02.13 - 02.19 - Valentine's Day

This week was all about food and commuting to work. Tuesday night was Valentine's Day and Jeffrey and Alley invited five of us to a Valentine's Day dinner at Ibiza Tapas Bar. I tried to make a picture about every meal. It was not a successful project, i still missed to take a picture about five meals. Just desserts were three kinds.
Fortunately Ildi drove, so I didnt have to worry about my food coma:D
Here we are:

And the meals:

Thanks Jeff and Alley!

After transportation management class we went out ot eat something with Andras. We have this tradition since the this school year, on every Wednesday night we are going to a restaurant. Every time into a different one.
Aziz offered us a great Turkish Restaurant in West Haven, so we checked it out, here it is:

___________________________________________________________________________

American traffic review by Bence

1. Photronics distance is 50 miles from Hamden. Average time to go there is 50-55 minutes.
2. It means 160 km driving on every working day.
3. I have a manual shifting Honda Civic 2000 LX
4. I have to go through Waterbury which is a bottleneck on the highway.
5. Americans run on automatic cars.
6. Americans dont use this rule: Pass Left, Keep Right!
7. You can exceed the speed limit by 15 mph, so at 65 speed limit, you can go 80 mph without any problem

Consequences:
a. Bence cannot speed on the highway, jerks are on every line (usually 4 lines per each direction) with the same speed, there is no way to go
b. Bence got mad when it happens - it is really annoying, they have much better cars than I have and are afraid of speeding above 65 mph or so
c. The highway is stocked, why do they have/need 4 lines?
d. Because of the bottle neck effect any time you pass through Waterbury, there is a traffic jam (smaller or bigger). I dont like traffic jams, not just because i waste my time in it, but my manual shifting car works differently than automatic cars in the jam. They accelerate faster and they dont have engine break. So in the jam i accelerate slower and stop faster. It really hurts the flow of the traffic jam. Anyway. And I have to shift so many times between 1st and second gears. Americans do not understand what is wrong with me. :D
e. Because of they are afraid of speeding and driving in a rainy weather Bence can speed in the inmost line!!! YAY!
f. Bence is absolutely exhausted at the end of the day and sometimes falls asleep on the classes.

Results:
       Americans are not good at keeping right
       Bence has to get used to it.

Because "What doesnt kill you makes you stronger!"

Just to get the feeling:

:)

02.06 - 02.12 - Basketball Hall of Fame, Black Bear

I am sitting in my chair after a crazy party night and thinking about how to start this spot. I have been thinking for like 10 minutes and i figured that why don't i just write down what i am thinking about. So, here we go! I have already started my spot:)

I would split my week for three sections: school, work, weekend.

So, school, well, I cannot tell you anything relevant right now. Honestly i am well behind of every class. We do have some papers to handle. I have to organize my thought regarding the school, i just do not know what is going on there. I know it is bad, very bad. After finishing this blogspot i am going to look over every syllabus, i am trying to be organized. On finance class we will have our first midterm due on the 20th of February. I would have to read 90 pages. Oh well...

For the other classes i got my books at least and now i am able to learn physically. :D But i still have to pick them up from the QU post office. Ok, that is well enough about the school.

Photronics. I will tell u more about the company later on. I have so many things to do there, several projects, etc. Here is their webpage: www.photronics.com. They are producing photomasks and have 8 factories. What is a photomask and how they make it? http://www.pkl.co.kr/english/product/product05.html This is a pretty good company and i will learn a lot, especially in inventory management and procurement. My official responsibilities will be the following as it is written in my offer letter: 

- Develop basic understanding of Purchasing and Inventory functions

- Support of tactical and day-to-day departmental needs as required

- Support of process improvement projects

- Data analysis for cost saving initiatives

- Specific areas of Interest?

I cannot tell you more guys about these projects, otherwise i should kill you, but i am going to like the third point and the fifth one. This company is on NASDAQ, but the headquarter is perfect size for me to learn how to manage a company at this size. Brilliant opportunity to learn!!

But the way to go there is just a big suck. 50 minutes each way and 100 miles a day. After my first day i was exhausted like crazy! After work i went to transportation management class, and i just looked out my head without any consciousness what is going on there. Anyway, after it we went out to our regular restaurant visit (every Wednesday we are going out and eat every time at different places), and as we arrived i went to bed. Fortunately Xiao Xiao asked me whether i did my homework for managing marketing channels or not, because it is due to tomorrow. I said, WTF?????? What is wrong with you? There is no homework for tomorrow. Actually we had...So i had to get up at 5 in the morning to do my homework for the class before work. I did. And i guess i will get 100% on it. Then i went to work and after it, i had that certain class and then we went out to the Eli's (bar). 

I had training with the HR, finalized the paperwork, and i passed the drugtest too! We went to the cleanroom, it is the soul of the factory that is the place where the photomasks are produced on silicon quartz plates and with pellicles. We were gowned up in the gowning room and went inside. You cannot imagine that world. I could compare to some kind of Sci-Fi movie, or Nasa airplane. It is crazy! Colors, smells, touches, mood are totally different. You can imagine how clean that room is, in a cubic meter there are just 100 particals. If you rub your clean (freshly washed!!!) palms together, you gonna make 700 particals an average. So, when your mother asks u whether you cleaned up your room, even you did it, it is still in mess!:D Since then I do not want to clean up my room, it wont be clean anyway:D

On Friday lunch we went out a new mexican restaurant. The service was just unbelievable!!! That was kind a service we should learn! I have already done:D

Weekend. So, yesterday was a pretty good day and night! After our regular workout on Friday my abs were killed on Saturday. Never mind Bence! I was almost not able to leave my bed:) I put some shitty food together for breakfast and at 11am, we (Andras and I) headed towards Springfield. The main goal was the Hall of Fame (Basketball). We arrived, the discounted entry fee was $17 per person! WTF??? I am surely not interested in basketball, but ok, i have one life, so, it is time to start to make that kind of interest! Remember Bence, you are open! OK, i thought! We went into it, it was a little bit disappointment, but later on i enjoyed every minute i spent there. I made a lot of pictures, videos, we sacked some scores. I'll show you some pictures. 

Then we went to visit the UCONN, University of Connecticut. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Connecticut 30,000 students are at the campus. That is a real university town, in the middle of nowhere. They have own police station, called UCON Police, not just QU Security. Policeeeeee!!! I was amazed! There is no similar university in Hungary, i am sure! 

On the way back we visited this: http://www.connecticutsar.org/sites/eh-schoolhouse.htm Nathan Hale Schoolhouse, a piece of the american history. That guy said this: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

Here are the pictures and videos:

Mexican restaurant meal with my Photronics colleagues. 

 

Ready for the cleaning room at Photronics!

Hall of Fame:

The beginning of the basketball

and later on... (i have the story until nowadays, but it is too large to upload)

:D

Mr. Naismith

Hungarians are everywhere

The father of the basketball

World Record Slam Down

With Michael Jordan

Hall of Fame I.

Hall of Fame II. 

QU is better!

UConn Huskies

Nathan Hale Schoolhouse

Somewhere in New Haven!

:)

01.31-02.05 - NYC Carrier Fair, Photronics

Another week just went away. The first and best thing I have to tell you is that my car is repaired!!! The mechanic changed the hose on the coolant system. And they fixed my DC, which is the cigarette lighter, so now i can smoke in my car:) Nooo, i can use my GPS.
I still dont have my transportation book and managing people book...
There are two bigger things happened to me during this week.

1. Photronics
Wednesday was my first working day. I went to Brookfield, which is 50 miles away and met with my HR person. I got some papers and had to go to take my drug test. First I tried to do it in Bethel, that is 10 minutes from the Photronics, but there they were not able to take the test (they do just blood test). My test quote was for urine test. Then I went to Danbury, that is another 10 minutes from Bethel and there I took the test. I would bet that you think it was easy to do it. But, it is not!:) You get a little cup and you have to produce a sample between 30 and 60 ml. But you cannot pee at the beginning because that sample would not be appropriate (dont ask why), so you have to stop it before the very end and target into the little cup and open the tap again. I almost miscalculated this action, but finally i hit the limit. Huhh:D Before the action you have to wash your hand, during the action you have to pee into the toilette, which is filled with a special blue liquid and you cannot flash when you finished. Your genitalia (that says the official instruction)  mustn't touch the little cup. After you did the sample you cannot wash your hand until you give it to the lab staff. Basically that is it. :)
Then i went back to the headquarter and met with my supervisors, one of them is the director of supply chain and the other is the VP Supply Chain. They are nice persons. I will have two mentors who I work with. Mostly I will work on projects. Lots of different projects are going on right now. Each of them is exciting. The atmosphere is great and the feeling that I will work at the world leader of photomask producer is awesome! I cannot tell you more about my job right now, but I will talk about it later.

2. QU Carrier Fair
Friday was the NY Carrier Fair organized by QU. At 6:15AM we got on the bus headed towards NY City. After three hours travelling we arrived. The event was placed at 140 Broadway, YMCA Retirement Found building on the 28th floor. We were around 37, mostly seniors with finance, accounting and marketing majors and three MBA students. Iva, she is a Bulgarian MBA student with Health Care Management specialization, Lisanne, her girlfriend and organizer and me from Tarcal.:)
I want to describe this event seriously but before i start to do so, i got to tell you the biggest motivation factor was a cheap trip to NY and free food. I know it is sad, but i didnt know much about this, until I was there. That is why I didnt prepare much to show my best face. I just carried some business cards with me and printed some resumes (just in case). I was not aware of the big opportunity of it. Most of the time i made fun on everything, just looked around and looked at the guys who were there and ate a lot.
That was the agenda:
9-10am          Alumni Panel
       Panelists:       1. Chris Rich '10 - Goldman Sachs (mergers and acquisitions)
                            2. Tracy Annunziato '11 - NBC Universal
                            3. Megan Girard '07 - LinkedIn
                            4. Yury Marasanov '07 - ING Capital
                            5. Brittney Castine '07 - VML
10-10:15        Break - group by major (it means that you decided where to stay, whether at Finance panel or Marketing panel)
10:15-11:15   Session 1
                         Marketing, Advertising
                         ----------------------------
                         International Business and Management    Scott Pollak '96 - Citigroup
                         Accounting
                         Finance                                                    Ric Wallace - Morgan Stanley
11:15-11:30    Break
11:30-12:20    Session 2
                         Marketing, Advertising
                         ----------------------------
                         International Business and Management    Jessie Russel '06 - American Express
                         Accounting                                               Luke Garritori '09 - Deloitte after MBA
                         Finance                                                    Thomas Cucci '09 - VIP Services
                                                                                         Brian Tahan '94 - Credit Suisse
Lunch!
12:30-1:00      Networking and Your Pitch
1:00-1:15        Developing Your Pitch
1:15-2:00        Informal Networking
                         Practice your Pitch and receive a verbal critique on your networking skills
2:00-2:30        Debrief - What worked and what didn't

GO home and arrival at 6:30 to QU.

Some comments on this event. I realized early that these firms do not fit perfectly and do not hire immigrants for any position. So I just wanted to hear something the financial sector of the City, what is going on. Chris from Goldman told us that he usually works from 80 to 110 hours a week!!!!! What do you thin about it? He said that is is worth it. OK. The others from this sector told us that this is a really challenging, ever-changing sector and job. They usually start their they between 4:00AM and 5:00AM. And go to bed (not go home) between 11:00PM and 12:00PM. Even they are at home, but they are online, reading, learning, doing some phone calls. They make tons of money, but is it really worth it? They said that is a personal life decision whether you want it or not. I don't know that i could do it. I guess not...So i was happy that i chose something better. The lunch was great! You cannot imagine how delicious were those wrappers and sandwiches!
After the lunch was my time! I learnt a new word: pitch (how to sell yourself in 30 seconds/brief introduction). We had to practice as well so i didnt have choice, i did it. I met some really valuable people, some entrepreneurs, even this is a rare specious but still there are some everywhere, if you are persistent, you will find them! When you present your pitch, you have to seem confident and interesting. But after your turn (30-60 seconds) follow the 80:20 rule. Listen to the other 80% of the whole conversation, let the other person to speak! And tell him/her something interesting about you in the 20% of the time that maintain the interest.

And here are some pictures:

Farewell lunch with Szasza (i cooked:)

My first working day at Photronics

Before the end of the Carrier Fair (i forgot to use my camera earlier)

View from the 28th Floor (NY, Manhattan, 140 Broadway, YMCA Retirement Found)

I apologize for this silly video!

Before

After

:)