Monday 23 March 2009

And the Oscar goes to....

After such a relaxing weekend, I think we all struggled to get up for work this morning. We’ve only got 3 working days left with our clients and so we’re spending this week tying up lose ends and wrapping up our assignments. I delivered the stock/inventory management training, with the help of my interpreter, and they seemed to like what they saw and were able to practice with the tool. Fingers crossed, I’ll get to see it in full use before I leave Hai Phong on Friday.

I had also asked Mr Dung, at the end of last week, whether he would be prepared to give an interview about the work we had been doing, for internal IBM communication purposes. He enthusiastically agreed and armed with a video camera we had our first attempt this afternoon. With communication being one of the main challenges we have faced during our time here, this seemingly easy task was not as straight forward as I had initially hoped. The accountants decided that, since they had never used a video camera before, they wanted to be in charge of the filming and I was promptly told, that even though my interpreter was asking the pre-prepared questions, I should sit next to Mr Dung during the interview (it seems these ladies could be quite assertive when they want to be). My interpreter and I are still trying to decide whether we should have a voice over in English or subtitles but the wobbly nature of the filming would give anybody sea sickness. So we’ve decided to have another attempt tomorrow but needless to say, I don’t think we’ll be winning any Oscars ;-)

My accountant friend also decided that today I should learn how to introduce myself in a work environment, so with that in mind my Vietnamese phrases of the day are: I work for IBM which sounds like toy lamb (tone going down) veea (tone going down) chaw IBM and toy laa (tone going down) neeyaa tuu (tone going up) vun (tone going up), which means I am a consultant.

If you haven’t seen this yet, here’s a link to a recent article about the IBM CSC program in Business Week: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_12/b4124056268652.htm

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