Why You Should Consider Travelling After University & Why I Am Combining Travelling & Study

The answer to the second part of my Title is easy: because it's cheaper. As for Part I:  As a, for me, great 2013 comes to an end, and everybody starts making lists, reviews, pre-reviews and more about the past 2013 and for the coming 2014, I as well am making big plans for the new year. Realizing that travelling and experiencing life the way I love to is expensive and thus inachievable without a good savings account, I decided to combine my future plans and dreams (of travelling the world, you know...) with my probable future in the marketing & communications sector. As off mid January I will start a Masters in International Marketing at Coventry University. So bring on 2014! 

Thesis: Done (The Sequel)

This doesn't feel the same, but it actually is just like last year. 

The proud owner of this blog has used: 

• some cool YouTube-videos,
• Facebook,
• Twitter,
• himself as a reliable source,
• other social media like: Instagram, TripAdvisor etc.
• interviews with Belgian, French and Croatian AB InBev-employees
• and three whole pages of sources

to accomplish a 19.921-words thesis on Belgian Beer Café in English. I will be going to the printer tomorrow, handing in my thesis on Monday and presenting it in front of a jury, of which only two out of four members will have actually read it, on Thursday. Enjoy the cover page. Enjoy the weekend. Holidays soon.

Some Unfortunate Facts About Modern Living

If you're in too good of a mood, watch this video. Your faith in humanity will be completely destroyed. Watch it and have a bad day, because.. yes!

PI = 3.14159265359

Today is PI-day!

Last day of studying, I need a peptalk.

Did you notice how the last part of studying is 'dying'? 

2012: What brought us together

A video about 2012. That's it for this year. 

2013 will bring me: exams, internship for the Belgian Beer Cafe, a visit to the American East Coast and with some luck a EEET'13! See you in 2013 for more blogging about my Experiences, which I still believe Are The Key To Success.

Happy New Year & Stay tuned.

12-21-2012 21:12:12

Just to tell you I was there. 

Project Internship 2013: AB-Inbev

Another good Friday today. Just received an e-mail that I got accepted as an internship student at AB-Inbev (famous for: Stella Artois, Beck's Budweiser, Quilmes,..) in the Global Headquarters in Leuven, Belgium for the development of the Belgian Beer Cafés wordwide! Next semester: bring it on!

Obama Wins the 2012 Election

Thank you USA. You did the right thing. 

Obama's Complete Victory Speech: 

International Business Case Competition 2012 - KHLeuven

This week all our Wednesday - Friday were cancelled because all Advanced Business Management - Marketing Communication students had the opportunity to participate to the International Business Case Competition, one of the qualification rounds for the NIBS Business Case Competition 2013. 

Twenty teams, consisting of 4-5 students, who came from The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium (KHLeuven) were devided into four poules had to solve one business case every day. Afterwards they had to present and defend it before a professional jury, consisting of professors, business men and ex-participants of the IBCC. My team, with a student from Germany (Carolin), one studying International Law (Evy) and another one Human Resource Management (Sophie) (KHLeuven), managed to win both on Wednesday and Thursday, and found ourselves in the finals on Friday afternoon. 

I must admit that our performance on Friday was far from the best one we had given, but appareantly we were the least bad of the four finalists and thus, after a brief discussion, the jury awarded our Team 15 as the

 Winner of the International Business Case Competition 2012 - KHLeuven (Belgium).

A selection of Belgian beers - what a gift for the winners !

Statement by KHLeuven University College

Banaba studenten geven beste van zichzelf in IBCC

Van 10 tot 12 oktober gaven de studenten van de Banaba Advanced Business Management het beste van zichzelf tijdens de International Business Case Competition.  In internationale teams, samen met studenten van Hogeschool Rotterdam, Heilbronn University en Zuyd Hogeschool, verdiepten de studenten zich in complexe business cases.  Na drie loodzware rondes werd het team vanSophie Noë, Evy Durwael, Thibault Schroven en Carolin Knödleruitgeroepen tot Champion of the 2012 International Business Case Competition.

Volgende stap is het selecteren van het Belgische team voor de NIBS 2013 Worldwide Case Competition, die van 3 tot 9 maart georganiseerd wordt.  KHLeuven is gastheer voor de 18de editie van dit wereldwijd event.  Meer info over de NIBS competitie vind je hier.

Team 15 

Cuatro años atras cambio mi vida

Escuchalo, que te va gustar!

Mi querido Fl. Ameghino,

Hoy, 24 de agosto 2012, hace cuatro años que empezé la aventura más grande de mi vida. Salí por la mañana muy temprano de mi casa en Mechelen, llendo para el aeropuerto de Bruselas, Belgica. Vía Madrid llegé a Buenos Aires a las 22.00 de la noche. Era las 04.00 en Bélgica y estaba muy cansado.

Después de un campamento muy lindo con AFS Programas Interculturales Argentina, con chicos de todo el mundo, y de siete horas de viaje en colectivo llegé a Florentino Ameghino, mi secunda tierra natal. Ahi me recibio la familia Liébana, la mejor familia del mundo si me lo preguntes, y ahi tamién empezo mi verdadera experiencia de ser un chico de intercambio en un pueblo chiquito en las pampas de América del Sur.

Fue un año inolvidable con muchos encuentros que cambiaron, o por lo menos, influenciaron, mi vida. En la escuela Mariano Moreno nro. 3, en el club atletico, en el gimnasio, en el campo, en conciertos, durante noches que a veces tardaban hasta las nueve de la mañana, en las casas de mis compañeros y sus amigos, en Media Luna Polo Club, en casamientos de personas que ni conocía en esta época, durante muchísimos asados y durante mis viajes hacia el sur, el este, el norte y el oeste de Argentina La Linda, me hice amigas y amigos para la vida que hasta hoy influyen mi manera de ser. Me enseñaron tantas cosas que ni si quiero podría escribirlas todas.

Os quiero agradecer, amigos argentinos, por todo lo que hicieron por mi. Y espero que de alguna manera o la otra, también aprendieron algo de Europa, de Belgica y de mi.

Muchas gracias y hasta pronto espero.

‘Chau che’

El belga barbaro

First YouTube video ever

Today it has been seven years since the very first YouTube video was uploaded.
Boring, yes.
But nowadays YouTube receives 60hours of video per minute.

PS: we like elephants.

KONY 2012

Nothing is more powerful than an idea
whose time has come
whose time is now



Everyone's sharing this video, so probably I should too: Joseph Kony: one of many 'to must be killed'

The Sequel

Images say more than a thousand words

I hope that this image travels the world . . .

                                               

"While newspapers and television talk about the lives of celebrities, the chief of the Kayapo tribe received the worst news of his life: Dilma, "The new president of Brazil, has given approval to build a huge hydroelectric plant (the third largest in the world). It is the death sentence for all the people near the river because the dam will flood 400,000 hectares of forest. More than 40,000 Indigenous Indians will have to find another place to live. The natural habitat destruction, deforestation and the disappearance of many species is a fact."
What moves me in my very bowels , making me ashamed of being part of Western culture, is the reaction of the chief of the Kayapo community when he learned of the decision—his gesture of dignity and helplessness before the advance of capitalist progress, modern predatory civilization that does not respect the differences . . .

But we know that a picture is worth a thousand words, showing the reality of the true price of our bourgeois "quality of life".

 

Univerception

You want to see how big or small something is?  Scale of the Universe

Social Media: Explained

Source

Socialism is a bitch

Socialism is a bitch, funny story to share today!

An economics professor at a local University made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class.....

That class had insisted that socialism works and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, as it was a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on the socialism principles".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A....

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were HAPPY.

But as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average went down further.

Also as the tests proceeded, the scores never increased since bickering, blaming and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED 

The professor concluded that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great.....but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler.....

He said there is a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

And these are possibly the 5 best points you'll ever read applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for it, another person must work for without receiving his due.

3. The socialist government cannot provide anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. It cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any Nation's progress.

National Strike

Today, January 30th 2012 is, yet again, a shamefull day for Belgium as an economy. National strike in the whole country, therefor the word National is appropriate here. Nothing works. Companies, public transport, some schools, ... Although universities don't strike, implicating that students coming from far will have to be very original finding a way to get to their exam on time as there is no transport available for most of them.
Of course there are some original ideas/actions that take place: the Rector (=university principle) lending is car+driver (why the fuck does he need this in the first place?) to students to bring them to their exam and back.
People making Facebook-pages to offer or look for a place to sleep or a mean of transportation.

A new phenomenon, thanks to social media, are the people, mostly youngstars like me, writing 'open letters' to newspapers, trade unions, companies etc etc. (= a letter directed to someone or a group of people, that is put on the internet for everyone who want to to read it.).

And yet again the belgian economy suffers from this, last December the one-day strike costed the belgian economy 500 million euros. Thank you Trade Unions. You should be happy you still got a job! Be mad in a way that you DON'T make other people who do not share your opinion suffer!

I could write a whole letter here, why I think you people are wrong. But I won't. I just don't think it's worth it at the moment. But here's some other people's opinion, that I (partly) share:
 - Mijn brief aan de heer De Leeuw (hij heeft zijn naam niet gestolen)
- "Mijnheer De Leeuw, u kiest niet voor ons, wij kiezen zelf"

Striking is for losers.

January 2012: Strikes and MegaUpload

Some actions might be over the edge, put I support Anonymous. 

Will you live your life, or will you be lived by the life put onto you by your direct and indirect environment?

De Standaard - Word eens volwassen

Quote: "Wij zijn geen jongeren die de solidariteit met de oudere generatie willen opgeven. Maar we kunnen niet anders dan vaststellen dat u met uw houding nu zelf de solidariteit met de toekomstige generaties op het spel zet."

De Standaard - Word eens volwassen