Welcome to my blog! Allow me to introduce myself and talk of random matters, here I go:
I'm Edwin, currently a senior majoring in Finance and Chinese Flagship. I moved to Hawaii about three years ago to attend UH Manoa, and after I graduate, I will be embarking on my capstone year for my Chinese Flagship degree in Nanjing (I've spent 2 months in Beijing in 2016 and so excited to go back and visit old buds) This capstone year will entail a semester of an internship of my choice, which will likely be at X company doing finance shenanigans, and a semester of business courses taught in Mandarin as well. I am absolutely addicted to traveling and I've spent the past two summers participating in Chinese intensive programs in Beijing and Taiwan, so words can't express how excited I am to go to Copenhagen, a place so foreign to me , for an entire semester. I love having to adapt to the unfamiliar and being put in an uncomfortable place, it really shows me who I am and what I'm capable of, which is very rewarding.
This semester has been the busiest semester of my three-ish years in college and let me tell you, preparing the study abroad/scholarship paperwork, registering for classes, and getting the Danish residence permit on top of doing well in my five classes, internship, two business clubs, and mentorship program has shown me that deleting social media and buying an agenda is all the difference in staying alive and well or chucking myself into the Ala Wai where I could spend the rest of my life living as a mermaid. When free time allows, I ride my bike (2008 Gixxer) around the island with my riding buddies, read for fun, or go out with my roommate Ryan and/or best buddies on the weekends.
MR. JOHNSON, MANGE TAK!.
I knew I was going to see Europe one day, I just didn't know how soon. Mr. Johnson, you've made countless dreams come true and thanks to you, so will mine. I'm so grateful to be a Johnson scholar with others who are also trying to broaden their horizons by going abroad. I will be attending Copenhagen Business School (CBS) next spring and the reason I chose this school was because I knew the least about it and wanted to learn/soak up as much as I could. I had no prior knowledge of Copenhagen, or anything Europe-related for that matter. I didn't even know that Copenhagen was in Denmark, I initially thought they were separate countries..whoops. But, that proves my point, I want to be uncomfortable, I want to adapt to foreign surroundings, to get lost, and in my humble opinion, the best way to do that is to throw yourself in the unfamiliar and embrace all uncertainties that accompany it.
The scholarship played a chunky part in my deciding to go abroad, if not the deciding factor. I'm a senior now with two semesters left and honestly, it made a lot of sense to stay in Hawaii, to find internships, to hold on to my living situation... but the appeal of going abroad was too great and receiving the scholarship was like getting the green light and now I'm on track to studying in Denmark! This study abroad opportunity is, in fact, a once in a lifetime opportunity and believe me, I will make the most out of it.
Thank you Mr. William Johnson for your generous support!
The photo on the left is of the Johnson scholars (Europe). The photo on the right is of the Johnson scholars and the Freeman Scholars (Asia).
BEFORE I GO...
As I'm about to board my flight to Copenhagen from Narita Int'l airport, I just was to say that if you're interested in studying abroad in Copenhagen...be prepared to do a lot. I like controlling all the little details like finding accommodation, petitioning and registering for courses, and booking my own flight so I went with MIX. Otherwise, if you like having everything done for you and paying a bit more, then go with study abroad because they take care of it for you. If you decide to go with MIX, I'm not trying to veer you away, I'm actually trying to help prepare you... mentally. The application process is long and requires a lot of paperwork, class petitioning, communication with CBS and last but not least, a trip to San Francisco. You will need a Danish Study Visa in order to reside in Denmark for more than 3 months and the closest Danish consulate is in San Fran. So, if you're up for all of the above mentioned, go for it! As I mentioned in the first sentence, I'm about to board my plane, and in turn reap the reward of my hard work this past semester. Of course, I didn't and couldn't have done it all myself. I have the MIX office, Vinnie, and most importantly Natasha Bailey to thank. Without their help I wouldn't have been able to sort out all my dumb questions and get everything done in a timely manner, so THANK YOU! Time to go(:
SOCIAL EXCHANGE WEEK
In order to allow the 300+ international students from various countries to get to know each other, the Exchange Crew at CBS facilitated an entire week of social events. From comedy night to Danish folk dancing to Hawaiian Luau, I've made a few friends from here and there and its amazing learning new cultures and starting this semester off with new people. Its been two and a half weeks here and I'm starting to really get familiar with the transportation system. I downloaded an app called CBS which I can use to get around on the metro, buses and trains. It cost me about 750 DKK which is about $120 USD for two months. If you don't take the metro often that is a ton of money you could be saving but since I take it every single day, multiple times I thought it was the best choice for me. Besides getting from A to B, I've been trying to pick up a bit of Danish and Spanish. Danish...not so well, but since I've taken Espanol in high school its a matter of refreshing my memory. Oh, I forgot to mention why I'm trying to refresh my Spanish and its because I met a guy from Mexico and he was basically my first friend out here and slowly but surely this Spanish speaking group of one and a half grew to a hoard of 15. People from Chile, Bilbao, Brazil and Mexico tend to congregate together whenever and wherever so I slowly became the minority... Anyways, after seeing a little more of Copenhagen, I decided to take this weekend to visit Berlin. My classes only go up until Thursday this week so I left right after my class and will come back on Sunday, giving me four days to do some exploring by myself. Thats about it for now, enjoy the photos!
My flatmate Gustavo from Brazil--great dude
Spiral staircase in one of CBS's halls Church in Roskilde (Old Viking Town)
SOLO TRIP
As the title implies, I decided to book a spontaneous trip to visit Berlin in Germany a week ago. A round trip from Copenhagen cost me $150, which isn't thaat bad considering I booked it two days in advance. I decided I'd take the weekend to myself since I'd do heaps on traveling with friends in the coming weeks to other European countries. Why Berlin? I thought that it would be nicer to visit all those culturally rich sites on my own and appreciate the beauty in my lonesome, just a personal preference I guess. I'd also like to mention that having a schedule that doesn't have class on Fridays is the most liberating arrangement that I've been taking advantage of lately. I had one class on Thursday afternoon, and as soon as we were dismissed, I headed home to snatch my luggage and head to the airport. When I arrived, I couldn't help but compare Berlin to Copenhagen and was initially disappointed to be honest. Copenhagen is just so advanced in many ways such as infrastructure, design and architecture, transportation, and overall cleanliness. Berlin, on the other hand, was lacking significantly in all those areas. After a few hours of exploring, I realized I was wrong in comparing the two cities, in fact I realized that I was only looking for flaws at that point. It would be ignorant of me to compare an Asian city to a European one and the same concept applies between European cities. No two cities are the same and finding flaws are easy, but once I hopped on a different frequency, I honestly saw Berlin in a new light. It wouldn't do the city much justice if I tried to explain my experience in a few sentences so I'll just leave it at that and hope one day you can experience such a culturally rich city. A few notable sites worth visiting: East side gallery, Mitte district, TV tower, Berlin Botanical Gardem, museum island, Liquidrom spa. Once I returned home, it was time to prepare for my Topics in International Finance and Risk Management classes. We have what would be the equivalent of Laulima called "Learn.cbs.dk" where our professors post readings and class slides and usually there are at least 30-40 pages of reading we need to prepare before class. Many of my courses have case studies that we need to work on with our groups outside of class, so after class my group and I usually meet in the canteen of whichever hall our classes were. I'm still getting used to the fact that these classes are typically 2.5-3.5 hours long, which is draining and hard to maintain focus, but on the plus side there are only 2 sessions a week per class (sometimes 1). Enjoy the photos from Berlin!
THE GRIND
These few weeks have been comprised of much less traveling and much more work. As finals are coming up in less than a month, I've been locking myself in my room and preparing for an exam that my entire grade depends on. What makes this less stressful is that my flatmate, Gustavo, and I are secretly ding-dong-ditching others on our floor in between study sessions. This allows for stress relief and an adrenaline rush that wakes us up.
To be quite honest, I'm still not used to the way classes work here, especially for my International Finance class. The teacher speaks in a monotonous voice for three and a half hours and goes extremely fast. At first, I thought I was the only one that didn't catch what was happening because every time the teacher asks if there are questions, no one raises their hands (there are at least 35 people in the class), but after a while I noticed those around me were also confused as to what the teacher is talking about. So in order to deal with this I've been recording his lectures and going home to work on the problems he discussed in class and schedule office hour meetings to clarify any more questions. So far, it's going okay but I'm more or less excited to see how the exam really is. For my other classes, Intercultural Communication and Management, Knowledge Management, and Risk Management of Multinational Enterprises, the exams will be written products, meaning we get the prompt on a certain day and have 72 hours to turn in a 10 page paper. As the time to take exams comes closer, I will keep you updated.
SPRING BREAK
For spring break, the 3 other guys from Hawaii also on exchange with me decided they wanted to travel to Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Budapest so I tagged along with them. It turned out that many others on exchange at CBS had the same idea so we met up with them throughout the trip if they happened to be near us. First stop was Berlin and the only reason we went there was because the bus from Berlin to Vienna was much cheaper than a flight to Prague from Copenhagen. There, I went to a spa and then met with some friends at night for some dinner and drinks. The next morning, we visited Spreepark, which was an abandoned amusement park that was gated off. This was no deterrent as we simply hopped over the fence and explored the ruins. It was only about 15 minutes before we were kicked out by local police...whoops. Then, later that afternoon, we took a 5 hour bus ride to Prague and our journey truly began. The hostel we stayed at (The MadHouse Prague) was extremely welcoming and fun, if you decide to go to Prague I highly recommend that hostel. They organized tours, family dinners and pub crawls for everyone in the hostel. We explored the city in the day and saw Prague by night after dinner. After 3 days in Prague, we took a 4 hour bus to Vienna. There, we rented a car from Europcar and drove three hours west to Ramsau Am Deichstein, a beautiful glacier in the countryside. After an hour or two there, we took another hour and a half drive to Hallstatt, one of the most beautiful little towns in the world, in my opinion. That was one of the highlights of my spring break. The next day, we took a bus to Budapest. There we saw parts of the city in the day and went on a night cruise organized by the hostel. The bridges and buildings were brightly lit at night and provided some of the most amazing views in Budapest. As we were concluding our trip and getting ready to board the flight, we were informed that our plane had major technical issues and weren't able to board. It went from delayed boarding time to cancelled flight within 2 hours and RyanAir provided accommodation for 3 nights since the next available flight wasn't until 3 days. We got to stay at a beautiful hotel equipped with a view, pool, gym, sauna and turkish bath. We weren't complaining. Finally, after 3 days we were able to successfully hop on the next flight back to Copenhagen!
EXAM WEEK!!!
Sorry I've been MIA, it's been a while since I last posted, but I've just got through exam week and time is on my side again! SO, I have a few things to say regarding courses if you ever plan to study abroad at CBS. They go by quarters here so for the Spring 2018 semester, it is divided up by Quarter 3 and Quarter 4 courses. Depending on how the courses here are assigned to each respective quarter, you may end up with a good distribution of workload, OR, like me where I had 3 exams (for my Q3 courses) within the span of 3 days and will have another one later (for my Q4 course) in the semester. Having 3 Q3's really affected my exam prep because it was very difficult to focus on any one particular exam. I ended up using up 65% of my time on Risk Management, 30% of my time on International Finance and literally about 5% of my time for Communication and Knowledge Management. That was just the because of the order of the exams in which they came, and since Communication was last, I started on the 10 page paper 18 hours before it was due and let me tell you, that was finished only because Monster Energy allowed me to. I think I did fairly well on Risk Management and Communication, however, International Finance was iffy and I'll explain why in a bit. But first some tips so you don't end up like me. Before finalizing your course selection, make sure you consider the amount of Q3 or Q4 courses you want to take at the same time, I would recommend two Q3/Q4's at most per quarter and since there are also semester long courses, that may increase your workload on top of that. I just finished my exam for Topics in International Finance (written sit in 4 hour exam), Risk Management of Multinational Enterprise (72 hour 10 page home assignment) and Communication and Knowledge Management (10 page written assignment). As for the Finance course, the biggest issues were: The excel and keyboard in the testing center were different that my Macbook Pro's keyboard and excel, which I wasn't prepared for. For excel, "." and "," are switched...So for example if you want to type in a formula with a decimal point like 1,654,345. 34, it must be typed 1.654.345,34. To add to the complication of adjusting my brain to that, it was difficult to find symbols on the laptop if it is your first time using a Danish keyboard. I would suggest practicing the problems on the computers in the CBS library prior to the exam. It would save time from learning on the spot. I also prepared rather inefficiently by studying the example exam and class slides, which usually works for me; however, the exam had multiple curveballs thrown at me. The example exam comes with 11 possible questions that may be on the exam, all listed with the % of the test it would account for. The actual exam would come with 4 questions: from the example exam, class slides or cases. Each question worth ~25% of the exam, so it takes about 1 hour (more or less) to finish each question. Because two of the questions were from the cases that I did not know to study, I may have done poorly, but I haven't gotten the results yet. If I end up having to retake the exam, it will be in June 8 which means I have a second chance. As for the Risk Management course, some tips would be to work with a group to split the questions amongst yourselves because the paper you're required to write involves having a company to apply relevant theories and models to, so if you can split the questions so that your group mates can find relevant links and attach the sources, you will save time searching the internet for them. Each paper is submitted individually. For Communication and Knowledge Management, a tip would be to familiarize yourself with the theories, models and case company before writing so that you can know how to explain the case with the theories. Below are some photos of the library you will potentially be studying in.
What I do in my free time.. (attached photos)
TOUR OF DENMARK
So I just got back from a 3 day tour of Denmark where we hit Odense, Aarhus, Skagen, Aalborg and Billund. Odense is where Hans Christian Andersen's first home is, so we visited that and the museum about his life. We stayed at a hostel for 2 nights at Aarhus and Aalborg and went from one city to the other by bus. I thought that Billund was definitely a highlight of the trip because thats where Legoland is (basically this Disney of Denmark). Someone said we were at "the happiest place in the happiest country" and that was pretty accurate I'd say.
If you plan on going to CBS, I'd recommend this trip. There is a cap on the number of students allowed to go so the sign ups are a few months before the semester starts so hop on that as quick as possible. If you're worried you don't know anyone else going on the trip since you haven't made any friends yet, don't worry, you'll meet a bunch of new people on the trip anyways.
(see attached photos of the trip below)
TASTE OF DENMARK
In case you didn't know, the Danes are generally more conservative and introverted when it comes to meeting new people, and for the exchange students, this means it'll be a bit tougher to make local Danish friends out here. From what I've heard, you need to earn a Dane's loyalty and trust to establish a friendship, but once you're in, you're in for life. I've noticed that the friend groups here are always very close knit and they don't usually invite a bunch of new people to hangout with them so, in order to make at least one Danish friend before leaving, I struck up conversation with someone who wasn't already chatting with his friends on the first day of class and told him (Nicolai) I was really interested in Danish culture. From then, we worked on class discussions and group projects together but never really hung out outside of class. We didn't have many friends in common so it was more difficult to find something to do, so I telling him how I haven't tried ANY traditional Danish dishes yet and how I had a list of things I wanted to try. I showed him my list after class one day and we planned to try a few of the dishes together by next week. What was special about this was that one of the dishes on my list was Gammeldags æblekage and Nicolai said that his mom knows how to whip up some great homemade gammeldags æblekage and would be willing to make some for us on the day of our food tour.
Since Nicolai stays in Ringsted, we had to take a 30 minute train from the Central Station to his apartment. First, we went to the local bakery to get some strawberry tarts and these chocolate rum truffle ball thingies that really tasted like alcohol. Then, we went to his mom's and had some of her homemade gammeldags æblekage (see attached photos). She showed me what a typical Danish home looked like and we talked about differences/ similarities between Danish and American culture. In addition, I also gave an Asian/ Chinese perspective on the Danish social culture because of my upbringing. Afterwards, Nicolai took me to a Kro (restaurant that serves traditional Danish dishes) where we had Stegt flæsk med persillesovs (see attached photo), another dish I crossed off my list. What was even more exciting was he let me drive his car around town and it was the first time I've driven manual in years!
EAST vs WEST
One of the reasons I chose to do my exchange in Europe rather than Asia was that I wanted to experience the opposite of my Eastern- style upbringing. Although I was born and raised on Guam, my parents were immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong who were slightly old fashioned in their way of thinking. In addition to this, Guam is heavily influenced by Asian culture because of its geographical location and its large population of Asians from Japan and the Philippines.
What stands out to me the most is the extent to which Danish society in general strives for equality everywhere. Gender equality is especially huge here and you can see this in the workplace, school and even in their dating culture. Women have a lot of power here and are extremely independent, so people don't treat women any differently than men. I know that in many many Asian countries, the women are seen as less independent and competent than men, so they are treated differently, whether in the workplace or at home. Of course, with increasing awareness about gender equality, more traditional societies are changing their outlook on this matter but it is currently still quite evident. Oh, and one thing about some of the public bathrooms (especially at CBS) is that they are all gender toilets so don't be alarmed if you come out of the bathroom stall and there is a girl waiting to use it after you! I guess Asian culture tends to separate sexes to give more privacy and respect for "your business" to save from embarrassment perhaps? I have yet to see an all gender restroom in Asia.
Another thing that I'm very impressed about is the Danish work culture. Although I didn't get the chance to get a job here, I've spoken to so many people (both Danes and non- Danes) about their experiences working in Denmark. Managers interact with their employees as if they were equals and everything is about involvement. The power distance between top and bottom is not big at all and this means that, in contrast to Eastern work cultures, there is no need for employees to feel any lesser than the managers or CEOs. Of course, it is understood that managers have a larger responsibility but anything can be discussed between top and bottom, even if it means the employee is challenging the methods of top management. Along with this is a culture of trust between colleagues and therefore no need for micromanagement. One friend said that if she says she'll get something done, people can consider it done already. I think that there are so many pros to having this type of work environment compared to the East where there is an evident power distance in the workplace. The fact that managers have the last say and that its difficult for employees to bring up issues with the boss's methods is a large hindrance to the general adaptiveness and productiveness of the company. IF there is a better way to do something, I think it should be done regardless of whether it makes the boss "lose face".
22nd BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION IN DENMARK!
So I recently turned 22 and like my title implies, in Denmark. I learned a few things about birthdays here and apparently the Danish flag plays a big part in every birthday celebration. It isn't about being nationalistic at all, it's just what they do. My Danish buddy and her roommates Sissel and Christina made me a cake and it had tiny Danish flags placed around it. It looked nice until my face was ultimately smashed into it, something I was quite disappointed about...but it did taste great. I organized a BBQ at one of the parks and everyone brought something so the turnout was pretty good! We learned two Danish games, Kongespil and Kævle. They're both amazing games that I think I'm going to take back to Hawaii with me! The picture below is the cake and the three Danes who made it.
ROYALTY IN DENMARK
Last week was the Crown Prince of Denmark's 50th birthday celebration week. I'm posting about this because I was very surprised at how much the Danes love their beloved Prince Frederik. I was watching his celebration with my Danish buddy Cecilie as her and her roommates told me how down to earth he was. One of the things that stood out to me was that he actually bikes his children to and from school.
His celebration was one week long and each day was a different form of celebration than the next. One of the more interesting days was the Royal Run, where he ran 1 kilometer in Aarhus, Aalborg, Esberg, and Odense and 10 kilometers Copenhagen. I think this was to show that he was still young and active, and to be with the people of Denmark, which I thought was amazing.
To this day, I'm still surprised at the level of equality in Scandinavia, even when it comes to the royal family.
THE END
These past 5 months couldn't have been any better for me. I made lifelong friends who I'll see again in the near future. I experienced a couple new cuisines, one of my favorite being Spanish tapas. I adapted to the different, but very efficient Danish education system. Last but not least, I developed a new outlook on life through immersion in Danish culture, one that is almost the opposite of the culture I was raised in.