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For every Sales Solutioner

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In this issue

Letter from the editor .... 1

Ideas for next issue ........ 2

Brussels by night............ 3

Delirium Cafe ................ 4

Your article ................... 5

Artikel ........................... 6

Artikel ........................... 7

Volume 1, March 2013 iShares

iShares will be FOR and FROM you

SSCers, your very own publication,

though sharing with friends, family,

far-away relatives or even your

mother in law iwill be allowed. You

will all get the occasion to become

the occasional journalists so please

let your creativity flow and cooperate

for next issue. The survical of this

magazine is in your hands ! For this

first edition I had to ask for a few

‘volunteers’, begging them to keep

this all a big secret until publishing

day : an iSurpise for all you readers.

Now you may turn the page and find

out what next issue could be all

about. Have fun !

Anno domino 2013

January 23rd.

While having a few beers in a nice Brus-

sels bar and in the more than exquisite

and charming companie of Jaque

(LONSSC) and Nancy (BRUSSC), I told

them about a project I had in mind. An

idea that actually had been crossing my

mind several times but never saw the

light of day since I did not know how well

(or badly) it would be received by you, my

dearest Sales Soltioners : Create some

kind of magazine, newspaper, newsletter,

pamphlet, or whatever you may want to

call it, to share between the European

Sales Solution Centers with the thought of

bringing us a little closer. Interacting bet-

ween us with our own magazine and at

the same time having fun doing it. Like

the idea so far ?Both Jaque and Nancy did

so too, thought it was a great idea idea

and said they would help me make this a

reality. Just to show you what a few beers

on a cold winter’s night can accomplish !

One of the articles in this first issue will

tell you all about the great evening we

spent and even reveal some pictures (or

at least the ones that made it through the

selection committee). I guess now it’s my

duty to live up to my promise and for the

moment I must say I think I managed qui-

te well, since the result is what you all are

currently reading. .

Some history

Where did this all start then ? Well I did

something similar while working for the

United Airlines Call Center in Paris, deca-

des ago. At that time it was called ‘Apollo

Magazine’, very much appreciated by my

colleagues over there in the French capi-

tal. So much, some of them were reading

it in the metro and simply missed the me-

trostop near the office. So they had to

get off and change direction, loosing pre-

cious time and finally arriving late for

work. Needless to say they must have

been really emerged in their Apollo Ma-

gazine. But we don’t want you to arrive

too late for work, besides you don’t have

a clue yet as to what this will be all about,

so this never ending explanation simply

continues.

Why iShares ?

From those dark ages way back in Paris,

where I had to copy all the issues and

hand staple them together before distri-

bution, a lot of water has flown under the

bridges of the Seine river, ‘the times they

are a-changing’ and we now all live in a

ciber world full of iPad’s, iPod’s, iPhones,

and more items from the apple-logoed

company. That’s what explains the first

letter of your magazine’s name. The se-

cond part of the name because it will all

be about sharing between us ( what we’ll

share exactly you will all find out in a few

seconds, if you keep on reading ). And

even though some of us might be using

EZR, you’ll have to admit that iShares

does sound a lot better than ‘iEZR’ and is

far more easy to pronounce as well. Al-

ready bored before even turning the pa-

ges ? No problem, you may hit your dele-

te buttom and go on with your daily job.

No hard feelings !

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KOP VOOR ARTIKEL OP BINNENPAGINA

Holiday : How was your last vacation ? Any useful

tips about lodging, restaurants, or anything else you

think we all should know about ?

Cuisine : Do you want to share your grandmother’s

cake recipe ?

Fun : Heard any good jokes lately or seen a funny

cartoon ?

Lodging : Want to rent out your apartment while

you’re off to the Foundations Course ? Offer your

couch for the couch hoppers amongst us ? Rent your

apartment for the summer in FRA/LON/BRU ?

Who’s who : In every issue we will publish an inter-

view with one of your colleagues, so we all will get

to know that person a little better and who knows,

we may be in for some surprises.

Some fantastic entry in our computer that would

make our job easier ? Go ahead and share it with us,

even though we do not want the magazine to be-

come too work related, there are other means of

getting to know these entries.

Music : Do you love the latest Justin Bieber, Metalli-

ca or Adele album ? Tell us why !

Movie : Did you go see ‘Life of Pi’ and thought it

was an absolutely great movie everyone has to

see ? Try and convince us to go see it with your

opinion about this movie.

Photo : Do you have a nice photo to share ? We’ll

pick the ‘Photo of the month’, and who knows we

might even organize a contest.

Books : Did you feel ‘Nine shades of grey’ a MUST

read, or would you rather recommend us‘The Can-

terbury Tales’ ? Tell us why.

Crossword Puzzle : We’ll try to publish the occa-

sional crossword puzzle or quiz, and might throw in

a small reward for the winner.

Internet sites : Did you find an interesting site on

the internet ? Write us all about it !

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This list certainly is not complete. I am convinced you will find more items of interest you’d like to read or write

about, so please feel free to tell all of us so this magazine will really deserve its name.

At this point I may have all lost you. Great if you continue, hopefully you will not regret it and really get inspired to

cooperate in our next issue.

This probably is the longest “Letter from the editor “ I’ll ever write in any issue, but this first one well deserves it.

My sincere thanks go to Amit for allowing me to start this project and to eve-

ryone who has contributed to this number 1 of your soon to become favorite

publication.

Enjoy reading, stay tuned and see you

next time, some of you might even get an

email from me without expecting it !

Pascal

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Locations

Hard Rock Cafe : Grand Place

Poechenellekelder : rue du Che ne 5—1000 Brussels

Manneken Pis : Stoofstraat 46—1000 Brussels

Delirium Café : Impasse de la

Fidelité 4 A—1000 Brussels

In the

editorial I promised I would

reveal all the details from

our ‘excursion’ to Brussels.

Promises are made to keep,

so here’s your reporter’s

full report of an excellent

evening. After two days of

‘sharing’ with Jacque from LONSSC in our

office, it was time to change ideas and go

for a night out in Belgium’s capital. Actu-

ally our offices are in Diegem, a 15 mi-

nute train ride to the Brussels Central

Station. Luckily it had stopped snowing,

but it still was freezing cold outside, so

we left the UA- premises dressed as if we

would be going on a polar expedition but

I was confident our barhopping would

warm us up soon enough. A 10 minute

walk from the station brings you to the

Grand Place, where Jaque took the nec-

essary pictures and we all admired the

beauty of this square. Nancy even said

she thinks the Brussels Grand Place is

nicer then the San Marco Square in Ven-

ice, but haven’t been to Venice myself, I

could not judge whether or not this was

true. We walked by the recently opened

Hard Rock cafe, but instead of going in,

we decided to go show Jaque

our famous ‘Manneken Pis’

first. We found him a little

further on his usual corner,

doing what he always does,

despite the freezing cold.

Better him than me ! After

the necessary pictures Nancy

took us across the street to one of her

favorite spots : the Poechenellekelder,

which means something like ‘cave of the

marionettes’. If that does not mean any-

thing to you either : ‘Marionettes’ are

puppets used in a puppet theater. Little

did I know this was going to be a very

nice discovery and certainly one of the

bars I would take friends to on a visit to

Brussels. The place is really ancient, hun-

dreds of Manneken Pis all over, nice at-

mosphere and a wide variety of Belgian

beers. Every beer served in its own spe-

cial glass like it should be. We started

getting a little warmer already. This is

what we had : ‘Orval’ for Jaque and Nan-

cy (6.2 % alcohol), I had a ‘Triple Kar-

meliet’ (8.4 % alcohol) myself.

Yummy !

Nancy, Jaque and Pascal enjoying their night

in the ‘Poechenellekelder’

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When I asked Nancy what she had she said she for-

got, but I do remember she started laughing and

never stopped until we saw her get in a taxi to get

home later that evening. Must have been something

way above the 10 degrees of alcohol. After this first

degustation we returned towards the Grand Place.

Short stop at a souvenir shop where Jaque supplied

herself with some Belgian chocolates for the home-

front.

We then wanted to show Jaque the ‘Cerceuil’ café’.

The name means ‘Coffin’ and all tables actually are

coffins ( hopefully not used ). Some pictures and off

we were towards the ‘Rue des Bouchers’ area,

where you find a lot of restaurants and also

Manneken Pis’s girlfriend ‘Jeanneke Pis’. In front of

this little statue, we found another one of Nancy’s

favorite bars : Delirium Café. Here you can try more

than 2000 brands of beer, with of course many Bel-

gian beers and a selection of beers from over 60

countries. Needless to say this bar well-earned it’s

place in the Guinness Book of Records. I thought it

was a little bit more noisy than our first stop, but

well worth a visit.

Luckily we were close to ‘Chez Leon’, a typical Brussels restaurants where they serve one dish everyone has to try : Mussels from Brussels. Besides we had a 50 % discount coupon, so our choice was quickly made. Be-fore entering we quickly went to check out if we could find any of our Accounting colleagues at the nearby (recently opened) Hard Rock Café, but since we didn’t find any of them, we re-turned to have a much desired meal and of course : All 3 of us decided to go for the mussels, accompanied by a typical beer especially brewed for the restaurant. This would be our last beer for the night. Very happy and satisfied with our even-ing excursion, we returned home. We made sure Nancy (who lives in Brussels) safely got into a taxi, while Jaque and myself headed for the train station of Brus-sels Central station. Jaque had to get off at the hotel near our office in Diegem, while I continued to Leuven, where I live. I finally got home by 23h20, quite a de-cent hour. I remember I went straight to bed and slept like an angel. I can speak for myself and say I did not dream of any pink elephants. I don’t know about Jaque and Nancy, you’d have to ask them.

They say they choose a pink elephant as logo because if you would drink too many glasses, you would probably see pink elephants appear. People say that the most animals you see if suffering from a delirium tremens are elephants, dogs, cats and snakes. The beer was elected “Best Beer in the World’ in 2008 at the World Beer Championships in Chicago and Délirium Café has expanded internationally and even opened franchises in Rio and Japan. An idea for a next excursion maybe ? We’ll keep you all posted. Nor Jaque, Nancy or myself saw any strange animals, not yet anyway, but we all felt one thing : HUNGER.

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Some fun

ALITALIA = Arrived Late In

Turin, And Luggage In Australia

(no offense to our Italian friends)

Air iShares recently introduced a special half fare

for wives who accompanied their husbands on

business trips. Expecting valuable testimonials, the

PR department sent out letters to all the wives of

businessmen who had used the special rates, ask-

ing how they enjoyed their trip.

Letters are still pouring in asking, "What trip?"

Click here for a funny video

about airline safety.

Or how about one of a

dumb blonde ?

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UW LOGO

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At the airport for a business trip, I settled down to wait for the boarding announcement at Gate 35.

Then I heard the voice on the public address system saying, "We apologize for the inconvenience, but

Air Amit 570 will board from Gate 41." So my family picked up our luggage and carried it over to Gate

41. Not ten minutes later the public address voice told us that Flight 570 would in fact be boarding

from Gate 35. So, again, we gathered our carry-on luggage and returned to the original gate. Just as we

were settling down, the public address voice spoke again: "Thank you for participating in Air Amit's

physical fitness program.

Don't forget to send us your funny cartoons, jokes or anything fun for our next issue !

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I’m sure we all remember this day as if it was

yesterday. Maybe not for what we did in the

evening (or night for that matter). The big

event took place during office hours, since we all got

this lovely letter with our bonus.

In the Brussels office, everyone was happy at least,

but one person even happier than all the rest. Luckily

we had a reporter on the spot who could capture

this moment. For obvious reasons, we will not reveal

who it is, but that seemed to be one big envelope he

is holding !

February 14th

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Coming in next issue

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The White Day

In Happy Purple ~ by John E WordSlinger.

This day, was so special, when big chocoholics so little,

sang the jelly bean prayer from the basket of victory.

You may have heard, or never, of this for-surreal history.

So please do listen as I share this, ever real, bonny story.

There was a knock at the door, I wondered who could it be?

Was it the Easter Bunny with some scripture candy for me?

I looked through the window, and seen every precious hue.

All about the green grass was eggs scarlet, yellow, and blue.

The sun has beautifully risen from the wonderful east.

I felt so happy with the magic of life within released.

There was a flash, visual music, just past the red oak tree.

I seen his tall ears, marshmallow tail, then his quick feet.

He has to be from heaven, I do give him merit

He left us proof, he left us a half bitten carrot

And when I went to bed that warm spring night

Mother told me why the egg was the color white

I thanked my dear mother with kisses and laughter

I told her I loved my basket with the purple wrapper

She said, it was my father’s idea, I’m his dear child

He said, it’s the meaning of life, to again give me a smile.

Poet ’s Corner

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