around the dot - guillaume rigal

A quickie from the not-so-quiet (driling, fire alarms) "quiet lounge" in Dubai airport on my way back to Sydney, just before boarding. I have spent a great two weeks in Europe working from the London office and then spending one week in Oléron with the family (amazingly with enough wind to windsurf most days). I always like to blog from airports, don't know why. I have loads to tell but a plane to catch - thought this would give the old blog some life back though ;)

"One year..." I have been telling me this a few times over the last couple of weeks. One year since graduation. One year since all the good stuff that happened around graduation ( desorientation , capstone class , summer ball...) And today it's been one year since I joined American Express. I don't want to sound nostalgic but these 2 years at London Business School and UCLA were clearly good times. And even if I got lucky with a rotation program taking me around the world, working life just can't match student life. :/ I'll be back in London next week and I'm sure I'll find a few MBAs to reenact our student life highlights at a trendy bar or a local pub. On that note, I think it'd be fair to add soon: One year since I stopped posting on this blog regularly. But I've been a bit more thorough with our blog in Oz and more recently with this very stupid experiment: blogging my Gmail/Skype/Facebook status .

I just spotted this new "badge" on the Apple website a few days ago: "A Greener Apple". For once, it isn't about a new product but more about old ones. The page being linked to is a memo from Steve Jobs in response to allegations that Apple doesn't do its fair share to be eco-responsible: Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well. I think it's a good initiative but if Apple wants to be taken seriously, I doubt a once-a-year update and vague plans (as ann...

May The 4th Be With You! I just received this joke by email. Hilarious it is, and resisting I couldn't .

While waiting for the first estimates of the first round of the French presidential election, I found this fascinating article by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes on the BBC website about Russian billionaires suburbs. Pot-pourri of the best parts: Ever since I arrived in Russia I've heard tall stories of a secret city deep in the forests outside Moscow where the rich indulge their fantasies in sprawling palaces of marble and gold. It sounded like a good story. I didn't expect it to be true, let alone that I'd get an invite. According to Forbes magazine Russia now has 60 billionaires. [...] Most of them live in Moscow, which, if I'm not much mistaken, makes the Russian capital home to more billionaires than any other city in the world. It is quite a change for a place that 15 years ago had no millionaires, let alone billionaires. Fifteen years ago everything in Russia was owned by the state. Today a quarter of Russia's economy is owned by 36 men. While the whole s...

"Mr Robot, give me a job". That's what you'll need to sing using the air of " Mr. Sandman " to get a job at Google and other large companies pretty soon. I found this article published in January in the New York Time burried deep in my Factiva feeds by cleaning up this week-end: Google Answer To Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm ! In short: Have you ever made a profit from a catering business or dog walking? Do you prefer to work alone or in groups? Have you ever set a world record in anything? The right answers could help get you a job at Google. Google has always wanted to hire people with straight-A report cards and double 800s on their SATs. Now, like an Ivy League school, it is starting to look for more well-rounded candidates, like those who have published books or started their own clubs. Desperate to hire more engineers and sales representatives to staff its rapidly growing search and advertising business, Google -- in typical eccentric fashion -- ...