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[7.8.2009]
Last two weeks were a mix bag of hard work and loads of fun for me here.

In the fun part, all of the interns had a trip to the oral care plant in Gross Gerau, Germany. It was a learning experience for us to see how the ideas of the lab are being finally made to real large scale production. At the end of the tour, we received a bag full of Oral-B toothpastes, toothbrushes and Wicks throat drops from the plant. Then, there was a social event organized for the interns, the supervisors and the mentors. It was a trip to Seligenstadt, a small but typical and beautiful German town. It was nice to hear about some of the German myths and mythologies surrounding that town from the tour guide. We had the official Interns photoshoot there. After that we were taken to a place for tasting of the famous German wines, followed by a grand 3 course meal. It was great fun talking to everyone including the other supervisors in an informal event.

Coming to the more serious part, I got the first hand experience of the P&G philosophy of “Consumer is the Boss”. Every work that is done at P&G has to be approved by consumers. Last week, I had this opportunity to show a part of my work that was done in the last two months to the consumers to understand whether they liked it or not. It was like giving an examination where the consumers are the examiners. The studies are still going on and I am keeping my fingers crossed. Also, I am in the last month of my internship. I have to start working for my final report and also my master thesis for my university. So, a lot of work is left to do for me.

Presently I am looking forward for quite a busy week ahead, followed by a fun weekend (I am planning to go to Munich with some of the interns here).

[10.7.2009]
I am back again to share some of my experiences...

Last week, a group of new summer interns joined P&G (I had joined one month earlier than scheduled). It is like a mini ‘United Nations’ at the place where we are staying now. We are now a small group of interns from 10 different countries spanning 3 continents around the world staying in the same building. It is just overwhelming for me to think sometimes that I am living in such a culturally diverse environment. For me, this internship is turning out to be not just learning my project at work, but also learning about different cultures. We have been going out together for dinners and also went out for a day trip to Mainz during the weekend, which is just outside Frankfurt.

Also, coming back to something more serious, I just had one of the most important days of my internship this week. It was my 'Mid-term presentation'. I had to give a presentation on the progress of my project till now to a group of people from both inside and outside my section who are concerned with the project. The approach of presentation at P&G is slightly different than presenting scientific work at the university. The focus here is more of presenting only the portion of the work that is beneficial for the current initiative, compared to university, where we also stress on our 'journey of learnings'. Anyways, we had a whole day of training on 'Effective Presentation' last week, where we were trained about tips and tricks of giving a presentation. That helped me a lot to prepare my mid-term presentation.

Something very 'special' happened to me last Friday, that I must share it to you. The Vice President and the Director of R&D Femcare came to Schwalbach. We had a department meeting involving them and everyone here in Femcare. At the end of the meeting, all interns including myself were given recognition as new members in the organization in front of everyone. This small gesture by the department made me feel special. I am here as an intern for three months, but the feeling that I and my small contribution have a big importance for the company is unique and overwhelming, and is something that I will cherish even after my internship.

I am looking forward for the next weeks to come. Will keep you updated...

[19.6.2009]
I just don’t know how to explain last 5 days at P&G in one word to you all.

It was just fantabulastic (absolute fantastic and was a blast)!

I had a series of meetings this week. Even lunch hours were used to carry out discussions. Here, I must say this you all – lunch and coffee are the two time, when lots of important decisions are taken place at P&G. In one of the meetings (that ran for more than 2 hours), I was a part of a discussion (through telephonic conferencing) with four people from four different countries spanning two continents. Can you imagine that!!! This not only showed me how diverse P&G is (in a small scale) but also gave me an elevated sense of responsibility. I was part of such a discussion within three weeks into the company!

Now, if you think that P&G is only work, I tell you, you are totally wrong. P&G had participated the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge Chase in Frankfurt, this Wednesday (17th June). It’s a mini marathon for 5.6 km. I was a part of the 961 member strong ‘P&G Running Team’. We had a very attractive yellow T-shirts that clearly made us very distinctive in the crowd. It was an amazing experience to run with nearly 70000 people from about 2700 companies.

That is not all. On Thursday, the P&G Femcare (at R&D, Schwalbach) had its annual department event. We all were divided into 6 groups and were left in the streets of a beautiful small town called Bād Soden outside Frankfurt, with a set of clues (like a Treasure Hunt game). Our objective was to make our way through the town by solving the clues and reach to the final destination. The final destination was an ‘old barn’ where we had some refreshments after which we went to play table soccer in real life (still don’t know what the game is called in actual; in here, we were actually tied to the stick and had to kick the ball to the opponents goal). It was great fun and was a very good opportunity for me to interact to everyone.

In all, I just had an amazing week. But now I am tired. I am going to take some rest this weekend and wait to see what the next week has in store for me.

Bye for now….

[12.6.2009]
A warm welcome to you to my blog,

First and most essential thing – a small introduction about myself. I am Deb and am 23 years ‘young’. I am Indian and studied till my undergraduate (in Biotechnology) in India. Currently, I am doing my masters in Applied Biomolecular Technology from University of Nottingham, UK.

Well, I am presently at P&G as an intern in the R&D Femcare department at Schwalbach, Germany. I had got my offer for internship in December last year, and it has been a long wait for me before I finally joined. This is my second week at “office”. The first two weeks had been a real roller coaster ride for me. I felt that I have become a small kid again. Every second that I have spent here, I have learnt something new.

In my first day, I was given an overview about the company and its purposes, values and the principle. I also met my supervisor, Daniela Baum, and she introduced me to my project. I was not told about my project before coming here, obviously because of confidentiality reasons. But, the moment I heard about my project, I got very interested and excited. In my three months here, I have to make demonstrations for a product. Well, whole of my academic life, I have focused on laboratory work. This was the first time I will be working on something that deals on – the way to present the benefits of the product already developed in the laboratory in simple semi-technical terms to the consumers. This is a kind of work I always wanted to do which involves linking of ‘science’ to the ‘common people/consumers’. For me the most exciting thing about working at P&G is that I get to work with the best in the world. Everyone here is focused in their job, and unlike university laboratories, the concept of “Consumer is the boss”, plays a very important role in everything that is being done here.

I spent my first week, meeting people around me, with whom I have to work with. I am very thankful to Daniela (my supervisor), as she made my ‘onboarding’ simple for me. She introduced me not only to the other members of my section, and also to almost everyone at my department. The people here are so friendly and helpful, that I now feel I have been here for a long time. I had a series of meetings in my second week from experts in various fields related to the product I am working on. It has been a great week in terms of getting an insight to the various steps in product research at P&G.

Well, that was about my life at work. I have made friends with the other interns already present here and have been going out with them in the evening and the weekends to the city centre and the banks of the river Main. Travelling is my hobby and I have visited quite a few countries and big cities. Among them, I should say, Frankfurt is one of the very beautiful cities I have visited. The skyline of Frankfurt at night looks so grand, filled with all the architecturally aesthetic skyscrapers.

I am eagerly waiting for the weeks to come. I will be keeping you posted with all the experiences and the new things that I will be learning in the process.

Ich wūnsche Euch ein schönes Wochenende (I wish you a nice weekend, in German; learning the language too).