Being topical, I thought I’d write a blog on fun facts about Valentine’s Day!  If you ever wonder why we spend 1 day a year buying flowers, treating our loved ones to chocolates and bubbly (personally I think that should happen every month?!) then read on find out where it all began.  I’ve also added my own thoughts to give the blog some attitude, if you don’t agree then feel free to COMMENT!

Enjoy and Happy Valentine’s Day

When did it all start?

There are various theories on the origin of Valentine’s Day, but the most popular dates back to the time of the Roman Empire during the reign of Claudius II, 270 AD. Claudius didn’t want men to marry during wartime because he believed single men made better soldiers. Bishop Valentine went against his wishes and performed secret wedding ceremonies. For this, Valentine was jailed and then executed by order of the Emperor on February 14. While in jail, he wrote a love note to the jailor’s daughter signing it, “From your Valentine.” Sound familiar?  No actually, I’ve never had a letter written to me from a prisoner in jail?!

Flowers

• 73% of people who buy flowers for Valentine’s Day are men, while only 27 percent are women.
• 15% of U.S. women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day – wow, is that desperate?!

Roses

• The red rose was the favourite flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love.
• Red roses are considered the flower of love because the colour red stands for strong romantic feelings – never would have guessed that one…
• Approximately 110 million roses, mostly red, will be sold and delivered within the three-day Valentine’s Day time period – anyone interested in opening a rose shop for 3 days a year?!

Greeting Cards

• Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all Valentines – are you going to let this go guys?!
• Teachers will receive the most Valentine’s Day cards, followed by children, mothers, wives, sweethearts and pets – teachers, really?!  Think they missed out my school in this survey…

And… More fun facts about Valentine’s Day

• Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, France, Australia, Denmark, United States and Italy.
• The most fantastic gift of love is the Taj Mahal in India. It was built by Mughal Emperor Shahjahan as a memorial to his wife – Mughal definitely set the standard with this one
• Every Valentine’s Day, the Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet – do they know it was a story?!
• About 3% of pet owners will give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets.
• In the US, 64 percent of men do not make plans in advance for a romantic Valentine’s Day with their sweethearts – typical!  

So, I’m not sure if any of you know but its actually Christmas Day on Sunday, shocker, I know. So since it’s so close to the big day, it’s only right I do a Christmassy blog to get us all in the mood…right? WRONG! I’m sure you have had just about enough of what’s the top gift to get this year and the best way to recycle your tree. So I’m going to stick what I know, funny videos, good purchases and LADS!

Let’s kick things off, as always, with the ‘YouTube vid of the Week’. This week, we’re sticking to something short, simple and just god damn hilarious.  We can thank Ollie Sidwell (yes the founder of this fine company) and his weird sense of humour for this fantastic clip, cheers Sid! And the ‘Mother of the Year’ award goes to…….

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne3OMr1_Pxo

Now the award for ‘Purchase of the Week’ award doesn’t actually go to something I personally bought, but acquired through a very generous secret Santa.  As our Christmas social got underway last week we all exchanged gifts and I unwrapped (from my beautiful Metro newspaper wrapping) 3 gifts, the Hollyoaks calendar, a book called ‘The Game’ and a condom (very LADish). The gift I will be talking about is the book ‘The Game’; it’s something I hadn’t heard of before but has apparently created a lot of buzz. It is a real life story about a shy retiring writer, Neil Strauss, (pictured below) who suffers from a lack of charm and confidence when it comes to attracting the opposite sex. He decides enough is enough and wants to change his ways by studying world renowned PUA’s (pick-up artists) and their theories and techniques. Once he had adopted them and takes on the role of his alter ego ‘Style’ his amazing story begins. This story includes using his techniques on Britney Spears, receiving life coaching from Tom Cruise, moving in with Courtney Love and being officially voted ‘World Number One PUA’. I’m only on page 126 and I’m already engrossed and am sure it won’t take me long to finish.

Whilst reading it on the tube the other day a guy, who had read the book, interrupted me to tell me that he loved it and swore by it’s techniques. So a definite book for all the LADS out there!

Which brings us swiftly onto ‘LAD of the week’. This man is a smooth talking, smartly dressed and incredibly talented LAD. Women want him and men want to be him. Love him or hate him, there is no denying this man’s class. Even as I write this I am listening to his wonderfully received Christmas album. I am of course giving this award to Mr. Michael Bublé. Once again he has the whole country swooning over him whilst be bangs out great performance after great performance, with his big band behind him it seems as though nothing can stop this man from turning any song into a classic. There will be LADS out there who disagree with this week’s award but he is talented, loaded, women everywhere will do almost anything to be with him and all without having a six pack…LAD.

As always it’s been a pleasure and it’s time for me to shut up and for you to get back on with some work!

Adue, Kwa Herini, Auf Wiedersehen and Goodbye!

Tom

Loughborough graduate Rebecca Griffiths tells us how she found the inspiration and courage to start her own business and some top tips for those of you who want to do the same! Since this is something we can relate to here at RMP we’re delighted to let her tell you her story. Here’s what she had to say…

For me, graduating from Loughborough University was one of the most daunting experiences. Being released into the real world is something that most students dread. It’s even harder still when after three years of study you still haven’t worked out what you want as a career. This was my dilemma.

I would never have imagined starting a business but today, I am writing this blog post following the launch of my new online fashion store wantherdress.com. The website is a family business and was created with my sister, a graduate of Leeds University.

I had never seen myself working in the fashion industry; I had studied drama so it was a very unlikely move. It soon became clear to me that the fashion industry was the way forward, since all my interests were within it and e-commerce, especially in fashion, is continuing to grow making it one of the most popular ways for customers to shop. Now I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. You don’t have to stick to what you have studied, there are so many opportunities out there and you can adapt your experiences from university to suit the career you love. Charlotte, my sister, knew shortly after graduating that this was her dream career. This made the perfect balance when working together.

The creation of wantherdress.com has taken around five months from the initial idea. Starting a business is extremely difficult, but the most challenging part is having the guts to go for it. We have learnt so much already. As young women and recent graduates, we have found that sometimes it is difficult to be taken seriously by the people we deal with. We have now built more confidence when dealing with suppliers and other partners to ensure that we are receiving the best service from everyone.

The goal for this website is not just to be an online store. As you can see by the name Want Her Dress, it has more of a social context to it. Our eventual aim is for the website to be a social network for girls and women to share their fashion experiences, style tips and photos to encourage others to Want Her Dress.

Tips for students looking to start a business:

• Rather than constantly talking about ideas, take action.
• Don’t be put off by others or talk yourself out of it.
• If you believe you can do it, you’re right. Never give up.
• Never be embarrassed about what you don’t know, never pretend to understand something you don’t, just ask.
• Enjoy it…business should be fun!

Visit our website: www.wantherdress.com. You can also follow Want Her Dress on Facebook: www.facebook.com/wantherdress & Twitter: @WantHerDress for exclusive posts on offers, photos and an insight into the day-to-day workings of the team!

Words by Rebecca Griffiths

Photo by Tomal Price

It’s been a busy first few months for us here at TUI! We all now feel very settled in our job roles and are starting to get use to the early mornings!

In the last few months we’ve had a lot going on. In Product, we’ve been putting together and signing off our new brochures for 2012 and early 2013. We’ve also started work on planning the summer 2013 season and the 5 year strategy. Late trading finished selling for summer 2011 and have now moved onto Winter 2011. Early Trading are currently busy putting together information for the turn of year papers, special offers that go out to the national newspapers for January. And finally the placements in Cruise have been looking at new routes and areas for the ships to sail to for summer 2013 and selling the final seats left on the cruise ships for this year.

A few of use have been very lucky and have already gone on resort trips including a cruise around the Canaries, a trip to Majorca and a trip to Mexico. This has been really useful as it has enabled us to see the hotels and areas that we are looking after and really make the most of the product and holidays that we are selling. It has also got to the time of the year that we have all started to think about using the great holiday discounts that we get whilst we are here!

As well as our day to day jobs we have been helping recruit the new placements for next year’s intake. We have all visited a university placement fair somewhere around the country to talk to potential students about the scheme. It’s been a great opportunity to shout about how great our scheme is. We have met some really strong candidates at these fairs and have already carried out one assessment centre.

In November the guys in cruise organised a cake sale, quiz and raffle in the aid of raising money for Children in Need. The main prize was a weekend cruise to Amsterdam. A lot of organising went into this and the whole business got involved – the cakes in particular went down well! They raised a total of £1400, which was a fantastic effort!

We’ve got lots of things to look forward to in December. This includes the Commercial Christmas party, the placement Christmas party and the hanger visits to see our Thomson Airways aircraft undergoing maintenance. It’s going to be a busy month in the office as we all get ready for our busiest time of year in January. We would like to wish you all a Happy Christmas and look forward to welcoming some of you at the next assessment centre.

So it’s been another couple of weeks, which means another blog. Actually got my first couple of recommendations for YouTube video of the week and LAD of the week recently so cheers for those guys. So let’s crack on…

First up, ‘YouTube Video of the Week’. Now I thought that I would get some inspiration for this weeks video from TV show ‘Rude Tube’, so I sat down to watch it and it turns out that weeks episode was all about sex so thought it might not be appropriate for the innocent minds of RMP and our users…

I was also shown a hilarious video by Wicko AKA Big Dog yesterday but similarly its not exactly appropriate, so you’ll have to ask him yourself! This weeks choice is a bit of a mood lifter, so although there may be some rubbish people out there, this is just to show that there are still some people out there doing some amazing things and to confirm that in general PEOPLE ARE AWESOME!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo0Cazxj_yc

I’d absolutely love it if you guys commented below and told me out of those, which was your favourite little clip. Mine is the guy doing that flip thing on the big bouncy ball (Not it’s technical term I’m sure).

So it’s that time for my ‘Purchase of the Week’ feature and I’m surprised I can even do one this week due to the pathetic attempt at a bank account I claim to have. I was recently on the road down in the beautiful South-West of England attending the Plymouth and Exeter Careers fairs and got peckish so decided to venture into a sandwich I have never tried before, a mouth-watering Bacon, Brie & Cranberry baguette. Now to many of you this may be the norm, maybe even a weekly occurrence, but for myself it was a strange combination that I had previously decided to steer clear of. I mean I’m sorry but who sat there hungry one day and thought “ohh you know what I could really do with? A bit of bacon, cheese and fruit!” It’s odd and you can’t deny it! However, as I have recently discovered it’s genius. I was just sat there letting this crazy arrangement of flavours do backflips on my tongue and absolutely loving it! So the moral of this story is to just try something different, if you can’t afford a holiday, you can at least let your taste buds take one!

Now time for something that I always like to put a lot of thought into, ‘LAD of the Week’. This week it’s a bit of a remember a LAD award as it goes to a natural born performer who played in one of the greatest rock bands of all time and had millions of people across the world left in awe as he dominated any stage he graced. I am of course talking about the late and ever so great Freddy Mercury, who 20 years yesterday we lost in an untimely death.

Queen has sold over 300 million albums worldwide and continues to live on through various fantastic (and not so fantastic) tribute bands as well as continuing to inspire many music-makers of the modern era. He is undoubtedly a rock-god who used every inch of the stage to perform classics such as ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and their most played song of all time ‘We Are The Champion’. Not only does he live on through his music but through The Mercury Phoenix Trust which raises awareness and helps educate those in the developing world of AIDS, the disease that took the legend away. So the only thing really left to say is RIPLAD.

As always it’s been a pleasure and it’s time for me to shut up and for you to get back on with some work!

Adue, Kwa Herini, Auf Wiedersehen and Goodbye!

Tom

Hi guys

Now I know I said I would be doing a blog every two weeks, and that it has been a lot longer than that since my last one. I do hate disappointing my huge fan base, the guys in the office and my mum, so from now on I’ll do my absolute best to keep the blogs flowing.

So let’s get back on track. First up, ‘YouTube Video of The Week’. This week we have a video that has spread like wildfire and is getting coverage from the likes of The Sun and CNN. Flashmobs have been a huge viral sensation for a few years now and this video continues that trend with a romantic twist. Watch the video (with sound) and enjoy… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8D2mx2EVc

It is also a video that a member of the RMP family can relate to. The lovely young lady who is being proposed to was an ex-girlfriend of RMP co-founder Alastair Lindsay, when questioned on the video this is what he had to say:

“Fair play to the lad, he’s clearly more attractive, imaginative and romantic than me. She had a lucky escape and I wish them all the best.”**

The main difference I can see between Ali and Adam? About 3 Feet!

Now we have my ‘Purchase of The Week’ feature. I have been excited to write about this since it is all I have been playing lately. I went out and bought myself the incredible CD that is ‘The Kinks – The Ultimate Collection’. There isn’t enough I can say about this beautiful collection of music, hit after hit, tune after tune! Whether you haven’t listened to them at all or it has just been a while I urge you to revisit them. After a few days of running through the album and arguing with myself I have decided my favourite song is ‘Stop Your Sobbing’. This, however, was an extremely hard decision and it could have easily been 6 or 7 others.

It’s available from places like Amazon and E-bay for around £3!! Which is just outrageous for such a top piece of work.

Please let me know of any of your favourite ‘Kinks’ songs/gigs/interesting stories as I’m just discovering them myself and would love to hear them!

So Finally, we are brought to the “LAD of The Week” feature, something I’m always on the look out for. This week it goes to a man who time after time just amazes the nation with a look into the far corners of the world and the nature that inhabits it. That’s right, this week’s award goes to NatureLAD, David Attenborough.

His latest BBC series, ‘Frozen Planet’, started a couple of weeks back and it has been an absolutely storming hit (as most of his shows are). Even at the amazing age of 85 he manages to show an enthusiasm towards every living thing, from the micro-bacteria that lives on a snowflake to the breathtakingly intelligent Killer Whales and how they strategically take down their pray. He shows us parts of the world we never knew existed, and most of all does what no teacher in 12 years of school to do…get me interested in science!

The man is a true legend, and with that the big LAD nod of approval goes to him and his team for allowing us to discover things we never knew we could.

Sir David Attenborough….NatureLAD!

So it’s time for me to shut up and for you to get on with some work, cheers for reading. I’ll be back soon.

Adue, Kwa Herini, Auf Wiedersehen and Goodbye!

Tom

**May not be an exact quote

Nominations now open in the National Placement & Internships Awards 2012!

Wew are delighted to announce that nominations are now OPEN for the third National Placement & Internships Awards 2012, sponsored by PwC.

Due to be held on Wednesday 18^th January 2012 at City University in London, the Awards celebrate the outstanding achievements of employers, universities and students within the world of undergraduate placements and internships.

There are 15 Awards up for grabs, including 7 Awards for employers, 3 for universities and 5 for students. Awards up for grabs include ‘Best Placement Student, Best Intern & Best Society’ with up to £1000 for the winners!

Entering is really quick and simple just visit the website at www.rmpawards.co.uk

And fill in a nomination form before the deadline of Friday 18^th November.

To find out more, click here.

Good luck!

Hello all!

As you can probably tell by now, RMP has jumped on the blogging bandwagon and every other Thursday you will be hearing from myself, I’m one of four placement students here trying their best not to mess up all the hard work that has been put into the company thus far.

Now I could bore you with stories from my life in London, but instead I have decided to bring you some regular features that will hopefully bring a cheeky smile to your face.

Firstly, I will bring you “YouTube video of the week”. My first one, some of you may have seen as it has racked up over 3.5 million hits and it sort of tells you a lot about myself as a person and my sense of humour. (Volume needed)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK_CKtYCRIc

I think what we have learnt here is: Kitten + Tortoise + Chamillionaire = YouTube Hit! I’d like to thank my friend Daniel for introducing this to me and hopefully you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. I’d also love to hear from you guys about your favourite YT vids, so either post them in a comment below or send them over to tom.wilson@ratemyplacement.co.uk and I’ll pick my favourites to blog about.

So next up we have my “Purchase of the Week” feature. Here I will discuss, yes you guessed it, my top purchase from that week and being somewhat of an impulse buyer I’m sure we will see some amusing items. This week my award goes to my Thomas the Tank Engine Toothbrush. I recently visited friends in Sheffield for a 21st and stupidly forgot my toothbrush, so took a trip into Poundland and found this little beauty. After making several appearances over the weekend my friends gave me a challenge to get photo’s of Thomas at various landmarks I visit across the globe and you can see the first one here when he visited Edinburgh Castle.

Features from this item include: Teeth cleaning, suction pad at base that allows it to be stuck to (almost) all surfaces and best of all, if your name is Thomas, it has your name on it!

Next I bring you the “LAD of the Week” feature. Here I will discuss who in the week has really stepped up to the plate and earned the prestigious nod of approval from men across the country.

This week it goes to a guy who literally changed the way we look at the world and certainly how we interact with each other. I am of course giving this week’s award to the late Steve Jobs. After a long battle with cancer, Jobs unfortunately passed away last week leaving the technological world in mourning. Not only did he create technology like their were pieces of art but gave us the opportunity to do things such as play Football Manager on the go, get football score updates by the minute and check out the latest Sweedish page 3 girl on the train without looking like a complete pervert.

A few notable tributes include one from Barack Obama: “Steve was among the greatest of innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

“The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.” 

And on that note I award Steve Jobs the LAD of the Week award. We salute you sir, RIP.

On that note I would like to give you a huge thanks for reading, especially if you made it to this point. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks and feel free to leave comments or questions/tweet the blog to friends/repost on your wall, it’s all appreciated.

Adéu, Kwa herini, Auf Wiedersehen and Goodbye!

Tom

Fancy hearing about a placement at TUI straight from the horses mouth?! Then read on as throughout the year, we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers. Meet Ben and Amy who have just started their placements with TUI….find out what they’ve been up to so far!

“Firstly we would like to say hi to all of our bloggers on the Rate My Placement Website! We’ll start firstly by introducing ourselves – we’re Amy and Ben, two of the nine new placements at TUI Travel this year. We’re both in the third year of our courses at Loughborough University. Amy is studying Retail, Marketing & Management, and Ben is studying Transport & Business Management.

The placements at TUI are based at the Head Office in Luton, are are in the Product, Trading, and Cruise departments, which all sit under the Commercial Division. Katie and Max work in Late Trading, Becky and Saoirse are in Early Trading, Holly trades Accommodation Only, Joel and Antoni are in Cruise whilst we’re both working in Product.

Over the next twelve months, Ben has been placed in the Short Haul team in product, looking after the resorts of Mainland Spain & Portugal, and Amy has been placed in the Long Haul team, working on the resorts of Aruba, Mexico, Cuba & Jamaica. We’d like to give you some information about Product which is central to the whole of the Commercial Division. Our job involves making key strategic decisions – starting with deciding on which hotels we will feature for each of our resorts, what product we’ll be selling, pricing them to ensure a strong profit, then designing and placing them into our brochures. Once this is all finalised and signed off, it gets handed over to our Trading teams to sell and yield manage throughout the season. We also have the day-to-day role of answering queries from anyone across the whole business about our resorts, as well as trying to ensure that they are selling well throughout the year, by analysing sales reports and meeting with the Trading team.

We’ll now give you a brief overview of Trading. They’re responsible for analysing sales and reacting with pricing decisions, depending on many things such as the current rate of sale or the state of economies around the world. For example, if they see that a hotel is not selling well in a resort, they will adjust the price in an attempt to try to increase demand to that hotel and hopefully the resort, too.

Lastly, but not least, the Cruise team have their own Product and Trading teams, similar to the above, but dealing with cruise holidays and the ships which fall under the Thomson & Island Cruises brands.

We’ll now give you a quick outline of our induction period. Lasting two weeks, we had an in-depth overview of TUI, along with some great activities to break the presentations up. Examples of which included a cocktail party activity (unfortunately, no alcohol was involved) which helped us to develop our understanding of the different TUI brands and products, a visit to the Thomson Airways hangar to see the aircraft undergoing maintenance, as well as a mystery shopping activity in our own retail stores to check up on customer service. We were made to feel really welcome by everyone for these first couple of weeks – we even went out for lunch in our teams on the first day!

This week at TUI in the Commercial Division has been People Week. Throughout the week, there have been many activities going on, including presentations taking place, similar to in our induction. On Wednesday night we also had a quiz – unfortunately we didn’t win but we had loads of fun and so many people got involved and had a laugh. The week has been ‘back to school’ themed, so today everyone came in dressed in uniform! (We both won the awards for being the best dressed in our department – great first impressions done for us!). We’ve also got some more exciting social events lined up for us, including team nights out, the TUI Sports Day weekend in Shropshire and, of course, not long now until the Christmas parties start!

That’s it for a few weeks from us, we’ll be updating you again soon. Don’t forget to check out our Facebook group as we’re now recruiting for next years intake!”

Join Tui’s Facebook group for more information, just click the button here. You can also find out more from Ben and Amy at TUI Travel, plus visit the Industry Zones on RateMyPlacement for more personal accounts from students on internships and placements!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at TUI Travel?

Throughout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers so read on to find out how Anna and Karla have been getting on at TUI Travel!

”Our latest blog said that we had another busy few months ahead and we’ve stayed true to our word – but as we always say, with hard work comes hard play!

The late trading team have just entered their busiest period and are full swing ahead with last minute pricing to ensure that all packages are sold, whilst product are busy preparing for the 2nd Edition launch of Summer 2012 brochures. The Cruise team have been busy managing changes to the Winter 2011 season and have also been preparing for the 2nd edition brochure launch in August.

We have welcomed two of the new placements students in the last month. Both Katie and Max have started their training in the Late Trading Team – replacing Dec and Jac who are taking up other positions in the company now that the contracted placement year has come to an end. We’ve had a few nights out to say hello and goodbye to the students, including a night in St Albans and a lucky night (for some) in Luton’s Casino!

The month of June also saw Tui’s “Big Event” summer party at Whipsnade Zoo. It was a fantastic evening enjoyed by all. Some entertainment of the event included an adult bouncy castle, a bucking bronco, a free bar, a tasty barbeque and a live band with a superb performance from our very own Managing Director Johan!!

Although we are entering the last few weeks of our placement, we are still spending time in other departments and developing our knowledge. Majority of the students have spent time with the After Travel department and have even had experience of listening in to live calls from customers – which can vary from querying lost property to making important complaints with the need of compensation. We all learnt how important customer service is and how important it is to please dissatisfied customers in order for repeat business.

With only 5 weeks left until our placement comes to and end, we’ve still got many things to keep us busy alongside our day to day jobs. We’ll be helping with the induction of the new placement students, making the most of spending time in other departments and last but not least making sure we do nothing embarrassing that could be used for our leaving speeches!!

Why not join Tui’s Facebook group for more information, just click the button here. You can also find out more from Anna and Karla at TUI Travel, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at TUI Travel?