My own path- Szymon Bielecki

Posts

#Taiwan How did I end up on the other side of the world?

How did I end up on the other side of the world? Whenever I am back in Poland, and meet someone new, who does not know me yet, and the conversation leads to me revealing in live and study in Taiwan, I usually get wide-opened eyes in response. "Where?"- people ask. "In Taiwan, you heard right" is the usual response. What comes after, can usually be grouped into three main types of a response. Type A: "Where the hell is that", type B: "Careful with the ladyboys, I heard Thailand is full of them", and type C: "Isn't facebook banned in China?/Do you eat dogs?". In the beginning, I was getting irritated with the responses, maybe slightly offended, but as time passed, I got used to it. There is not a huge awareness of the existence of Taiwan among Westerners. The ones who do have some idea, will consider it a part of China- from their perspective, a reasonable assumption. After all, the language spoken here is Chinese, the majority of

#Taiwan How Taipei's roads are becoming greener

Taiwan aims to eliminate two-stroke scooters by 2020. This is due to the contribution of this type of motorcycles to overall air pollution in Taiwan. One of the cities implementing measures of replacement is Taipei City. Source: Focus Taiwan Taipei is the capital of Taiwan, with over 2,7 million population. This population is sitting within an area of 271 square kilometers, meaning it is a very densely populated city, with over 10,000 people/km² [i] . Taipei is not to be confused with New Taipei City, two separate administrative entities, with New Taipei surrounding Taipei City. TPC, area wise, is much smaller than New Taipei city, but much more densely populated: over 5 times as much! Taipei City is the richest city in Taiwan, with the biggest government budget and the richest population. Source: Wikivoyage In January this year, Taipei City Government, and more specifically, its Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced a two-stroke motorcycle scrappag

#Entrepreneurship 10 rules of successful PowerPoint

Presentations are a daily struggle for many of us. Whether you are a student, a teacher, an entrepreneur, a researcher, or anyone else, there is a good chance you have to present something quite often. We are often provided with a computer, projector, a pointer (not always), and an audience who wants to be entertained. How you speak is another story, and will be covered in some other post. But what we always do for these presentations, is we prepare a PowerPoint to support our speech. I've seen many: at school, during my work with Hult Prize Foudnation, at conferences and meetings I attended. And sadly, hardly ever was the PPT what it should have been? Why PowerPoint? Whether you use windows or Mac, or just stay on your mobile devices, like phones or tablets, you do use powerpoint. The file format is supported by all the major devices. It is a standard presentation format nowadays. Many are trying to take over the position of leading visual presentation format, such as Prezi,

#Taiwan Second Hand shopping

If you're wondering how it is to buy second hand in Taiwan, I hope this post will give you a better insight into the topic. Why shop second hand? Starting off, why do we buy second hand? Second hand products purchases are an alternative option to buying brand new products at the store. Most of us do that to avoid the high commission margin the retail stores are clocking in. It is not uncommon for goods to lose 30% of value at the moment of leaving the dealership, especially luxurious goods like cars. Therefore, second hand goods are usually the much-cheaper option for many of us. We buy second hand: cars, clothes, electronics, home appliance, furniture... in general, durable goods. But once I moved to Taiwan, my world with regard to second-hand shopping got twisted around. Second hand pricing in Taiwan To start with, the prices. In Taiwan, we often encounter second hand goods priced very similarly to new, or at least, with not as much a price difference as normally expected.

#Branding What exactly is a brand?

Hello all! Brand is a very popular word nowadays. We are surrounded by brands, we have our favorite brands, maybe some of us do own brands themselves. But what exactly is a brand? Oxford provides us with many definitions of the word "brand", two most relevant in my opinion: A type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name. A particular identity or image regarded as an asset. Most of us associate brands with few obvious components of brand identity: logo- the graphical representation of brand identity- Adidas' Three Stripes logo slogan- a sort of motto that leads the company and creates its image- Nike's "Just Do It!" colors- the certain combinations of colors that a company chooses as theirs e.g. white, red and navy of Tommy Hilfiger faces- celebrities and experts associated with the brand e.g. Cristiano Ronaldo as a Nike face tune- musical jingles that brands make their own, eg. McDon

#PersonalDevelopment How to choose the right school for you?

Hello there! In today's post, we will talk a little bit in choosing the right educational path for yourself. My sweet little sister, Zuzia, is facing a choice of a high school for herself, now graduating from secondary school. Back in Poland, the educational system changed recently, from 6-3-3 (6 years elementary education, 3 years "gimnazjum"- secondary school, and 3 years of profiled high school) to 8-4 (8 years general elementary education plus 4 years profiled high school). This means that 15 years olds are asked to make decisions that will direct them for the rest of the life. Zuzia was lucky enough to be one of the last students to follow the old system. In my opinion, the most important exam a Polish person takes is the one at the end of secondary school, not the maturity exam at the end of high school. Why? High school is the time of your life when you figure out who the hell you are. That is when our personalities are starting to become strong, firm, and