zondag 30 augustus 2009

Junk food smorgasbord

Teammate Susan Geller came up with this great idea to all bring a few packages of our favorite (and/or most typical) junk food from our home country.
That'll be our way of sharing culture. High level.
So, leaves me thinking... what's a typical Belgian piece of junk food? Besides fries and curryworsten with stoofvleessaus (which will be kind a hard to fit in the suitcase).

Mind you, the Belgian snacks will have to compete with entries from Canada (beaver tails they told me - explanation to follow), Brazil, Korea, Mexico, Germany, Hungary (gulash gummy bears anyone?) and the US of A (head start when it comes to snacks...).

Snacks galore, Indian people beware...

D-day minus 6


6 days to go.

Checklist:
Pre-work status: no comment (in other words: still some ground to cover).
Shopping: done (backpack, medication, fleece, sunglasses).
Packing: thinking about it.

The assignment: create a business model for Seabuckthorn. People living in the barren mountains of Leh, Ladhak, survive in a rugged climate and mainly live off trekkings in the Himalayas.
They do have this berry, called Seabuckthorn, flourishing in these harsh surroundings and that's where the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, asked for our support.
Create a sustainable business model and marketing plan for the various derived products of the berry.
And the "our" refers to our tiny team: my colleague Clai Marshall and yours truly.

And how did I come to this point? The job...
Working at IBM.
Selected for the Corporate Service Corps, a program designed to expose selected IBM employees to the 21st century context for doing business -emerging markets, global teaming, diverse cultures, working outside the traditional office and increased societal expectations for more responsible and sustainable business practices. CSC participants perform community-driven economic development projects in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, working at the intersection of business, technology and society.

So, that's why I'm boarding a plane to Mumbai next Saturday.
Bollywood here I come