Holi, the Festival of Colors!!!

Hello,
We just celebrated one of the biggest festival in India, Holi. It's a one day festival and a national holiday all over India. People call it Festival of Colors as on this day, we throw colorful powder to each other amongst friends and family. This is my favorite festival in India, even for me better than Diwali, Festival of Light, that last year was celebrated in October.

Anyway, I had two celebrations for this, first at my office in the evening, then with bunch of AIESECers on the next day. I am not really sure what the story behind this festival, but it just fun! Holi should celebrated all over the world. You can't imagine the happiness environment all around you on this festival. I am glad, again, staying one year, experiencing all these different and interesting festivals in India.

Cheers,
Alfajri Alwis

New Year New Hopes

Happy New Year everyone!!!

include Lunar New Year (so, I am in excuse saying this greeting today hehe). Its been a while after my last post. I couldnt manage to write any post during last month (salute for Al..you are blogger sejati..I read all!).

Well, this month is my 3rd months here. time runs so fast but I can say that I am almost 100% adaptable with all the condition now. The culture gap in term of working style and condition is quite hard in the beginning. But thanks to AIESEC, I have some experience before dealing with underpressure work so it is just the other type of what I learnt during my AIESEC career.

Last week, I had an intercultural training from PwC where we got a view about who is German? why they tend to be very serious and so worry to the outsider? some German history which is very interesting. I will post it later.

Once again happy new year (1 jan, muharram and lunar), wish everyone luck this year!!!

ps. 2009 is ox year means it is our year (for everyone who born in 1985) , wish you get double luck =)

Greetings from Vike ^^

Hey all..

Halo kak irma, bang al, kak cynara, n kak Ira..
First, I wanna say thanks for Kania as my manager who made this blog.
Keep your effort to make Exchange UA especially OGX ^^ become a spotlight in Indonesia.. Hehe

Ok, let me introduce my self.
My name is Vike Vanesha, as a VP OGX 0809 in LC Andalas University, AIESEC in Indonesia.
I am responsible to help the people who want to feel a great and true life changing experience..
whuuw, so wanna go abroad?? contact me soon..!! ^^

Ok, thanks to kak Irma and bang Al who already publish their experiences in this blog..
I know, you have more, its just a some experiences that you had.
but, through your story, all of you will inspire us to feel and make a same story or even more. I believe that..

I will socialize this blog, not only for exchanger, not only for AIESEC member but also to everyone..
Include our trainee who have an internship in UA.
I will invite them to share their experiences here..

Please feel free to publish everything that you want as long as inspire us..
hohoho..


Hopefully, next time is my turn to publish my experience about internship in AIESEC.. ^^

GO EXCHANGE..!!

EXCHANGE 0809
Strong Foundation and Amazing Growth !



cheers
Vike

Do I Look Like American? Chinese?

Not once, twice or three times, but so many times people thought that I was American. Any particular reason? This is the conversation that I had last night with an Indian in a toilet:

him: hei brother! how are you?

me: pretty good, s'up?

him: I am cool, so, are you American?

me: no, I am Indonesian

him: oh, I thought you were American

me: no no, I am Indonesian, why did you you think I am American?

him: you look like American!

Even some trainees thought that I was American at the first time we talked. Then anytime people ask me where do I come from, I will let them to guess. And so far, no one could tell that I am Indonesian, mostly they said either American, Indian or Chinese!!! Maybe it's still ok when people think that I am American (maybe for the way I talk) and Indian (for my face), but Chinese??? Couldn't stop my self rolling on the floor laughing my butt off for this one. =)

Alfajri Alwis

Hallo from Frankfurt, Germany

I wish I will be the first posting the story here, but man goes first (if you meet Al you will now what I mean hehe). Let me introduce my self, my name is Irma Kasri and I just started my internship 3 weeks a go at PricewaterhouseCoopers Frankfurt, Germany. In next one year; I will be working in Global Mobility Department as coordinator of PwC and AIESEC Germany cooperation as well as project assistant for internship and recruitment program.

Frankfurt is a financial city of Germany where you can find a lot of financial institution here include the EU Central Bank. It has around 650.000 inhabitants and quarter of it is foreigner. They are mostly come from Central Europe, Turkey, Spain, Africa, and many more. It is the second international city in Germany after Berlin but the most expensive one. The things that I was impressed during my first month here are the on time and fully organized transportation system, also the honesty of German people. The driver never asked you for the ticket, so you can easily cheat by not buying the ticket but no one do that. It just reminds me to Jakarta’s train user but anyway we can’t compare it. As four season country, we are now in winter where the temperature is around 0 – 10 degrees. It’s hard to adapt especially when there is snow with hard wind, I can feel my body shaking and it’s really hard to make any moves.

Talking about my company and the job that I have now, it’s out of my expectation. I have background in accounting and finance but now I am working in HR although it is also a financial services company. I should thank AIESEC because the experiences in organizing project and HR stuffs mostly I got when I was active in this organization. My manager was also the AIESEC member 12 years a go, so we have so much fun when we share what we do during our AIESEC life. I am lucky to work in this department because every one could speak good English, because some German people although they can speak English they prefer to speak German when you have conversation. As the way to adapt, I just sign in to German class to be able to recognize some words and to make conversation in next few months. The alphabet is similar with Bahasa but they use ‘sch, st’ so much that really hard to pronounce. The funny things are when you meet someone, you should say Guten Morgen (in the morning) or Hallo and when you leave the office or elevator you should say Tschüs or Cao (bye), no matter you know them already or you just meet them for the first time or they are your boss.

Well, I still have a lot of story to share but I will do next time. I hope the other exchanger can share their story here too, so we will have more exchanger in the future.

Greeting from Chandigarh, India

Hei all, what a great idea to start a group blog like this! I thought it would be nice to introduce ourselves first then we can move on after! So, I would love to start, as I always want to be the first, lol!

So, me re naam Alfajri Alwis hai. Currently 23 years old, doing one year internship in Chandigarh, India. I am doing an MT Internship, working for authorGEN Technologies in their internet marketing department. Basically promoting WiZiQ and authorSTREAM (check them out, they are super cool tools!). I am happy to work here, everything is great, nice and friendly people, I love my work, and I learn a lot. What else can you expect from an internship? Super duper good time! (I hope they are happy also with my work in the other side, ^^).

Anyway, so, living in Chandigarh is pretty amazing. Quite expensive compare to another Indian cities, but it is so clean, green, safe and they have roads ^^. I am glad that I am here, I am pretty sure it would have been harder if I were in Delhi or Chennai or in other cities.

Most asked question for me is, Why India? These are my reasons:
1. India is so big and rich, and I dreamed to go to India since years ago!
2. Their IT Technology and IT Development is #2 in the world after US
3. They speak English
4. Priyanka Chopra and Aishwarya Rai are Indian!!!
5. Indian Movie Industry is the biggest in the world (and some of their movies are pretty nice!)
6. I've been to Canada, so wanted to explore something different than the typical countries

7. Somebody said that I look like Indian back home, so wanted a prove; do I?

The last but not the least, AIESEC just reach 5000 Exchanges around the world in 2008, and do you know how much AIESEC India contributes for that? I guess nearly 25%! It's mean, more than 1000 exchanges here! So, in the last 4 months, I've met so many interns from around the world; US, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, UK, Brazil, China, Columbia, Taiwan, Turkey, Spain, Chile, Mexico, Egypt, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Czech, Ukraine, Mauritius, Togo, Nigeria, South Africa, France, Austria, Malaysia, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Canada, Slovakia and... you name it! (But I think I already mentioned them all!)

Bluift, it will be a novel-size post if I share all of my experiences so far here in the last 4 months. Well, you guys can jump to my blog, I posted some pictures also there. From now and go on, I'll try to keep updating also in this blog!

Cheers all, Namaste,

Alfajri Alwis

Welcome to our beloved EP and Trainee

Welcome to our new blog called 'Life Changing Experience!!!'.

This blog is dedicated to all our beloved EP and Trainee who is in abroad or in Padang to share their experience, idea, funny story, sad story and anything you would like to do.
You are free to EXPRESS here!

We wish your story will be the best source for anyone who willing to have same experience or just want to convince their parents what will they get when they are abroad or having internship in our beloved Padang city.

We would like you to post the story in English, so everyone worldwide can also read your story.

Lets live your experience but sharing it with us.
Let us know your Truly Life Changing Experience!