Hey AIESEC - and other events

I always wondered how Xmas might be under palm trees. Well, the Indo-German Chamber of commerce showed us. Gluehwein, Weissbier and Apfelstrudel at 25 degrees Celsius. They closed the venue at 10pm. We left it 2 hours later, as we had to finish the beer supplies. A hell of a party.
I tried to invite the Swiss gang as well, but unfortunately those I knew were either out of reach, out of town or at least out of office. I even called the high commission again, curious if they were going to organise something. Learning point: the Indo-German Chamber raises a party for 12,000, while the Swiss Business Hub closes its doors: "The high-commissioner has left. Feel free to call us back in two weeks when his successor is in office."
This is I think the explanation enough why in this city I hang out with the German crowd - teaching them even Hindi. Our classes were suspended for a while, but still I keep learning new phrases and words in new languages, like "chor" (Hindi: thief), "kaam pe challo" (Hindi: let's go back to work), "oleh" (Nigerian: lazy bastard) and "te quiero".

TCS ACE conference: It has already been 1 week that we came back, still a nice memory. I would love to make some pics available (I shot about 700 or even more) but unfortunately my computer is in a state of coma (major hardware error).
5 people were in charge of organising the conference, 4 out of them were AIESEC Alumni. Hence the whole thing was pretty much my 3477th AIESEC event. And there it was again, this unique mixture of empowering powerpoints and hangover. The only problem: TCS is from Mars, AIESECers are from Venus, as the conf reminded me;
In our company usually one gets a task, if the skills necessary are with the person addressed is secondary. Skills can always be picked up on the way. One is expected to come up with new ideas on one's own, and if it takes a month or more. In AIESEC 3, 4, 5 people come together, put a flipchart on the floor and start putting down ideas. And within 10 minutes they have more ideas together, than the single TCS-chap in one month. Something's going wrong here. I miss teamwork!
On the other hand, getting a task without (fix) deadline is cool. And anyway, AIESECers have this talent for performing high in areas complete strange to them in the first place. In our company, the only thing that counts in the end is the result, not how you got there. In comparison someone else put it like this: "In AIESEC everything is about the process, and even if everything screws up, people are still happy as long as they have stuck to the process." This statement is worth a thought.

Linked to all this, Poorva called me. Imagine a typical young AIESECer from Pune with the usual Maharashtran accent and the strongest Zueriduetsch that one can imagine. That is her bring along after a year on a Zurich highschool.
She asked me to facilitate a little cultural sensitivity training at a recruitment event for newies. I knew it would be a little journey into my past. But I did not know how deep, until they played that video...