Second Week

After having spent an amazing weekend both visiting the city and relaxing in Cold Spring, the second week was already upon me. During the night from saturday to sunday the hour also changed from winter time to summer time which means the time difference with Belgium is currently 5hours.

After talking to Marshall about the game plan for this week one thing became very clear to me, this was going to be a tough week. As I was very busy spending time at the office and on the road, I couldn't really find the time to keep you guys up-to-date on what's going on in my life.

Monday, 12/03/2012


As I spent my sunday chilaxing in Cold Spring, I was completely rested out to start my second week at the office. My day couldn't have begun any better: a beautiful sunshiny day with a temperature forecast of 22°C. The day itself wasn't very special as there were no meeting scheduled for that day. I spent my time conducting desk research on the business model for Gilt, a company who sells high-end products at a discount price; the same concept as Groupon but then with expensive products. On this site products are offered such as cars, expensive clothing, big holiday vacations...

Depicted here below are some pictures from the office, so that you can have an idea in what environment I am working in. 

The office from the outside

My desk

Conference room

My boss Marshall Mermell

The logo of the company

Tuesday, 13/03


Tuesday was a very packed day with two meetings to attend to. A first meeting was with the editor of magazines for high-end products. Magazines you won't find in your regular kiosk our press-shop. Those magazines are aimed at very wealthy people and are only to be bought via a subscription. The magazine in question was targeted at people owning a private jet. The reason for our visit was to pitch the editor if it was possible for B&B Pools to place an ad in those magazines. As we were on a tight schedule, we were soon on our way to the following meeting with B&B Pools and Spa center.

The latter was a very interesting meeting as we discussed stuff on which I had to work on during the week . Such as the use and implementation of Hubspot for the new website of the company. As I am on a non-disclosure agreement with the school and the company, I am not allowed to go more into detail here. The meeting lasted about 2hours, which finished around 1pm. Afterwards we had some lunch and we headed back to the office to work.

It was again a beautiful day here in the USA with temperatures rising to 73°F/23°C, proof of which is depicted here below.

Wednesday, 14/03

Yesterday I had to wake up very early because the day was jam-packed with meetings with current and prospect clients. In the morning we met with Doc Rick to host a radio show on Hormones and Feng Shui. For the latter one we had to make contact with a Feng Shui specialist based in California, however due to some technical issues the we had to record and re-record the show three times; luckily everything turned out to be fine. Here are some pictures of Doc Rick and Marshall hosting the radio show.

 




In the afternoon we had some lunch at a typical diner on the I-84. Something very common here in the States is that almost all the diners are owned and exploited by Greek people. The restaurant may be owned by Greek people, but the food is still typical American.

In the afternoon we had meeting with a potential client in the Orange County Business Accelerator. The people we were meeting had developed a magnificent product called Frugaldoo but were lacking the managerial experience to really get promote the product and raise its awareness. The meeting lasted three hours in which we explained them how we were going to help them on solving this problem.

On the way home I shot some magnificent pictures of the Hudson area. After a very intense but educating they we arrived at the office around 7pm, finished our to-do list and went home afterwards for a good night sleep. 

 

 


Thursday, 15/03


Today was, unlike the past three days, cloudy and fresh and we had a meeting to attend to in the early morning. It was a very interesting meeting with a start-up company on which we have to create a go-to market strategy and then hopefully implement our strategy. As I have only attended meeting of which the business is a clients already for so many years, it was really interesting and fascinating to see how MKTworks, Inc. can help these people bring their product/service to the market.

The rest of the day we spent at the office revising the meeting we had this morning and sharing some ideas with each other. I also had to conduct some research on similar concepts on Groupon and Gilt. I came to the conclusion there are plenty of similar concepts, maybe not as popular as Groupon but they are out there and thus can form some threat.

Tomorrow I have to get up really early because I have fill out some form for my social security number at the SSN-office in Poughkeepsie. As this place is usually crowded with people we decided to go very early so that we are the first one's in and first one's out. We also have a meeting to attend to at 10am and a Skype-session with the KHLeuven at 11am. I also have to do my laundry tomorrow, so busy day ahead tomorrow.

This weekend I'll be spending St-Patricks day in the city to watch the huge parade on 5th avenue as well as to discover other parts of New York where I haven't been before. Sunday you will all be reading about it in my blog. See you then!

View from the outside on my apartment

Ron 'sceptic in chief' (81 years old)

Weekend in the NYC

It's been three days already that I didn't post anything on my blog. In that time I was very busy working for the office and visiting New York City. Today, sunday, I can finally relax from a very hardworking but exciting week.

Thursday, March 8th

Last thursday was a very hectic day as one of the servers hosting almost all the websites from clients, was spoofed (hacked). We tracked the IP addresses down all the way back to the Netherlands. In order for us to solve this problem we needed to back up all the files containing the websites. Therefore I had to go and buy a 2TB hard drive in the famous Walmart stores. As this was about 15miles away from the office, I had my first driving experience in the USA with the car depicted here below. The rest of the day consisted of backing up all those files, which took a long time. 

Audi A6 with the personalized number plate!

Friday, March 9th

Friday morning consisted of learning how to use hubspot as explained in my blog earlier. I gave Marshall more insights on the do's and don't of web management by experimenting with the program. 

In the afternoon we had two meetings on the agenda with a guy who owns the exclusive patent to sell eucalyptus based cleaning products in the United States. It wasn't really a meeting, but more a conference call with two other company interested working together with that guy. The second meeting was with an investor who was interested in starting up a business with that guy. In order for them to do that, we met with that guy and gave him advise on a go-to marketing strategy. 

In the evening I attended an art opening in the Beacon, a city 10miles northbound of Cold Spring, during which I met the host of the opening and an female opera singer and some other very interesting people. Afterwards we went to have dinner in a Japanese restaurant in Beacon, which was very nice of course. Luckily we were back pretty early, because the next day I wanted to be fresh and lively to visit NYC. 

Saturday, March 10th

The day started off just perfect with a beautiful sun shiny day and a beautiful city to visit that day. Even though I'm about 100km away from the city, it only takes one hour by train to get there. I got my train 09.05 and it took me a little more than an hour to arrive in Grand Central Station NYC. Below you can see some pictures of the beautiful scenery through which the train was driving as well as some pictures from Cold Spring in the early morning.

           

I arrived in the city around 10.15 and the moment I first walked into the main terminal I was overwhelmed  a feeling I can't even describe. I mean what a beautiful and amazing station that was, the station of Antwerp is nothing compared to that. The whole station consisted of many small shops, restaurants, gift shops and a number a Starbucks cafés. But to me, la crème de la crème was of course the recently opened Apple store integrated in the main terminal, the biggest one I have ever seen so far. As usual the shop was crowded by people exploring the iPhone, iPad, MacBook... It was, as Steve Jobs expressed in his last words: "oh wow, oh wow, oh wow". Of course I couldn't spent my entire day in an Apple store, so there I went exploring one of the most exciting cities in the world.

5th Avenue

As I haven't eating anything that day, my first stop was a Starbucks to get some OJ and a chocolate donut.  After having consumed my breakfast I headed for fifth corner of fifth ave and 49th street: Rock Plaza in front of the 70 stories heigh Rockefeller Center with it's amazing view of the city on 'Top of the Rock'. After taking some pictures of the Rock Plaza and it's famous Ice Skating Rink, I went all the way up and took some amazing pictures of Central Park and beyond as well as from the Empire State and the skyline of Manhattan. As you can see on the picture, it was indeed a beautiful sun shiny day, but that doesn't really mean the temperature was that good. It was about 6-10°Celsius in the city. Luckily it became a bit warmer as the day advanced. As you can also see on the pictures, I visited NY by myself. So not many pictures were shot with me on it. For some pictures I just used the front camera on my iPhone to do that. Also a quick note, the lens of my camera was full of scratches so most of the pictures are blurry and overexposed.

  

Le me with central park

So here we have some magnificent picture of NYC. For people visiting the big apple anytime soon I can definitely recommend to do this. Tickets are a bit pricy 25$ but the experience you'll have once you're up there is definitely its money worth.

By the time I was back on ground level, it was around 11.00am and I continued my journey as I walked uptown-bound on fifth avenue where all the big brands have their shop: Abercrombie & Fitch, Apple, Nike, Louis Vitton, Chanel, Rolex...



But besides passing by all the outlet stores, I also stopped by St. Patricks Cathedral right across the Rockefeller Center to say hallo to God and light a candle for all the people I love. As I walked further down with avenue I also stopped by the A&F store where I was almost became deaf due to the extremely loud music they were playing there. My last stop on fifth avenue was the big glass cube in which the logo was displayed of one of my favorite brands: the famous Apple store. I didn't spent that much time there as some of you might have expected, I was only there for 15minutes. As I had a wireless connection and Skype installed on my iPhone, I decided to Skype my family and make them a bit jealous. I even got a hold on my grandparents to Skype them.

 

After visiting all those cool places, I decided to have something to eat. A restaurant characterized by the golden Arches: McDonalds. Not just any place in the city, but on Times Square. As the place was crowded with tourists and locals and I couldn't find a place to eat, I consumed my meal on the red stairs in the middle of time square. I have visited Times Square two times now and it is still a place that keeps amazing me. At that time of the day I already took so many pictures, that my phone battery was almost dead. So I decided to save my battery for the afternoon and charge him somewhere in an Apple store in order to take some pictures on Times Square at night, which is way more amazing as during the day. 

In the afternoon I took the subway to the 9/11 Memorial, all the way downtown Manhattan. The place is still one big construction site as they are working on a new World Trade Center. However the place where the two towers stood before 9/11 is now a big memorial site with two big memorial pools representing the towers. Surrounding those memorial pools are names of the nearly 3.000 casualties of 9/11 and 26/02/1993 inscribed in bronze on parapets. On the memorial site they are also working on a big museum on the horrific happenings that took place that specific day. After spending some time at the memorial site, I also visited a temporary visitor center where all the names are displayed and where people narrated their testimonies of that day. Also a five-minute long movie was shown on how the WTC was before the attacks, how happy people were working there. Anyhow this visit made me stand still on the happenings of that day. You have all presumably seen the footage on TV that day and you all felt an immense feeling of grief and compassion. But the moment you enter the site where it all happened and read and hear the testimonies of people, it really has an impact on you. No words can actually describe how I felt after this visit. To have an impression of the site I took some pictures, which I depicted here below. 

                   
After having spent quite some time at the memorial I had some difficulties orienting myself, as downtown Manhattan has a whole different organization of streets: no grid plan with streets and avenues rather different street with different names; no logic at all. Anyhow, I walked around in the neighborhood, visited Wall street, saw trinity church (famous from the 'National Treasure' movie). But as my phone battery was dead I sadly couldn't take any pictures here. But as I'm only one hour away from the city, many more pictures will follow.

Afterwards I went to the Apple store on Grand Central to charge my phone as well as to do something about the scratches on my camera lens. For only 20$ they have changed my back cover, so I was good to go and I could take great pictures again, from which the results will be shown today further in this blog.

When walking from Grand Central Station to Times Square I passed the public library, one of the biggest library in the world. I just got in before closing time and took some some cool pictures of way better quality as the ones earlier that day.

    

Afterwards I ate some dinner at BXL Café, a Belgian restaurant on a 2 minute walk from Times Square. I drank a good Stella Artois and had some typical Belgian food, Duuhh: I ate some 'stoofvlees met frietjes' or as the menu says: Sirloin Tips Stewed in Brown ale served with fries'. Anyhow it was delicious.

Before heading back to Cold Spring by train, I took another walk on Times Square but this time by night which was way more amazing as by day. I took the train back around 8pm and I was in Cold Spring by 9u05pm. So an amazing day has come to an end. I'll definitely return and see what other things the city has to offer me besides the places crowded with tourist. 

I'll end my blog with showing you some pictures of Times Square as well as some pictures of Grand Central. 

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope to welcome you next time with new and fun stories of my life here in Cold Spring!