It's Been a Week...A Crazy One at That.

This past week has been a bit hectic. My best friend Lindsay and I made are first trek to a Los Angeles restaurant and blogged about it. We're really excited to share our amazing food escapades with everyone. I'll post a link soon, we're still trying to work out some kinks.

I have been trucking along at my internship. I began work on the performance index, once again. I was pretty sure it was finished, but alas, that is not the case. So it's back to the drawing board. I have a feeling that as soon as it is done, we'll get 2009 data and everything needs to be started over. Oh well. Anyways, beyond that I've been working on the financials project in between my work on the performance index. It's been a lot of number crunching, that's for sure. I'm not such a big fan. Or I am, but I need something creative to tide me over.

Sorry this is such a short post. Despite the craziness of the week, everything gets condensed into a few key projects for me. I'll try to post mid-week this week in order to better remember everything that went on.

The UN Gets Back to Me (I'm that Important)

When I fill out online forms or send an email to a generic email address, I never think that I will actually get a response. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the UN did, indeed, receive my email and wrote me an email back. As I mentioned last week, I was looking for definitions of an urban population in a number of countries. I wrote the UN an email asking if they knew the exact definitions for a number of countries that I was missing. Unfortunately, they did not. They did, however, give me links to the statistics websites for various governments. From there, I was able to direct my questions directly to the governments of the countries I was looking for. Again, I filled out a request for information form. We'll see if they get back to me :).

Beyond an email response from the UN, I worked on the final pieces of the performance index and began working on a financials pivot table. I also had the pleasure of taking a day trip up to beautiful Santa Barbara, where I lived for one year (I went to UCSB for a year, and promptly transferred...it wasn't for me). I hadn't been up there in at least a year and had a wonderful day walking up and down State Street with Lindsay. We then went to one of our favorite restaurants, Piatti's for a linner (lunch/dinner). It was just as good as I remembered.

Anyways, I'm getting ready to go hiking in the lovely Malibu Canyon state park (I believe there's a state park for hiking, I should probably look it up).

Another Day, Another Week

It's been a long week... I'm really close to finishing up the performance index at my internship, so I'm really excited about that! The index has been through a number of different iterations, and I'm sincerely hoping it's the last. I got to do something I never thought I'd get to: I emailed the UN to ask them for a definition of what constitutes an "urban population." I'm waiting on them to get back to me (I have my doubts that they ever will). Basically, we're trying to get a feel for the volume of traffic to see various titles, and in order to do that we've focus on an urban population rather than the entire population for each country. We feel that the urban population is representative of movie-goers because rural dwellers have less access to theatres.

During my research, I found that each country has a different definition for what constitutes an "urban population." This caused some problems, because we needed definitions for each country. I managed to find they holy grail of urban population definitions in a UN document, but unfortunately, there were some major countries missing. I figure if the UN doesn't have definitions for these countries, they probably don't even exist.

After I'm finished with this performance index project, I will start working on 2009 financial data and creating pivot tables. Exciting!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. I'm going to get back to it!

Back to Work, Back to Work

Tuesday was my first day back at work after two and a half weeks of crazy school time and then non-travel. It was nice to have a break, but I'm definately ready to be back! I will be working four days a week from now on, so I'm hoping for some interesting projects!

I'm still working on a performance index for 2009 titles. It's been a refining process, with still a lot to be done. I've also been working on some presentations that focus on creative marketing ideas (it's amazing the amount of advertising space there is in a European tube station, check it out here, or here). I really wish LA had a more developed metro system, I'm pretty much in love with tubes and trains.

Moving right along, my friend and I are going to start a food blog this summer. We're going to eat at a new restaurant every week and then share our experiences (with pictures, of course!). We've got three months before I have to be in Germany, so we're going to eat as much amazing food as we can!

Volcanoes, Please Don’t Erupt When I Have to Travel…

So, the last few days have been quite interesting. I was meant to get on a plan and fly to England for the Oxford short course, which I was really looking forward to. But alas, Iceland, your volcano has been pretty hard core. Instead of learning about Global Management in Oxford right now, I’m sitting at home, watching television and trying to figure out what to do with my life (alright, just for a few days, I start my internship again next Tuesday).

I got my fish back, Butch. I had given him to a friend to take care of while in England. It’s nice to have him back; he’s my buddy while at home. He’s also really pretty and feisty. He’s a Beta. I digress…

Here's a little about me. I'm currently an MS in Global Business student at Pepperdine's Graziadio School of Business and Management. I just finished up my first year (phew!). I graduated from UC Irvine in June 2009 with a BA in Business Economics. I'm a huge fan of reading (Russian classical novels, anyone?) and writing poetry in my free time. I used to take lessons in classical Egyptian dance, which I hope to continue this summer while I have a bit more free time. I'm currently working as an intern at Vizeum Global Management, which I started at in January.

I’ll just give you a bit of a recap of what my internship entails. Vizeum is based in London and is owned by the Aegis Group. Vizeum is an international marketing strategy and media buying agency and the Santa Monica offices service a single account: 20th Century Fox. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a performance index that analyzes how different titles perform in different markets. It’s been really interesting because trends begin to come out when you look at different genres in different markets. For example, some countries tend to over-index in Family films, while other markets tend to over-index in male-skewing films. I know I’m being vague here, but I can’t be more specific (sorry!).

That’s pretty much it for now. I’m going to go try to find something to do…I haven’t felt this free since school started in August. It’s a bizarre feeling. It worries me a little.