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.
Liftoff Friday 6.50am from Copenhagen Airport, headed for the HHL Challenge 2005 at the Handelshochschule Leipzig, Graduate School of Management. We (Marthe Gundersen, Stefan Jung, Thomas Joachim Hansen, and I) were selected from a pool of applicants to be one of eight participating teams in the competition, which had a focus on DHL’s move of hub to Leipzig, a possible development of a Leipzig logistics cluster, and a third Harvard logistics case.
The first part of the case was to be handed in at noon, so we were working in the plane on the way to Berlin Tempelhof and in the train from Berlin to Leipzig. (BTW: Danish train standards are way behind the German.) Although we were stressed, we managed to meet the noon deadline. The remainder of Friday was spent doing the second part of the challenge (the Harvard case), which was to be handed in at midnight.
Saturday was presentation day. Below is a photograph from just before we are going to present (from left, Marthe Gundersen, me, Stefan Jung, and Thomas Joachim Hansen). Unfortunately we did not make it to the top two, who were the only ones placed.
However, we got to do a lot of sightseeing in Leipzig in the afternoon, including a field trip visit to the DHL hub. Saturday night included sightseeing of the Leipzig night life. Sunday was spent in Berlin hunting football matches, Internet cafes, and Starbucks - and a little sightseeing.
Yesterday evening, I came back from Karlsruhe, where we participated in the Business Masters 2005 (my first post on this). Unfortunately, we did not make it to the finals, but competition was very tough. The–very interesting–case was about Lufthansa, one of the main sponsors of the event.
We made a lot of good points in our analysis, in my opinion, but there is some improvements to made when it comes to implementation. In this regard, it was inspiring and helpful to learn from the finalists–and for that matter, from the organizers, and Booz Allen Hamilton consultants, who constantly were there to ping pong with you.
The event was organized extremely professionally, and we had a great time meeting the other teams and solving the case–Work hard, play hard. Below is a couple of “work hard” pictures taken with my cell.
Today, my team and I got the very pleasant news that we qualified for the Business Masters 2005 case competition. Jubii! (Yahoo! in Danish :-)) We were one of 12 teams selected from more than 180 applicants to participate in Karlsruhe, based on our motivational essay, cvs, and our pre-case solution.
The team consists of Stefan Jung (his blog), Christoffer Husted Rasmussen, Maja Kuhnell Frederiksen, and myself. (Photographs below of Stefan, Christoffer, and Maja).
In October, I was in Lausanne (photos from my trip). One of my friends, who lives down there, has just gone crazy and uploaded an inferno of beautiful photographs from the Swiss Autumn.
He also made a photo of my private tennis court - I love the view I have there. Check it out :-).
Of the more than 250 photos I took, I have assembled a small slide show of about 30.
This morning I landed in Copenhagen Airport - back from Lausanne. I’ll give you the story later, along with some more photos, but for now you will have to do with this photograph from the town of Vevey, which used to be home for Charlie Chaplin.
Tomorrow, I am going to Lausanne (very close to Geneva) for vacation. It’s comes in at the exact right time. To have any notion of what I am going (in) to, check out this post by my friend, Morten (who I am going to visit down there). Wow!
I will try to see whether I can update you as I am there, but at the latest I will upload some photos when I get back next week.
I have just come home from the McKinsey EuroAcademy 2005. It started on Wednesday evening with a team-building dinner for the Nordic participants (four from Denmark, the rest from Norway, Sweden, and Finland), where we in teams prepared a three course, super delicious dinner for each other. It took place in Meyer’s Madhus, which I can recommend highly.
On Thursday, we flew to Athens to meet with the 120 students from all over Europe. Thursday was mostly relaxation, getting to know each other, and a presentation of McKinsey.
Friday was Academy Day, which started with a speech from Patrick Cox, former President of the EU Parliament, followed by a panel discussion. We then split into groups to debate different issues in Europe ranging from Banking in Europe over European Governance to Eastern Europe. I was in the latter with about 15 other students, which proved to be very informative and exciting, especially as we had several students from Easter Europe in our break-out session (e.g. the Czech Republic and Turkey). Our moderator was the Governor of the National Bank of Serbia, Radovan Jelašic. These break-out sessions were followed by an inspiring leadership panel. At dinner, Jean-Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank, held a wonderful speech on, especially, the Euro, its consequences and success.
On Saturday, we went out sailing on 47-yachts. Although sailing is one of my keen interests, I have never sailed such big sailing boats. We were about 21 boats, so we had a semi-race, which was extremely fun.
Sunday, a hectic goodbye day, where we had too little time to say goodbye to each other — hopefully, we have the chance to get together again at some point. I have already some plans, and I am sure the rest has too.
Thank you all for a wonderful trip.
I like the Italian-godfather-silence-before-storm kind of feel over this one.
I first mentioned Arena di Verona in this post. Arena di Verona is an open air, colosseum-like amphitheatre, where they perform opera. I watched a sublime performance of Verdi’s Aida. Here is my most recently processed photograph.
Another shot from the Italy trip three weeks ago.
As I think I already mentioned, I took close to 600 photographs during the Italy trip, so there is more to come. Here is a view from the big bridge connecting San Marco and Academia in Venice.
These are, like the Campari shot, some of the very first photos from the trip. On the left hand, Morten is getting ready to shoot from the boat, which we took from the airport to San Marco (still Venice), and on the right, I am shooting some architecture across the canal (Morten took this picture).
The first picture I had through PS from my Italy trip.
The building in the picture is not actually in Venice, but on the neighbouring island Lido, which we passed on our trip with the vaporetto (some kind of water bus) from the airport to San Marco.
I have just returned from Italy (on Monday), where I toured Nothern Italy with a friend of mine, Morten, which you might already know.
First we flew to Venice (Saturday) and had a look at this fascinating, but also in so many ways strange city. On Sunday we drove to Verona to have a look at the Romeo and Juliette city, but — more importantly — to see Verdi’s opera Aida at Arena di Verona, an ancient, Roman colosseum-like amphitheatre. If you at some time are in the area, do not miss out on this great opportunity. Below is a picture from inside the arena about half an hour before the opera starts.
We returned to Venice in the middle of Sunday night, and stayed in Venice for another two days. At this time it is very turisty. You should go outside of this season, and pick a place to live that is not that close to the San Marco square.
On Wednesday we took the train to Florence, where we were to visit one of my very good friends from New York — Paolo. There are pictures of him in some of my earlier posts from New York. We stayed at his parents summer residence outside of Florence–a beautiful olive yard.
On Saturday, we took the train to Milan, where we finished off the tour with some power shopping. More photos to come, hopefully, once I have gone through the more than 1.5k pics we took down there.
Finally, I have had the time to look at my Los Angeles (FEB 2005) photographs. Clicking on the link below, will take you to a dozen photos from the below mentioned visit to LA. We were placed among the finalists in the competition ahead of Berkeley, Wharton, and Thammasat.
SAS’s wireless internet on their long-haul flights works perfect. Right now I am flying over Baffin Island in Nothern Canada on my way to Seattle.
In Seattle I will transfer to my flight to L.A., where I will participate in the Marshall International Case Competition at the University of Southern California.
Attentive visitors might have noticed that this is the first blog update in a very long time.
…and I am very sorry! The short version of everything is that I am back home in Copenhagen, where everything is - almost - as usual. Much to be told at a later time.
What I really want to tell you is, that I am going to Los Angeles on Monday to participate at a Case Competition at the University of Southern California. I will update you more on this as we get closer–and I’d be surprised if I don’t upload any pictures for you to see ;-)
