Master thesis II

Last Monday I officially started my internship at Givaudan in Dübendorf, Zurich. Givaudan is the world's largest company in the flavor and fragrance industry with headquarters in Vernier, Geneva. The company has more than 8500 employees worldwide and generates a revenue of CHF 4 billion, whereas the fragrance sales make up 46% and the flavor sales 54% of the total. I write my master thesis in the R&D department, the Flavor Delivery Science. The atmosphere is very international, as my team consists of people sitting in Cincinnati, OH, USA and in Naarden, Netherlands. All teams work in close collaboration and therefore I could attend a telephone conference right on my first day. No need to say that everything is in English, even the conversations at lunch. I'm really glad that finally everything went well, after all the problems with the contract.
By the way, next Friday I'll be in Arosa, as we have a team building event the whole day, including skiing, apero and dinner. That's what I call a good start into an internship!

Besides, I was talking to Kai this week about our planed trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong this year. As I will be in community service from September till the end of November, we might go somewhen in May, as the World Expo opens right then. But we will discuss that in the next days and then hopefully come up with a decision.
Yesterday I was in Zurich at Lara's place for her farewell apero. She is going to Dublin for three months and thus invited some friends to say goodbye. The rest of the week I worked late, had coffee at Starbucks with Lea, went to the gym and went running once, when the sun was out and the snow partly gone.

Master thesis I

I'm already back from Asia. I will update you step by step in the next few weeks, so that you get a clue of what we experienced in Vietnam, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. To make it short: It was exciting!
Now, it seems that winter has gone and spring is slowly but surely coming, already bringing some warm and sunny days. Besides, I got some good news concerning my master thesis. While I was traveling, Givaudan and my professor came up with an agreement for the contract we all had to sign. I'm now even better off as before, because I will also get a recompense for my work. The only problem is that I will not be able to publish all my results because of confidential reasons.
As I wrote in a previous post I applied for a strategy conference in Venice, Italy which is organized by Booz&Company. As the conference is open for master and PhD students from Germany, Austria and Switzerland it was quite difficult to be accepted. Thus I was not disappointed when I was announced that I do not belong to the lucky few participants. However, I also applied for a workshop with McKinsey&Company in Rome from March 26-28. This time I had more luck and I was accepted. To get to know each other we'll first meet at their office at Zurich Airport, before boarding a Swiss machine to get to the italian capital. The hotel we'll stay could actually not be better: It's the Ripa Hotel (Via degli Orti di Trastevere 3), a nice boutique and design hotel.