Sunday, June 24, 2007

June 22, 2007 TGIF

Today I feel much better. I haven't slept too much, but I'm doing more or less interesting stuff at work that keeps me busy and entertained, and Eric and our other female colleague (whose name I still can't memorize... O...-san) are a lot of fun working with. I mentioned that I'm thinking about going to Osaka this weekend, and immediately I had an email from Eric listing interesting stuff to see and a map from O...-san.

The weather is quite stormy today and it seems like an entire ocean pours down on the soil of Amagasaki - fortunately, Arima-san lent me an umbrella! I've been talking so much about the rain season, but as I don't really like walking with an umbrella, I didn't bother bringing or buying one - until I realized this morning that it probably wouldn't be the best of ideas to get to the office totally soaked...

I met the last missing member of senior staff today, the one I will work with next week, in Procurement & Logistics. And he told me that we will be going on an excursion to see an SBU warehouse on Friday! I'm not sure whether I've mentioned it, but I will go on another excursion to see the production facilities in Ehime, a couple of hours West from here - Eric and I will take off the afternoon before, have dinner with the production manager, and the next day, we will visit the facilities! On our way there, we'll cross the world's formerly largest suspension bridge (Haengebruecke) by train - that's bound to be interesting! In general, I'm very happy what SBU (well, Eric) came up with to occupy me these coming weeks! In total, I will spend about 2 weeks in the President's office (where I was these past 3 days), almost 2 weeks in Procurement & Logistics, a week in Marketing, a week in Business Development, one day in Finance, and I'll be seeing a bunch of other sections which I don't remember at the moment. So lots to learn =)

My plan to eat at my desk today failed because the president of SBU, Mr. Amling, asked me whether I wanted to join him and Eric for lunch - and I didn't want to tell him no :o) This way, I also got to know the canteen, or shokudou.

I'm not quite sure whether I like Amling-san. He's very nice and friendly, but very matter-of-fact and he conducted half a job interview with me. Especially about that gap in my CV (Lebenslauf) between mechanical engineering and CBS... But it seems that in the end he was more or less satisfied. I don't know whether he was the one who picked me as an intern, but he definitely knew my CV very well...

Food-wise, I had curry (curry sauce with veggies, meat) and rice for lunch, and a kind of Frikadelle (meatball) for dinner - the meat and veggies almost always taste good, but I'm already getting sick of eating rice... it just tastes like nothing without salt, onions or garlic! In general, I don't think that Japanese people ever use garlic (Knoblauch) in their meals... *sniff*

Oh, and O...san introduced me to "smoked cheese" today! It's quite perverse actually, a tiny cheese ball in the shape of a sausage ("mini winnie") and tastes like a sausage as well! I don't think that'll become one of my favourites =)

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