THE NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONS AND THE CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENT Assignment

THE NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONS AND THE CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENT - Assignment Example nt of the differing cultures within the organization in order to determine an appropriate way of managing the organization in order to enhance the profitability of such organizations. My score did not surprise, I had adequate understanding of the varied cultures interviewed. The United States is a cosmopolitan society. This implies that the society experiences some of the cultural conflicts quizzed in the interview. As such, I have interacted with people from varied cultural settings and therefore understood the differences in cultures in the different societies. Among the strengths I exhibit in intercultural awareness is the fact that I have interacted with people from varied cultural backgrounds. Through such interactions, I understood the intricate features of the culture besides understanding the dynamic nature of cultures. Through our interactions, we trade cultural values as people abandon specific cultural features they feel retrogressive and adopt new cultural values. The dynamic feature of culture has helped integrate the society, as the world became a global village. The weaknesses I portrayed in the quiz was lack of knowledge of African cultures among other cultures of far flung areas such the minority societies in east Asia and the enclosed areas such as Northern Korea. Understanding culture is often relative depending on the interactions that people have with each other. My lack of knowledge of such cultures is therefore a portrayal of the enclosed nature of the societies a feature that therefore limits their interactions with the rest of the world. However, I must improve my weaknesses and build my strengths in order to enhance my understanding of the cultural differences in the different societies. In order to do this, I plan to undertake studies on cultures. I plan to read different books that address the cultural diversity in the society. Existing literatures provide appropriate information about different cultures including cultural practices

Impact Of Ecommerce On Vodafone Marketing Essay

Impact Of Ecommerce On Vodafone Marketing Essay E-Commerce in simple terms can be explained as buying and selling of goods and services and transfer of funds through digital communications. Electronic commerce over the Internet is a new way of conducting business. Ecommerce or electronic commerce involves carrying out business over the Internet with the assistance of computers, which are linked to each other forming a network. The amount and volume of trade that is conducted over such mediums has increased manifold over the years with the spread and adoption of Internet. The growing number of Internet users, (estimated to be more than 1.4 billion worldwide [1]) coupled with increased Internet Connectivity, has contributed to increase in spends for online budgets. Vodafone is the worlds leading international mobile telecommunications group with approximately 280 million proportionate customers as of 30 September 2008 [2]. Vodafone has equity interests in 27 countries across five continents and over 40 partner networks worldwide. Lets have a look at all the ecommerce activities done by Vodafone Vodafone maintains and manages a UK online store for consumers; this ecommerce site is one of the most visited websites in the UK and reliably handles 1.85 million unique visits per month [5]. This has been achieved by optimizing both the front-end and back-end code to ensure that it operates smoothly under considerable load. The site is under constant development with promotional/sales changes made on an on-going basis and releases of strategic developments every 2-4 weeks.   Why is this Vodafone online shop different? It enables a remarkable customer online experience; It completely automates the buying and renewal of online subscriptions; It is built on a very powerful infrastructure: ATG, an e-commerce solution used by the worlds top brands. Picking up the major benefits Vodafone gains are: Customer acquisition increased number of new subscribers; Customer retention due to the personalized customer experience; Customer growth through handy, accessible mix of services; Cost-effectiveness decreasing customer-related operational costs by integrating core business systems. Quoting from the news articleM2 PRESSWIRE-16 May 2000-VODAFONE: Corporate customers enjoy benefits of e-commerce (C) 1994-2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD RDATE: 16052000 Vodafone today unveils Vodafone Corporate Online, the heart of a new e-commerce strategy for its corporate customers [6]. Vodafone Corporate Online is a secure web site (Extranet) that will initially enable corporate customers to buy goods or services on-line, request installations, recoveries and review order status. Future e- services such as on-line bill analysis, billing via email and electronic bill viewing will follow later in the year. Graham Ward, Managing Director of Vodafone Corporate, said: We are constantly striving to make life easier for our customers and our innovative e-commerce strategy plays a major role in the business [6]. And also another ecommerce transaction of Vodafone is that, the account is also very easy to manage via the Vodafone web site. There is the option to change your price plan, top up, manage your calling groups or even add extra services [7]. If you purchase just a sim card to put into an existing phone, you can send all the settings for GPS, SMS, and WAP etc via their website to update your phone automatically without the need to spend ages doing manual input, or spending hours on the phone to an advisor. Leading e-commerce marketplace makes it easily accessible to Vodafone customers. New mobile application ensures best customer experience on mobile. Vodafone is to offer the new eBay mobile service to customers, enabling them to keep up with their latest purchases, wherever they are and whenever they wish. The eBay application will be free to download  on Vodafone live! or embedded on key customer Vodafone handsets. Launching in Italy initially, the new eBay mobile service will be available across Europe later this year [8].   The eBay mobile application, accessed directly from the customers handset, will include the ability to search and browse items, find deals, bid on items and buy fixed price products. The application will be embedded onto key consumer handsets from Vodafone in the future. Customers with compatible handsets will also be able to download the application from Vodafone live! The application will help consumers track their eBay activity in real time on their phone and will also ensure their mobile and web activity is synchronized.   As we move closer to the convergence of web and mobile, it is essential that we can offer our customers, leading Internet based services, such as eBay, in an easily accessible way, [8] said Frank H. Rà ¶vekamp, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Vodafone. There is a strong demand from eBay users to benefit from a mobile application where they dont miss the end of auctions and bid back when they are outbid. Todays announcement offers just that and gives Vodafone customers a great service and a clear advantage allowing them to make the most of their time [8].   Vodafones main areas of interest are [3]: focus on the customer including privacy, security and online protection; reducing environmental impact through network energy-saving, waste reduction and green travel and; using communications technology to help customers reduce their carbon footprint; supporting good causes including World of Difference a major new volunteering programme; employee engagement and advocacy; working with suppliers to raise and maintain standards. To reach and succeed on these interests the Vodafone started all above mentioned e-commerce strategies and a lot more so that it can enjoy many benefits, the impact it had on Vodafone are, Vodafone was be able to reach new markets across traditional geographic boundaries and expand their customer base. Firm was able to provide cost-effective customer service with tools such as Frequently Asked Questions, delivery-tracking technology or personalized online customer accounts. Its win/win when e-commerce allows them to shift a lot of the burden of service back onto the customer. Stay open for business 24-hours. Vodafone customers can purchase online while employees sleep. And also potentially saved money on labor, materials and other overheads and reduce their inventory holdings. Ecommerce allows Vodafone to carry out businesses without the barriers of time or distance. One can log on to the Internet at any point of time, be it day or night and purchase or sell anything one desires at a single click of the mouse. Essentially this allows them to offer their goods and services to both a global and local market 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, often with vastly reduced overheads which are associated with traditional sales methods. Operational benefits of e commerce include reducing both the time and personnel required to complete business processes, and reducing strain on other resources. The strategic benefit of making Vodafone ecommerce enabled, is that it helped reduce the delivery time, labor cost and the cost incurred in the following areas: Document preparation Error detection and correction Reconciliation Mail preparation Telephone calling Data entry Overtime Supervision expenses According to research conducted by AC Nielson, in September 2006 5.9 million Australians were shopping online, making us the third-largest online spenders behind the UK and the US [4]. Over half of these online shoppers (51 per cent) came back for more and average shopper spending was up 19 percent to $1,900 per annum [4]. Concluding the facts I have written above regarding the ecommerce techniques and strategies used by the Vodafone and also the impact ecommerce had on Vodafone, I would once again like to remind the readers that ecommerce brings in more advantages weighed against the disadvantages to the adaptor. The major the benefits what all firms are striving for are, Increased awareness of products and services   Businesses can now greatly expand their markets using ecommerce, no need to constrain the focus to only the local scene, but by using the Internet, businesses can venture into international and regional markets, with greater ease. This dynamically changes the nature and the marketing activities of some businesses, possibly encouraging the business to expand the diversity of its products and services, to meet these new markets. Websites, in their nature, allow hundreds and thousands of items to be on view 24/7; thus encouraging wider viewing, and extended trading hours. Freedom   With the freedom of being able to post your information on their website, hence on the Internet, at any time of the day; available information of all variations is increasing at a huge rate. The freedom to browse anywhere and interact with anyone is enough to tempt the smallest of businesses and the most introverted of people to get on the Net; hence Net users are increasing in numbers, at an alarming rate, approximately 50,000 per day. Businesses are buzzing on the Net; they have found a way to compete on an even field, with even the largest of corporations; and within a daily increasing customer marketplace. This can be done only by ecommerce Cost advantage  -businesses based on ecommerce are extremely aware of how they can profit by being on the Internet; they can advertise their products and services without the huge costs, and delays of printing, publishing and distribution. The market is a global one, which adds greater value to the costs outlaid for promotion and marketing; compared to the limits of offline. Ecommerce facilities can be incorporated into the website, transforming 2D screen visuals into user reactive models; for example, consumers can order their products and services online, greatly reducing administration expenses. Reduction of telephone calls to potential customers; follow ups by email; newsletters digitally made, promoted by email or downloadable from the website, with reduction of distribution costs; less promotional material sent out, printed and wasted; extended trading hours without a human presence; are just a few ways to cut costs. To reach their goals and strategies, striving through life time of the business will not make any difference they should adapt ecommerce and feel the advantages and the turn-up on their business as soon as possible. This article about Vodafone can be great example of how adapting ecommerce had made an impact on its business activities, customer base and a lot more.

Birth Order Essay -- Analysis, Alfred Adler

Dating all the way back to the late 1800’s, Birth order has been studied thoroughly. An incredible amount of psychologist and doctors have studied how birth order, or a person’s rank by age among his or her siblings, can affect a child’s personality. Researchers find it difficult to find conclusions due to the fact that it is hard to establish a control group that has controlled variables. Experts say that â€Å"different social status, location of the family, and size of the family can create confusion and affect the quality of conclusions† (Hartshone par. 2). The first study done was by Alfred Adler, an Austrian psychiatrist born in 1870-1937. Adler argued that â€Å"birth order can leave an indelible impression on an individual’s style of life† (Voo Par. 2). A child’s â€Å"style of life† is one’s habitual way of dealing with the tasks of love, friendship, and work. Alfred Adler’s study concluded that birth order can affect all aspects of the developing child. According to Adler, â€Å"First-borns are forcefully taken off their throne when the second child comes along, which could create lasting controversy between them. He said, â€Å"The younger children may be pampered and spoiled† (Haines Par. 3). This may leave an effect on their later personalities. He also wrote about how other things should be considered in regards to the birth order outcomes such as the number of years between the birth of the oldest, middle, and youngest child. Experts have found that each child, depending on bi rth order, has certain tendencies. Nature vs. Nurture has much to do with the way a child’s personality will be formed. â€Å"Certainly, many individual traits and tendencies among brothers and sisters are the products of a unique arrangement of genes (Renkl Par. 2).†... ...nil.† (Education Par. 6) They did however, say that the only study which did show birth order effects apparent were the ones that were judged by their parents or siblings. The researchers were not the ones to find the effects. Therefore, this made the study result in there not being effects on birth order. This is just one example of how birth order is a very disputing and controversial study going on. In conclusion, birth order is indeed studied very thoroughly. Birth order can be the result of a unique arrangement of genes, or it can be the way you were raised and the environment you grew up in. Birth order may not even affect your personality at all! Psychologist and doctors will continue to work on new experiments and studies. New information is released all the time. There is no doubt we will have a much better understanding of birth order in the future.

Relationship influence relationships Essay

Physical attraction is based on people’s appearances. Often a caring, kind, and affectionate person will go unrecognized among others. Mostly such people find their partners due to physical proximity, â€Å"one’s actual physical nearness to others, in terms of housing, work, school, and so forth.† On the other hand, an attractive person usually would have far more attention from others. Mills had an experiment which showed that â€Å"most important determinant of desire to continue relationship was physical attractiveness.† (1982) However, in Today’s Magazine, the article read : â€Å"according to a new study, [men are] willing to overlook a woman’s body shape and weight if she’s friendly and likeable†. But, consider that the article, if you read it, doesn’t present other important information, such the percentage of people who are in the category, and to what extreme were those studies true: it’s likely that men can overlook minor unattractive traits, but it doesn’t totally disprove the study mentioned above. Even though the point if this study may have changed slightly, it is not a secret that attractive people seem to be more of everything, since with beauty, person seems happy, healthy, successful, interesting, even if it isn’t necessarily so, which is called the halo effect. Another kind of attraction is romantic attraction. It is â€Å"love that is associated with high levels of interpersonal attraction, heightened arousal, mutual absorption (‘with regard to romantic love, the nearly exclusive attention lovers give one another.’), and sexual desire.† Romantic attraction has a â€Å"like scale† and a â€Å"love scale,† that Zick Rubin brought up to measure the â€Å"attitude† towards friends and love partners. In result, love usually included passion and commitment, whereas liking lacked those things. Estimated by these scales, type of attraction can be described by the chosen attitude towards each other, as to what the two people think of each other, and whether they are intimate or not, and so on. Just as there are different reasons for forming our personalities, there are different causes which bring people together. The reason some people choose to date who they date is partially due to homogamy -â€Å"the attraction of people who are alike† and heterogamy – â€Å"the attraction of opposites.† A person may seek to find someone with similar qualities or with the opposite ones to â€Å"balance out.† To some degrees, love may be just a mere excitement. This love (which is also something like secret love) is determined by different situations, such parents’ disapproval, or when fleeing the country with someone. Just as in secret love, those events may lead to feel even stronger attraction. But even if such situations can be an attribute to the relationship, it can also bring conflict. Those relationships can be affected by uncertainty of whether there is any kind of attraction between the two people. (As Kenrick wrote, â€Å"it is sometimes hard to tell the difference among sex, love, and infatuation (1989).† There are also two problems: excitement that adds to attraction and boredom that decreases it; the influenced behavior may not be the cause of attraction. (Homans 1961) Similarly, I am sure there have been times when you’ve known or heard of someone who, for example, embraced everyone he or she was friends with. His or her behavior doesn’t necessarily mean deep attraction, but it may just be a way in culture, personal way of showing friendship, or a habit, or may be the fact that he or she misses his/her girlfriend/boyfriend. Any of those reasons may be the factor, why due to body language, a woman may take such action for affection, or, from another point, a man can misunderstand woman’s â€Å"warning signals†. References Homans, G.C. (1961) Social Behaviour: Its Elementary Forms, New York, Harcourt, Brace and World. Kenrick, D.T. and Trost, M.R. (1989) ‘A reproductive exchange model of heterosexual relationships’ in Hendrick, C. (ed) Close Relationships (Review of Personality and Social Psychology 10) Newbury Park, CA, Sage. Miell, D. & Croghan, R. (1996) ‘Examining the wider context of social relationships’ in Dallos, R. & Miell, D. (eds) Social Interaction and Personal Relationships, Milton Keynes, Open University. Mills, J. and Clark, M.S. (1982). ‘Communal and exchange relationships’ in Wheeler, L (ed.) Review of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol 3), Beverley Hills, CA, Sage

How to Solve a Crime? Essay

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all Brass had on him. He laid a credit card on the bar counter and wished it luck. It only had to bear the price of a couple of rounds, but his salary and his expenses were not on speaking terms lately. It was Christmas in Las Vegas. Every year, it set him back until April. Which was tax time. Which set him back until Christmas. There was a comforting rhythm to it. ‘They have some good single malts,’ Catherine said, and ordered a beer. That was one of the things Brass liked about her. She had class, but didn’t make a man pay for it. Marg Helgenberger as Catherine Willows, Las Vegas Crime Scene Investigation senior supervisor. Catherine is the glamorous commander of a crack team of forensic criminologists It was 4:30am on Christmas Eve, meaning it was Christmas morning to anybody who had got some sleep in the interim, and crime scene investigators Catherine Willows and Nick Stokes had just finished dropping off bodies and registering the evidence they’d gathered at a messy murder scene. The fatal string of Christmas lights was wound around the female victim’s neck so many times the coroner was going to have to cut it from the corpse. The second victim was her husband; they assumed he was the one that did the strangling. With the steak knife in his neck, he’d only had just enough blood in him to finish the job. ‘The weird part,’ Nick remarked, leaning on the bar with his heavy forearms, ‘is the lights around her neck were still on when we got there.’ ‘It lent a certain festive air to the scene,’ Brass replied. Brass’s understudy for the evening, a young detective by the name of Ottman, known as ‘The Otter’ among the wittier senior staff, sat uncomfortably between Catherine and Brass. He looked ill. He hadn’t worked many murder scenes before, and this one wasn’t just bloody, it was ironic. Irony always made things worse. The knife was part of a gift set intended for the dead man. It had his monogram burned into the handle. For the veteran CSI team, it was just another couple of dead people, another raft of evidence and paperwork. Ottman cleared his throat before he spoke, a habit that irritated Brass. ‘There’s nothing festive about people killing each other on Christmas Eve,’ he objected. ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ Catherine said. ‘It’s awful. Every murder is awful. But if we mourn the dead every time we find them . . . ‘ ‘Some do,’ Brass interrupted. ‘They don’t last in the job.’ He fixed his melancholy eyes on Ottman and waited for the message to sink in. Before he could be sure it had, the drinks arrived. Beer all round except Ottman, who opted for one of those Tiger Woods non-alcoholic things that used to be an Arnold Palmer. The kid didn’t even know how to drink. Catherine decanted her beer into a glass. Nick picked at the label on his. George Eads as Nick Stokes. Formerly Catherine’s deputy, he has just been promoted to be her co-supervisor. Occasionally over-emotional. ‘Lot of murders this time of year,’ Nick said, in much the way he might observe it was a chilly night. Ottman cleared his throat. ‘People always get crazy around the holidays?’ he asked nobody in particular. ‘If you’re going to kill somebody, the season of joy is a popular time. Statistically speaking,’ Catherine replied. She checked her watch. Coming to the bar had been her idea: it was too late to go home and get in bed. She’d wake her daughter Lindsay up, and now that she was 18, Lindsay didn’t like early rising at Christmas. So Catherine was pretending it was the previous night, rather than the following morning. Nick had proposed they get coffee and breakfast, but he lived alone and his family was in Texas. He could lounge around all day. Catherine had a full schedule of family events, and breakfast at home was one of them. Brass glanced over at Ottman. The guy wasn’t cut out for this work. He was a fairly good detective. Book smart, but not great at murders. He would be best at property crime, hustles, something like that. Brass’s first reaction to any weak-hearted cop was always to push his buttons, expose the soft parts and toughen them up – that, or drive him out of the department before he made a costly mistake. Still, it was Christmas Eve or morning, according to your tastes, and the poor guy was clearly having a hard time. ‘Sometimes, even with murder, there’s Christmas spirit,’ Brass said. ‘The steak knives were good quality,’ Nick agreed. Catherine shook her head. ‘Go easy,’ she said, observing Ottman’s discomfort. ‘No, seriously,’ Brass continued. ‘Remember that time, it must have been seven, eight years ago, the one with the 60-G watch?’ Nick raised his bottle to his mouth, trying to recall, then snapped his fingers and set the bottle back down. ‘The big guy and the little guy.’ ‘And the dancer,’ Catherine added. She never forgot the dancers. Ottman had his hands folded in his lap, his drink untouched in front of him. He clearly didn’t want to ask. But the others were looking expectantly at him, so he asked anyway, rather than let the silence get too long. ‘So how was there murder and Christmas spirit?’ Brass took a pull of his beer, dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief, and twisted around so he could face Ottman. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. It was a warm Christmas night back in the high times when people went to Las Vegas just to get rid of their excess cash – by the truckload. There was still plenty of crime, but it was a different kind of crime, the kind that comes from an opportunityrich environment. These days, it’s the kind of crime that comes from a lack of opportunity. The difference is academic to most victims. Gil Grissom was supervisor back then. There had been various robberies, a couple of fatal accidents and a gang fight that night; nothing serious. Then the call came in, around 9pm on Christmas Eve. ‘The call came in from the Mediterranean Hotel on the Strip. Maid finds a corpse in one of the VIP suites. He’s lying on the floor in his boxer shorts,’ Brass said. ‘Ambulance shows up, medics think it could be foul play, they call us. I was first on the scene, me and a couple of patrolmen. ‘Hell of a suite he had, about the size of Yankee Stadium. Looked like the Pope decorated it. As crime scenes go, not too shabby – especially compared to Latrine Alley, where at that moment most of the graveyard shift was on its hands and knees, looking for shell casings with a flashlight.’ Brass took a swig from his beer. Ottman cleared his throat, but Brass got there first: ‘So we take a right at the grand piano and there’s the victim, in the split-level living room.’ ‘Dead,’ Nick added, in case Ottman was as slow as he thought he was. Paul Guilfoyle as Captain James Brass, a Las Vegas Police Department homicide detective who does things by the book ‘Fatally so,’ Brass resumed. ‘Frank â€Å"Bozo† Bozigian, heir to the automotive floor mat fortune. Big guy. Always rents this same suite, every weekend. He was lying face down on the carpet with his head busted open against this gold-plated coffee table the size of my house. ‘The table was interesting. There were five lines of coke laid out on it, and a stack of $20 bills that would keep a stripper in business for five years. And most importantly, a chunk of meat with hair in it – from where this individual’s head came in contact with the corner.’ ‘An accident,’ Ottman interjected. ‘Yeah, except for one thing: Bozigian’s knuckles are all busted up. There’s blood under his fingernails. Maybe it’s relevant, maybe it’s not, but this guy was in a fight some time around when he died.’ ‘Sounds circumstantial,’ Ottman said. Brass ignored him and carried on, determined to get to the exciting part: ‘So I look around while I’m waiting for these two CSIs to show up, and I can’t figure it out. Looks like Bozigian just fell down and busted his head, right? Death by misadventure. Except he’s only got his drawers on. And when I look around, all I find is a fully packed suitcase in the bedroom. Where’s the clothes he walked in with? Where’s his shoes? ‘Only thing the victim has on is gold chains and a wristwatch, which is one of these Swiss automatics that sets you back 60 grand. Basically, I’m stumped.’ ‘Which doesn’t happen that much,’ Catherine said, and raised her glass to Brass. ‘Here’s to Christmas,’ Brass said, and they all drank. ‘Took us a while to get there,’ Nick said. ‘The other major scene, the gang fight, was a mess. Gil Grissom and the rest of us were working it for hours. When we finally got out of there, me and Catherine showed up at the Mediterranean looking like trash pickers.’ He laughed at the memory. Catherine smiled. It hadn’t been funny at the time. Nick went on: ‘There wasn’t any camera surveillance on that floor, but we got hotel security to secure video from all the elevators. Then we went into the suite. The deceased was a huge guy, twice my size, steroid muscle all over him. Shaved head, tattoo of a pole dancer on his back.’ ‘The tattoo probably scared the maid more than the blood,’ Catherine added. ‘No question about the head injury,’ Nick said. ‘He got it from the table. Scalp is split open with a furrow gouged out of the skin, and on the iron corner of the table there’s a corresponding scrap of tissue with identical hair on it. You could see at a glance this guy hit that table hard enough to kill him. But w e never guess at anything if we can prove it instead. So we take a set of one-to-one pictures of the whole scene. Then we collect the tissue, the hair, the money, the cocaine. Then it’s time to move the body.’ ‘Corpses are always heavy, but this guy weighed a ton,’ Catherine observed. Brass clapped Ottman on the shoulder. ‘It took all three of us to roll him over,’ he said. ‘If you’d been there, Ottman, it would have been easy.’ Nick stepped in to continue the story. ‘The front of him was more interesting, from a forensic perspective. He’d been bleeding, and it had pooled under him and glued him to the carpet, which is one reason he was so hard to move. His hands were clenched into fists. We found some blonde hair caught under a chain on his wrist. Several skin tags. They got pulled out hard.’ ‘He wasn’t blonde, needless to say,’ Catherine added. ‘So we bagged it. There was blood, maybe even tissue, under his fingernails, so we went to bag his hands, too, and that’s when we start realising the watch is a factor after all. I remember the make. It was a gold Vacherin Constantin automatic, and like Brass says, it was worth five figures. ‘But it didn’t fit his wrist. Had a dive-style bracelet on it – you fit those exactly to size on a watch like that, by adding or subtracting links with tiny screws. It was way too tight. So we opened the clasp and found blood on the underside of the bracelet. No lividity where it squeezed the skin, so as far as we can tell, the watch was put on after death. And get this – a patent fingerprint on the crystal. I mean you could see it in ordinary light, it was that clear, and printed in blood.’ Ottman cleared his throat, and Brass suddenly understood why they called him ‘The Otter’. When he swallowed, he looked like an otter eating clams. I t was perfect. William Petersen as Dr Gilbert ‘Gil’ Grissom, Catherine’s predecessor as CSI senior supervisor ‘If there was blood on the watch, did it correspond with the corpse?’ asked Ottman. ‘Did his hand fall under his head, or maybe his knuckles bled on it?’ ‘No,’ Catherine said. ‘But good question. His hands were down at his sides, palms downward, and the blood was all up under his head. His knuckles had stopped bleeding some time before death.’ ‘So the blood either came from the earlier fight, or it came from somebody else putting the watch on him after the guy was dead.’ Ottman nodded as he figured it out. Brass added: ‘That’s not all, though. It was on his right wrist, which makes sense if he’s a southpaw, but it wasn’t a left-handed watch.’ ‘So we looked around,’ Nick said, ‘collected whatever we could, and then I accompanied the body to the morgue. Bra ss and Catherine went to LVPD to file the preliminary report.’ ‘That was it until we had some more information,’ Brass said. ‘So back at Crime Central, I did a little research. Bozigian wasn’t unknown to the authorities.’ Brass paused. ‘Bozigian was from Glendale, California, but spent most of his time in Vegas, always at the best hotels. Looking at his rap sheet, he was one of these playboy types with a fat trust fund that didn’t go as far as he wanted it, so he was always looking for more money. But he was too lazy to actually earn it, so he went for the quick scores: private bookmaking, junk real estate, money laundering through clubs. Most of all, gambling. ‘He loved the cards, so even if he made any money, he lost it just as fast. Got into some wild bets. People got hurt. But he never did a day’s time.’ Nick counted off a few details on his fingers: ‘The assistant coroner determined Bozigian’s time of death to be an estimate of one to three hours prior to the maid finding his body. So I checked out the hotel’s elevator security footage, looking for any visitors to that floor during this time frame. ‘Sure enough, a guy gets in the elevator alone. He’s suspicious because he’s got a towel to his face. Can’t get a good look at him. He rode up from the parking garage, exits Bozigian’s floor. Five minutes later, he gets in the same elevator car and rides back down.’ ‘By now,’ Catherine interjected, ‘Grissom is working another scene, which is a jewellery-store robbery. Apparently this guy drove his monkey-brown Toyota truck straight through the front window of a store on the Strip, jumped out, grabbed what he could, and drove off. Not a real criminal mastermind. They have his plates and everything. Name is Henry Carson. There’s an APB out on the truck.’ Catherine said: ‘Brass and I have ten minutes free, so we decide to go crazy and get a cup of coffee at the place next door. Halfway across the police department parking lot, we see the truck. Same plates, same colour, the front all smashed in. ‘Out gets this little tiny man, smaller than me. And it looked like somebody ran him over with a train. Face pummelled. Blood all over his shirt. He sees Brass, walks up to him, and says, â€Å"I’m turning myself in. I killed a man named Frank Bozigian.† ‘ But how could one of these little people murder a 300lb man mountain with just their bare hands?