Global Recipe I: Taiwanese Cucumber Salad

Want to try something refreshing in hot summer? Today let’s have some Taiwanese cucumber salad!

Integrants:

1. Cucumbers (I personally recommend English cucumber. Taiwanese one, you can find it in Ranch 99, is even better. )

2. Garlic

3. Sesame oil

4. Sugar

5. Salt

6. Chili (Thai is good)

7. Rice vinegar

Steps:

1. Smash cucumbers by the knife, and cut them in small pieces.

2. Put cucumbers into a bowl, and spill salt (three tea spoon) on them.

3. Stir them well, and wait for 20 minutes

4. Cut garlic and chili into small pieces

5. Get rid of juice in the bowl, and add garlic, sesame oil, sugar, chili, and rice vinegar inside.

6. Wait for 30 minutes. You are ready to enjoy them!

Note: the proportion of different integrants depend your own flavor. Some people may want it sweet, hot, or sour.

A Great Journey with TSG

I joined TSG since last fall and started as a first tri rep. Afterwards, I became the Executive & Speaker Chair for two trimesters. I consider my experience in TSG a great journey with fantastic people, not only TSG members but also those who help me on the way.

Of course, the work load sometimes is quite heavy, especially with finals or projects. I still remember that I received and replied over 100 emails a time during the early morning. There could be more than 10 cultural dinners during fall or spring. Each dinner requires up to 10 cultures. I enjoyed in doing so. Why? The experience I learned from organizing these events allowed me know more people and observe cultural diversity. Staff from Executive Education Program are some friendly and helpful. The positive energy spread out through our communication. I was encouraged to take more responsibilities and to learn from the mistakes.

During our weekly TSG meeting, we not only share good news but also discuss different issues we are facing. School staff attends our meeting to seek for better communicate toward student body. As an observer (yes, I am not talkative in these meeting, which is abnormal from what I usually do) and a participant, I notice more aspects of cultural diversity and learning experience. Besides, several projects were initialized based on demand from student body or issues we identified. Everyone can take part of them. These practices gave me many insights not only in TSG position but also in class. I had opportunities to talk to different people on campus, and these interactions enhanced my MBA courses in Thunderbird.

Of course, a TSG member would have more responsibilities than other students. You may think that those tasks would cost a lot of time. However, that’s a shortcut to lead you a colorful and vivid student life. Plus, you would absolutely learn a lot of things from those jobs. Once a MBA student told me that “the most important thing you learned in business school may not be from class but from anywhere outside classroom.” I do believe that and keep doing so. Thus, I encourage all of you seek for this great opportunity. You don’t have to involve in TSG. The same experiences could be from any clubs, TAs, or other positions allowing you reach more people on campus. Good luck, and all the best! Thanks again to those people who always tolerate my mistakes and patiently lead me through this great journey. Thank you.

EMBA Connected to Our Campus

Recently I got a fantastic idea from Beau Wilberding. He suggested that we can bring EMBA, Global MBA, and the participants of executive education program together with our campus events, such as foosball tournament. The Grand Canyon Trip had a half of participants from LG program. That was a great start point!

Last Friday, Korean Club also invited those LG executives to its BBQ event. I talked to some executives. They were nice and friendly. Furthermore, they show high interests in club events and look forward to interacting with students on campus. From regional clubs to professional clubs, these guests are willing to get attached to our activities. We ill certainly invite and encourage them to do so.

During summer, Global MBA also had several on-campus sessions. Beau recommended that we could have a foosball tournament for them and the rest on campus. The only requirement is that you got to find a teammate from other tracks instead of Global MBA. That way would definitely increase and facilitate our interaction. Somehow, they might feel that they are isolated from other programs. This is our responsibility to make them feel home and to show them what T-birds truly are.

From the executive education program, what else can we bring them beside the cultural dinners? Those experienced executives came here to share their knowledge and to learn theories from our faculties. We as T-birds can also play a key role to enhance their Thunderbird stay. So are the EMBA students. The more we interact, the better we learn from each other.

As a student in Thunderbird, I love to see more initiatives from everyone in our community. These actions will simply make this school a better place to study and to memorize after the graduation. Let’s play for another tournament! Come on!

Foosball and Our World Fair!

The World Fair was a great event with lots of fun! Thanks to Erich and all clubs organized the event and hosted booths. The games were lots of fun. Some of them were very traditional and interesting indeed. Those booths reminded me about the night market in Taiwan. Not only great food but also different games were something I miss very much about home.

That evening, the attendance was amazing! More than 200 people showed up. The numbers are more than I expected due to the small student population on campus in summer. Japanese booth was certainly good for summer. Little pond for fun fishing was every kid’s the most favor. Thailand Club had very interesting one, throwing a water ball against the pin. The water would definitely cool you down from the heat outside. I was lucky that there was only powder falling on me rather than water.

When the foosball tournament came in place, everyone was crazy about it. Latin American people seriously knew how to play this stuff rather than I did. Sorry to Vincent Kao, my teammate for foosball. Although we took off the clothes and got extra point, the single point we got from the “natural uniform” was the only one we had at the end. (Thanks to Kedar drawing “T” on our chests to complete the Taiwan Club uniforms.) South Korean red uniforms were sharp and shining to catch everyone’s eyes. MJ Lee’s “it’s ok!” turned to the most popular slogan during the whole tournament. Eventually, Latin American Club took over the game and won the championship. I can tell you: they are really good not only in football but also foosball.

Congratulations to the winner, Latin American Club, of foosball tournament and Thai Club of club booth. We highly appreciate everyone who contributed to or helped this event. World Fair met a huge success because of you all. Let’s have more fun in summer!

CMC in Global Market

Prof. Youngdahl once said that the employers are our key customers to the Thunderbird. I totally agree on his point and recalled the meeting we had at the end of last trimester. Several Taiwanese students and Frank Neville talked about how we could market Thunderbird better in Taiwan or elsewhere. We mentioned about CMC’s role in job search. In fact, CMC can serve our key customers better by providing great ex-pats to those global players.

As I know, HSBC used to have a program called “IO (International Officer)”. The program is to hire young professional with talents and potential and to send them overseas through different job rotation and reallocation. Eventually, those IO would become country managers or even higher positions. This process ensured HSBC’s manpower aligned with growing business around the globe. I am not sure whether HSBC still keeps this great practice or not. But I am certain that there must be some more companies looking for managers with global experiences and diversified exposures. T-birds can be their perfect matches!

Last fall, my first trimester, I talked to a CMC adviser. He admitted that CMC doesn’t have a lot of resources to help students find jobs outside the USA. What if we start from the headquarters in the USA? Would it be a totally different story then? We come here to learn about how to manage a company in a multicultural and international circumstance. We do practice these techniques in our daily life because of well presented diversity of student body (comparing to other schools). Employers can easily send T-birds as ex-pats to elsewhere. Emerging markets with great potential are good battle fields for us to crack in. I remember my Latin American RBE class. These classes also enhance our capabilities to work oversea.

Beside HSBC, for example, Benq, a Taiwanese company spun off from Pan Acer Group, bought Siemens cell phone division recently. The acquisition will be effective in October, 2005. The cultural differences certainly require managers with skills to handle the situation and to facilitate the process. Our CMC can take more active position to approach those key customers and to let them know about T-birds’ quality and specialties. I do believe that we have advantages over other MBA students. CMC can lead this to happen.

Call for Asian Show!!

Have you ever heard of Thunder Radio? I believed that some of you may learn this from Kellie, a passionate alumna working in the school. She is in charge of an interesting podcast site called “Thunder Radio”. It’s an easy way for all T-birds around the world to know about other cultures, music, or issues of different countries. So far, we have total 37 podcasts available including music and talk show. But we definitely need more Asian voices!! (Otherwise, I am already too talkative…)

The show can be anything you want to talk about. For example, I am really interested in new technologies in South Korea, hot TV series in Japan, and whatsoever interesting stuff you want to talk about. All shows will be available on the internet. No matter where you are or who you are, as long as you have the internet access, you can listen to the most diversified shows around the world. Asia is one of the best examples because of its limit of the transportation and various cultures. There are so many different and unique things happened in the continent. We can introduce people what’s going on there. We can have a cooking show teaching people how to make Asian food at home yourself. What would be the appropriate attitude when you start doing business in Thailand? How’s the music trend like in India? We have tons of things to talk about!!!

Asian students are always considered as a quiet group. The diversity will only happen when people start to interact. That’s the first step toward appreciation and understanding. I know that many of us are out of campus. But thanks to the internet, which makes things much easier. All you have to do is to take a recorder or even your laptop and start your recording! Everyone can do it. We are looking forward to having you on-air.