Towards the end of my internship last year i had said that its hard to do “only one” internship. I had thought about doing another internship but i was not sure when or when.
However that changed when came across a message from a friend of mine from Warsaw SGH about a developement traineeship in Warsaw, Poland.
What happened next?? Read all about it on,my new blog http://trendcrusher.blogspot.com/
2 years ago • 0 notesIts been 7 months since i started this blog and I’ve documented the highlights from my internship in Poland. I have changed A LOT in these past 7 months mainly due to the experiences i have had and also the people that i have met during this time.
Since i have got back home i have realised the impact that i had on others while i was in Poland and also the impact that the people i met there had on me. There were many times that i wanted to give up and come back to UAE but it is mainly because of the people i met that i stayed on.
Its had to choose the best moments from my internship as there were too many. The ones that i have mentioned in this blog, i will remember for a long long time.
If i had to use a song to describe my internship in Poland, it would be the following lyrics from a song by Foo Fighters…….
It’s times like these you learn to live again
It’s times like these you give and give again
It’s times like these you learn to love again
It’s times like these time and time again
If i would have to redo my internship all over again, i would do it for sure. Good times and Bad times. I am thinking about doing an internship and if the right one comes along with definitely take it up.
I have some job offers both in UAE and Poland at the moment, i am not rushing into anything and keeping my options open.
At the moment i am concentrating on the “8 day academy” and TEDx Shekavati. The “8 day academy” is a project started by Masarat Daud, who is based here in Dubai. It is “an inspiring initiative to make 100% literacy a reality by educating villages and communities in just EIGHT days!”
I will traveling to Fathepur which is in Rajasthan,India in the first week of January for the academy and TEDx. Check …. for more information about the project,the weeks leading up to it and a lot more.
I know i said in my last entry but i came across something and i just had to post it here.It is the AIESEC version of the “Suncreen Song” (if you have not watched it before, check it out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wGHSQrlw-U )
I found it on the blog of AIESEC Bahrain (http://aiesecbahrain.blogspot.com/2009/10/sunscreen-song-aiesec-version.html) who took it from Luis Magalhães.
Its a nice read, definitely advice i would give anyone after my internship experience. Here it is….
Ladies and gentlemen of AIESEC, “Go on eXchange”
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, “eXchange” would be it.
The long-term benefits of eXchange have been proved by companies, where’s the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own AIESEC experience.
I will dispense this advice NOW!
Enjoy the power and beauty of your Team.
Take that in your mind.
You will not understand the power and beauty of your Team until they’ve faded.
But trust me, in 20 years,when you’ll look back at photos of your team buildings and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility layed before you and how fabulous your work really looked.
You Achieved more than you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future.
Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to create a conference with a 2 days notice.
The real troubles in your career are going to be things that never crossed your worried mind, like that function in Excel you never needed before or a way to see your emails in the middle of no where
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Create a Roll-Call
Don’t be reckless with other people’s dances.
Don’t put up with people who are reckless with your randomness
Work
Don’t waste your time on jealousy of others results.
Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.
The race is long and, in the end, you just need to learn.
Remember sugar cubes you receive.
And listen to the feedback you get,
If you succeed on applying it, you’ll grow.
Keep your old badges.
Throw away your old and confusing post-its.
Risk
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life.
The most interesting LCP’s I knew didn’t knew what they wanted to with their LC’s
Almost every MCP that I know didn’t knew they wanted to be MCP some day
Do plenty BOAT races.
But be kind to your knees.
You’ll miss them in a 8 days conference.
Maybe you’ll raise TN’s, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll have lots of trainees, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll go abroad.
Maybe you’ll dance the tunak-tunak at an international conference.
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance.
So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy the experience.
In every way you can.
I know that some people go further.
But it’s only yours and no one will live it for you.
Dance
Even if you have never done it before
Follow someone’s the directions, even if you don’t know them.
Do not go to bed before everyone.
You’ll only miss the party in the morning.
Get your parents involved.
You never know when they’ll be the main sponsors of your trips.
Be nice to your members.
They’re your best link to your LC and the people most likely to stick in your teams in the future.
Understand that people come and go, but some precious few should stay.
They’ll work hard, bridge the gaps, understand the philosophy and lifestyle of the organization, because the older you get, the more you need the people that you met when you entered.
Work in E.R. once, but stop before it makes you hard.
Work in T.M. once, but stop before it makes you soft.
Travel
Accept certain inalienable truths:
International meetings are the best
Even if trainings are not that great.
Even if things are expensive,
You will have fun
And when two weeks pass, you’ll fantasize that when you were there, the price for beer was reasonable, roll-calls were crazy, and members respected their facis.
Respect your leaders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you’ll have lots of materials.
Maybe you’ll have a wealthy LC.
But you never know when either one might fail you.
Don’t mess too much with your processes or by the end of term you wont reach anything.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but look for people that supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia.
Dispensing it is a way of fishing the materials from your computer, writing it in a new template, correcting the places where you can sill read “SN” and giving it to someone that will use them better than you.
But trust me on the “eXchange”.
By Luis Magalhães
Heres a picture of Eunika and me with the Exchange team of AIESEC Wroclaw UE.
Its been a month since i got back to UAE and quite a few things have happened since then…most of it has to do with me dealing with change.
One aspect that I forgot to metion in my previous entry was adjusting back into AIESEC here. For the past 6 months i have been out of the loop of whats going on in AIESEC UAE and there is also now a new team in the national leadership.
Two week ago,i attended the “1st National Leadership Conference of AIESEC UAE”. I spoke about my internship experience in Poland. It was 5 minutes long so i kept it brief and mentioned the main highlights from my internship. I also prepared a PowerPoint presentation with pictures from these times that i mentioned. It went off pretty well and i think everyone liked it.
Here are a couple of pictures from it…
Other than that i am keeping myself busy with some work. I’m still working for Savi Technologie here. I have some other job offers also and i am trying to figure out which will be the best for me and also my future. I am leaning towards taking up an offer here in UAE/Dubai mainly for family reasons
I’ve also been catching up with some old friends from high school.
I’m working on a project for which i will have to travel India in january. I am really excited about.more on that in my next entry which is going to be my last entry for this blog.
The past 3 weeks have been a bit strange for me. It feels great to be back in UAE and be with my family but at the same time i miss Poland and my new “family” and friends there.
I spent a lot of my time with my family and also catching up with my friends here. My Grandmother from Canada came to UAE few days after me. It was good to spend time with her since i had not seen her in close to a year. My mother’s twin sister also came to UAE for a few days.
My aunt from Canada made a surprise visit to UAE and spent a couple of days with us. It was great to have all of them around.
I met up with my friends in the music scene in Dubai at Finals of the “Road to Sound City”. After talking to them it seems like not much has changed since i left. I will be working on a few gigs before the end of the year. More on that in another post.
I was also working for 3 days at the Formula 1 race at the Yas Marina circuit here in Abu Dhabi. I was part of a team doing a workshop with children 16 and under. The task of the workshop was to get them to replicate the Yas Island using building blocks. It was a lot of fun as i like kids. My brother, Kevin and sister, Janice were also working with me.
Heres a picture of us
Heres one of us with the rest of the team on the last evening
After working on the 2nd and 3rd day i went for the Kings of Leon and Aerosmith concerts which was at the Ferrari World at the Yas Island. I am not really a fan of Kings of Leon but went along with my brother. They put on a good show. The Aerosmith concert was better than when i saw them 3 years ago in Dubai. They still got it 40 years later.
I’ve been slowly adjusting back into life here in the UAE in the past few weeks. It has also got me thinking on what i should do and where i should be in the coming year. I have a few plans but not sure what the best to to now…
Stay tuned in the coming weeks to find out what i decide to do.
2 years ago • 0 notesOn April 20th, i left UAE. I said bye to the people i loved the most and made a journey to a country that i had previously only heard about, Poland.
Six months later i am back in U.A.E., a very different person. A changed man.
For the next month i am going to be updating this blog with how it has been adjusting back into life in UAE, especially my family and friends and of course AIESEC.
My last few days in Wroclaw were hectic to say the least. One of the main thing i was busy was wrapping up things at work and dealing with the things i was responsible for at work.
On Thursday was a party organised for me. I had rented out a bar for the party, which was a good decision looking back now.
Most of the people from my work came to the party along with my friends from AIESEC, this made it one of the best parties that i had in Wroclaw. I am now going to much more, here are some pictures from the party.
The next day, i left for Berlin for a few days. More about my trip to Berlin in my next post.
Berlin years ago was only known to me as a city that i had learnt about in my geography lesson. This past weekend that all changed. Berlin will not longer be just another place for me, another page from my geography textbook.
After my last party in Wroclaw on Thursday night, i travelled to Berlin on Friday night still recovering from the party.
The place i was living in Berlin was David’s Backpackers Hostel in West Berlin. The main reason i chose this hostel was its proximity to the Tegel Airport (where my flight back to Dubai, UAE was from) and also to the Central Train station in Berlin.The place was really nice, my room was bigger than i expected it to be (especially after living in a dormitory for the past 6 months in Wroclaw and also living in hostels all over Poland).
Since I reached after 10 pm on Friday night i decided to take it easy and take some rest (which i really needed)
After a good night rest, i got a late start on Saturday morning. After scanning the various tours around Berlin, i decidedto take the free Walking tour of berlin by NEW BERLIN. The Tour covered both East and West Berlin. It started at the Brandubrger Tor. and covered some of the most important places around Berlin like the House of Parliment, the wall, checkpoint charlie and a lot more.
The Tour Guide was really good and made the tour interesting with his sense of humour.
After all that walking i decided to spend the rest of the day at a Turkish cafe that was close to where i was living.
The next day i decided to go to LEGOLAND and also Madame Tussads. Both were really nice and i ended up spending a lot of time there.
I did not end up checking out the nightlife in berlin as i had a flight the next morning and did not want to miss it.
There is A LOT to see and do in Berlin and i think i barely scratched the surface this past weekend.
Check out the rest of the pictures from Berlin @ http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2597955&id=28118637&l=d79dd3fbac
2 years ago • 0 notesSeptember was the month of conferences for me. The Autumn conference of AIESEC Poland that was held at the end of September was the 3rd conference i was attending in the past month.
This time around i was not a Facilitator or Chair but a “Party delegate. I did not have to run any sessions or do anything at this conference except party :P
I cannot say much about the conference except the parties since i was only at them.The parties were great especially “Global Village”,there were not only people from all parts of Poland but also from other parts of the world.
I met some people from India, who are interns from the “Enter your Future” project.
The venue of the conference was close to a lake and it was really beautiful.
It was nice to catch up with my friends from the previous 2 conferences especially from the “Train the Tomato” group and also Warsaw SGH.
Going to this conference was one of the best ways i could spend my weekend after a hectic week at work.
2 years ago • 0 notesThe last couple of weeks have been a bit hard. With my trip back to U.A.E. coming up, i had to decide if i wanted to come back to Poland after to continue my internship here in Wroclaw.
After meeting with my boss Greg and discussing everything, we decide that it would be best that i go back to U.A.E. temporarily and then decide if i should continue to work with Savi Technologie on a part time or full time basis.
The past weekend I spent in Warsaw. One of the main things i had to do was to apply for a German visa as my flight to Dubai is from Berlin. I got it in around 1 hour, the fastest i have got a visa from any country.
Later in the day i went to the University of Warsaw SGH campus to meet up with my friends from AIESEC as it was “AIESEC Day” at their University. I met a lot of the people from the Adapciak camp who were really surprised to see me there and also looking a bit different.
After an awesome meal at an Indian restaurant called in the city centre, i went for the information session about AIESEC where i had to speak about my AIESEC experience especially my internship.
In the night there was a party hosted by AIESEC along with the Erasmus Students Network. It was in an video arcade area in a mall, i am not sure when was the last time i was in a place like that. The theme of the night was Champions, there were pool,bowling and air hockey competitions being held throughout the night.
The main attraction of the night however was the “Boat Race” competition. Heres a picture of my team for “Boat Race”
I spent the rest of the weekend recovering from my trip and party in Warsaw. It was definetely worth the trip. The people from AIESEC Warsaw SGH are a great bunch.
Stay tuned for pictures and more from my last few days in Wroclaw…
2 years ago • 0 notes