We Are The World...

It's been an amazing week in Manila! I have really enjoyed it here so far. I met a large number of people in a short number of days, but am happy to consider many of them new IBM friends already! I've already connected some of the folks I met with my US counterparts to establish new working relationships. You simply can't beat face-to-face networking...especially globally....what an opportunity!

Our local IBM DST team in the Philippines is amazing. Many are young and very new to IBM, but already are contributing to success of IBM and our world-wide team! I was able to meet our team in UPA J Ayala technohub for the past 2 evenings. They all work mid and late shifts, and work very hard! The have excellent leadership in Henry Lee, who did a fantastic job coordinating all the meetings!

On Thursday evening, the team escorted me to an open marketplace located near the IBM campus and we ate local vendor food together! They looked out for me and offered many samples of local cuisine. So many people and lots of unique dining choices that you don't often see in Atlanta, to say the least!! I enjoyed the food (even though I wasn't quite sure what it was) and a drink of coconut milk and cantalope. A US traditional dessert of red velvet cake was bought since it would be familiar to me, and was shared with some from Philippines that had never tried that before! Very nice evening.

Meeting the local IBM DST Manila team in person and the Cebu team on the phone was one of my favorite parts about this trip so far. I have heard many stories about their families and what they like to do with their free time. From the UPA J Ayala site, there are FIVE men whose wives are going to have babies within the next few months and TWO that are getting married in the next year (on the same day!) Very cool! Events in life that are universally important, for sure!

Last night, we ordered pizza and the team surprised me with a Philippine tradition of karaoke...oh my! I was joking with the team that based upon my singing, I could be the first IBM CSC participant to be asked to go home before my assignment even started! :-) To say the least, it was a tremendous amount of fun! And, this is where WE ARE THE WORLD comes in.....we sang that as one of our songs and sang the chorus together....so awesome!! :-) That is a song that has been sung before in the US when our teams did team building activities together back in the day...good memories there, too. We also sang songs by Cyndi Lauper, Styx, and Incubus, just to name a few. I'm hoping all of you are humming We are the World as you close this blog. Pictures coming soon.

Make it a good day!