ERM Class 1

1808 7-3-10

Gotta right this one a little early because we're going out to dinner and karaoke (ya.. I know) to celebrate Clement's birthday.

I got up early today to talk with IDTECH about their products and fish out some details and prices from them.  It was fairly easy, though I had to dodge a few questions.  The woman on the phone was super sweet and an excellent pick as sales person.  She had the whole flirt thing really going for her.  I said something and she responded "Totally." (she's in Cali)  I have been in China for around 4 months now, and suddenly hearing a simple American slang got me really homesick.  :-/

Today was our first class on Enterprise Risk Management.  It went fairly well, like our other German professor he's much more of a lecturer.  Spent a good half day talking about the financial crisis and how it came about.  Pretty consistent with what I've learned from a variety of other professors.  He was fairly pessimistic about the outlook though.  Basically he thinks we're screwed and eventually China will need to saddle up and lead the world economy.  It's a valid theory really, though I'm hoping America can't get our shit together and pull out an epic come back.  We'll see.

After that we began talking about the importance of risk management and yadda yadda yadda.  I would go into details but it's pretty self explanatory.  Risk is a necessary part of business and it's fine to have, as long as you understand what it is you're getting into.