Rita Forst beer drinking songs ... Mum a Mia!

Whilst working in OPEL Reusselsheim, I as a member of the USA team found my German counterparts to be friendly and helpful.
There was a faction who felt that OPEL as a German manufacturer in the mould of BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz etc had the upper hand when it came to technology and quality.
While I was there we had engineers from Sweden (Saab) Australia (Holden) and they were just starting to use Fiat drivetrains (Italy).
The Opel tech centre is home to many nationalities. Generally, they get on...
During my time at Opel, Rita Forst was head of Powertrain.
Today Rita effectively heads up GM Reusselsheim.
Bloomberg reports that Rita is encouraging the singing of Beer drinking songs when dealing with non German colleagues...

As an executive at the carmaker’s powertrain unit, she’s belted out German drinking songs over dinners with Swedish colleagues to loosen people up. While heading GM’s diesel engine development center in Turin, Italy, she set up exchanges between German and Italian employees who were reluctant to cooperate.
“You can only work in a globalized environment if you know, accept and adapt to various cultures,” the 55-year-old German said in an interview. “That can lead to friendships and makes things a whole lot easier.”

I'm not sure how the Swedes reacted. However,Saab has since been sold off...
Here is a video from this years Paris Show. Nick Reilly, Rita's boss opens and Rita finishes.



I enjoyed my time at Opel. I wish them well.

All you potental funding partners out their contact me through my web page:
http://motorsportuniversitymalysia.com/

I will be participating at this years ASLI automotive conference in KL 2-3 December 2010.
 You can meet me there, if you wish to send a delegate.

On a funding note: Malaysian PM Najib announced his budget today.
A portion taken from the Star.

FIRST STRATEGY: REINVIGORATING PRIVATE INVESTMENT
19.Another PPP(Public-Private Partnership Initiatives) project identified is the Academic Medical Centre. This project is a joint venture between Academic Medical Centre Sdn. Bhd. and Johns Hopkins Medicine International as well as Royal College of Surgeons Ireland. This project involves private investment of RM2 billion

The text of Najibs speech starts with the words:
1.Praise be to Allah, for enabling me to table the 2011 National Budget. Indeed, this is a significant budget. This Budget is a precursor in our final efforts towards achieving Vision 2020, which is 3,365 days or 9 years, 2 months and 17 days away.

As you can gather, Malaysia is a Muslim led country. I'm not sure if Rita will be sitting down with Najib for a beer drinking song session any time soon.
Secondly, Malaysia is striving to become a fully developed nation by 2020. It's neighbour Singapore has already achieved this.
My proposal would be on the border between the two nations.
I'm neither a Muslim nor a German beer drinker.
However, I must fully endorse Rita's statement:
“You can only work in a globalized environment if you know, accept and adapt to various cultures,” the 55-year-old German said in an interview. “That can lead to friendships and makes things a whole lot easier.”

On that note,
I'd like to wish everyone, everywhere, a very happy weekend.