Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Lots of Updates and No Time

Since we last spoke we have been really busy.

Saturday we went to our friend, Lisa's birthday celebration, which was hands-down the best brunch we have had since we moved to Singapore. Matt also made a funny joke, but it might come across weird on a blog, so if you're interested email me or Matt. I was proud of him.

Saturday night we went to the east coast and ate good Chinese food and had some beers on the beach with excellent people. It was a mixture of our Jews and some SAIS people. Really nice to not think about Finance for a while.

Sunday our friend Rachel had a t'naim ceremony here. She and Daniel are getting married in the States, but they wanted to have a celebration with their community here in Singapore, so they sort of split up the wedding ceremony. It was especially neat, because they had to create the whole thing from scratch. My favorite is their t'naim document. They wrote it like a daf of talmud - where they had their t'naim (conditions or commitments) written like the mishna, and then they had paragraphs explaining what each of the terms meant - including references from torah and other texts. It was really brilliant.

Sunday night we had a funny experience, because we went to Chat Masala (our fav restaurant) with Naomi and Adi (our guests), and it was empty. It's never empty on Sunday night. We always have to make reservations. We asked if they knew why, and no one did, but we suggested maybe because it was the F1 final race? On the way home, Matt and Adi were petting our neighbor's dog, and the neighbor asked why we weren't watching the race. Every tv in our condo was set to watch. I guess we just don't care...more Chat Masala for us!!

Sunday night we also watched the Michigan game (Slingbox and DVR - it's amazing). I cannot believe what happened. They looked absolutely horrible for the first three quarters - HORRIBLE (and Wisconsin didn't look much better!)...and then all of the sudden...out of nowhere. I just can't believe they won. Really - I can't.

Last night my group had a super productive meeting where Luis and I finished the Finance, Anna and Won finished the Accounting and Brian got a head start on Stats. I think this group thing is good...we just can't do it all!

Last night Matt and I went to the UHC services. Last year there was an earthquake at Rosh Hashana night services. This year it wasn't earth shattering...just nice. We had a great dinner with old friends (it was our anniversary of meeting our closest friends!), and we met a few new ones. Then we had a Rosh Hashana drink...also for Lisa's birthday. Call me crazy, but I wasn't up for the bar with the girls dancing around poles that the rest of them seemed to prefer. I mean it's ROSH HASHANA! I feel bad enough for going to the bar...We ended up at a much more conservative place...but still in Orchard Towers.

Best story of the night...I checked my phone before services, and I had a missed call. It was from Adonai. That's my friend at INSEAD, but I really thought it was HILARIOUS right before RH services.

Long and pointless blog posting...but I guess there's a lot going on, and too many stories.

Friday, September 26, 2008

The Great Deluge of 2008...and a Weird Day's End

Today started at six. I woke up to leave the house at 6:30, but at 6:28 a HUGE storm started. The thunder and lighting were very loud and bright, and the rain was outrageous. It did not stop or let up for a long time. I decided to study my finance at home until it let up...which it didn't, but finally I left at 7.

I got on the MRT, and all was normal, until the train stopped for no reason. This does not happen in Singapore, as you may remember. It took 1.5 hours to get to my school stop (which is usually only 40 minutes on the train). The stops were crammed with people, and everyone was late for work. It was bad, and it was still pouring.

I finally arrived at school at 9:15, and I had a solid hour and a half before I had to talk to an administrator about a program we were running today. More than nothing, but not great compared to the THREE hours I had planned.

We had stats this morning, and then we had our first INDEVOR (I will post about this later) club activity - which was this amazing man, Dr. Ashok Khosla, who came to INSEAD to tell us about the importance of sustainable development and what's happening to our ecosystems. He was so inspiring, and he had so many wonderful ideas. I have so much to learn from him - I wish I had more opportunity. I really enjoyed his talk.

Then accounting, then econ. Then group work until 9. Then I went to the ex-pat grocery store to get stuff to make a cake for my friend's birthday lunch tomorrow.

Well. I arrived at City Hall MRT (where the grocery store is), and there were so many people. The lady of the MRT (I call her Rosemary) - you know, the one who says, "please mind the platform gap"? She was saying, "the station is crowded. If you are not taking a train, please exit the station. The station is crowded. If..." I didn't know that was in her repertoire.

I was just thinking, "please get out of my way. PLEASE GET OUT OF MY WAY! I'm tired. I am sick of finance. I want to do my shopping and go home and eat dinner. It's almost 10 pm. Please!"

I did my shopping. I went back upstairs, and as I got to the MRT entrance, I heard, "vroom. Vroom. VRRRRROOOOOOm." My first thought is, "it's the F1 in Singapore this weekend. They're probably playing those sounds in the mall - because they would do that here." My second thought was, "Maybe this is the first F1 night race practice that I read about in the paper, but it's not HERE. I'm in a mall." Then I looked out the window, and there it was! The track is just outside the MRT, and I could see and definitely hear the cars going by right next to me.

I must say that I think that racing cars is dangerous for no reason, not friendly to the environment and just generally useless and pointless, but I did get excited a bit, because there were so many people there who were happy, and it must be good for the Singapore economy, right?

Anyways - a weird beginning and a weird end.

AND, Matt came home from Hong Kong today. Yay. I'm much happier with him around.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Look Left! Look Right!

I have been in school for four weeks, and I have a pulled muscle in my neck for the second time. Both times it was in the same place, both times I woke up with pain, and both times I wasn't really able to turn my head to the left and even less to the right. Now it even hurts to look down. I had to ask Tenley today if I spilled on my shirt at lunch. I couldn't quite see the power point slides in class. I have no idea how I'm going to sleep tonight.

More important, though, is the future. I think I must be stressed, and I guess I'm even stressed in my sleep! My goal is to figure out how to get destressed before bed so at least I can wake up and turn my head.

Maybe Matt and I should go back to drinking tea together before bed. If it weren't so damn hot here...

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Crack Open a Guinness...and Teach Some Econ?

I'm still not comfortable blogging about INSEAD...I'm working on it, knowing that some of my classmates could be reading my blog, but none has identified himself yet, so maybe no one is?

Here goes...

We have this hilarious teacher for micro econ. He came in the first day of school in shorts, a Hawaiian tshirt and flip flops and explained how he was upset about the rise in the price of beer. He stays in Hawaii and teaches at Hawaii Pacific University, but he is guest teaching at INSEAD for a couple of semesters/years(?). He is just excellent. He actually reminds me of Steven Cobert in the way that he's totally over the top, so creatively funny, and just knows a lot. He entertains us to no end in class, and I would say that 50% of the time he's just outrageous.

Setting the stage - there are a couple of National Weeks at INSEAD. This is our first one, and it's British/Irish week. The bar has turned into a pub, and there is Guinness for sale. Apparently all day.

Today, we had econ at 2, and two of my classmates were late. They ran in, two minutes late, and they promptly delivered a Guinness to the front table of the lecture hall where the prof cracked it open, had a sip, and continued to teach us about how to set a price for a good.

I actually think I could devote my entire blog to this guy, as he comes up with such great stories and tid bits, but I will not. That might make him uncomfortable.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Stanley Clark, Markus Miller and Victor Wooten

Friday night we went to an amazing concert. It was at Esplanade - where we have seen an "eh" performance of The King and I as well as a really boring, weird, modern Indonesian dance performance. I am pretty sure we have been there for other things, but I can't remember.

Anyways - this was definitely the best. Stanley Clark, Markus Miller and Victor Wooten are all three bass (guitar) players. They formed a band of THREE BASS PLAYERS! It's a pretty neat thing. They have a back-up keyboardist/synthesizer as well as a wonderful drummer (with an excellent body), but they were the stars by far. I really like(d) the band Bela Fleck, and I have lots of their music - partially thanks to Kenny and partially before I acquired his cd collection. Victor Wooten was one of the bassists in that band, and they really highlighted their bassists - which is pretty unique for a band. He makes his bass make sounds that I have never heard before, let alone coming out of that instrument. I heard a superb interview with him on NPR, and when I saw that he was coming here I was pumped.

We went with Peter, Maria, Gal and Ohad and Karthik. I can't really explain what it did to my insides, but I hadn't heard good music in such a long time, and I so rarely feel lost in something beautiful while I'm in Singapore. I know that's a sort of negative thing to say, but everything is so organized and planned, and you never get carried away by the authenticity of something. I absolutely loved the music. They have a cd called Thunder, so if you're looking for new music - go for it!!

In other news we went to an INSEAD party afterwards that auctioned off men. It was pretty funny - but though I try, partying hardy is just not my forte.

One of the highlights of my Saturday was cleaning out the house. When I got to the garbage can, I saw that there were MAGGOTS ALL OVER IT!!! I haven't really cooked since I started school, and I guess we don't use our garbage can too much, so I have no idea how long they were there. I think it must be from some yucky cat food from last weekend. I wanted to crawl out of my skin and die. Matt took care of it. Sometimes I really appreciate having a husband.

Last night we went to our friends, Brandi and Terry's house to play Settlers. We had the best game I have ever played. We were all in it - and it was so exciting to the end. Did I ever write that I love that game?

Today Matt is doing his pool exercises for his rescue diver certification, so he's gone most of the day. I went biking in East Coast Park with Deeksha - which was super nice - except for when she fell off her bike and skinned her knee. She did a really good job of not hurting any other parts of her body, though.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

No Cheat Lie One

Aunt Phyllis is right. I didn't tell the story about the taxi driver.

So the other night I was on my way home from school, and I asked the taxi driver where his favorite food is in Singapore. He told me he loved the crab in Geylang. I asked if it was near the side of Geylang with the prostitutes or the other. He assured me that there were prostitutes all over Geylang. I then asked about the prostitutes in Little India, since I haven't seen them yet. He said they're for "old man."

He said all men cheat on their wives. "No cheat lie one." i.e. If he tells you he doesn't cheat, he's lying. I said, "really? you think EVERYONE cheats on their wives?" He assured me that certainly everyone does. I said, "I think it might be more accepted in Asia than it is in the US." While I do believe that many men in the US cheat, it's harder to find people to cheat with, and it's definitely not socially acceptable. Here it's not exactly accepted either, but it sort of is.

Anyways - I said, "I'm pretty sure my husband doesn't cheat on me." He said "Tonight. Spot Check." Spot check? Spot check...what? I asked him to explain. "Check his bullets." His BULLETS? He went into detailed descriptions of what I should look for.

In other news I went to a super heavy but really good Russian movie tonight. It was called "The Banishment." Very good. very long. In fact - it was so long that the Japanese restaurant below the theater - the restaurant that I really wanted to go to (for the root beer float - don't ask) was closed. Disappointing.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Google

I'm obsessed. Not as obsessed as Ruthie, but I really love Google.

I use:
gmail (and am the biggest promoter)
gmaps
blogger (obviously...)
Google calendar
iGoogle (my homepage is iGoogle - you can set it to load anything you want including your friend's blogs, news, new Spanish words, "how to's," weather...)
Google Analytics (to see who YOU are reading this blog)
I love their online tools - like spreadsheets
I also have a great Google t shirt (thanks Jer!) and I'm trying to take a picture of me in it in each country I go to since I got it

I really believe that Google just gets it better than any other company I am aware of. They are so able to see what people want, and they give it to you without any bull. I'm currently reading "The Google Story" so I will offer more insight when I'm more than 1/2 done with it.

Working at Google is my dream.

I ran a Jewish family program two weekends ago, and a woman who had just moved to Singapore asked if Matt and I wanted to go to her house for Shabbat dinner. We accepted, and on the way over, I received a call from my friend, Pam. "You know that she is really high up in Google in Singapore, right?" NO! I did not know this! I was super excited, but I tried to control myself during dinner and only let it slip once that I love Google and want to work for them. The good news is that she said they're hiring "MBAs like [me]."

Google came to our campus to recruit tonight. They're mostly recruiting the people who are graduating in December, but I went to hear the presentation. The presentation content was good - the delivery was "eh." But I still want to work there. I talked to the recruiter, and she said that the Singapore office is really growing right now, and they will be hiring in lots of departments. Good news for me. (We're most likely to stay in Singapore when I graduate).

I walked away and thought all was well and good, but then I realized that I think that Google might be holy. I went back to my locker to change out of my fancy recruitment clothes, and I did a really weird thing. Usually when I'm in a religious setting, I'm very aware of things that have God's name, and I don't put them on the ground. I would never put something on the ground and then realize it and then pick it up - I'm pretty conscious of it from the beginning. Well, I had that same thought as I started to put the "recruitment page" from Google down on the ground. I subconsciously thought - this is holy. Don't put it on the ground.

That's weird.

I love Google.

Picture is me writing this blog posting.

Monday, September 15, 2008

NY Times Thief

You'll have to wait 'till tomorrow to read about my taxi driver who told me how to find out if my husband is cheating on me...

Because I just talked to Jeremy, and he told me the best story.

Jer lives in Ithaca in an apartment building. He has often found that his NY Times is not where it should be in the morning.

Last week, he left to go biking at 7:30. The Times was where it should be. He had a pleasant ride, but when he returned at 8:30, he found that the Times was gone, and the part of the bag that had his apartment number written in BIG BLACK MARKER had been ripped off and left on the floor.

Jer was peeved.

He asked the custodian if he knew what might have happened to his paper. The custodian didn't know, but he apparently went to the management and asked them.

The next thing Jer knew, he had a note left for him that said that the management went through the security camera shots from between 7:30 and 8:30 that morning, and they found the culprit. She gave him a copy of the screen shots of the culprit, her note accusing him as well as his response.

That's awesome (or really bored management).

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Drunk Man

Last night Matt and I met up with Peter on the street across from his condo, about two minutes from our condo. We were waiting for Lisa to come in her taxi to pick us all up and take us to Maria's. We're carrying - iced tea, beer, settlers of catan and other goods.

A man goes by on a bike. He is on one of those old bikes with a ton of cans and bottles strapped to the back with garbage bags and bungee cords. We didn't pay much attention.

Then...*crash!!!*

We look about 20 meters away, and the bike has fallen on the curb, but we couldn't tell if the man was there. Nothing was moving. Matt and Peter ran over (I was the designated ambulance caller) and indeed there was a still man, connected to the bike, while the bike was sort of in the road and sort of leaning on the curb.

Matt and Peter pried the man off of the bike, and he was semi responsive. His eyes were moving, but he wasn't communicating at all. Unclear why. Then a super nice Singaporean man came by on his bike and stopped to help as well. They carried this man to the grass on the other side of the sidewalk, and they were trying to talk to this guy - and I was trying to figure out if an ambulance should come.

This man did not speak Chinese, and he didn't know very much English. Finally the Singaporean guy figured out that the fallen man was totally wasted. He then smiled and said, "I drunk." Matt ran off to get some water and snacks (unclear why he got snacks, but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. Blood sugar?). The man somehow communicated that we should just wait with him for a few minutes, and then he would continue. We waited, trying to figure out if he was hurt (he FELL OFF HIS BIKE!!), too drunk to go home, or if there was someone we could call to come and help him. Matt returned with the water and snacks, but the only water the store had was Evian, so this man basically poured the Evian all over himself, and maybe a little went in his mouth.

Eventually, the man got up and tried to get back on his bike. He kept saying thank you for the water, and he kept kissing the bottle. He even held it in his hand when he drove off...but it took him about five minutes to get the bike going again. He lost his flip-flop. He didn't look for traffic behind him, he was a disaster. We didn't know if we should keep him there, since we were pretty certain that he had a higher chance than normal to get killed, but we didn't know how to do that...so off he went.

And we ate a good dinner and played Settlers.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Just don't let it bother you...

We had a speaker the other day about returning to school...coping with the stress and all of the new changes. There are a LOT of changes.

The woman was actually really good, and she talked about not letting things bother you - like if a car cuts you off in the morning, just to get over it, because life is just like that. Be flexible. Etc. In theory, I totally agree, and I have been working on that. My specific task is the way people walk in Singapore. I know I have bitched about this before, but it really drives me crazy, and when people cut me off and then stop, or don't walk on the right side of the escalator, I really do get pissed off, and I give people dirty looks, and I want to push them. This is not my normal personality, and I'm not sure where it comes from, but I'm working on it.

It's not so easy to not let these things bother you.

Today I tried listening to an album that really calms me. I think that worked, but then I can't listen to NPR. Hm...I will have to figure something else out in order to become a flexible, not angry walker in Singapore.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Schedule

I'm definitely a structured person. I like to know what's coming next, and I like to be prepared for it. This isn't to say that I'm not a flexible person, but I just prefer to be organized.

Our class schedule does not help me with this.

The first time I was in grad school, I had a certain class on Tuesday mornings, another class on Wednesday afternoons, etc. Not INSEAD. We have classes all over the place. Sometimes we even have two sessions of the same class back to back. Other times we don't have a specific class for over a week. It makes no sense, and it has basically glued me to my calendar so that I know what's coming up next.

We have five classes, all with preparatory reading, some with homework to hand in, some with exercises that are just meant to help us, and we have to be prepared for each class. A few of our profs have said that they are big fans of cold calling, so we *really* have to be prepared for class, but we haven't seen too much of that yet.

The good news is that after today, we don't have finance for ten days (this class is extremely difficult for me to understand).

In the meantime - I'm just trying not to drown in all of the work, and I'm trying to stay ahead of the readings a bit, since I don't have any of the text books, and there are very few on reserve in the library. We'll see how long this lasts...

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Weird Things about this Weekend

So there were a few weird things this weekend.

I went to a movie that is part of an Israeli Film Festival. Here in Singapore. Yup. That's weird.

I went to the movie with four other people. There were five in total (I'm sure your math is good...). FOUR of us were wearing black t shirts and jeans. That's a very high, unlikely percentage.

I got my third pedicure ever on Saturday. It was wonderful. The lady who was taking all of the disgusting dead skin off of my feet was talking to the lady next to me in Chinese. It seemed like they were talking about me, so I smiled at the lady next to me. She said, "she said you must wear shoes everyday, because my feet are much worse than yours." Hm. Wear shoes as opposed to WHAT? I then realized that it was wear shoes as opposed to wear sandals - which was correct until I started school one month ago. I wore shoes everyday. I have white, ex-pat, prissy feet.

I used to run into people in Ann Arbor ALL the time. People hated walking across the diag with me, because I couldn't make it across! Broadway was the same. Walk me on Broadway - any time any day, and I will run into someone. Not true in Singapore. I have probably run into five people in Singapore - and two of those occasions were the same guy. This weekend I ran into TWO people at really unlikely places. One was a woman whom we went on a dive trip with a few months ago. She was working out at a gym that was next to the bar I went to on Friday night. The other was Matt's co-worker, and this was standing in line for fishball noodles on Saturday afternoon at the same hawker stall.

Finally - this isn't weird - I wanted to share some super cute things. Tonight I ran a program for families in the UHC community here. It was on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. I won't go into why, but each family was asked to bring a fruit that has some significance for their family and tell us why they brought it.

1) I brought an apple, because when you bite into it, it's sweet, like my family. (Adina, Jer - doesn't this remind you of a joke you once heard - in 1984 or so?)

2) I brought a star fruit, because it has five points, and we have five people in our family, and when you cut it, it's pretty.

3) I brought a banana, because when you peel it, it's really sweet and wonderful inside, but first you have to peel it to get there, like our family.

There were others, but I especially liked those.

Everest Training

So...I'm not training to climb Mt Everest, but my friend Tenley is. She and her husband Jeff are climbing a part of the mountain in about a month. Tenley is doing training to get her body ready for 12 days of trekking...

Yesterday they went to a mountain in Malaysia, and today they did a training in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. I went with her this morning. Basically we went up and down these long "natural" staircases. It was probably really good for our legs (and maybe butts too?), but not the most exciting thing to do. Luckily I like Tenley, so we had fun together.

I wanted to share an experience from this morning. Tenley brought a plastic bag full of carrots. During a rest, she took them out, and she was about to start opening the plastic bag, when a monkey came trotting up to us making a weird grunting sound. Tenley and her quick responses threw the bag of carrots into the forest. The monkey immediately broke open the bag and enjoyed a huge carrot...all the way until the end. It was scary. It reminded me of this time when the monkey attacked me for my banana peel.

I took this picture with my phone, so it's not so clear, but this is the end of the monkey enjoying the carrot, and the bag of carrots is somewhere to the right of the picture, next to the tree.

Matt is coming back tomorrow morning. I'm glad, because I really enjoy life so much more when he's a part of it. I can't wait to have him back...and neither can the Kitty. She keeps watching the doors - even when I'm going to sleep in my bed, she is watching the doors, as if she's ready for him to walk in at any moment. I keep telling her, "four more days..." "Two more days..." etc, but she doesn't seem to understand.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Lahser and Facebook

I graduated from Lahser High School. I don't think I can accurately remember what high school was like, or what the people were like, but at the time it seemed to me as a very diverse place - people from lots of different cultural backgrounds, and a small variety of socio-economic situations. People in general were privileged, and for the most part, I think we were a pretty smart school/class with many people who were going to go somewhere.

Facebook has a function where you can see all of the people who graduated from your school the same year as you, so I just checked that out - just to see who's on and obviously what they look like. I saw a few things:

1) There are a LOT of children. Most have young babies, but it does seem that a large percentage have kids. Scary a little bit.

2) I actually counted that 20 of the 87 people live in Michigan, which is more than I expected, but still sort of sad if you think about it. I feel bad for Michigan's economy - and worse for the people it affects.

3) There were a few people who definitely were not in our class. I have no idea who they are.

4) I only saw two other person who live abroad - someone lives in Korea, and Dustin lives in London (but I don't think he's actually in the LHS '96 list for some reason).

5) There seems to be a ton of people in the LA area. I wonder if that's a weather thing or what. How did they all get there?

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Careers Day

Remember when you have Career Day in high school? I wonder why they add an "s" in business school? Maybe it's a "translation" thing?

Anyways - we had our CareerS Day at INSEAD yesterday. It was an entire day devoted to self reflection - using lots of neat/not so neat tools, and quite a bit of internal pondering.

I am really trying to break out of the non-profit thing - maybe do some sort of social impact job in the corporate world - but all of my tests told me I either want to be a therapist or work in a non-profit. Poo! How are we supposed to have career switches if we only know what we know? I have devoted time now to learning what is SIMILAR to non-profit...but might put me in a more professional environment and maybe even making more of an impact.

The honest truth is that at this point I'm glad to have broken out of the Jewish non-profit world...at least for now.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Starting INSEAD

Luckily, this week has been much better than last. Since we last spoke (ha!), we have actually started normal classes, and we are beginning to establish a routine.

I'm more excited than ever about this year. So far the profs have been excellent, the content is fun, and the people are outstanding. The best part of INSEAD (so far at least...) is that there is real diversity. I remember when I went to U of M there was a huge focus on diversity, but really that meant that there were lots of different people, but none of them mixed. At INSEAD, we are all totally mixed, and the largest nationality population (Americans...) is less than 10% of our class.

The basics:
INSEAD has two campuses. One is in Fontainbleu, in France, and the other in Singapore. Our intake (or promotion, as they call it here) has 450 people, and 300 of them start in Fonty (as it's called) and 150 in Singapore.

The program is 10 months. At the school at any given time, you will find two different promotions, because INSEAD has two promotions per year - a class of December, and a class of July. Basically, they graduate 900 people per year. That's a lot.

The year is split into five periods (P1, P2, etc.). For P1 and P2, we all have the same classes, with the same people, in the same classroom, in the same seats. We do the group work with the same group. After P2, people can switch campuses. Apparently more than 60% of INSEAD students go to more than one campus. The school also has an exchange with Wharton during P4. I'm still deciding what I will do about this. Switching campuses (especially to Fonty...) seems to be part of the INSEAD experience, but I have a lot to consider before I decide what I'll do.

Right now (P1) we are taking "core courses." This includes: stats, microecon, finance, accounting and leading groups. In college and grad school I took many semesters of stats, one of micro, one of finance and a whole degree about leading groups. We have basically gone over everything I knew already in the first class. :) Not really...but I think I will be learning a LOT!

Our class has people from 65 different nationalities. If you look at a group of people, it is really rare that you will ever see two people from the same country.

All classes are conducted in English only. You need three languages to graduate INSEAD, and you need two fluent languages to get in. My two are Hebrew and English, and I just found out that I passed out of the Spanish requirement. Phew. I don't think I could focus very well on that when I have things like accounting to worry about...

My group is made up of five people - a woman from the Philippines, and the rest are guys. One is from Taiwan, one from Korea and one from Portugal. We haven't yet worked so much together, but I KNOW we will have plenty opportunity!

Hopefully this will give a context into my postings as this year progresses...