Personal

 by Brendon J. Wilson

Crazy Or Feisty?

It’s internship time! Given that the UBC Commerce Career Centre has a grand total of seven jobs listed for the Lower Mainland, I’m taking matters into my own hands these days. But where to work?

On an impulse, I remembered my old friend Mark Hanson, VP of Sony VAIO Marketing. Given the amount of work I’ve done to solve Sony laptop problems for Sony customers, I figured I’d be a shoo-in for an internship position there. After all, I’d pretty much been working for them for over the past year anyway, right?

I fired off the following quick email to Mark Hanson last night:

Hey Mark,

Don’t know if you remember me, but I’m willing to bet you remember this website:

    www.brendonwilson.com/ideas/sony/getangry.shtml

I’m still getting email on a weekly basis regarding the Sony thermal shutdown problem, not just on old Sony models but on new ones as well. That got me thinking:

I should work for Sony.

What I’m going to suggest might be classified as either ballsy or just downright crazy, but I think it makes sense: I’m currently in the middle of my MBA at the University of British Columbia, and it’s coming around to internship time (June – August). I’m already helping Sony to solve its customers’ problems when Sony’s own customer service seems incapable of recognizing and addressing customer issues, or addressing them in anything but the most ham-fisted manner (ie: replacing whole motherboards for $800).

The failure of their laptops is costing people more than money or lost work: it’s costing Sony the loss of a lot of street credibility. I talk to people and see just how disappointed they are with their laptops, especially given that they bought a Sony specifically because of the dependability they’d come to expect from Sony. Now they’re swearing they’ll never buy a Sony again. Not just a Sony laptop. Any Sony product.

So, here’s what I propose: you hire me for my MBA internship and I track down your customer service and your quality assurance issues.

You already know my attributes: I’m smart. I’m technologically savvy. I’m an evangelist. I take service seriously. And I get the job done. It’s all there on the resume on my web site.

I look forward to hearing from you soon,

Brendon

I just can’t decide: would this be considered “crazy” or “feisty”?

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 by Brendon J. Wilson

Great White North

Ashley’s friend Catherine is visiting us for two weeks, so we decided to take a short three-day trip down to Seattle. I’d always thought of Seattle as a cousin to Vancouver, but most of the times I’d visited in the past I hadn’t stayed long enough to really get a feel for the city. This time, I got a better opportunity to really see the city.

One of the first things that always strikes me when I cross the border into the US is the immediate presence of African-Americans. What I can’t figure out: where are all the black people in Canada? Vancouver is less than three hours from Seattle, yet you’d be hard pressed to find any black people in the city. Did the trail of the Underground Railroad arrive at the US-Canada border and Harriet Tubman said “Right, far enough.”? It’s weird.

We visited the usual tourist traps: the Space Needle, the Museum of Flight, the original Starbucks store and the Pike Place Market. We skipped the Experience Music Project this time, mostly because it’s a trip unto itself.

If nothing more, I at least learned the secret of that episode of The Simpsons where Springfield gets a monorail: Matt Groening, the show’s creator, went to Evergreen State College in Olympia, just outside Seattle. The Seattle Monorail, a leftover from Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair, runs from the Seattle Center to its terminus in downtown Seattle, a mere 1 mile away! Everybody sing:

I swear it’s Springfield’s only choice,
Throw up your hands, raise your voice!
Monorail!
Monorail!
MONORAIL!

Though at first glance Seattle appears to be similar to Vancouver, on closer inspection it seems like every large American city. Huge multi-lane highways feed into the center of town, yet there’s still horrendous traffic congestion at rush hour. The city empties out after 5 o’clock, with the possible exception of the malls in the downtown core. Not a lot of people seem to actually live near downtown.

Maybe Seattle isn’t Vancouver’s cousin. More like an uncle, twice removed.

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