Meeting Mai Predecessor

I've been back to work this week at UK Trade and Investment. I am now interning with the Major Sports Events sector after we changed our name from the Sports and Leisure Infrastructure team. Presumably we changed our name because we deal mainly with major sporting events and the word "infrastructure" causes people to only think about construction when in reality we work with companies that provide all sorts of products and services.

I've been helping our marketing manager, Jessica, with some case studies on UK companies who had success at the Olympics in Beijing this summer. "Success" meaning that the company was able to win or sign a significant business contract and profitably provide their services. We're trying to research how the contracts came about and what the details of the companies' successes are. Some of UK companies we're looking at include the architects of the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium, the suppliers of the minerals and metals used to make the Olympic Medals, the manufacturers of the device used to test the quality of the swimming pool water, and even the florists who provided over 40 million flowers for display around the Olympic gardens. I have been contacting people in Beijing to help us get more info on these companies. When finished, the case studies will be used for future promotions, events, reports, press releases and speeches.

Interestingly enough, this week I was also able to meet the TWC intern, Mai Le, who worked at UKTI during the summer program, and wrote for the blog as well. She is studying in Madrid this semester and came to London for a weekend visit. She stopped by UKTI to go out to lunch with some of her colleagues from over the summer who are currently my co-workers. It was funny to talk to someone who had the same internship and the same responsibility of writing for the blog. We were able to share stories and laugh about many of the office's idiosyncrasies. We also tried to teach our supervisor Andy how to use chopsticks, not really an endeavor which could be considered a UK "success."

On top of that, Linda and I had been planning on making a Vietnamese noodle recipe called Pho that night, so after finding out Mai was Vietnamese, I mentioned our dinner plans. She got pretty excited, so I invited her back to our flat for dinner. The Pho was delicious as we talked a little more about UKTI and Linda and her discussed different Vietnamese dialects and foods. She soon headed out as she had a flight back to Madrid the next day. It was all a happy coincidence shared over a tasty meal. It was great to meet Mai, although a little like I was catching up with my own ghost… hmmm, and tomorrow's Halloween? Anyway, I've been writing this over my lunch break at work so I have to get back to it and finish up a few things before it's officially the Halloween weekend. I'm not sure what I'm going to be yet, but I do know where I'll be; Amsterdam and western Germany.

Dylan