The Fish Story

Of course, the traditional AIESECer definitely is thinking about the fish philosophy - this book of 100 pages that has exactly four things. There are actually different opinions about it. I found it quite good but was critized by my team members who regard the book as low level and mediocre. So all the ones that have thought about the fish book when reading the headline, make up your mind to which category you belong... Anyway, this is not the topic today.

What I was referring to is a sociological experiment and mystery in the same time in our office. No, it is not about Arturs process of self discovery - just joking Arturo. It is about Ernst entering Moksha, no another joke. It is as well not about Alexis discovering more about this conspiracy theories (there are this rumours that everything is somehow coordinated by this secret conspirative organizations - Alexis thinks that even the change agent came out of some of those organizations - me personally I really dont believe in that stuff, I would more believe in this men in black thingie with the alien tribe in the safe deposit locker - probably we are exactly the same and the world is one of this lockers, so all those conspiracy clubs are just some group of random strikers that are anyway controlled by aliens). But this all is not the topic.

It is about the aquarium that we have. Yes. we have an aquarium. Have a look at the picture of it. You can see one of our LC members visiting the office and having a look on the new whale we bought some days ago. Anyway, what matters is that the fish we had inside somehow died. And until now we werent really able to figure out why the died. Furthermore there were as well fish that simply disappeared. And this is the whole mystery our brains are not able to fully understand.

It all started with one fish out of four dying at the beginning of our term. This was ok, as anyway we wanted to close the chapter of last years team, so a radical cut was maybe a good sign. He actually died in a quite cruel way as he somehow got into the pump of the basin which caused some serious problems with his guts. After that we had three fish, one big one, one cleaning fish (quite ugly) and one smaller fish.

The cleaning fish was the next one to die. He actually simply disappeared over the weekend. We searched him but couldnt find any sign. We thought that during the cleaning and rearranging of the stones of the aquarium he probably somehow scratched too much on the surface, digged deeper and ended up below the stones.

But now the miracle comes. He wasnt there when lately we cleaned up the whole aquarium, put the stones out and searched for him. We were confused. After one day in the new clean aquarium suddenly out of the two fish the small one disappeared as well. It was clear for us:

IT's the BIG FISH

I always didnt have a good feeling with him. He had this grin in the face and seemed to hide something. He looked nice, but thats just the surface. He is a pure killer, a murderer a bad fish. So we decided that we have to do something. We have to give him a counterstrike! So Artur and I went into this fish shop and bought three new fish, where one is the crucial one:

HINNERK, a "lionsheadfish"

This fish is one of the most weird fish ever seen. Just check out this illustrative pic. Hinnerk reminds us somehow of one of our LCPs, but we wont mention the name of course. Hinnerk will play the role of a guard, a counterpart, a stronghold, a wall, something that blocks the killer. This is the strategy against him. We will see whether Hinni (how friends call him) is able to control the other fish. We truly believe in his potential.

The journey starts now...

getting to know your future

I do not know a lot of places where you get to know the future already before you know how your own future looks like. hm?

Meaning that you do not even know where you are going, but you find out that you definitely need to move as somebody else is going to be at the place where you are currently. In AIESEC the situation is like that. Some days ago I got to know my successor. It is an interesting concept that we have here:

You start to feel that you are performing, you finally established some regularity and patterns in your work, you begin to realize where you strenght lie, you found out how to move others, you see the benefit that your work is creating - you begin to have an impact. and SUDDENLY you begin to see that your term is going to end...

The organisation has already decided upon the future and you do not even know where you should go. I think it is a really interesting situation. You are somehow forced to make up your mind about your own future before you really want to do so. But maybe one has to see it from a different point of view.

Maybe life is realizing much quicker than we do where we should go and therefore finds some push to make us think more. Maybe this is to really start the thinking process on which direction one should take. To put it in other words: in order to start the future somebody just has to delete your past and present... and thats not a bad thing at all

Benedikt reflects on FUTURE

I would like to invite to to have a look at Benedikt's thoughts about his first big AIESEC conference ....

Steering Team Reflections

Hey dudes,

My collegues seem to be really lazy with blogging... So let me share some of my thoughts and things that are currently happening in my life. I already can here the team bitching about it: "of course I cannot post something, I dont have time. You as the president anyway dont have a lot of things to do, thats why you are all the time blogging and making videos."

anyway, my general thought is that I had a reason to apply for MCP - beeing able to blog was not really included, but it is a nice side effect.

so. I am sitting here in the newly arranged AI office, our headquarter in Rotterdam. actually I think it is really looking better than before, they have a nice carpet, they have some relaxation area, etc.
but I think they main beauty part in this office is the diversity of the people. To have a multicultural team is easily said, but the atmosphere and the beauty that comes out of it is undescribable.

In steering team meetings I have the pleasure to sit at the same table with the following nationalitities: Estonia, Canada, US, UK, Venezuela, India, Poland, Turkey, Hong Kong - truly global. Still it is impressive how similar the mindsets are when it comes to crucial discussions. The variety of viewpoints and perspectives doesnt change the common mindset of the people at the table. I doubt that the ambition represented in this table is copyable, is applicable in any other organisation or enterprise. If you ask me what makes AIESEC unqiue it would be something like I described it above - although the viewpoints everybody is adding to the discussions are diverse, controversial, sometimes lead to hard debates - the ambition of everybody still is the same.

The level of discussion culture in a multicultural environment, the deep talks, the courage to not only scratch the surface, to dig deeper, to discover more about what is beneath us. Not beeing afraid of blowing away walls, not beeing afraid of saying NO, not beeing afraid of saying YES, not beeing afraid to express every single view point even if you are the only one standing out of a million people... no hesitating, not resisting, not compromising with what one really wants, letting it go, crying, lauging, loving

Isn't that the true soul of our organisation: Opening eyes, opening arms, opening ourselves to discover more about who we and the others actually are?

The opportunities that lie beyond us are amazing. discover