S.

yes, finally I'm writing about my work!..

Can't believe it is already a month and several days as I'm here. Time flies too fast!

What I'm actually doing here: my internship is for one year in an Australian company called ADSHEL. They are the biggest operator of street furniture advertising (media space provider) in Australia and New Zealand. Basic idea is that the company tenders for agreements with councils, under which Adshel supplies free bus shelters and get in return the right to sell advertising space in side panels of shelters. Coverage is really impressive, they have even panels in Tasmania! In addition, the company has panels in shopping centres across the country, and operates advertising sites in Sydney International airport.

I am the marketing executive in the company, and there are 6 other people working in the marketing department with me. Overall there are about 50 people in our Sydney office. My job includes:

• working on organizing marketing events and promotions (lots of it is corporate entertainment),
  
• marketing communications (for example we'll be launching a new kind of product line soon, and I will be working on marcomm materials for that)
• I do internal marketing too, like producing internal newsletter and other stuff;
• participating in a web re-launch project (sounds familiar, isn't it :)
• managing charity advertising campaigns with Adshel
• organizing professional photo shots of our special advertising campaigns (where there is some special creative execution)
• organizing an annual national sales and marketing conference in October
  

I think I will be asking for more work soon :) Need to continue stretching and challenging my capabilities!
Overall - my experience in Adshel is AMAZING.
It's most of all because of the company culture. It is totally is the one as we envision in AIESEC company culture should be - flat enough structure, feeling of belonging, openness, focus on achievement rather than competition, striving for excellence combined with great fun spirit and human approach. I can so easily relate myself to company's values (which are very much related to those we have in AIESEC), it makes the whole integration process much easier. Plus the company is keen on green initiatives (to stabilize the impact we do by producing shelters). Examples are introducing bus shelters with solar power, reducing water usage in cleaning of shelters' procedures, paper recycling in the office etc. I'm so glad I can work in a company and be true to my sustainable living principles!

In addition, my integration process is great. I had 2 weeks induction plan (!), with meetings with all departments, role clarifications etc. I was given lots of trust and responsibility for my work since the first week, and I really appreciate it, and do my best to stand up to the standard set :)

A couple of quotes from my company:
CEO, Steve McCarthy:

"My main job here as CEO is to recruit good people and to create environment where they can perform and develop" (culture of excellence, anyone?)

On that line - Adshel was featured in 2006 in one of studies on cultural transformation as a great example. Actually the story is, after the speech the CEO of Adshel had about company's transformation, at one of conferences - a girl from MC Australia who was at that conference also, approached him and said, we have to talk with you about a partnership. This is how I appeared here :) (I'm the first trainee Adshel has, so bear a responsibility!)

Marketing director, Anthony Xydis:

"I believe that all good things you do return to you at the end; now we took you for an internship, you being the right person in the right place, to give you a possibility you wouldn't have had otherwise; and who knows, when in the future you are the director of the company, you take trainees also"

I think it's great, this is why all companies should take trainees :) mind the piece about right person with right skills in the right place!
In general my marketing director is a cool guy, for what he has as best part of him - it's a combination of Brodie and Dey - mega mix :)

And this is my marketing team (left to right):

• Leanne, marketing coordinator, Chinese origin
• Anthony, mark director, Greek origin
• Nick, New Zealand mark manager, New Zealand origin
• Edwina, research manager, Australian origin (however may be something else..)
• Marc (on the front), mark executive, half-Croatian origin
• me, Russian origin :)
• Marie, marketing manager, Italian origin (my direct manager - mostly due to her and her patience I have the opportunity to do all the things I do in Adshel :)
• Aaron, technology and innovation manager, New Zealand origin

This is after our team building training - familiar theory but what a great execution by all participants! Without all our AIESEC tricks, games etc - and still a great team building and discussions. I was very well impressed.

Well, this is my work, this is my life, and I enjoy it.
Watch this space for more insights :)

Labels: AIESEC, culture, internship, sydney, work

This post is utmost inspired by Kristi's recent post about Butterfly Effect

I guess many of you have seen the movie, it's about how one small thing can completely change the course of life, course of the universe at a bigger scale as originally put by Ray Bradbury.

Kristi wrote:

The tag line is change one thing, change everything. We all have moments in life when we wish we could change something, we wish we would have done differently. Right a wrong. Correct a mistake. Gain love... In the movie it becomes possible. In real life however, once we lose a chance, it’s gone. A small choice or a decision in an ordinary day could have made a big difference, could have turned your life to a completely different direction. Whether it would be for better or worse, only universe would know, but the fact is lots of special moments in life are lost because we think too much instead of asking, we are too busy being afraid instead of daring, or worse, we often fail to look into other’s eyes and speak our mind and heart.

It's great reflection, I love it. Very much of what I felt after watching a movie.
However my thinking direction was more on the line "how lucky I'm now for all those little and big choices i made". I was then in The Netherlands, working in AI and loving the environment, appreciating my opportunities. And I thought - "What if I wake up tomorrow and it all has been just a dream of the parallel world, and I'm an accountant in some small Belarussian town without any perspective etc... How really fortunate I am to be who I am and live how I live!.."

I suddenly became aware and happy for all the steps I did that led me to my experience at that moment.
Even now, look - in what world I, a girl from Belarus, would have a great time working in a cool company in Sydney, half of the world away from home? (as my marketing director put it - all good things you do in life - they come back to you at some point :)

However, the opposite of celebrating the right choice is true also.
You never know how it would really be the other way, if you did something differently; may be it all could be even 100 times better? May be you could be a superstar singer if you really listened to your mother demanding you to finish music school?

My take would be that we need to be more aware of our choices, be more conscious about many things we choose to do. And most importantly, we need actually to choose, knowing that this is the best option we are aware of, not just flowing on the current.

Having said that - to think too much about any single thing (will my life change if i go shopping today?) is difficult and actually meaningless too :)

How then to understand, what flip of butterfly wing changes your life, and which doesn't? What is big to decide on, and what is insignificant, isn't worth of worrying?

To answer I try to learn to trust my intuition more. It actually is right in more cases than I thought. I think our intuition is a reflection of things we know, we feel, but unconsciously. In a way this unconsciousness is a very powerful and influential thing upon our lives.

How many times I thought to myself - "I don't know why, but I feel that that is the way to go or not to go". and thinking deeper afterwards, I actually found out why I was thinking that, there were actually reasons and things that formed my feeling of a right/wrong choice.

As Brodie once put - learn to understand and manage your unconscious self, and you'll learn and manage much more of your life. I'd add - of choices in your life.

At the end of the day - our life is a result of choices we did once, one way or another.

Labels: batterfly effect, change, choice

The week-end before I was in Blue mountains. Lucky me, not even 2 weeks, and already there! Things happened just right, that a friend of my friend was going there by car and kindly invited us to join in. Apparently Blue mountains less than a couple of hrs drive from Sydney, so that made a perfect Sunday trip.

Generally Blue Mountains is a big forest, I presume it's a national park. Wikipedia it, I guess it'd be better than my would-be theoretical background :)

One major feeling after visiting though - you want to come back and sit on some cliff, looking into far-away horizon of mountains and thinking life. It was great.



We began by going to waterfalls and around. Follow the trail, and stunning views are opening just as you turn another time on a small path.




We found a would-be closed for maintenance path that leads to waterfalls, it was great! Feeling of a real tropical forest, when it's all green and water gathers from the stones up there. Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't climb some tree around or didn't go right to the waterfall!





Views there - they are just wonderful, I loved that place. You go around, up and down, on the caved in the rock way, and at every second, left, right, above, beneath you - nature itself, so perfect and peaceful that you want just to breeze it and to be a part of it… Don't know how to describe best, I guess every mountain place, even though different, has some magic in it.

The we set for Three Sisters, famous tourist place, where you see a great panoramic view. Three Sisters are actually rock cliffs (not a surprise I guess :), according to a legend, there were 3 witches (don't know though good or bad ones), that were turned into stones.
I nicely enjoyed the sun there

And then - oh, then we took a trip in an almost vertical train road down to the plain, to follow the walking trail in the forest, and then climbed back in a cable cabin.
Things that amazed me:
I kept staring at all those unusual trees around me, they are just great! "Paporotnik", a plant usually growing from the ground as a kind of grass, in Blue Mountains it was a tree! It's just so cool, I loved it.

This one looks like a corn on the tree! too cool :)

And of course, eucalypt trees themselves. As I learned, Blue Mountains are blue, because eucalyptuses' oil, when melted by the sun, emerges in the air tiny fluids. And that, multiplied by hundreds of thousands of trees, creates a special blue-ish aura. However only from far-away, when you are actually in the forest, you just breeze enormously clean and very… forestly air, you know, that unmistakable scent of a real forest?

These are actually eucalyptuses

And yet another farewell look at the magnifying far of the mountains…

I wish some of you, my dear friends, come to visit me in Australia, so I can share Blue Mountains with you :)

Labels: australia, Blue Mountains, forest

Labels: 8March

Yes, this is beautiful me that evening :)))

Friday - work, work… Hectic time of learning everything in the last minute, as the girl, from whom I'm taking over, is leaving. Lunch in 4 Seasons hotel, where a charity we support, organising a thank-you lunch. Appears to be a full-course served lunch/event for 400-500 people, with some of Australian TV and other celebrities, and some famous comedian, who talks out Oz politics - laughing till tears, experiencing famous Aussie comedy-talk live. Back to work.. Evening - Friday drinks in a nice lounge club with some company staff, including CEO and people from all departments as farewell drinks to leaving Anke (that I already mentioned dozen of times :). Going to sleep at 10 pm…

Saturday - today! Starting off with coffee at said to be the best coffee place in Sydney, driving across Sydney to look at flats to rent (listening on the way to Indian music, exploring city districts under increasing last summer heat). Going afterwards to the beach, relaxing in quiet waters of Shelly, getting some tan! Missing that famous Mardi Gras (parade of homosexual communities and one of biggest events in the city). Yes, I'm tired of crowd, tired after the sunny beach and want to sit now at home and write this blog post :) More to that, I might actually see the parade the next year, if I stay here a bit longer! Anyways, this is not an event of my life, I don't feel much emotional connection to Mardi Gras crowds and parties, at least not today :)

And Sunday, tomorrow - going to Blue mountains!!! Report with pictures to follow :) In the evening - taking a crowd of Sydney trainees to again sponsored by my company cinema viewing, in an open-air summer cinema.

Well, this is my week review :) Full of events and people, an example of how I want to live every moment of my Aussie experience to the fullest :) Life-non-stop!!!

p.s. hehe apparently Aussies sing that "here's to 'someone', he's true blue…" not only at Hush Run, but every other time they toast beer!