Tuesday, October 30, 2007

 

SpassKasse

Apologies to all those who cannot follow the above word game. It is mocking the name of the half state owned bank "Sparkasse" (save+bank) to "Spasskasse" (fun+bank). Anyway, why would I write about my bank? I tried to get a bank draft for my NUS Grad School application. Obviously the bank draft would have to be in Singapore Dollar.
I explained this to the person at the bank at least twice. They said they would send me a check book and assured me that the checks would work in Singapore.

When I received the checks I found that they all carry the currency Euro. So I went back there today to find out that these checks can only be used here and NOT in Singapore. Then two bank persons had to spend another 10min minutes on the phone to find out HOW to do a bank draft for Singapore and now it takes another week until the bank draft will be ready! They better hurry and do it properly this time.....

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Saturday, October 27, 2007

 

SYSTEMS - Ideas for better business?????


Here a short report from today's trip to the Business IT Fair SYSTEMS in Munich today. Our faculty had a few free tickets up for grab, so my friend Andy and I decided to go, why not?

After attending a few talks and presentations and talking to some of the companies at their booth we came to the following conclusion:

1. The talks are too "shallow", there is not enough "meat" there. We attended this talk about strategic data protection for companies and all it was saying was: "Yes, data protection is important and this is where data is lost and we can help you protect it". As if we hadn't know the first two points already, why would we be there to the talk?! In other words, the speaker didn't deliver, he didn't say WHAT exactly this company can offer and HOW they do it. We both agreed that we would not hire that company for this reason.

2. Company presentations are quite interchangeable. Every major company presents themselves as "global", "flexible", "you get training and career track", etc. Because everyone says so already it is hard to tell in how far this is actually true.

3. Job interview can be tricky. There was a talk from a former HR executive who spoke about how he used to "grill" people in an interview, ie asking "Can you draw/swim/cycle?" just to see if the person on the other side of the table has the guts to answer a "yes/no" question. ;)


Bottom line, we agreed that we can do the presentations better and can also be more competent in many technical questions than some of the staff on the booth. So we are about to make it better next time when we are working :)

Monday, October 22, 2007

 

Second Bundesliga Weekend in Bremen

I just returned from the match against Bremen today. In the Squash Bundesliga the matches are always on Friday and on Sunday. One day will be home and the other away. From all the clubs that play in the league Bremen is by far the farthest. That is why we drove to Bremen on Saturday already.

We lost our match against Bremen 0:4, only Ruben Glatt got close to a match point. The worst about our result today is that Bremen is a direct competitor in the league when it comes to not going down this year.


Gary Wheadon:Andre Holderegger 11:10(2:0) 11:2 11:1 3 : 0
Heiko Schwarzer : Benjamin Fischer 11:10(2:0) 6:11 11:7 11:5 3 : 1
Norman Junge : Ruben Glatt 8:11 10:11(5:7) 11:5 11:10(2:0) 11:7 3 : 2
Felix Unger : Daniel Dahlmeier 11:5 11:3 11:8 3 : 0

Saturday, October 20, 2007

 

Second Bundesliga Weekend

Today we had our 3rd Bundesliga match of the season. We played against Stuttgart in a all Baden-Wuerttemberg Derby.Unfortunately our team was weakened by the absence of our number 2 Marco Deeg who has the flu. Because of this I got play Bundesliga again, but lost clearly 0:3 to Dennis Drenjosvky.
But our team could still gain a 2:2 draw and conquer the first point for this season.

The complete results:
Andre Holderegger : Patrick Gässler 7:11 9:11 2:11 0:3
Benjamin Fischer : Moritz Dahmen 4:11 11:7 11:8 11:9 3:1
Ruben Glatt : Jan Ole Bleil 11:1 11:3 11:7 3:0
Daniel Dahlmeier : Dennis Drenjovski 4:11 6:11 6:11 0:3


On Sunday we have to play against Bremen. So far!! It is like driving from Singapore to Ipoh to play one game!

Thursday, October 11, 2007

 

SAP Stock Price

This week my current employer SAP announced one of the biggest takeovers in the IT industry. Unfortunately the announcement was received with a lot of skepticism on the stick markets so that SAP share prices fell by almost 4%. This again was motivation enough for me to have closer look at the history of the SAP share price.

To my surprise some turning points in the chart correlate with my personal events in SAP ;)


Saturday, October 06, 2007

 

Squash Bundesliga



The Squash league has started into the new season this weekend. Our club, the 1. Squash Racket Club Karlsruhe, is back in the first league, the Bundesliga. Yesterday we had the first match of the season agsinst the team from Taufkirchen, near Munich.

Our No.3 Benjamin Fisher had exam and couldn't come. As a result our No.4 Ruben Glatt moves up to No.3 and I moved to No4 and got my Bundesliga comeback after Singapore.

I had good start against my opponent Norbert Straub and won the first set 11:9. But then I had to pay for my long absence from the league and the hard matches and lost 11:9 6:11 4:11 4:11.

Ruben lost hist game 1:3 too. Then our No.1 Nicklas Mueller, Swiss Number 1 and European Junior Champion had a tough fight with world No.41 Ritwik Bhattacharya and lost in a close match 2:3. Marco Deeg could retrieve the point of honor with a clear 3:0 victory.


The complete results:

Ritwik Bhattacharya : Nicklas Müller 10:11(0:2) 11:9 11:10(4:2) 7:11 11:5
Martin Maierhofer : Marco Deeg 9:11 5:11 10:11(0:2)
Matthias Maierhofer : Ruben Glatt 11:7 11:4 9:11 11:9
Norbert Straub : Daniel Dahlmeier 9:11 11:6 11:4 11:4

 

SAP Business Lunch

I think the students @ SAP Research Karlsruhe are a quiet a social group. We have students from all all over the world: India, China, Brazil,... So we initiated a Friday lunch custom: every Friday instead of going to the canteen, we go out to have lunch of a different country. So far we had Chinese and Indian food, next week will be German :)

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