AIESEC

The last days I have been mostly spending at home. On the one hand I was being busy unpacking everything that I had stored away (I still cannot find my pots and my frying pan), getting everything organized and done on my to-do list and on the other hand it is simply too cold outside for me. I am freezing. A lot. Ok, today was not so bad, I could manage with a couple of layers.

Today my AIESEC LC was organizing a company fair, a yearly even that is used to finance most of the activities. I expected to see only a few familiar faces. But instead, it felt more like an Alumni / Oldie reunion. Saw a lot of faces that I have not seen for a long time. Some faces even on the company side of the exhibitions.

Now I feel that I arrived a little more here in Tübingen. One does not meet too many people when always staying inside...

Yesterday, I went with Martina - another German who is on the same program here as I am - to meet some local AIESECers for dinner. At the moment, they are quite busy preparing for the new semester to attract new members. I am already looking forward to those events.

After dinner, I went shopping for shoes. I brought my suit from Germany along, but left my old matching shoes intentionally at home. One reason was that they are old, second reason was to save some space in my luggage and third I thought it was a good idea to buy new ones in Taiwan. Ying told me before, that something like a sale was going on at Mitsukoshi and since I cannot remember any other place selling good shoes (not that I am really looking out for those), I just went in there for a first look. Maybe it was a mistake that I went alone, without a native speaker.

It was already a bit late and not many people were shopping. So the shop assistants usually entertained themselves by talking a lot to each others. In the section where I went to, there were four of them. Sadly, their English knowledge was about as good as my Chinese. But since I was the only one, they still tried their best and of course, since I was buying shoes, there was a lot of talking with our hands and my feet. They tried to help me so much that in the end, I would have felt so bad if I left to look for other shoes at other places that I ended up buying the pair of shoes.


At least I do believe that I got good shoes, even though I spent more than I wanted to. But I am sure in Germany those shoes would still have cost a lot more...

This weekend is the weekend for the newies in AIESEC. Just like the last two years, we are having this conference at the place where I study. But this time, I am really really only involved for the fun of it. no responsibility, only for emergencies (Where is a copymachine, How do we get access to the balcony, we kinda kicked the ball up there...). And besides enjoing the chats with friends that I have not seen for a while, I am sitting in my office and finish up some work.

And I went jogging again, roughly 5 km, but the up and downs of the track and my lack of training proved to be challenging enough. Luckily there is a shower here hidden at my faculty. And it is even better in quality than the one at the place where I stay. After after having played some volleyball in the almost too warm sun, I might consider taking another shower

Last week's friday evening, I was spending at Holger's new place, a small get-together and inofficial testrun of his birthday-cum-moving-in party in still quite a while. His place is in one of three giant appartment blocks each having 22 stories. Their size reminded me a little of all those HDB buildings in Singapore. But unlike Singapore, they are surrounded by fields and there was a stunning view from his place.

The next morning, Holger helped me to picl up Chi from the airport. Chi is an AIESECer from Hong Kong who just finished his interneship in Colombia and is now starting to travel a little around Europe before going home. It was Yuki that got me in touch with and asked me to show him Tübingen for the one day that he was around Stuttgart before moving on. Lucky him, Tübingen is small enough to see in one day and there was a cityfest going on - the whole town was a lot more alife than usual. And after having dinner (thanks a lot for preparing: Ying and Jooch) - Oscar, an AIESECer from Colombia was joining us as well - it was time for Chi to head out again. I bet he was really looking forward to get some sleep.

Last monday there was a socalled Global Village organized by AIESEC as one of the many projects of United Nations Millennium Development Goals. I help out with the Singapore booth (and had the impression that I had more stuff from SG and all the other Singaporeans (Ying, Denise and Yizhen) together. But as typical Singaporeans, they were more worried about the food I guess :-p and maintained a constant flow of Kaya Toast and adapted Pork Floss buns.

My pictures can be found here: Global Village Pictures

Also collected a few new pins. And never thought how much thought was put into the Taiwan-logo. Luckily there was a little piece of paper explaining what the artist wanted to express:

The 'T' represents the sheltering eaves of Taiwan in a symbol of the island as a warm home.
The 'a' represents the host of this home, ardently welcoming travelers to Taiwan.
The 'i' is the traveler who has come to visit and is being received by the host.
The 'w' is the two people, host and visitor, shaking hands and greeting each other happily.
The second 'a' and the 'n' represent the two sitting together, drinking tea and chatting casually.
In the upper right corner of the logo is an image of the island that expresses Taiwan's earnest and sincere desire to "Touch Your Heart."

... I think I know why I did not persue a career in arts or graphic design...

Had a three day seminar on project management from Monday to Wednesday and on th elast day had to appear in formal clothing - first time for me to wear a suit to university. Maybe even the last time as well.

Besides that I am spending Friday to Sunday in the MC office of AIESEC Germany to discuss strategic and sustainable IT/IS development.

I admit that originally I should have been blogging right away about stuff that I have been doing in Singapore, but better late than never. Almost a month after I returned, I finally started to put my pictures online. I flew with Emirates Airlines via Dubai to Singapore where Shub, Pamela and Imran picked me up at the airport and brought me to my temporary home at PGP in NUS. There I met the first familiar face: Visayon, he was in my group at AROC 2005. After a dinner, it was time to sleep. The next day I went with Shub to NTU to meet another familiar face: Dei (he is on his internship in Russia right now). There I had my first chicken rice (such a small portion) and mango juice. Later that day, I was leaving for Penag to meet Eeling and spent a week with her and her family for Chinese New Year. Malaysia is so relaxing and her family is really nice, they were taking me around everywhere and it was also my second visit to Georgetown. It felt much different compared to the first time I was there. Back then, I was just a tourist with less than a week experience in Asia.

Click here to see my first set of pictures: Dubai, Welcome in PGP, Penang. Also I included the pictures from my speech at Queensway Secondary School since they were online already.

Eeling: I hope I located your family's house correctly?

Since the word of my video got around the AIESEC community a couple weeks ago, now more than 2000 people have seen it on YouTube (where it currently appears on the first page of search results when searching for 'aiesec') and few hundred downloaded it and I also saw it appear on a few blogs.

Official premiere was at an LC gathering of AIESEC NUS in March.

Happy