Journey in Cambodia (again)

Hi back,

It's been a long time. I didnt have the time to blog before leaving to Cambodia.



This is my second trip to Cambodia but this time it was more interesting since I visited more cities including sihanouk ville and Phnom Penh (see the previous post for the complete plan).


I dont have that much time (yeah I know I keep saying that but its true). I'm just doing a quick pit stop in Bkk before moving forward tomorrow.


This is just to post some photos I've taken during this amazing trip.




The photos are still uploading so I think I will post few of them on the next post.



To access all m pictures, again you have http://picasaweb.google.com/tntresor or my photobucket account http://s179.photobucket.com/albums/w314/tntresor/


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Here are some pictures taken in Angkor. Enjoy!

My Holidays plan in SE Asia

I'm about to get into the Final exams period. It's gonna be A LOT of work.

but after the rain comes the sunshine and in my case the sunshine has the colors of holydays.



I already have a plan for the 3 weeks (roughly) I'm gonna spend in the region.

I have a friend coming from France and we gonna hit the road together.


So, we will start by Cambodia. Direct flight to Pnom Penh (PP) which will be used as our base camp. From there we'll probably visit two or three interesting cities that are not more than 5hours away by bus.

Of course Sihanouk ville is on the radar.

I have a phillipino friend who's living in PP for quite a while so we have shelter and he will tip us on the hot spots.

It's gonna be fun.



Next step is thailand.I havent really visit the country because I didnt have time.

Starting from Bkk we will head North to Chiang Mai and eventually Chiang Rai.

There are a lot of things to see in these two cities so we will probably spend around 4 days in the region.
Sukhotai is in the way so we may make a stop there in our way to Chiang Mai

From Chiang Rai we will either fly or take the bus to Laos.

The first stop will be Louang Phrabang. I have been told that it's a wonderful place, so will check by myself.

Then we will go to Ventiane, the capitale. Plan to stay there a couple of days.


Finally we will make our way back to Thailand.

Udon Thani is the first stop. But we wont stay there for long.

Though the end part of our trip is unclear, I think we will take a flight straight to the South.

And who says South in Thailand says BEAUTIFUL BEATCHES.

I still cannot make up my mind between Ko Lanta (for French people: Yeah the island of the reality TV show "Koh Lanta") and Ko Samui.

If you have any tip please let me know.



Well writing that trip plan cheers me up.

Sounds a lot of fun. Cant wait to be there.



But for now, lets take one thing at a time and start by the exams part.


I will find the time to blog somehow (or not).


Oh btw, if you have any remark, tip or comment on the schedule, please let me know.

Weather in Thailand (BKK) during April

Well I like to blog on the weather here.

Usually I compare it with the weather in Europe and more specifically in France.

Normally I enjoy being there bacause the weather is usually better than in Europe.


But since one week, well lets say that its not so enjoyeable.

It's raining most of the time. Sometimes it's really impressive.

Last time we were going to a italian restaurant 20min far from AIT. Its was raining so hard that we couldnt see a damn thing 3 meters away.

The cab driver was a woman, and she was so worried she was driving incredibly slow.

Not only was that a little bit boring, but it was also dangerous since she was breaking abruptly quite few times.


We also had an incredibly violent. A LOT of trees in the campus did fall. It was impressive to witness it. Trees were cut in half by thunder and stuffs, power was also cut several times.


The good side is the temperatures drop. There are pretty nice, somewhere around 22 to 28 maximum.

Therefore I make less use of AC (air conditioner) which is also good for the environement.



I'm a lil bit worried about the rain because my holydays are coming very fast, and I dont want to backpack under the rain.

Speaking of my holydays I have quite a lovely plan. But lets save it for the coming post, shall we?

Come back again

Hi back!

I've been quite absent for the last two weeks.


But I was so busy with work, couldnt find a single minute to blog.



Things are still going crazy.

I'm sleeping 3-4hours a day and work for 20-24 hours in a row.




However this w-e my body just decided that it couldn't take it anymore, so basicaly I took three days off. Mainly sleeping and chatting, try to keep social network connections lively.


I don't know how I will do that, but I'm planning to blog more, do some translations for Techcrunch FR, and write a lil bit.



Thats all for my coming-back post.

More interesting post are to come.

Song of the Day: Robin Thicke

A quick post to post a song of one of my favourite artist currently, Robin thicke.

This is not the first time I post one of his songs. If you have missed it, I suggested you to read (and listen) this entry.


The song of the day is "2 the sky". A wonderful song.

So as usual, just prees play and enjoy.





And feel free to leave your comment on the song.

Knowledge sourcing: Daimler-Benz (case study)

I've been working for two weeks like mad.

One of the subject I've been working on a case study related to knowledge sourcing in Daimler-Benz.


The presentation was for the Management of Innovation class.

The case describes how the R&D departement was organised as in 1997.

It is a very interesting case bacause as a multinational company, the R&T department is quite big


We can see how Daimler-Benz have adressed the common issues regarding the management of innovation and knowledge sourcing in a technology driven industries.

The second part on the management of international R&T sites is also very interesting.

The mechanisms set up to make sure that they monitor the latest information on all the automobile related technologies and that the knowledge acquired flows within the company.


The presentation is visible below. As a presentation, it realises its full potential with the comments of those who have made it.

But since the actual presentation was not recorded, you will just have the raw data, though well structured.


I want to thanks Somchai who was my partner on this presentation.

He will present our work to his boss in his company. Apparently the lessons we learned are very likely to help him at his work and even lead to the implementation of some new ideas. I'm very glad to see that the result of our work has an outcome applicable to real company.






Feel free to leave a comment

Pictures from Angkor

 

Angkor Wat, the main attraction. It's somptuous. It was 6 AM when the picture was taken.

 

The right aisle of Angkor Wat

 

Just Me, inside Angkor wat main temple

 

The Library. Just beautiful AND amazing.




These are just few pictures I've taken during this trip.

I've taken around 150 pics, Foly has taken around 220 pics. You can add Moly's and Rebecca pictures as well.

You can call us pictures freaks. We dont care, the trip was just so amazing!


Of course I've created one web album dedicated to that trip.
Just click here to get a bigger sample of the pictures. And watch them as a slideshow, especially for the sunrise.

Enjoy!


More to come soon on Banttambang.

Trip to Cambodia: Part I

I just came back from this amazing trip in Cambodia.

I dont have the time to blog about it in details so I've decided to divide this story in many parts, here is the first one.


I went first to Siem Reap which is the closest to the Angkor sites.

Siem Reap is quite a touristic city. Which means that the city life revolves around the tourism.

This fact has some importance on the way people behave as well as on the prices of goods and foods.


First thing, you have to find where to stay. We stayed at the "Popular guest house" which is actually quite popular, at least among backpackers.

The price of the rooms is very fair. A bedroom for two (two beds) with ceiling fan will cost you 8$. We pay $9 because we were three. Thats just $3 each.


The next thing you need to do is to decide by which mean you will go to Angkor. You have the choice between renting a bike (DIY method), take a tuk-tuk (usually for the day), take a taxi (virtually nobody do that) or rent a car.


For the tuk-tuk the price range is $5 to $10 each depending on how many you are.


Then you can go to discover the city. Just walk around and you will see a LOT of open-air mini shops. They are trying to sell you everything you might expect them to sell.

Bottom line: NEVER PAY THE PRICE GIVEN. You bargain, the harder the better.

The more items you take, the lower the price/unit is. For example, we get altogether 6 T-shirts for $1 each instead of the original $3 "price".


The funny thing is that they ALL trying to sell you EXACTLY the same things.

There are 8 or 10 books, and everyone is trying to sell those (there are actually photocopies but with the cover which really looks like the real books one). Same thing for the T-shirts. It's amazing really!


One thing which is not so amazing but which is nevertheless surprising the first time is that a fair percentage of sellers do speak french.

It was at first quite disturbing since we, french-speaking people, usually switch to french when we dont want others (especialy sellers) to understand whatever we say.


I wanted to speak of the food, but I'll dedicated a post on the food in Cambodia.

On part II, I will speak but essentially show you the pictures of the Angkor site itself.

Post from Angkor (Cambodia)

I'm currently in the city of Siam Reap, the closest city before Angkor.



I've been visiting the temples all day long. And I must say that it's just one of the most amazing experience ever.

You have to take at look by yourself. Its just beautiful.

But if you cant, I've got an incredible number of pictures that I'll post in few days (as soon as I get back actually).


We wake up at 5AM to be on the site before the sunrise to see it from there.

And I must tell you that from there, you get one of the most incredible view you can imagine.

I dont know if the pictures will show how great it is.


several cities were built in the area, so you have a bunch of temples, with some differences in the architecture.

You have NO IDEA of how beautiful it is, evry single wall is sculpted minuteously.
I cant even imagine how much time they devoted on building those temples.


Anyway, I'm gonn blog about it later. I didnt came here to stay in a cyber-cafe :-)



Cant wait to post the pics.

More to come soon...

Things get crazy in AIT

I haven't write anything for around a week now.

One can wonder why?



There is a simple explanation which can be wrapped in one word: WORK!!!



I've already detailed what am doing in Thailand in this post.

I'm taking 7 courses actually, 6 as credits and one as an auditor (which actually doesnt make any difference from the workload point of view).

It was fine at the beginning, the workload was balnced, well spread over the weeks.

And then came the mid-term exams. The workload was heavy, but I was thinking that this was a one time thing.



I did have the chance to completely rest for one week.

And then things start to get crazy.

Everything arrived at the same time, assignments, presentations, reports, projects,etc.

I dont know, maybe all the Prof realized that there are just 6/8 weeks left.

But basically, now I have at least 2 presentations AND one report every week.


Each presentation means at least 15 hours of work and actually 20+ hours if you aiming at an "A" grade.

Not to mention the workload that a report implies.



I have at least 2 group meetings almost every day.

My schedule is so crazy, that I actually have to schedule my sleeping hours. And i'm scheduling those for the coming 2/3days.



Over the past days, I've hardly been able to manage to squeeze 5/6 hours of sleep which are most of the time divide in two "sleeping sessions" (thats how I call them now).

The rest of the time is totally devoted to work (and when I can, eat).

Now, I carry my laptop everywhere everytime and my closest friends are Excel,Word and PowerPoint coming from Office 2007 (which is a big improvement compare to previous versions).


I need to blog about the Cultural Show which took place last week-end and in which I was involved. It's the biggest event in AIT and I did play a major role. But I will blog about it later.


Last thing. My body actually did shutdown and reboot yesterday.

I was supposed to have a 2 hours sleep session between 6PM and 8PM.

So I went to bed, and next thing I know I opened my eyes and it was 1AM.

Some may say that the fact that I had 7hours of sleep over the last 72 hours payed a role. They may get a point.


So in a strategic move, I decided to grab 4 more hours of sleep.

It need to be confirmed, but I think it was a smart move. I wake up rested and fresh at 5AM.

I need to do some catch up obviously, but I'm fresh so I'm more efficient.

the next sleep session is planned for tomorrow 5AM (10PM GMT).



I'll come back as soon as I can