Hello all!

I went to bed pretty early on Thursday night, so I figured it would make more sense to combine these last two days for you. Of course the day I didn’t actually write a post, I found out that I have a sizable audience for this blog…and even had some requests for pictures  =) so I will address that first.

Request: What does your hotel look like from the street? What do the streets look like in general? I guess I take my surroundings for granted and was waiting until our full day tour tomorrow before taking these pics, but here you go:

Here’s one way to transport goods, need I remind you it is 100 degrees F?

The locals like to take a sort of “siesta” after lunch

Selling durian on the street

Definitely buying one of these before I leave

The tall, tan building is our hotel

Better view of Hue

Football (or “soccer”) stadium near the hotel

Please keep the requests coming!

What else to report? In regards to our project, we have been focusing on research and preparing for a presentation next Tuesday. We want to provide a preliminary look at our recommendations soon, so that we can 1) make sure that we are on the right track and 2) have enough time to work with the client to do some detailed planning. The content of the presentation will be centered around performance-based pay and how to implement such a system in their company.

As I had mentioned previously we had the amazing opportunity to speak to the students at the Hue University of Sciences about preparing for an interview, communicating effectively, and describing what is like to work for a large company like IBM today. Here are some pictures:

The 12 of us in the hotel lobby, about to leave for the conference

The stage for the presentation, note the IBM in the sign – I believe it says the name of our presentation

The team, post-presentation, we were sitting in the front row, so my action shots did not turn out too well – I will steal some from our CSC managers later =)

A picture of the campus, outside our lecture hall

The presentation went very well and was well-received by the students. We were happy to have a lot of questions during the Q&A. I was reminded of the significant culture differences between our countries during this presentation. In the USA we are taught how to write an email, create effective presentations, and prepare for an interview very early in our education. From the questions we were receiving, it seemed as if many of these topics were new to the students – we provided as much insight and as many tips as we could to address their questions – but, as I typically feel after any service event, I wish there was more that I could do…

After retuning, we took a quick break and met up for a a delicious dinner to end the day:

Tomorrow we will be on an all-day tour of Hue, so you can definitely expect a lot of pictures!

(As I am typing this I just heard a very loud “boom” and the sound of water outside of my room…which means, it is raining! This season is considered the “dry season” and we were told that is very rare for rain to come during this time…looks like a miracle =) Hopefully this means that the weather will stay cool for the tour tomorrow!!)

Goodnight!