Sunday, 07 December 2008

Halfway through

On Tuesday we had some meetings at SAP Offices in Woodmead. We met people from SAP South Africa and heard about SAP generally, how SAP works and about the different departments of SAP. Listening to the professionals speaking about their areas of expertise was very interesting. We had interviews with Freek Malherbe, Simon Carpenter, Alvin Pauls, Lerusha Nayager, Hildburg Hofer and Pumeza Bam. First Freek Malherbe told us about SAP’s industries. We learned many useful things about the company. Then we met the HR director and discussed about HR matters. It was really interesting and mind-opening

After the HR we had a session with the Learning Talent Manager. LTM was quite new concept to us. Main topics were how to get the right person to the company and how to keep him or her on duty. We haven’t really studied that yet, so probably in later studies we will get to it. Then we met Simon Carpenter, the director of strategic initiatives at SAP Africa. He told us about the platforms of SAP systems.

After these interesting meetings we had lunch with Lerato. It was probably the last time we met her during this trip. We will miss Lerato. Yet again, another nice day with people from SAP South Africa.


On Wednesday we head to the department of education in Pretoria. We had a meeting with the personel of the department of education. The meeting was actually about briefing about African and Finnish educational systems. Also the Idean group was accompanying us over there. People here are really interested in Finland and so we talked alot about the possible collaboration between Finnish and South African universities.

On Saturday Max had prepared us a nice dinner with his family in his place in Pretoria. We enjoyed each other’s company and didn’t talk too much about work. Max has a lovely wife and his daughter is great too. “The Braai”, like they call this grilling together event, was perfect. There was meat for everyone: beef, pork, chicken and fish. We couldn’t have wished for anything more. Oliver Mtukudzi playing, Max showed us his best dance moves and finally we all found ourselves next to him on the dance floor. The evening was excellent and we all went smiling back home to Colbyn.





Today we woke up really early. Our plan was to leave to Pilanesberg National Park at 6 a.m., but because of the boys, the departure was at 6.30 a.m. Finally we got to the park and booked us a tour. We drove around in the park spotting different species. We saw zebras, impalas, gnus, hippos, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, lions (from a distance though), a coyote, an eagle and even a little turtle beside the road. We took hundreds of photos and the trip went well. Some of us exhilarated from the African jewellery and statues outside the park. After some shopping we got back into the car and started our journey back to Pretoria. In Pretoria we ate some Indian food and walked around the market place at the Hatfield Plaza. Exhausted we came back home and almost all took a little nap. In the evening we had still some time to work on our project and write the blog.



2 comments:

Brian said...

Greetings to you guys

Its Brian From Siyafunda IN SA Since you have left we never receive any feed back from you guys how are you doing hope u are doing well. we also fine just wanted to know that we will like to visist your country one day.

Regards
Brian

T.S.P said...

What a wonderful experience you guys had at the national Park and by the way Pilanesburg is in my province North West, it is the biggest plutinum producing in SA, I last went to the park when i was 12 years old with a sschool trip and it was great, i hope you continue to enjoy our beutiful SA.

Amigos to u all

Much love hey.

Tshepo. BATHO PELE YOUTH ORG