TRIATHLON RACE AT KEY BISCAYNE

I completed my first Triathlon race on July 23rd, 2006. After a few months of physical training I was able to make it to the finish line. For those who don't know what a Triathlon race is, basically puts together 3 disciplines swimming, biking and running in one event, one discipline follows the other so who ever makes the least time wins. I was there to finish, and so I did. This race was about 1/4 mile swim in the ocean, 10 mile bike course and a 3.1 mile run track. It was one of the most exciting things I've done, competing against all those 500 athletes from all over the world Canada, England, Colombia, Argentina, USA and achieving my goal in 1 hour and 30 minutes. This was my 1st race but definetly not the last one.

EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

CONCERTS

The good thing about living in a big city as Miami is that you know all the good bands are going to make a stop here. I was very very lucky to get tickets for all the concerts I wanted. After 10 years I finally saw one of my favorite bands: The FOO FIGHTERS live last year teaming up with WEEZER.
After that our concert season started, we went to AEROSMITH and LENNY KRAVITS, FIONA APPLE, COLDPLAY, the surviving members to Freddy Mercury: QUEEN, the legends of rock The ROLLING STONES and the best band ever: PEARL JAM, they are my favorite band and finally after 14 years I got to see them from up close. All these pictures are from the Pearl Jam concert in Las Vegas.

MIAMI HEAT 2006 NBA CHAMPIONS

LET'S GO HEAT!
Finally after 18 years, Miami's basquetball team THE MIAMI HEAT won its first NBA title. I was lucky enough to get tickets for the final of the Eastern Conference, an amazing game, it is a great show they put on: cheerleaders, fire and everything with the "White Heat" theme. This team has a lot of the best playes on the NBA, like Dwayne Wade and Shaquil O'Neal, they are amazing to watch, what a show!
So here are some pics from the NBA final in the American Airlines Arena. After the Heats won everybody went crazy on the streets, us included, honking all over and cheering up for the Heats.

CULTURAL NIGHTS

We found out a good way to getting close to our home countries by preparing "Cultural Nights": we get together at somebody's house and one country offers its typical food, drinks and music. So far we have had Brazilian Night, Mexican Night, Peruvian Night and hopefully soon Argentine night. Very fun to share what your country has to offer.

For Mexican Night we had a lot and a lot of food: Tacos, Enchiladas, Chilaquiles, Tostadas and a lot of Tequila. It's very nice to find a cuisine with so much variety in taste, ingredients and also with so much joy for spice food like our peruvian food.

On Brazilian Night they also made a lot of food: starting of course with Caipirinhas, Feijoada which is rice and beans with pork, Pastel which is a fried meat empanada, amog other things. They tried to teach everybody how to "Samba", but it is so dificult to get it right, also they have this "Forro" music wich is very nice.

For Peruvian Night we made of course the only and unique PISCO SOUR, Papa a la huancaina, Arroz con pollo, Chicha and Mazamorra morada, also I made a power point presentation of Peru showing Machu Picchu, Colca Valley, The Amazon and Lima. All this was just before the cops arrived and threw everybody away from the apartment but the party was almost over anyways.

THE AIESEC TRAINEES: THE BEST OF EACH COUNTRY

El programa de pasantias de AIESEC es muy conocido en Kraft Foods a nivel mundial, viene siendo una parte importante del reclutamiento de talento joven desde 1989. Alrededor del mundo hay aprox 75 trainees de AIESEC, aqui en Miami somos 16 trainees trabajando en departamentos como Marketing, Logistica, Ventas, Finanzas, Operaciones, Exportaciones y Recursos Humanos.

Los paises de los que venimos: Argentina (2), Brazil (2), Colombia (1), Costa Rica (1), El Salvador (1), Guatemala (2), Mexico (3), Peru(2), Venezuela (1) and India (1). Tuve la suerte de encontrar un muy buen grupo de trainees, todos nos hemos hecho buenos amigos y casi siempre salimos en grupo, sea a la playa, al gymnasio, a conciertos, discotecas, cine, a almorzar, etc. Lo bueno de esta diversidad cultural es que siempre tenemos muchas cosas que compartir de nuestras culturas, experiencias personales y al final del dia uno regresa a casas sabiendo algo mas de cada pais.

A pesar de que somos latinos y hablamos el mismo idioma, hay muchisimas cosas en las que somos diferentes y otras que somos muy parecidos.

Diferentes: desde las cosas que comemos, las palabras que usamos para nombrar las cosas, por ejemplo “Casaca” en Peru es un abrigo pero en Mexico es chamarra y en Argentina campera, o la palabra “Enamorada” que senciallamente somos el unico pais que la usa, todos los demas usan “Novia” cosa que tomo tiempo acostumbrarme a usar. Pero como siempre decimos tratamos de hablar espanol estandar, osea con palabras que supuestamente todos entendemos.
Tambien hay muchas cosas que en nuestros paises se repiten: el apego a la familia, la religion, la forma de manejar “a la latina”, la inpuntualidad “la hora latina”, la realidad social de nuestros paises, la informalidad de nuestros politicos y la falta de orden en las calles, pero a la vez todos tenemos las mismas ganas por siempre mejorar como profesionales y salir adelante dia tras dia.

HURRICANE SEASON

One difficult part of living in Florida, is the Hurricane Season, we are close again Caribbean, Florida, the Golf of Mexico and Cancun. to this period starting in May and resuming in November. I experienced already the whole season, to be honest is no joke. Hurricanes can be devastating if the city is not well prepared. How does this starts? Very simple, the whole Caribbean area is a low pressure zone which accelerates the formation of tropical storms that afterwards become Hurricanes, which means trouble for all this zone,

Hurricane Dennis was the first hurricane that came within Florida, although it was a category one, we were not allowed to go out to the streets or wander around.

Hurricane Katrina was the big one, started out with string winds, you could actually see the sky moving over your head, when it was time to get home things started to get ugly. I could hear the thunders roaring, the string rain, everything turned a littler bit blue and that’s when we knew we were at the eye of the storm. We got a lot of fallen trees, energy polls, broken windows, very chaotic scene. However New Orleans got the worst part as you might know, the city flooded and millions of people lost their home.

Wilma came out of nowhere, all of a sudden we heard on the news that a storm was going to hit Cancun and we were next. For three days Wilma passed through Cancun before hitting us, we were lucky again, even though we got a lot of wind, rain and pretty much the same devastation as in Katrina, Miami held on for five days without electricity.

KRAFT FOOS LATIN AMERICA

I started working for Kraft in May 2005, as I said before, our office consolidates all the information from the countries of Latin America before reporting this information to Kraft International Commercial. Here we also develop most of the strategies that are used in the later on in the countries.
KRAFT Foods is a multinational food and beverages company, we are the leader company in that category in the US and the second largest worldwide. Our most famous brands are: Oreo, Royal, Tang, Milka, Club Social, Clight, Toblerone, Macaroni and Cheese, Philadelphia Crème Cheese, among others.
I’ve been doing all finance related activities for the Human Resources department, including budgeting, salary analysis and overhead costs for our employees. Most recently I’ve started coordinating the assignments of our expatriate personnel,

these are the employees coming from Kraft from another country for a short period of time to work in this office for a determine period.
The office environment is amazing, 120 + employees from all over the world, you Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Germany, UK and so on. People are very kind and opened minded, they are always able to help and support you in every way they can. It's amazing to hear diferent languages and diferent spanish accents while you are working.

My HR team is very nice, our boss is a great manager and leader, always teaching and supporting us. Our office ocuppies two floors in a nice building with all the appliances we can get, so every employee just focuses on his job. We work from 9am to 6pm, but sometimes we stay until 8pm tops. We get a lot of exposure to the international environment here, working with the countries in the Latin America region and also within our Headquarters in Chicago and other offices in San Antonio. I have had the opportunity to meet the top executives in Kraft Global HR, very smart people with strong commitment to the company.

WELCOME TO MIAMI, BIENVENIDO A MIAMI

What there is to know about Miami? very easy answer, everybody knows Miami! True, but not everyone knows this city in the eyes of an AIESEC Trainee. This city is located in South Florida, very close to the end of continental USA, the southernmost point of Florida is about 90 miles from Havana, Cuba. Because of the proximity to this country and the rest of Latin America this city is just as Latin as Santo Domingo, San Juan, Caracas, Lima or Buenos Aires. Is one of the most desired vacation places and also a target place to migrate for Hispanic background people, in fact 57% out of the 2 million people in Miami comes from a Hispanic background, but in my opinion I think is more, like 80%. You can find all latinamerican nationalities here for sure.
The language here is Spanish and sometimes English and sometimes both: SPANGLISH. You can spend your whole life without speaking English with no problems at all. I heard that in some restaurants and stores you can find signs stating: “We speak English”.
We are about 20 minutes away to the closest beach, which is Miami Beach where it all happens, the beach parties, the clubs, the fancy restaurants, etc. Miami without a doubt is a vacations town so it is a lot of fun.
Kraft Foods is located in a neighborhood called Coral Gables, which is very residential, calm and quite. All 15 trainees live 5 blocks away from the office, most of us have roommates.
The tough part of Miami is the heat, the Miami heat, it is really difficult coming from cloudy Lima and getting 35-39 degrees for 8 months with 100% humidity and lots of rain with a full 5 month Hurricane season.

ASI PASO, PASO EN MIAMI

Hola a todos, mi nombre es Miguel, soy de Lima, Perú. Soy egresado de la Facultad de Administración de Empresas de la PUCP. El objetivo de este blog es detalllar a traves de los ojos de un trainee algunas de las impresiones y/o experiencias durante estos 18 meses en las oficinas de Kraft en Miami, EEUU.
Estoy aqui desde Mayo del 2005. Un poco de historia, empece en AIESEC CLUC en Octubre 2001, estuve desarrollando mi comite en cargos de creciente responsabilidad desde el 2001 hasta el 2004, periodo en el cual fui miembro y VP del area de OGX y posteriormente Presidente de mi comite local, claro esta paralelo a los estudios de Administracion de Empresas en la Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Perú.
Llegado el momento de la ansiada internacionalizacion a traves del programa de pasantias de AIESEC no hubo mucho que pensar, pues el objetivo era claro: encontrar una pasantia de calidad donde pudiera desarrollar mis habilidades y poner en practica todo lo aprendido en la universidad, ademas de esto vivir en carne propia el intercambio y el entendimiento cultural.
Luego las debidas pruebas de rigor para entrar al programa empezo mi busqueda. Gracias a Dios no demore mucho, para ser exacto hice el match en 1 mes y unos dias.
-La empresa: KRAFT FOODS LATIN AMERICA, Management Traineeship en el area de Recursos Humanos.
-El lugar: Miami, EEUU donde se encuentran las oficinas regionales de Kraft Latin America, lugar donde se consolida toda informacion de America Latina antes de ser presentada a Kraft Internacional y es donde se desarrollar muchas de las estrategias que rigen para toda esta region.
-Duracion: 18 solidos meses.

Entonces ahi va, espero que les guste y de paso practican un poco de ingles.

Miguel
...life's a journey, not a destination...