Sunday, June 08, 2008

Starting a new life

In terms of energy consumption, it has definitely been a very intensive month (those who know me will agree that I have only limited energies, and that day-to-day mobility has never been one of my strengths). But on the other side, it has been one of the most exciting times of my life. I wish I had had time to write about all of the things that have been going on in my life lately, but I guess I'll have to settle with summarizing it all. I hope you enjoy the ride:

May 5: After considering the idea for a couple of months, Marcelo decides to sign up for Deutsche Post World Net, becoming one of 150 management consultants analyzing and implementing global business proposals for the express & logistics conglomerate. It was not an easy decision, but probably the right one. On the way to DPWN, I had the chance to talk to over 25 employers, including Siemens, SAP, Lufthansa, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Consulting Group and British American Tobacco, just to name the most prominent. It may seem as if everyone wanted to interview me, but in fact I sent over 100 applications to get those 25 employers talking to me.

In any case, the whole interviewing process was a very enriching experience which allowed me to meet many of the top decision makers in a wide range of industries. Needless to say, my heart was severely broken by Google, a company that refused to interview me in spite of my extreme eagerness and (arguable) competence & personality fit. Fortunately for me, some companies did show great interest, such as Siemens,  Potential Park, Mental Images, SER Solutions, and, DPWN Inhouse Consulting. Of all the options available, probably DPWN IC offered me the best career development opportunities, prompting me to abandon my beloved Berlin and embrace infamous Bonn.

May 9-22: Having decided my professional future, I decided to embark on a "relampago" trip to the US. What started as a joke ("If I sign a contract I'll go and travel the world"), ended up being an amazing tour. To break it up for you, we are talking about 4 cities (New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Houston), 4 different hosts (Chris, Ingrid, Adriana and my sister Angela) and lots of calories. If you haven't seen the pictures, please check them up on my Facebook profile. From a purely emotional perspective, this trip allowed me to fulfill several dreams (doing a "road" trip by myself, visiting some of my best friends, spending money I had not earned yet, and so on). But from a philosophical perspective, the trip also made me realize how humans can find happiness in almost every corner, needing only good friends and very good insider knowledge about the cool things to do and see in their respective cities.

May 22-31: The US trip was a crazy, sudden experience that will never be forgotten. However, it delayed many of the tasks required to prepare myself for Bonn. Having said this, the last days in Berlin were a combination of intensive networking (meeting friends for lunch, dinners and drinks), desperate calls to all sort of organizations (health insurance, arbeitsamt, etc), lazy packing (a couple of shirts per day), and a final, yet uneventful good-bye party at my place (the guests leaved around 1 AM, no one got drunk and no one spilled wine, as if people refused celebrating my departure).

June 1-8: My girlfriend calls it the B-witching. I call it destiny. Basically, for some strange reason, I have always spent long times in cities whose name starts with B. Or let's put it like this: of all the cities I have spent more than a whole month (8), six of their names start with B (Barranquilla, Boston, Bogota, Barcelona, Bollendorf and Berlin). And now it's Bonn.

B-witching or not, the fact is that I am very happy of being here, or at least for the moment being. Believe it or not, the small and relative unknown city (once capital of West Germany), displays some of the most exquisite residential architecture I have seen in Europe. It is definitely not my type of town (provincial in nature but yet very fancy-looking, similar to a rich holiday town), but I have to admit Poppelsdorf and Südstadt are probably two of the most beautiful districts I have seen in my life, and it is only fair to write it down.

Having said this, my last week has been a mixture of very intensive experiences, such as getting to know my way around the company, working already in two different projects (to be fair, clearly underperforming), meeting young and fascinating colleagues, and of course, fighting for a flat in Bonn or Cologne with hundreds of hungry individuals looking for the best deal.

Phew, I never thought I would make it all the way here. I hope this story is not too boring for my "long" list of avid readers, but I am sure most of you will find something interesting in these lines, if you spend enough time looking for it ;)

3 comments:

scrat said...

Welcome.

Anonymous said...

B-witched...maybe we'll be able to break the spell and move to Cologne ;-)

Anonymous said...

The party started after you left ;-)
CU soon in Cologne ----please not Bonn !!!

P