Dear Reader,
Who am I?
I am Michel Blok and 25 years old. I am coming from the Netherlands which is quite a bit away as you can see on the image on the right! I study in Amsterdam and live 3km from the coast at a town called IJmuiden. I am studying Business Intelligence and now at the beginning of my third year in which I need to do an internship.
Why an internship abroad?
Because I can… No, three years ago after I finished my previous study (System and Network Manager) and went traveling around the world. For a year I traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Cook Islands and a lot of Asia. That triggered me to travel even more but also realized that I needed to study, to get a job which puts me in the position to work abroad. In the second year of my studies, we were asked to start looking for an internship in the Netherlands or abroad. I straight away saw it as an possibility to feed my desire of traveling and started looking for interesting companies abroad.
How did I find Lightspeed?
Me and my mate from school (Ron) both wanted to study abroad together. We applied at more than 70 companies through email and simply by calling all around the world. For a few months we tried, but realized after a while that our method wasn’t working, simply because the companies wanted an insurance of a mediation company. So we contacted a mediation company in Indonesia and South Africa to see what would happen. These countries interest me because I haven’t yet been there and they have very different cultures as we know them at home. Africa has a good climate and a great diversity of things to do. And most of all, straight away we had a good contact with 4exchange which were very helpful and brought us in contact with Ashley of Lightspeed.
When did we seal the deal?
When we mailed our “requirement/assignment list” to Ashley, he responded with more information than we ever received before. It was also written with a great excitement about Lightspeed as a company and its possibilities. It appealed to us that Lightspeed is working by the method Scrum and is very flexible company to gain the most out of its employees. So we discussed for a while with Ashley about our assignments and the requirements of school, and finally at 21st of July we sealed the deal and arranged everything for our trip to South Africa.
Our plans for the coming five months?
Learn a lot at lightspeed and help them setting up their new company Feedmymedia. Develop my English and get familiar with working by Scrum. Make working with all Google Apps and WordPress my own and help there where needed within the company. Beside working I would like to go to Robben Island, do the Shark Dive, do the highest Bungyjump and experience the African culture!
At the moment this is my third day in SA and second day at Lightspeed and the team is great. I have to say so far so good and think that I will have an amazing time the next coming five months!
Cheers,
Michel
