Winning by Jack Welsh

5 02 2010

To break up the travel blog I have decided to write about the books that I read during the trip.

I just finished listening to Winning by Jack Welsh on my iPod.  The audio book comes on 9 discs and is read by the author, which is always nice.

Winning is about how to win in business and as a CEO of GE or General Electric for twenty years, Jack should know a trick or two.  The book is divided into four sections, each with its own focus.

The first section is called Underneath it all and talks about Jack’s fundamental believes in how to conduct business, manage people and run a business.  He talks about the importance of a strong mission and concrete values in a company, the absolute necessity of XXXX when working with people, the power of differentiation where people are valued for what they contribute and compensated accordingly and the value of each individual receiving voice and dignity

The second is called Your company and talks about people, processes and management within companies.  It goes over leadership, hiring, people management, letting people go, managing change and crisis management.

The third section is called Your competition and goes through the strategic side of companies.  The author goes over his views on how you create strategic advantages, how to device meaningful budgets, how to grow, both organically and through M&A and he also throws in a talk about Six sigma, which he has a special interest in.

The fourth section is about Your career and talks about career management.  It goes through finding the right job, what it takes to get promoted, what to do if you are working for a bad boss and the big question of life/work balance.

Finally there is a section called Tying up loose ends where Jack goes over a few topics that he couldn’t fit into the other sections and he also answers a few personal questions.

You can say that this book is like a mini MBA, first laying the groundwork then something about management, next comes strategy and finally career management.  At least that sounds very familiar to me.

Obviously Jack Welsh is one of the heavyweights in this game with well over forty years of experience so his advice should be sound.  The book was very interesting to me and quite entertaining.  Jack has examples of everything he talks about and that makes the book very practical and at the same time a very easy read.  I mostly listened to it before going to sleep and I have to admit that I fell asleep a few times without turning off the iPod but in other chapters I was so interested that I listened for more than an hour.

I would recommend this book to anyone in business and especially to people working for big companies, where it has the most applicability.  As I said it is an easy read (or listen) and approachable to anyone interested in winning in business.


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Reviews

Siem Reap

4 02 2010

We have absolutely fallen in love with the Cambodians or the Khmers …at least here in Siem Reap.  They are so soft and gentle and polite and always smiling.  We had read so many stories of scams in Cambodia and it looked so dirty and unappealing at first that we were a bit worried but even when they are trying to trick us they are so nice :)

The Khmers are a bit darker than most Thais and a little more delicate and very handsome. It is funny how both of us connected the word Khmer to something bad after the Khmer Rogue and Pol Pot but we noticed that the Cambodians are where proud of being Khmer …well the 90% that are actually Khmer.  So Khmer is just the name of their ethnic group.

We have had some Khmer food already and it was absolutely fantastic.  We had some chicken curry, fish curry and spring rolls and everything was served with rice and a cold beer.  The spring rolls were just good spring rolls but the curries where to die for.

We went to the markets here yesterday and they looked wonderful, both the day market and the night market.  The night market was filled with silk and cotton scarves, pasminas, hammocks and clothes and they also had a lot of things made by Cambodian artists, both paintings and sculptures, mostly from the Angkor temples and the villages around here.  We are definitely feeling the biggest fault of being a backpacker – not having enough space for all the things we want to buy and having to carry everything we do find space for for the next three months.

It is funny how everything here is quoted in US dollars.  There is the Cambodian Riel but we have not seen in used on price tags anywhere.  For $1 you get 4,200 riel so that might be one of the reason but it must be hard for them not to use their own currency that fluctuates according to their economic situation not because of some outside reasons.  They must be suffering now when the dollar has been declining when they shouldn’t be.


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : South East Asia

Crossing the Thai-Cambodian border

3 02 2010

After all the stories we had read about the scams people get them selves involved in our border crossing into Cambodia and the ride to Siem Reap was quite unimpressive.  We just walked through, negotiated on a price for the taxi to Siem Reap and off we went.  Maybe it went so well because we were well prepared and knew what to do.  For those that want to make the same trip I’ll start from the beginning in Bangkok.  Other might want to skip this section.

The scams that we had read about before hand were:

  • Visa scam – offering to speed up take care of the visa application for you at ridicules prices
  • Consulate scam – same as above
  • Visa border control scam – border police asking for bribes or they will not process your application anytime soon
  • Money changing scam – say that you need to change into Cambodian Real and giving you horrible rates
  • Guesthouse commission scam – taxis delivering you to a guesthouse for a commission.  The owners getting angry if you don’t stay

Before we came to Bangkok we had already applied for a visa to Cambodia online.  It did cost $25 instead of the regular $20 but the process was smooth and would save us some hassle later on.  Since we had to wait for our visa into Vietnam until 15:00 we decided to take the 16:30 bus from Bangkok to the Thai border town Aranyaprathet since the hotel would be a lot less there than in Bangkok (300 Baht instead of 800 Baht).  We got the skytrain from the Vietnamese embassy to Mohchit station (40 Baht), moto taxi from the sky train station to the close by northern bus station (40 Baht) and a ticket to to Aranyaprathet first class (207 Baht) at booth 30 inside the station.  The bus ride to Aranyaprathet was about four hours and we arrived about 20:30 at the Aranyaprathet bus station.  We took a tuktuk to a hotel we had selected (80 Baht) but that was full so the tuktuk driver suggested The Market Hotel and we agreed.  The Market Hotel was very nice, clean and quite cozy.

We had arranged for our tuktuk driver to pick us up at 08:00 in the morning and take us to the border.  The lady that drove us the night before picked us up but after a 5 minute drive she jumped off and a colleague jumped on.  We weren’t too happy since we kind of trusted the lady but what the heck, I guess there was nothing we could do…  After about 5 minutes of driving the drive wanted to turn left when the sign for the border said straight.  I suspected that he wanted to try the consulate scam where they try to sell you a Cambodian visa for up to twice the price.  I told him I already had a visa and we wanted to go straight to the border.  He complied and drove us as far as he could go and we had to walk the rest.

We saw the signs where to go and followed the Thais that were also crossing.  First we had to fill out health check forms to see if we were healthy enough to enter Cambodia.  None of the Thais had to fill those out so it was a slight annoyance but again, what the heck.  We filled out the forms and were allowed to continue.  After that it became a bit unclear where to go as we skipped the visa application process.  We were soon picked up by a guy that seemed very helpful but we knew right away that he wanted to get us into the “free” bus to the bus/taxi terminal in the middle of nowhere.  He guided us along the long road towards the visa check point.  Along this road were several casinos where the Thais try their luck.  According to our self proclaimed guide, the Cambodians would never gamble – they are too poor.

At the visa check point we filled out another form with more or less the same question we had already answered, both in the health check and on the online visa application.  As we arrived we met some African guys that were having problems getting through but the place was not busy and we were through in 5 minutes.  After the check point our “guide” reappeared and told us that we had to get into the bus that would take us to the bus/taxi terminal.  When he saw that we were resisting a bit he raised his voice and said that the bus was leaving and we had to get in now!  As we were the only foreigners around I told him quietly that we could do what ever we liked, we would just come back later as there were lines of busses there and I was sure that we were not missing out.

Then we walked a bit and were offered a non-union taxi for $35 and we went to check it out.  There were a lot of police men and tourist police men around and some of the seemed annoyed that this guy had us on his hook but we followed anyway.  We negotiated a price of $30 for a taxi for just the two of us the whole way to Siem Reap and all the way to our guest house, paid on arrival.

So off we went and the ride to Siem Reap was un-eventful.  The road was wide and smooth, a really enjoyable ride.  We stopped once to fill the metan-gas tank of the Toyota Camry we were driving, once the driver stopped to pee and once he stopped in front of a sales booth and said he had to use the toilette.  A woman came out and said they wanted to clean the car so we had to go out.  She had all sorts of cool drinks for sale but we had water so we were fine.  Of course no one cleaned the car and the driver came as soon as he saw that we weren’t buying anything  …they have to try, don’t they?  In Siem Reap we had picked out a guesthouse from the Lonely Planet book and told the driver to head there.  He made some phone calls and then stopped at another guesthouse where we were told that our guesthouse was out of business and we should check out theirs.  We told them we weren’t interested and named another one and the drive took us there immediately.  We paid our driver a little tip plus the $30 agreed upon.

We walked around town and with the help of a tuktuk driver we found a likable guesthouse that had a double fan room for the right price ($7 per night).  Tomorrow we plan to start exploring the magnificent temples here including Angkor Wat, the biggest religious building in the world.

We really like the Cambodians so far, even if they are trying to trick us they are polite, soft and gentle.  When they see that we have had enough they leave us alone or do as we wish so it is all good, they are just like the rest of us – just trying to make a living :)

Next post will be less practical and more fun, I promise!


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : South East Asia

Cambodia

3 02 2010

Later today we are going over the Cambodian border.  We have read a lot of stories from people going this way.  It seems like there are a lot of scams to be aware of and dirty border guards as well.  I haven’t seen that it is dangerous, more that there are a lot of scams where the people are trying to trick you out of our money by over paying for the Visa in several ways or tricking you into exchanging money with a ridiculous rate or setting you into a guesthouse where the drivers get paid for delivering the guests and everyone gets angry when you, the paid for guest, don’t want to stay at that particular guesthouse.

We decided to go on our own to the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet and go by our selves to the border.  I’ll post later how that goes.  We are quite excited after reading all the stories and we better get going….


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : South East Asia

Different Bangkok

2 02 2010

We experienced a very different Bangkok than last time around.  Last time we were in the old city, which is both dirty and filled with cheap stores and markets and at the same time magnificent with her temples and the Great Palace.  Now we stayed close to Siam square where all the fancy malls and expensive hotels are located.  You could see the growth everywhere, new office buildings being built and traffic everywhere you look and people shopping, shopping, shopping.

It was much easier to see how big the city really is than in the old town, which felt like a little cozy village after a few days – not a neighborhood in a city of 6 million people.  The traffic at Siam Square at rush hour was endless and people everywhere.  To accommodate all this or keep up with the rapid growth the Thais build a pretty impressive Skytrain on top of the regular traffic which fitted perfectly.  The Skytrain has two tracks so far and is fantastic to use.  They do also have an underground in some parts of the city and a lot of busses that are very hard to figure out when you don’t read Thai.

We went to Lumphini Park, a public park close by, and lounged for a few hours.  The park had a lake that was filled with some sort of swimming dragons that were about one and a half meter in length and tortoises and fish.  In the afternoon the park started to fill up with runners and ladies doing aerobics and Tai Tsi that was open to everyone.  Twice during the day they stared playing the national anthem and everyone stopped what ever they were doing and just stood straight to show respect.  This happened as well when we went to the movies, before the movie started everyone stood up and they played a movie showing the king’s life under the national anthem.

When we were in one of the malls we started hearing intense screaming coming from the other side of the mall.  Curious we ran to the other and and saw hundreds of young girls trying to see a group of guys on a stage below.  Supposedly it was one of the hot boy bands in Thailand and you can just imagine the noise when hundreds of young girls between fourteen and twenty scream of excitement over those guys.  We were just surprised that the glass in the shopping windows didn’t shatter.

We were happy that we decided to stay in a different neighborhood and were able so see the diversity of the city, at least to some extent.  We will probably stay either in Chinatown or close to Khao San road when we come back after our journey through Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos – but who knows?


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : South East Asia

A few facts about Thailand

2 02 2010

Thailand is a kingdom, a constitutional monarchy with King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the helm.  The king has reigned since 1946, making him the world’s longest-serving current head of state.  The king is widely respected and the Thais have pictures of him in every establishment and he is on every single bill of the Thai Baht. 

The form of government has ranged from military dictatorship to electoral democracy but all governments have acknowledged the king as head of state.  Now there  is a democratic parliament but Thailand has been in political crisis for a while, marked with scandals, corruption and frequent changes in the cabinet.

Thailand is the 50th largest country in the world, slightly larger than Spain, and has a population of 64 million (21st in the world).  GDP (ppp) per capita is just over $8,000 or 86th in the world.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ,
Categories : South East Asia

« Previous Entries Next Entries »