Monday, April 30, 2012

2/3 of my internship, one month left!

Last week of April already and it was, how could it be otherwise, a very nice week. Last week a good friend of my parents visited the City for business and he invited me to have dinner and drink some beers afterwards.

I also bought tickets to see a New York Red Bull Football game during the weekend. The time-in between was filled with visiting clients, attending meetings and finishing work for school. Last but not least: My blog hit 1500 page views; a number I didn't even expected to hit after only 2 months. So a big thank you to all of you who keep on reading my stories! I really appreciate this!

Monday, 23/04/2012

One thing was for sure after going through the agenda for this week: it wasn't going to be a normal one. On monday we went visiting the warehouse where all the K-bear products were going to be labelled and stored. It wasn't a trip nearby,  a 1h30 drive to Port Jervis; a city where the borders of three states met at one point: New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The warehouse itself was an old place who served as an auction shop. It was a big warehouse with plenty of place to store your labeling machine and products. So it definitely has the potential of becoming something nice. In the garage of the warehouse old cars were parked, which was really nice to see. I also took some pictures.


In the afternoon we drove back to Cold Spring to drop of Marc and headed directly to the city as Marshall had an important meeting to attend to. I met with Marc, the friend of my parents. While I was driving, Marshall was caught up in work and didn't pay attention the road. There is speed limit of 55mph but as there was almost no traffic I was speeding 77mph. Unfortunately there was a cop car on the side of the road, the moment I drove by. Result: I got pulled over.

Luckily I didn't get a speeding ticket for this. This is mostly thanks to Marshall as he was smooth talking the cop by saying that I was an intern from Belgium and that his uncle was a state-trooper as well. Not so far down the road we spotted two Parkway troopers in the bushes. When being pulled over by Parkway troopers, you won't get out without a ticket; even worse they escort you to the closest Police department and make you pay the fine cash.

Once in the city Marshall went to his meeting and I took the subway downtown to the Conrad hotel where Marc was staying. We had a beer in the hotel lobby and made reservation in 'The River Café' under the Brooklyn Bridge. That restaurant was just phenomenal: exquisite food, the most beautiful view on the Manhattan skyline and nice interior of the restaurant! Here are some pictures of that night.

 




I spent the night at the hotel as I didn't want to take the train back to Cold Spring that late. I also had to take care of the broken iPhone for my cousin on tuesday morning.


Tuesday, 24/04/2012

In the morning we went to the Apple Store on 5th avenue to get my cousin's iPhone 4s replaced. Luckily this wasn't an issue and replaced the phone just like that. Afterwards my friend had to go to a convention, so I thanked him for the lovely dinner and went back on my way.

Marshall had to be in the city as well later that day. So I took the liberty of walking around in the city and visiting the set of 'The Bitter Pill' hoping to spot Jude Law or Catherina Zeta Jones. Luckily for me I got to see Jude Law but unfortunately he didn't have time/didn't want to take any pictures. However I did take a picture of him crossing the road.

In the afternoon I went to a pub to see the CL semi-finals between FC Barcelona and Chelsea. I only could stay for 30 minutes as Marshall was ready to leave the city to drop a client of at Newark airport. Too bad Barcelona didn't go through that night, it hasn't been their season this year.

In the evening we went dining in a Portuguese restaurant in New Jersey. We ordered a delicious sea-food plate for two persons, of which a picture is shown here below.

Afterwards we headed back to Cold Spring, picked up my stuff at the office and went to bed almost instantly.

Wednesday, 25/04/2012

As Marshall was very busy in the office in the morning and had to go New Jersey in the afternoon, me and Marc had to do the radio shows for that day. The first radio show was about sleeping and mattresses, I was so tired that day that I almost fell asleep during that show. Luckily I wasn't snoring and Marc gave a push so that I'd wake up.
In the afternoon I was alone in the office, so I worked on an assignment for school. As I didn't have a car, I had to wait until Marshall got home from his meeting; which arrived at the office around 7pm.

Thursday, 26/04/2012

Again I was left alone at the office. Marc and Marshall had an important meeting in Gloversville, 120miles north of Cold Spring. I was at the office and had to work on a spreadsheet for K-bear and catching up on some school work. In the morning I also had to drive to Fishkill to pick up the parents of Marc and drive them back to Cold Spring. So it was a normal day at the office, which ended around 9pm.

Friday, 27/04/2012

In the morning I had a Skype call scheduled with school to follow up my work performances and to comment on the work I have completed so far. Afterwards my mentor wanted to talk to Marshall concerning his finding on my performances; lucky for me he was and still is very happy having me here.

At 9am we had a three-hour meeting in Monroe with K-bear. It was an interesting an exciting meeting who was also very important for my management report.

In the afternoon we had a lunch scheduled with the person maintaining the Facebook page for BBPools, but this got canceled. So we drove back to the office and worked hard on the Go-to market strategy for K-bear. I also ordered tickets for a soccer match on saturday: New York Red Bulls vs. New England Revolution.

I spent the evening watching a movie and went to sleep as this was a rather tiring work week.

Saturday, 28/04/2012

I wasn't going to go and watch the soccer game by myself, I met with Alexandre at Grand Central Station around 1pm (kickoff was at 3:30pm). The Red Bull Arena is situated in New Jersey, so we had to take the train from Penn Station to Newark Penn Station. From there we walked around trying to find the stadium and failed to find it, so we took a cab there.

 

 


The Red Bull arena is really a beautiful stadium, having a capacity of 25.000 people. It was quite an experience going to an American Soccer game. People experience it in a whole other way, as European do. In Belgium for instance, we have the bad tendency to mock the referee, players and supporters of the opposing team. Here this wasn't the case: nobody complaint to the referee, the supporters from the opposing team weren't put in a cage as we are in Belgium, not even that much stewards surrounding them. They stood there amongst the other spectators. It was pretty cool to see.

The game itself was a rather boring game, but the Bulls did win by a nice goal of Thierry Henry. Too bad he got injured after 20minutes in the game. It was a really nice to see how americans experience soccer matches as well as the intensity of the game itself; it isn't that tough. When visiting New York, look for some tickets and go watch a game; It's worth going doing.

I returned back to Cold Spring around 8pm, had a three cheese pizza in the restaurant and went to bed afterwards.

Sunday, 29/04/2012

Sundays are lazy days for me. I slept out, watched some movies, cleaned my apartment, did my laundry, wrote my blog and went for dinner in the evening. Pretty exciting right, hè!

As I'm writing and updating my blog I began to realize how fast time goes here; only one month left for me in the USA. But that's down the road, until then you read more adventures on my blog!

Stay tuned!

No comments:

Post a Comment