most famous city in Australia, Sydney, for travelling three years ago. The first place I visited was the Opera House. As you know, it’s like the signature of Australia. This huge architecture made me feel it’s much bigger when I was inside of it. The Opera House is located at Sydney Harbour where you can see it easily when the plane's landing to the ground.

   Another signature of Sydney is the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This bridge is the way across Sydney Harbour between the Sydney central business district and the North Shore. it was totally made from steel. As I remember I had to cross this bridge for several times to do something I don't remember. It's hilarious, isn't it?

   And then I went to the Wild Life Sydney Zoo to explore the Australian animals. There were many interesting animals that I'd never seen before. of course! the highlight was a kangaroo. The next place that I visited is also about the animals but they lived in the water. Yes, It's the Sydney Aquarium. There were many sea life that would amaze you for sure!

   Not only the places that was so wonderful, But the aussie people  was also really nice. All of these things do impressed me. It might be a long time passed that I was there but the beautiful memories are still here with me. If I have a chance to go back, I'll visit there again definitely!

Canada - Jake

 Have you ever been to Canada? Or, have you planned to travel to Canada? Canada is located in the northern part of America continent. Canadians are very lively and fun. When I was 17, I travelled to Canada with my family. We visited Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, and Vancouver. There were so many leisure activities in the cities. The most popular activity is watching sports games. So, we went to the Air Canada Centre stadium and the Rogers Centre stadium to watch sports games. There were a lot of spectators and they were extremely excited by a match and players. We also had a good time!

 Many people in Canada are enthusiastic about sports such as ice-hockey, baseball and basketball. When the sports seasons start, the stadiums are always crowded with spectators. Especially, Because the Canada national team and the United States national team have always been rivals, they are crazy about the matches of the two teams. 

 I assure you that you must be immersed in that. And you will be able to see R.A. Dickey, Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, Dion Phaneouf and the other star players! If you’re interested in the sports, I want to recommend you to travel to Canada and enjoy!

Argentina

My experience in Argentina

Recently I travelled to Argentina and spent 4 days with my family in the country. But we only visited the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires. There`s a lot of good stuff to see there like the Japanese garden as well as well as the main street there, the calle florida a commercial street where there`s only people passing by with no cars. We ate a lot of tortilhas in this travel, it`s a typical chocolate sold in many stores there. Argentinian people are crazy about football so many people suggested us to see a game at the bombonera, a famous Argentinian stadium owned by the main football team of the country the boca juniors, but the tickets were sold old, so we visited the stadium the other day when there was nobody there. On the other day we went to a tango concert on the town, a very famous one called senor tango, we were expecting to see only some few demonstrations of the typical Argentinian dance but it was a really big concert with dinner and everything it lasted more than four hours, very tiring but really good too. And in the final day we went to porto madero a famous touristic place in the coast of the city where we found a lot of restaurants with a beautiful view of the main river that crosses the city. It an excellent travel with lots of fun I hope to visit Argentina again someday.

LA BOMBONERA

I was going to have lunch in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when a Tourism Guide girl gave me a brochure about some places to go there. I had a look at the brochure, there was a discount to go to the most popular soccer stadium in the city, but only if you go with someone else. I was with my sister, so obviously she didn’t want to go with me. I had been looking for a person for 3 days, finally I found a Mexican family asking for this activity at the hotel’s reception, so I told them that I had a discount and if they could go with me. The answer was yes, it was one of the most grateful days in my life. I went to the Boca Junior’s museum, I took a picture with the main player of the team and I bought the original competition t-shirt. The Mexican family was awesome, they paid my lunch and my bus, and invited me to have dinner in one of the most luxurious restaurant, but I didn’t accept because I had an appointment with my sister and our friends. I keep in contact with them and we are thinking about a trip to Las Vegas the next summer.

https://www.bocajuniors.com.ar/

The top money manager of the Twentieth Century, Warren Buffet,

In 2008 he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world after his donating millions of dollars to charity he was ranked as the second richest man in the United States.

Warren Buffet was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children.  Even as a child he showed an interest in making money. He worked in his grandfather’s grocery shop, he sold chewing gums and coca cola from door to door, and during high school he made money by delivering newspapers.

When he was 10 years old, he travelled to NYC and visited Stock Exchange, with 11 he bought his first shares.

In age of nineteen, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in business administration.

In 1962, W.B. started  buying stocks from Berkshire Hathaway. The company was originally operated as a textile manufacturing company and his headquarter is still in Omaha.  Today is  Berkshire Hathaway the ninth largest public company in the world.  He had an average annual growth up to 20% in the last 48 years. The company has a hand in different business areas. E.g. railroad, home furnishings, manufacturers of vacuum cleaners, jewelry.  Did you know, they are involved in IBM, American Express and in the company  that I work for?  The reinsurer Munich Re.

Buffet gave 99% of his fortune to philantropic away and is still active against his high age.

Microsoft and General Electric Joint Venture, Caradigm

In the last ten years more companies have been motivated to create different ways to sell their products by adapting to the market according to the needs of their clients. Furthermore, some companies use to sign business agreements that are called Joint Venture. In  those agreements  both companies consider the activity that will be developed, a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity.

One of the best examples of Join Venture was in December 2011 General Electric and Microsoft Shared Plans for New Joint Venture, “Caradigm”.

When Microsoft Corporation and General Electric formed a joint venture which is a health IT company of its own kind. This their common objective was to improve patient experience and the economics of health and wellness through providing the health systems with required systemwide data and intelligence.

For one part General Electric Healthcare provided transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Their broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

On the other hand Microsoft was committed to improving health around the world through software innovation. Over the past 16 years, Microsoft has steadily increased its investments in health, with a focus on addressing the challenges of health providers, health and social services organizations, payers, consumers and life sciences companies worldwide. Microsoft closely collaborates with a broad ecosystem of partners and develops its own powerful health solutions, such as Microsoft Amalga and Microsoft HealthVault. Together, Microsoft and its industry partners are working to deliver health solutions that enable better health outcomes for more people.

Lactalis-Nestlé, an unusual joint venture

Hey guys!

I hope everything goes well for you, even if we are entering in the coldest period of the year…

This week in business, and maybe for the last time (at least as long as Regan will not be teaching the business class), we are posting some interesting business articles. 

This week, we are focusing on Mergers, Acquisitions and Joint ventures. What do you know about this specific subject? I guess most of you are thinking they are just different words with a unique and common meaning. But, even if this 3 words seem to be similar to each other, in fact, there are some slight but important differences.

Very quickly, for your main culture:

-        Acquisition: one company is taking over another company; it means the big company swallow up the small one. This former small company loose its identity, and deeply belong to the big one.

-     Merger: creation of a common company following a fusion between different firms. Both firms are loosing their former identity and they are creating a new and common identity/culture.

-      Joint venture: quite similar to a merger, unlike that the 2 companies are not creating a common one, but a third one. This new company could be operated by only one company or both of them, but, in all cases, expenses and profits (and most of the knowledge, know-how, technology…) are shared by the 2 companies (usually at 50-50).

As an example of a joint venture, I would like to introduce LACTALIS NESTLE PRODUITS FRAIS (aslo and surely most known as LNPF or LNUF). This joint venture was created in the late 2006 by Nestle (food industry world leading company, Vevey-based, Switzerland. For more information, click here) and Lactalis (dairies product world leader, Laval-based, France. For more information, click here).

This joint venture is a little bit untypical because it’s not equally owned by each partner, but belongs at 40% to Nestle and 60% to Lactalis. This operation gave Lactalis the dairies fresh products European leadership (2013) and the challenger position (2nd) in the world. For all that, Nestle is not loosing in this deal. Indeed, Nestle is benefiting of the whole knowledge of making dairies fresh product via Lactalis, helping them to keep and even restore their market shares against the French Danone and the US Deans Food. The 2 Groups are sharing crucial and complementary activities as industrial, logistic, commercial and marketing. 

In my opinion, the joint venture is really successful. Indeed, usually, this kind of partnership lasts just a little time, maybe 2 or 3 years in average. In the LNPF case, this operation is still running (over the last 8 years) and I don’t think they plan to stop this really lucrative business. Moreover, they have covered 9 European countries like France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the UK and Ireland, Italy and the Iberia peninsula (Spain and Portugal). And they will likely gain lots and lots of new markets in the near future. They are also operating common brands, following a co-branding partnership, like Nestlé, La Laitière, Yoco, B'A, Bridélice and Sveltesse brands in France and Belgium ; Ekabe in Luxembourg, Ski and Munch Bunch in the UK ; Longa Vida and Yoggi in Portugal ; La Lechera in Spain ; Fruttolo and Mio in Italy ; and Hirz in Switzerland. All of this allows an annual turnover of €1.5 bn and permits the employment of over 3,300 people.

Finally, I remain confident in this joint venture and keep thinking they will improve their respective leaderships thanks to this common entity. 

Good" Customer service

Hey:Guy

In business class this week we learn about customer service because this is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction and feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. For example Lexus this automaker companies has been top rankings for guest satisfaction by J.D. Power and Associates. Lexus promises extraordinary customer satisfaction, the automaker needs outstanding personnel who share the company's values and the talent to deliver on them. Lexus has set extremely high standards for its dealer selection process and they were subjected to a demanding application process that required extensive customer satisfaction surveys and related data. The application process included several face-to-face interviews between the company and each prospective dealer. In the end, only 80 existing Toyota dealers were chosen from a field of 1,500 applicants. The company then turned to top dealers of competing luxury brands. It promises that Lexus will produce the finest cars ever built. In turn, Lexus dealers must promise to constitute the industry's best dealer network, Lexus dealers go to remarkable lengths to please their customers. Lexus execs tell the story of one South Atlanta dealership, which serves a vast portion of Georgia, whose service and parts personnel fly their own planes to reach distant customers whose cars need maintenance. “This is beyond service!” exclaimed one customer after watching the Lexus team fix her car in her own driveway. In a survey of dealer attitudes published by the National Automobile Dealers Association in mid-2006, Lexus dealers were by far the most satisfied of any dealership group.

Customer service... Pardon ?

Hey Guys! 

Again and again we are giving you a lot of interesting information about business and business-related things. This week, we spoke about Social media and, above all, Customer Service. According to you, what’s a good customer service? What’s the work achieved by this department and what are these duties? A lot of questions, isn’t it?

First at all, the customer service is not just after sales but could easily fulfil some pre-sales duties. For example, when you are doing your shopping, all of the information given by the front-line employees is part of the customer service. It could take the shape of a piece of advice or everything else helping you to choose the best item regarding to your expectations. Customer service is particularly used in the service area, I mean for example, when you are going to the restaurant or the hostel. Normally, in that case, more you pay; better will be the customer service. But sometimes, money and customer service are not directly linked: I will develop this idea in a further paragraph, speaking about my customer service experience at Carl’s Junior.

Closing the brackets, the second area of the customer service is the aftersales service. I bet you know what I mean; you surely have already experienced dealing with an aftersales service… Could be really positive, or could be really awful. Unfortunately, most of the time, the aftersales service remains awful… Fortunately, most of the big companies are coping really well with this kind of customer service (except Apple, perhaps…).

Now, I would like to introduce my surprisingly good customer service experience. I was just astonished, that’s why I would like to introduce Carl’s Junior. Carl’s Junior is a US-based fast food restaurant, supplying hamburgers at the fourth corners of Earth. They are well established in the US, but not only. Indeed, you can easily delight yourself in eating a burger in Canada, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Malaysia, Denmark, Costa Rica, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, Panama, Turkey, China and, for sure, New Zealand (2011)!

Normally, I expect nothing else than eating a disgusting meal in a fast food. Food is most of the time bad, and employees just impolite and not really nice. I always have had bad experiences with fast food chain restaurants (and it’s not a restaurant to me, just a store in which you sell products really similar to everything but not burgers…). Let’s move on the interesting facts. 

 

Once arrived at Carl’s junior, I surprisingly saw smiling and cheerful employees, welcoming me like at a real restaurant. I was a little bit confused, I admit… Once on the counter, I was just lost between all of the offered meals. They just took their time in helping me choosing my meal and gave me a kind of sign with a number. They said to me it was because I just needed to sit in at a table, and they will bring me my meal. Just perfect! After a short while, a waiter brought me my meal, with a lot of sauces and told me “Where are from? I guess you are French”. It’s strictly nothing but asking and trying to create a confident atmosphere with your customer seems really important to me. Finally, the same waiter came again maybe twice at my table asking me if everything was well and if I needed something special, always repeating “take it easy and enjoy your meal, we manage all the rest”. Moreover, he even meant “cleaning up the table and throwing my meal”!