Just short of a month ago, I was invited to Milan by my good friend Paolo. Paolo was my roommate back when I lived in New York (almost four years ago now). Paolo now works as the personal assistant to Angelo Moratti, who is a friend of Warren Buffet. Moratti had followed Buffett around his recent European tour to introduce him to new people, and the trip ended in Milan.

Paolo had invited me to the Buffett press conference to ask a question. See the full press conference on here: Part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. I asked Buffet what he thought of the significance of true equal opportunities for men and women in the workplace, and a couple of innovative ideas for how to achieve it. The part with my question is part 2 — you have to scroll about 10 minutes 15 seconds in.

After the press conference, Paolo had also arranged a small get-together in a hotel suite, where Paolo, me and 10 other people got to speak to Buffet for about three quarters of an hour. He is completely down to earth and extremely fun.

When we asked him what his metric of success is, he responded with a beautiful metaphor: “How many people will hide you”, which is a reference to who would hide the Jews during WWII. If you have people who will hide you, you have achieved something — true friends. He is a great guy, enormous aura and has great empathy. It was a magnificent experience.

Of course, the weekend after the event was as much fun. Paolo, Stefan (my good friend, who joined for the Buffet event), Simon (my cocktail buddy and entrepreneurship thought partner), and I hit the town in Milan. We ended Sunday morning for a Mozzarella bar brunch. Below, all of us in a slightly misty Milan right after Sunday brunch on the way to the airport.

My spring vacation this year went to New York with my friend Christoffer. One of my very good friends Jesper live there, and of course I have to come visit once in a while. Below is the view down Mott St, where his apartment is.

Writing up and down about New York doesn’t make so much sense anymore. Instead, let me highlight four peculiarities beyond the usual dining, clubbing and shopping:

• The best Cuban restaurant ever
  On the corner of Prince and Elizabeth is Cafe Habana — one of the top restaurants in the “everyday” range, that I have ever been to — a very low key, Cuban restaurant with a nice and busy Latin feel to it. It is impossible to book a table, so people wait in line on the street for more than an hour to get to eat there. While waiting for our table, we stood in the bar drinking Mojitos (great Mojitos). The bartender, a great, relaxed guy, with a lot of humour, mixed the one Mojito after another as if he were a machine. After having seen some thirty Mojitos fly by, we started wondering what the few drops of black liquid he put into the Mojitos, when starting mixing. After speculating in East and West, we finally asked: “Cuban nature medicine,” he answered, “it’s makes it taste better — and then you can also say that you’re drinking a healthy Mojito.”
• Roosevelt Island — what a bore
  When I was in New York the last time with Christoffer (last summer), we were eager to try the tram from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island, but never got around to it. This was of course on the to-do list for this trip, and the short ride with the tram was exciting as any picturesque vue of the Manhattan is. But the Island itself was incredibly boring. The Queensboro bridge crosses over the south end, which is rather noisy. There was simply nothing to do, but to grab a Starbucks coffee (yes, Starbucks had found their way to this otherwise godforsaken island) and take a walk around the north tip of it. The tram ride was nice, but don’t waste time on the island itself. Below a picture from Roosevelt Island towards Manhattan, and a glimpse of the tram that takes you back and forth.

  

• Williamsburg and Flushing Avenue
  We took out a day for the allegedly hip Williamsburg neighbourhood, and decided to take the Brooklyn Bridge stroll, and then head north. Let me just be the first to say: Don’t do that. To get to Williamsburg by foot from Soho via Brooklyn bridge involves 10 km and a completely dead walk on Flushing avenue in Brooklyn (I mean completely dead — no places to stop for Coke, ice cream, anything). Arriving at Williamsburg, finally, we find out that it is actually an orthodox Jewish neighbourhood, which by itself is very fascinating. That was one cultural side to New York I had never seen before. Continuing the walk through Williamsburg, we finally ended up in the allegedly hip part, but we were so tired that we didn’t manage to go to any of the cool galleries there. We stopped at the first, cool cafe we could find (there are numerous cool places to eat there — highly recommendable) and walked around a little afterwards to feel the atmosphere. All in all, a cool neighbourhood, that I have to go back to, but next time using the subway which goes directly out of Manhattan and smack down in the middle of the bohème part of Williamsburg.
• The Shampoo store on BWAY
  I had been thoroughly instructed by my big sister to bring back Redken shampoo. Fortunately, Jesper and Mia knew a dedicated shampoo store on Broadway, east side, south of Houston, with all you could ever dream of in shampoo, skin care, and the like products — in normal sizes and super sizes — and at a price that made my sister faint. (I think a quarter to a third of the price in Denmark.) I’ll have to go there again.

Finally, the weather was great and it was great to see Mia and Jesper again — with beer on the balcony, wonderful cup cakes that Mia had found from the Magnolia baker in the Village, and much more. One morning, I even ditched my usual personal shopper (Christoffer), and went out with Mia. She is a great shopping companion, and can’t wait to go out with her again.

Below, Christoffer, Jesper, and I are on the rooftop terrace of Jesper’s apartment building.

I did a small photo walk in Paris earlier today — it was a beautiful day, where the sun popped out and shed light on the recently renovated Notre Dame (behind the saxophone player in the photo). It has been way too long since my last visit to Paris (I think four years (!)). That will not happen again.

I know I have kept you out of the loop for some time now. The good thing about that is that it is because I have had a wonderful fall so far, too busy doing all kinds of things. So here is what has happened:

Uncle Bear x 2! On October 3, my big sister gave birth to a tiny little girl (7 weeks ahead of time) called Caroline. I have been to see her at the hospital, where she needs to stay there until she can take all of the day’s meals with my sister.

I also went to visit my little sister in London (she has moved there, in case you forgot). Along with seeing her, partying, playing tourists, I also visited the TownhouseDK, a small part of the London Design Festival. TownhouseDK is a Townhouse entirely decorated with Danish design. Pretty cool. Below a picture of my sister in front of where she works (view more photos from London trip).

I also visited my friend Morten in Lausanne, which is starting to become some kind of semi-annual tradition. I really like the area around Lake Geneva, I must say. I was lucky to be there at the same time as Lausanne-Ouchy had a “city-party” with all kinds of events, which filled the streets with people. Below a picture from somewhere between Lutry and Lausanne (maybe Pully, I can’t remember), with Lake Geneva and the Alps faintly visible in the background.

That was some of what I experienced so far this Fall. I’ll return as soon as I can with some points on a couple of interesting books I’ve read and some great new music I’ve discovered. Meanwhile, I find myself spending more and more time on Facebook — if you are not already signed up, I can highly recommend it as a great way of staying in touch with people you know, care about and love :-)

Charlotte, my wonderful little sister, has moved to London. While I miss her incredibly, I know she is having the time of her life, of which she will, from time to time, update us on with her blog.

On the upside is of course the excuse I now have to visit London more frequently. If you are also planning on going there, remember the London Design Festival (September 15-25), which my sister says is going to be a super cool event.

Tonight is the last night we have on Manhattan. Yesterday late afternoon there were thunderstorms over the city, which cleared the sky and made it look bright and blue this morning, which made the city even more beautiful than it normally is. It also lowered the temperature a couple of degrees, which made it a lot easier to walk outside.

We’re just about to head out to dinner, but I just wanted to post a quick picture before that. The star photographer behind the camera is Christoffer.

The photo taken from inside the atrium of a shopping centre at Columbus Circle, which is at the Southwest corner of Central Park (map), overlooking the circle itself, a statue of Christopher Columbus, and Central Park South (the street in the picture).

Christoffer and I are now back in New York City after our small road trip to upstate New York, Bear Mountain, West Point, Hartford, Providence, Boston and the Hamptons. We drove a nice Ford Mustang convertible, which Christoffer makes look good in the photograph below.

It is so incredibly warm here, it is hard to believe, but I guess that’s what you get from visiting the city in July.

I have made a Google album with some of the photos from the trip, that we’ve shot so far; you can find it here. I have also bought a camcorder, so once I return to Denmark and upload the movies to my Mac you’ll get some of those also.

On Sunday, Christoffer and I started our vacation with a trip to the U.S. Right now I am sitting in our apartment with the most magnificent view over Manhattan. We are reliving old times — big time.

On our way here, we had a stopover on Iceland. We decided to extend the stay so we had the time to make it to the Blue Lagoon about 20 minutes from the airport.

The water has a special pale blue colour, perhaps due to sulfur (I’ll try to look into that later), and is so warm you can’t believe it.

We arrived in New York City on Sunday evening. I’ll get back to you later with more pictures.

My familiarity with Amsterdam is — unfortunately — limited to a couple of drive-throughs/drive-bys… So, I’m changing that this weekend. Hopefully, I’ll return with my camera full of photographs, so I don’t have to post someone else’s pictures — although this one is quite nice :-).

China trip, Day Eight—April 13: About half way through the trip on this beautiful, sunny Thursday. The sky was still a bit clear from yesterday, but it that slowly became history as the day passed by. We started the day at the Renmin University (the People’s University), which has a new and pretty campus in a quiet and quite nice neighbourhood. Picture of one of their, I guess main buildings, below:

The entire morning was a seminar with a couple of presentations on human resource management in China by some of their MBA students, which was followed by a discussion with a number of MBA students. It was interesting to see their perspective on things, and—especially—debating culture. We had to “warm them up” in order to really get the debate going, and, still, at that point you could not be entirely sure that what we heard was their opinion or that of someone else (say, Chinese Government?). In any case, all of the students were friendly, warm of heart and sociable.

In the afternoon, we had paid a visit to the Beijing Biotech and New Medical Development Center. It was, mostly, a sales pitch: Why place your pharma R&D in Beijing? and like-minded questions were answered. But useful stats and historical developments came about as well.

In the evening, and one of the many high-lights of the trip, was a visit to a theatre showing the story about Kung Fu; expected, but fascinating choreography, music full of fantasy, and a visual experience of calibre. I could go there again. Picture, below:

China Trip, Day Seven—April 12: On the programme for today was a visit to the Danish embassy and hereafter the Danish industrial company F.L. Schmidth. During the night there had been hurricane winds, which completely cleared the usually dusty air and smog-filled sky, which was wonderful. You really feel the clean air, when you took a breath, and you could see the sun for the first time, because the smog had been blown away. On a day like this, Beijing started looking attractive and got the nice spring-feel over it. Everyone had their sun glasses out. Our embassy was situated in an Embassy neighbourhood, so it was a rather calm place, with almost no traffic and people, but a lot of fences and guards. The nice weather, though, made these rather cold surroundings seem nice. Below, a picture of the entrance to the Danish Embassy.

After our morning visit, we split up for lunch. A couple of friends and I headed for PizzaHut to get some real proteins, something we had been missing ever since we got here. What stroke us about the restaurant, which is a normal McDonalds-like fast food restaurant in Western countries, was that it was a really upscale, nice restaurant here: Marble floor, starlight ceilings, luxury couches to sit in and so on. And—not to forget—the toilets were the nicest we had seen so far here in China, and they were up to par to any Western luxury restaurant.

Our afternoon visit was with F.L. Schmidth, a Danish industrial that makes concrete factories and related things. Their head office is located in a good looking apartment/business cluster called East Lake, which is in a very nice part of Beijing. East Lake Villas was actually established many, many years ago by another Danish company, EAC. Below a picture of the entrance to East Lake.

China Trip, Day Six—April 11: This was yet another packed day, but it proved to be very interesting. As the previous day, we headed up to Tianjin outside Beijing to visit Danish industrial giant Danfoss’s main China facilities. Frequent readers of my blog will remember that Danfoss was the case company of the CBS Case Competition 2006, which gives it a special place in my heart. And it was amazing to travel thousands of kilometres across the globe to see that the buildings Danfoss has in Beijing, look just like the ones in Denmark. On the other hand, and equally inspiring, was how the structure of the organisation had been adapted to Chinese norms. It is big as well as little things, such as how the canteen is and how employees are appreciated, that meet the eye.

The visit at Danfoss was only for the morning—we drove back to Beijing for the afternoon to visit PricewaterhouseCoopers and learn about the insides and outsides of the legal environment for doing business in China as well as the comprehensive tax system. In addition to all that wisdom :-), one major takeaway from that visit was the view of the city from their offices (below).

I tried to keep up with daily posting during my trip to China a week ago, but I only managed to do so the first four days. Now, I continue—we are at day five. The title to this post comes from the hilariously funny speech that Will Ferrell held at the graduation ceremony for the Harvard Class of 2003. Let’s hit it:

Day Five—April 10: The programme for today was a daylong visit to Novozymes’s production facilities in the Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA) 2-3 hours drive outside of Beijing. Actually, the length of the drive varies greatly with traffic—and traffic grows at enormous speeds. In fact, some Danish expatriates we spoke to said that they could feel traffic volume increase week by week.

As usual, our chartered bus for the week was waiting for us outside the hotel to take us to the Novozymes facility. After a one hour drive, we entered a remote parking lot (a huge one) with hundreds of taxis and buses. Clearly, this was a maintenance centre of some sort and not Novozymes’s facilities. What had actually happened was that the driver was dissatisfied with his boss about some kind of pay issue, and he had decided to take us “hostage” until he had it his way. We did not know whether we had actually driven one hour in the wrong direction or how long we were going to stay here at this taxi/bus place. In Will Ferrell slang—We are now in Russia! But this happens in Communist China as well. After three quarters of an hour, we were on our way again, and I fell asleep for the rest of the ride.

After a long drive we arrived in TEDA, which is a huge development area. Many multi-nationals are placed here, and you can see countless production facilities. The area is designed as a grid like an American city, and it is expanding all the time. You sense pollution the minute you get there, which is actually not that different from the feeling you have in Beijing. Novozymes is one of the cleanest production sites there, and they receive constant awards for the sustainable production.
At Novozymes we met their finance manager and one of their production managers, who also gave us a tour of the plant. Most of all, it resembles a brewery, and it also smells like it—at least in the fermentation section of the plant. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to photograph inside the facility, so you’ll have to do with one from the outside.

The day ended in an ever-so-infinite car line on our way into Beijing—we had started getting used to it.

Day Four—April 9: Today was Sunday and Grand Sightseeing Day for us, inasmuch as our programme is packed on weekdays. We started early in the morning with our guide, who introduced himself with some cool, crazy Chinese name “…but just call me Phil or Phillip.” We called him Phil (photograph below).

The programme for the day was packed. We started at Tiananmen Square—Google it if you want to, I’m not too keen on writing too much about it behind heavily monitored Chinese internet firewalls. After Tiananmen Square we walked through the Gate of Heavenly Peace (they know how to name things here) into the Forbidden City, which is a huge complex of buildings, and where the emperor used to live hundreds of years ago. On the back of the envelope, the Forbidden City covers just below one square kilometre—it’s huge! Below is a photograph of the Gate of Heavenly Peace with a painting of Mao hanging over it.

Besides the striking architecture, the size of the palace, the breeze of history—what I really find fascinating is the fact that there is a Starbucks store inside the Forbidden City. Of course I had to take a picture, which is below. My friend Ditlev is posing next to our hidden (forbidden) treasure.

(…we did so much more on this day… we saw more of the gigantic Forbidden City, we saw the enormous Summer Palace, and we went to one of the hustler markets to see how those work. I don’t have time to write about all that now, so: …to be continued :-).)

Day Three—April 8: Eating breakfast on this—another grey (grey because of smog, not because the sun isn’t shining)—day, I was amazed by the fact that the Chinese seem to eat the same kind of food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner: Rice with eggs, chicken, dumplings with mixed meat, water melons, etc. Then, so am I on this trip :-).
This was the day where we were going to visit the Chinese headquarters of Novozymes, the company around which the cases evolves. Below, a photograph of their building.

Novozymes’s Finance Director for Asia gave us a more detailed presentation on their activities in Asia, as well as surprising and knowledgeable insights during Q&A. Novozymes produces enzymes and micro-organisms (if I get the time, I’ll write more on the company later) and relies heavily on patent protection of these products in order to stay profitable. To my surprise, in China, intellectual property rights issues are of no concern to Novozymes—their products and the processes to make these are simply too complicated to become victim of the normal Chinese culture of copying things ruthlessly.

We were also introduced to NNE (my unofficial explanation to this abbreviation is Novo Nordisk Engineering), which—like Novozymes—also originates from the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. NNE is an engineering consultancy and has managed the construction projects of both Novozymes’s headquarters and their production site in TEDA (an economic development zone a couple of hours north of Beijing by car). In the case we’re solving, the issue is an expansion of Novozymes’s production capacity, which is why the viewpoint of NNE is extremely relevant. Below is a picture of Novozymes’s Asian Finance Director, Mads, and NNE’s General Manager for China, Christian.

After having spent the day at Novozymes, including an hour or two of case solving, we headed back to the hotel. I headed out to Beijing’s pedestrian street with a bunch of people to have a look—it is actually a pretty normal pedestrian street with McDonald’s, Nike, Häagen-Dazs, adidas, and what else you could imagine. Evidently, there are also stores carrying Chinese-made products, for instance, a store carrying all kinds of “cutlery”, i.e., chop sticks (photograph below).

This was also the day where I bought an incredibly expensive ice cream from Häagen-Dazs (RMB 60, just below EUR 10, which is about the same as three good evening meals would cost you here) and some of my friends ate beetles, so we covered a lot of ground.

Day Two—April 7: We landed this morning and drove to the hotel from the airport. What strike you right away is the amount of traffic, the lack of visibility through the air, and the extremely dirty streets and buildings. There’s simply dust all over the place—your lips and throat dries out pretty quickly upon arrival—and stays that way (thus far, at least). Below, a picture from our bus ride from the airport to the hotel.

After arriving at the hotel, we gathered to get an introduction to the trip by the organizers, tips and tricks by Miao (a Chinese national resident in Denmark, who follows us on our trip), and—finally—the case, which we are going to work on the next 10 days, was also handed out. Below, a picture from our introductory meeting.

At the end of the day, we had a welcome dinner of traditional Chinese cuisine. Among the more exotic things were sea cucumber and pig’s brain, but there were also chicken, noodles, beef and much more. Below, a close-up of one of the dishes from the evening.

Day One—April 6: Kick off for my China trip, a day I’d been looking forward to for a long time. Although it is a kind of a business trip, I also view it as a semi-vacation—the first in months. I met with the remainder of the team in Copenhagen Airport, where obligatory hot dogs and window shopping was on the programme. Below is a picture of (from left) Jakob (who is on my China team), Louise, Morten (whom I studied at New York University with), and Peter (whom I was in LA with).

We transferred flights in Frankfurt to a jumbo-jet looking forward to an eight-hour flight. We landed on April 7 (local time) in Beijing. Below is a picture of the group in Beijing Airport completely wasted by the flight.

In nine days—on April 6—I’m going to China to study challenges and opportunities for Danish companies that are doing business in, well, China. In total, about 30 students have been selected to go on this trip, where we—in teams—will work on solving a business challenge facing a large Danish company’s Chinese operations. I haven’t met my team yet, but I am sure it will be fun, challenging, and fascinating to work with them.

I have been selected as the official photographer for the trip (our photos will be distributed to media/press)—and given my keen interest in photography, I am, of course, very happy about that.

What I really wanted to post to my blog is the preliminary programme which came out a couple of days ago, so here goes:

• April 6: Copenhagen – Frankfurt – Beijing.
• April 7: Arrival in the morning, introduction to everything in the afternoon.
• April 8: Day-long visit to Novozymes’s headquarters in China.
• April 9: Sightseeing: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace.
• April 10: Day-long visit to Novozymes’s production facilities.
• April 11: Danfoss’s production facilities in the morning and PricewaterhouseCoopers in the afternoon.
• April 12: The Danish Embassy in the morning and F.L. Smidth in the afternoon.
• April 13: Renmin University of China in the morning and the Beijing Biotechnology and New Medical Developing Center in the afternoon.
• April 14: Bestseller in the morning and IFU (Danish International Investment Funds) in the afternoon.
• April 15-16: Free time—or—time to work on the case.
• April 17: Case discussions and presentations at Novozymes’s headquarters.
• April 18: Sightseeing: The Great Wall.
• April 19: Beijing – Frankfurt – Copenhagen.

I will post in more detail on each event as we move along in the programme, but I am not sure how often I will get internet access and how much time I will get for blog-posting.

You are following the China Exposé.

I have been elected to participate on a team representing Copenhagen Business School at the inaugural Helsinki School of Economics Corporate Credit International Case Competition. The theme is extremely interesting and is a very hot one in risk management, so I am very happy to have been elected to the team.

It takes place on April 27 and 28, which will be my first visit to Helsinki. The team is Thomas Joachim Hansen, Christoffer Husted Rasmussen, and Stefan Jung, a strong combo in my eyes, and I am happy to be on a team with such outstanding professionals and fine personalities. It is going to be great.

Photo: The Helsinki Cathedral, built 1830-1852. Often used as a symbol for the city.

During my Christmas vacation (which is not really a vacation–four exams in January), I’ve had some time to browse through older photographs that I’ve taken. Below is a shot from Vevey overseeing Lake Geneva.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.