Trip To South China Part 1

14:49 4-30-10 (sadly I won't be able to keep the exact time for most of the trip)

With our backpacks bulging and our feet yearning for the open road our multicultural troop set off on our journey.  Here begins a tale of adventure, trains, Chinese food, and aching backs.  A tale that shall be remembered for a little while and then eventually forgotten by the majority of people who read it.

Like most adventures it starts off with the person writing them being rather bored.  Our train didn't leave till 11:30 which left me with plenty of time to kill, most of which was slain by eyeing my bulging backpack and watching anime.  I also wrote my mother a happy birthday e-mail.

Around 10, Clement, Sandra, and I set off from our dorm to make the perilous trip to the station.  Crossing paths with foul chaotic motor beats and a truck so over burdened with plastic bottles that it truly was a sight to see.  Through it all we had to dodge and twirl around other adventures like ourselves.

Once safely at our destination our trio parted ways to scrounge for food; the French heading towards the golden arches and me preferring a more local bread shop.  While my search for food yielded great success my beverage was not exactly what I had in mind, it was certainly milk tea but with a very strange after taste and small jelly rectangles in it. :(

After our meal had been consumed, we donned our overweight packs and headed to the highly infested hub of the train station.  Looking much like an airport terminal we found our terminal, produced our tickets, and descended via elevator to our grand carriage… maybe "grand" is an overstatement more like a 55 Chevy, over used but still in working order.

On the train we were joined by our local comrade and semi-guide code named "Charlie."  Our new completed group occupied four bunk beds on this ride, two on the bottom, and the other two in the middle.  We also had a small table near the window which we used to play cards on.

In fact, speaking of cards a large portion of our time was spent playing a game Charlie taught us.  Kind of like a cross between Rummy and Uno.  China and America clearly trumped the French Representative. :)

Now after some talking and food, we still have 14 more hours to go so if something happens I shall record this historical event in thy analogs. 15:30

19:50

Stuck in our beds the band of adventures summoned their courage and sang the latest songs of heroics from across the lands.  But even in their merry making we managed to scrounge around and come up with a high class meal of dehydrated noodles and boiler tap water.  But it's not as simple as it may first appear for the water is seemingly boiled in the pits of hell itself and even finding a way to carry your bottle is fraught with peril.

In the evening the brave adventures were passed by a local fruit seller who offered a tempting batch of apples and slices of "orange-like" fruit.  But the fowl fruit supplier was actually a witch and tried to trick the travelers with bad "orange-like" slices.  Angered by her trickery the group demanded compensation in the form of TOMATOS!!! Good night. 20:07

Reasonably Productive

2145 4-29-10

Well I guess I finally got over my lazy hump and actually started being productive today.  Wrapped a good portion of my research with Blue Bamboo, made decent progress on my ethics essay, more laundry got done, went out with Clement and Charlie (Chinese guy that we're going with on our trip) to buy some food for the long train ride, and attended our last HR class.

Man the day was gorgeous, great sun but cool and a light breeze.  Seems like every time I have to work from home it's perfect but then when I have the day off it's either really cold or raining (usually both).  I wonder if I could convince my company to have flexible work days based off of weather patterns hmm…

As I mentioned previously I wrapped up my research for one of the Indian markets and I got to see it doesn't look too good.  I think when I get back, if they haven't done it already, we will need to relook at the visibility of our business model.  It's not so serious that the project should be abandoned, but some of our requirements may need to be relooked at and maybe our approach should be changed as well.

So my final thoughts on HR class are this: did not live up to its potential.  We had a good subject (international HR has many problems, and is extremely complex), and a teacher with an excellent background.  But a combination of lack of depth and a lecturing teaching style really hampered my learning.  All we really did was point out some of the problems with HR, and talk about a few theorists that came up with why they are problems.  Well that's all super but honestly coming up with the problems is easy, I want to figure out ways of solving them, and we just didn't get there.  So far my favorite class is still marketing, at least he pushed us.

I've been pondering one of the problems of HR for awhile now though, and this especially comes up for westerners trying to lead a predominately typical Asian department or company.  In order to frame this problem I have to make broad generalizations, and it should be noted that every situation is a different.  But historically speaking the Western way of managing people is this, set the end objective, have a couple of mid-goals to reach, and let you get to it.  In the East it's much more of a hands-on management with the manager telling exactly how it should be done.

We can debate back and forth as to which one is better but honestly it doesn't matter and it doesn't really change anything.  What a company has to decide is what to do about it.  There are several options that first come into mind, either a. we have to train local employees on how to think creatively from a western perspective, or b. we have to train our expatriate managers how to manage a much more high maintenance employees.  Honestly a. is way too costly and unlikely to actually succeed, while b. is extremely frustrating to Western managers and may lead to increased expatriate assignment failures, also very costly.

I hypothesis that the easiest way to fix this problem is to create a more divided power hierarchy, because in Asia there is a much higher power disparity between workers and managers.  In order to compensate for this we simply make many more managers, essentially taking the same pie and slicing it up into smaller pieces.  This way a Western manager that would have maybe 20 employees directly beneath him under normal circumstances would now only have 4, and each of these four would have four people directly under them.  From there the manager will have an easier time directly delegating work to his four team leaders, using smaller goal horizons with an obvious focus on the large end objective.  The other managers can then turn around and directly manage the four other workers, providing the support they desire.  This has an added benefit in giving leadership experience to local staff for the eventual replacement of our expatriate.

Anyways just a thought.

Alright I'm done, I've got to get packed because our train leaves at 11:30am tomorrow and I want to be able to sleep in if I can.  O I should mention that you won't hear from me for awhile, I won't be back till May 8^th.  Essentially what I'm trying to say is that I won't have my computer with me so I can't post on my blog.  I'll try to keep a written journal while I'm gone and then spend the following Sunday and Monday writing them up.

So… until then have a good life.

Lunch with Leo and Movie Opinions

2141 4-28-10

How can one resist Barry White?  But I digress…

So today I just kind of wallowed around in my room.  I did some things though, mopped the floor, started prepping for my case interviews that I'll hopefully be taking in Nov/Dec, and went on a nice walk.  But still I felt pretty mobile-impaired today.

I guess the highlight of the day was going out to lunch with Leo, the Chinese guy I met at Yiyi's wedding (who drives a Cadillac, it's very swanky).  He took me to a local mall (the one with Carrefour inside) to a really nice restaurant and treated me to some awesome food.  I think we had ever kind of major meat except maybe deer, there was some chicken fried rice, slices of goose, duck, pork (with some nice mustard sauce), and then a pot full of spicy beef.  Along with this we a veggy plate that an assortment of… well vegetables but it included broccoli, which made me super happy!!  Also had some pretty interesting tea, had like sugar cane, carrots, and some other stalk like plant, served cold and over all pretty tasty.  And in typical Chinese fashion he paid for everything!!!!! The whole meal was like 210RMB, $30, a massive tab in China, though more common in Shanghai.

Anyways he's pretty cool, his English isn't too bad either (on the edge of conversational), and he's rather funny.  As I suspected he told me that Yiyi had reached out to him at the wedding and asked if he would be willing to talk with me, which I think is really sweet, if I was in her situation I don't know if I would have the mental/emotional capacity to worry about some foreign kid that I invited to my wedding, I know she was super preoccupied.  He also mentioned that she referred to me as her "best friend" which means a lot.  He's also convinced that a good life decision would be to get a Chinese girlfriend… maybe not this trip, if I get a long assignment here though it'll certainly become a strong priority. 

No worries, he suggested I try and find one that only spoke Chinese which would force me to learn the language, but I knew how much that would piss my family off and insisted that she would in fact have to know English so she could have a relationship with my family.  Though running the scenario of a non-English speaking wife through my head did make me chuckle.  I can see my parents in 10 years having this convoluted smattering of Chinese in their vocabulary.  Phrases like "WE WANT GRAND CHILDREN!!", "STOP SPEAKING CHINESE!!", and "It's your fault we never see our poor son" are the first things that come to mind.  Just joking. :P

Let's see… oh ya so I've been watching movies (about one a night or so) and I figured I would post some recommendations and a quick blub on my thoughts.  I'm not really going to give a summary, you can look on IMDB for those.

1.       The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – I consider this a kind of an art film in a weird way. It took me a little bit to buy into it but once I did it was a nice little ride.  Not a film that's going to alter your life or anything, but a good way to spend an hour or two.

2.       Beowulf – I love the story, I really didn't like their attempt at CG.  The art style was semi-realistic with this odd cartoony outline to the characters.  This movie might have been better if it had a bit more of a 300 style to it.

3.       Shutter Island – MUCH better than I thought it would be.  A very nice psychological thriller, with a nice twists and turns.  I had thought it would be a horror flick but instead it was just pleasantly disturbing.

4.       Summer Wars – An anime movie from the creators of A Girl Through Time, great artistic style that breaks away from the stereotypical "every girl has massive tits" that plagues the genre.  I also really like their idea of the World of OZ, a nice futuristic environment, like a modern MMO/Facebook taken two steps forward technologically.  Sometimes what they were able to do in the World of OZ kind of bent the limits of how much information one can input into a computer via a keyboard, but honestly, just enjoy the ride and don't worry about it.

5.       Thirst (Bakjwi) – a Korean vampire film that one of my friends called "mind blowing."  I'm not sure I would go that far, but it was good.  I haven't see any Korean films so this was an interesting first time experience.  This film is certainly not a happy one, but an odd mangled love story that might make you wonder about the suffering that goes on behind the day to day mask we all wear.

6.       Swordfish – this came out in 2001 and I remember wanting to see it but never got the chance.  I liked the experience, a little over the top, certainly when it comes to any scene involving hacking.  It should be noted that hackers don't have nice 3-D representational graphics depicting their code, it doesn't matter how awesome your code is, or what super encrypted data base your breaking into, code is code is code.  Anyways nice actions flick with a tried and true story line.

I'll be watching more I promise and from time to time I'll post an update on it.

Night.

Maybe It's Not Viable

2009 4/27/10

I should first issue an apology.  My last post indicated that if you hadn't reached out to me lately that somehow you were not a true friend.  Quite obviously this is false, and a selfish thing to say on my part.  I was merely a little down.  I fully realize that everyone is super busy with their lives (as I am with mine) and it's hard to reach out and contact people when you have to deal with everything closer to home.  I'm sorry.

So today I was 30 minutes late to work.  I don't think I've been late to work before without a 24 hour notice… ever.  I might have been like 5mins late to my last internship, but that's probably about the extent of it.  I think what happened was that I messed with my alarm over the weekend so that I could sleep in and I forgot to reset it, and I forgot to turn my alarm program back on my computer as well.  Luckily my boss didn't seem to care much, but still I hate being late.  I'm the guy that shows up at the party 10mins early, when the person throwing the party clearly expects people to show up an hour late.  I have to literally force myself to be late to things, and I mean I will like literally sit by my window looking out at my car wondering when I can leave so I can be appropriately on time.  It's rather sad.

Anyways I wrapped up my research on Manila today, not to say that it's done, just merely got to the point where we got a clear enough picture and any attempt to get a clearer one would be a waste of effort.  Sadly it's not looking good; there are just not enough chain stores in these markets to support our business model.  I've now moved on to Delhi to see if the data is similar.  If it is we might be facing a serious problem and will need to retune our business model.

We also had a huge discussion about EQ and AQ.  What?  You've never heard of EQ and AQ?  No worries; neither had I.  But the terms had come up in each of my classes and suddenly our HR manager brought it up as well and I finally had to ask "what the hell is EQ and AQ?"  They are in fact very similar to IQ, but instead of intelligence they measure Emotion and Adversity.  I'll let Jen (Jen is Tara, my first girlfriend's mother, and a licensed psychologist) explain the rest:

"EQ refers to how "smart" a person is about people, their feelings and what really makes people work. People who have high EQ are thought or presumed to be pretty sensitive to the emotional climate and needs of people. AQ is known by the body of research know as resiliency theory. It tries to answer why some people come out of horrid conditions seemingly ok while others are destroyed.

People who are more resilient are presumed to have a high AQ Score - they have some adversity intelligence that explains their inherent "survivability". Social scientists are trying to measure these. EQ somewhat successfully AQ is much harder..."

Anyways so Niko (my boss) and I were discussing why this is so important here and we believe it's because how you are able to control your emotions is a big part of retaining people's respect.  The more you're able to control your emotions, and the better you are at influencing other's is an important skill with a Chinese company.  That's our theory at least.

So anyways I took a break from writing this post in order to go out with some friends I just made, a Chinese guy named Michele (which I believe I mentioned in a previous post) and his friend.  Needless to say he's "interesting."  We had a few drinks at a bar and listened to some local business men sing, which was pretty funny.  So I'm going to try and introduce them to some of the other kids, I think they'll get along quite well.

Nighty night.  J

 

A Wasted Day

2024 4-26-10

Well after yesterday today felt like kind of a waste.

Some things got done like laundry, started the final essay for my ethics class, got some groceries and such.  I think I should have done more though, I have a book on case studies that I should be working on and I'm sure there are English Networking events here in Shanghai.  I should be looking for them.

I guess I was just kind of glum today.  It's not as though I'm not enjoying my time here, I am, I just feel like there's something else I could be doing or someone I could find that would help me enjoy it even more.  Kind of hard to find that when I'm sitting in my room though, so I need to continue my exploring.

I also just became acutely aware of the fact that nobody from my college has reached out to me to me except for Kris my roommate next year, and Annie the current Hendrix Culinary Club present asking for advice.  I guess what they say about out of sight out of mind is true.  Though in all honesty it doesn't really surprise me very much, I never really spent much time trying to make friends in college because I was almost always focused on my work in some form or another (even spending time with Amy was hard at times).  It is nice that I'm in contact with Boos (and Trang as well) every other day, having one friend that seeks you out is worth a thousand that don't.  Instead of bitching though I guess I myself should try and reconnect with people, though I have tried with a few, there are some people that I should reach out to again.

I made myself a sandwich today.  It was awesome.  I got some nice bread, a banana, peanut butter, and this crunchy chocolate filled candy that was made out of the same thing they make Nutella out of.  Smashed it all together and was like NOM NOM NOM!!  … end of story

Yiyi's Wedding

2245 4-25-10

Well today was certainly interesting, I’m super tempted to skip to Yiyi’s wedding but I’ll refrain and tell you about all of it.

Our Business Ethics class ended today, didn’t really even have an ending though, more like just kind of stopped mid-sentence. I’m not really sure I’m convinced you can learn ethical standards by getting a brief outline of what some people thought on various ethical areas. I think you need to either super specialize on a specific type of ethics such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and dive deeply into that subject by reading the actually essays written on such a topic, or instead have students engage in a lot of ethical dilemma cases and discuss the merits of their decisions, and the consequences of their actions. In the end though I think
I did fine in the class, I have a paper to write and that’s about it.

After Ethics I tootled on over to our HR class to catch the last hour of it (our class overlapped) and to take part in the class birthday party which was pretty cool. There was a cake, some music, speeches (yes short speeches), and people sang songs as well. Once that was all wrapped up one of the MBA girls (don’t ask me her name, I forget, though I have an e-mail from her around here somewhere) took me to buy Yiyi’s wedding gift card money holder well wishing envelope thingy, along with some cough drops. She was very sweet and definitely got me out of a bind.

I then went back to my room to prepare for the wedding. One of things that needed to be done was to write Yiyi a letter to go with her present (which in China is money, not very happy about this because to me this is very insulting, but that’s the custom). I’m going to go ahead and post it here, but realize who my audience is and that we talk about things a little bit differently then how I normally would.

Dear Yiyi,

I may have only known you for a month or two, but our friendship will last a life time. Today you’ve taken
your first steps down a wonderful road with your new husband, while sometimes you may get to walk down a nice gentle hill, and other times you may have to climb a steep cliff, but through it all, I believe, your gentle kindness will allow you to keep going and fulfill your dreams. The way may not always be clear but I know you’ll persevere, keep your mind working and your heart open and eventually find your way. I truly wish you the best of luck on your marriage and I hope it is one full of fun and happiness.

Even though other’s may take advantage of it try to keep your soft heart, I think this is one of your best traits and one that you should be very proud of. I may not always be able to be there for you physically, but keep a small part of my soul in your pocket and you’ll always find that I am willing to talk with you about any problem you may have. Even if 20 years have pasted and our memories are faded, you’ll always be welcomed into my home.

Have fun in Japan, I’ll see you when you get back.

Forever your crazy friend,
Kevin Watford

Sadly I realize now there were several mistakes that I had over looked because I forgot to read it out loud :-/ I corrected the big ones now, but I kind of feel bad that they’re in her letter. Hopefully she’ll forgive me.
After this was done, printed, stamped, and stuffed into the envelope along with 400RMB ($58), which is the normal amount for a friend to give, maybe a little on the high end, but I’m not sure, the rules change based off of the person’s status and I’m hoping the Poor Student status wins out over the Rich American status. I then put on my black dress shirt, and pants, with my red and white tie. A spray of cologne later and I was out the door. I was soon joined by Yierm downstairs (I had invited her to come with me) and we headed towards the station.

It should be noted that while Chinese weddings are similar in some respect to Western weddings they differ in many areas. The first of which was the fact that the wedding itself was held in a hotel and not in a temple of some sort as we tend to see in America, which now that I’m participated in the wedding it actually makes more sense to do it this way. But that’ll become apparent as I explain.

Yierm and I hung out around the entrance to the ball room just chit chatting amongst ourselves, though it wasn’t long until I was summoned. Did I ever mention that Yiyi does that? She doesn’t ever say “Hey Kevin can you come over here for a second?” instead she uses the phrase closer to “Kevin come to me.” This is of course likely do to a mistranslation then any actually “royal attitude” that she may have but I still find it amusing. Anyways this “summon” came in the form of a small Chinese woman beckoning us to follow her saying the bride wished to see us.

We followed her into a side room and their Yiyi was in full wedding dress having the finishing touches put onto her hair. She was gorgeous, though she wore a heavy burden of stress in her eyes, and she thanked me for coming and gave me a hug. I told her all would be well, and wished her luck. I was then dismissed.
From there Yierm and I hung out once again outside of the room until eventually we decided to try and find a seat. Yierm suggested that we should just sit anywhere, since that seems to be the custom in Korea and there didn’t seem to be any name cards around the tables. Luckily the groom found us and saved us a grievous mistake, we did in fact have assigned seats (the name cards came later) and guess where we were? No not in the back like I had expected, we were in the front, no, the very front, at the same table as the bride and groom.

I was stunned. Now maybe it’s not as significant in China as it is in the West, but somehow I doubt it. The only other people that sat at our table were Yiyi and the groom’s closest friends (the parents sat at table flanking the table). To be included in Yiyi’s wedding was touching, to be invited to sit at the head table, I was speechless, but the words “truly honored” come strongly to mind. I’m not ever sure if I’ll be able to properly explain to her how much this meant to me.

So we sat at this table in the front of the room, while around us the table gradually began to fill with Chinese friends and family who must have been wondering why the hell there was a white kid sitting at the head table. Needless to say it was a little awkward, but after about 10min the same little Chinese woman came to us and we were once again summed, this time to take pictures with the groom and bride. At this point though, Yierm decided that she needed to go because she double booked her schedule and was suppose to meet someone for language lessons so she decided to leave before the ceremony got started. ... *cough* I’ll leave it at that.

Luckily I was introduced to Leo, a Chinese guy, who also sat next to me at the table, and was kind enough to explain to me what was going on throughout the ceremony. He also happened to be really cool and taught me really useful words in Shanghainese (the local dialect… in Shanghai) such as “excellent,” “what you’re saying is bull shit,” and “let’s kill him/her (if said with a smile, this is seen as humorous).” We hit it off great and I’ll probably be having drinks with him on Wednesday. He also lives really close to be university.

Anyways back to the wedding. During the wedding drinks are provided as well as your food and it’s perfectly acceptable to eat and drink during the ceremony. There is in fact three ceremonies, I’ll refer to them as the White, Blue and Red Ceremony.

The first is the White Ceremony, and in many respects it’s similar to a Western wedding… kind of. Groom stands at the front, and after some time the bride walks down the aisle with her bride’s maid, who also holds the rings. No father escort, no ring bearer, no little girls throwing flowers, and in fact no best men or multiple bride’s maids (only the one). Anyways the bride gets to the groom, they exchange vows, and kiss. Ever seen that really ugly dude go after the hot chick and she’s like cranes her neck back in a desperate attempt to avoid the oncoming smooches? I have to admit that’s exactly what Yiyi looked like when the groom tried to kiss her, I’m not really sure why, but I intend to find out. Maybe it was general shyness about kissing in public, or maybe she wanted the perfect position for the camera, I have no idea but it was funny.

Afterwards they cut the cake (which we never ate… I’m not exactly sure what is done with it, another thing I should ask), they also fill a glass with wine which is stacked on a pyramid made out of other glasses and have it flow over until all the glasses are filled. And then… well then the bride leaves and the groom has a speech or something (things are a little blurred together I admit).

You may be asking yourself why I call them the White, Blue and Red Ceremony. You know ladies how much it sucks having to put on that wedding dress? Imagine having to take it off and put on another dress with a different hair style and everything. Ya that’s right, after some time of eating and what not, another ceremony began but this time with Yiyi in a blue formal dress! At this point I think the two families came together and took pictures and speeches were given. I’m not entirely sure, like I said the whole thing was long, and it kind of all has blurred together in my mind. O at the end Yiyi played a game with a lot of the teenagers on stage, kind of like when our brides throw the flowers behind her, but instead they held hands in a circle and rotated around Yiyi until Yiyi eventually said with her eyes closed to stop. Whoever was in front of her won and got the flowers (though I think they were later reclaimed for some other part of the ceremony to follow).

So after that I found out that we all had numbers underneath our plates and we were going to play a raffle game! O fun. So the first person was picked and they talked in Chinese and all of that fun fun, the girl got a small bear. The second number was called… the second number was my number. Here I am, the only white person in like a five mile radius and I have to walk to the front of the whole audience to answer questions. Of course the first question out of the guys mouth was “can you speak Chinese?” and of course I had to say no.

Luckily Yiyi’s bridesmaid saved me (yes she is also the two-timing hussy I’ve mentioned in other posts) and acted as a translator. I also used like the little bit of Chinese I knew to answer questions as best I could (with moderate success I’m proud to say). So what did I win after that embarrassing spectacle? Why Mr. Wang of course! Mr. Wang is a stuffed new year’s Tiger and also happens to have the same name as my Chinese family name (Wang). I’ll see if I can upload a picture of him at the bottom of this post. By the way it’s also considered very lucky to actually win one of these prizes, I feel doubly lucky that I won a prize with my surnamed stamped onto its forehead.

After more prizes were given away the third ceremony started, and sure enough Yiyi came out in a different dress, a bright gold and red one with a very traditional hair style. Stuffed happened, speeches were given, I think like candles were exchanged by the bride and groom and they used them to light a giant candle of their own. After that Yiyi and the groom finally sat down and had some dinner. They also went around the room several times and had drinks with everyone. It was at this point that I used my new found Shanghainese to inform her that I would like to kill her groom to the delight of everyone at the table. She glared at Leo and informed me that he was a very bad man, and was even crazier than me, but this was all in jest, even the groom was laughing.

Alright so I’m going to go ahead and wrap this post up. Long story short I gave Yiyi her present, and we had a nice intimate moment towards the end where she really wanted to thank me for coming and said how important I was to her. She in fact called me her little brother, which I gotta tell ya kind of brings a tear to my eye. I’ve lost two sisters in my life already, to have a new one that I know I will eventually have to leave is a little heart breaking for me. I think that may be something that only I really fully understand, sorry.

Once the party was over Leo took me back to campus, which was awesome because it meant I didn’t have to find my way back to the station, nor did I have to travel for over an hour and half to get home. He also drives a new Cadillac which was awesome.

Yiyi said she’ll send me pictures from the wedding, in a couple of weeks.

The Day of HR

1851 4-24-10

I was up by 4:30 this morning;, there was no reason, no yearning desire to be productive, no beautiful lover on my balcony, no loud neighbors, hell I didn't even have to go pee.  I just woke up, and there I was.  It was during this time that I ran out of water, which while having a sore throat, really sucks, and it wasn't till around 7:30 that I was able to get my heads on some of this precious liquid.  That's four hours of suffering ladies and gents, four hours!!

Then around 8:30 our HR class began and I got to be there, hurrah.  Most of the time was spent on learning about recruitment (sadly nothing I could really use in my upcoming job search) and the concept of "international teams" within a corporate structure.  But toward the end I started fading pretty fast because of my lack of sleep and from the fact that my nose and throat were getting worse so I left about 30 min early.  Even with my early leave I was in class for over 7 hours.

I also held my first English Language corner class today for the MBA students.  Two people showed up.  O well, two pupils will allow me to better focus on them, kind of strange though.  I'm not too sure I would want to practice English on my Saturday either.  The two guys that showed up seemed nice though, one owns his own travel agency (which he just started in January) and the other is in sales within in a giant Chemical firm. 

Mr. Travel's English is actually fairly good, so I'm just going to focus on pronunciation with him, and Mr. Sales just started learning last year, even still though his English is actually rather advanced for the amount of time he's had, at least it's far better than my Spanish was even after two semesters of class.  It will be more difficult to teach him because I have no idea how to actually teach English, but we'll figure out something.  Maybe just having simple conversations will help move things into the right direction.

Ok I'm going to watch a movie and then I'm going to pass out.  Take care everyone.

Might Be Getting Sick Again

2248 4-23-10

Sorry I got as far as putting the time stamp on this post and then I started reading Nietzsche's wiki page.  I've always really liked him.

Anyways so today was another day at work, I officially asked the CEO if I could be assigned additional assignments, if nothing else to merely break up the monotony of the current assignment.  I also feel like I've begun to wallow in this current assignment, just kind of rolling around in it day in and day out but not really producing anything worth mentioning.  Sure I'm making slow progress, but I send out like 10 e-mails and then I sit… not because I couldn't actually do more, in reality if I was honest with myself, I could move onto the other markets. 

A monkey could as well, to be frank I'm not challenged, and even though this is something I haven't done before I don't feel like I'm truly learning anything new at this point.  I miss Kim (my former boss) in many ways because even though we worked independently on many issues we were still a two man team and she was always showing me how to do things and why they were being done this way, which allowed for me a kind of frame work to discuss and challenge them.  But the market research I'm doing now has been challenged, we essentially agree on the course of action, and now it just has to be done… and I don't want to do it.  I want to move on to the next problem, come up with a solution, send it off, get the results back from the current problem, make the next move, get the results back from the other project, and move in a similar fashion.

Please don't start; yes I know everyone has to be in the trenches, yes I know its valuable experience doing different aspects.  I get it, if I didn't get it, I wouldn't even be working in the internship in the first place.  That doesn't mean I can complain about it on my own blog.  I think I would make a good apprentice but a terrible rank and file employee.

Other than that I went to class.  And that's pretty much it.  O I was talking to David today via e-mail and came up with another example of this whole "corporate video game" except I took into a slightly new direction.

Let's say for example you have a golfing simulator (free), one in which gamers could either pay a little bit of money for a set of golf clubs, or could in fact craft their golf clubs from scratch using your companies design software.  Your stock clubs that players could buy should be designed as non-optimal, in order to increase the advantage of those that choose to make their own. You could reasonably expect around 100,000 players to play your game on the low end.  Maybe 5% of those may actually be truly competitive.  That's about 5,000 players.  In game rewards could be given for winning golf tournaments, which would also increase the competitiveness of the game and the chances of people actually trying to design their own clubs.  Of those maybe only 30% of them would choose to try and craft their own golf clubs.  That's about 1,500 players designing golf clubs.  Players should be able to sell their designs to other players who might be willing to take them and modify and then resell.  This gives players a way of making in-game money, as well as providing a much large base of less ambitions designers ways of making improvements to other people's clubs or maybe only one club.

What do you have?  You have 1,500 players crafting unique clubs, and maybe around 70,000 players running simulations with them.  If you can craft a piece of software sophisticated enough to be able to understand the true differences in design and allow for realistic simulations this should give you around 100 possible designs that could work in real life.  Of those maybe about 5 sets would be truly great.  You could then turn around and give large prizes to the annual winners of your design contest, and use their designs as actual blue prints for your companies brand new set of clubs.

In theory, based on your software, you should be able to get closer and closer to an optimal club design, giving you a competitive advantage of your competitors.  As well as giving you a marketing avenue visa vi your game which is already targeted towards golfers.

Now this is just a rough idea, but hopefully you begin to see how video games can maybe utilized in a corporate world.  It would not be the suit and tie world of the current professional, it would be the world of the masses, where 13 year-old kids could just as easily give you your next multi-billion dollar product as your specialized engineering department.  People are dumb on average, but you place enough of them on any given task and someone that may be worthless at everything else can have a chance to produce something great.  The trick is being able to convince them to do it, and recognizing it when you see it.

O ya I'm starting to get a sore throat, hopefully it'll go away soon, but somehow I since impending sickness on the horizon, joy.

"Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else."

Planning a Trip

2339 4-22-10

Man I’m tired. While I got some work done in the morning, the majority of the day’s activities took place after lunch.

Clement, Sandra, and I will be going on a trip from April 30th all the way until May 8th. While at the moment the name of the three cities we’ll be visiting eludes me I know it’ll focused around the south part of China. During that time I highly doubt you’ll hear from me but I plan on still writing my blog and will post all of the entries when I get back.

Anyways so off we (Clement, Sandra, Liang’s roommate, and myself) went today to pick up tickets for the train ride. I found out that the ride is going to take us 24hours!! I guess that’ll give me time to conduct Clement’s and Sandra’s interviews. The tickets cost us about 350RMB a piece which is around $51.

With that accomplished we walked back to campus and stopped at the local fruit market (which I had somehow not visited yet), I’m definitely going to have to come back here. My hookah bowl also came in so we picked it up from the main gate, so no more carving apples!! It should be noted that I went through three apples last night trying to carve another bowl, and I never did succeed. Every time I tried to fit it onto the hookah the apple would split in half. -_-

One we got back I dropped off myself and went out again to meet Yiyi all the way out into the middle of Pudong, which is the east part of Shanghai (I live on the far west side). We had a great time, she formally gave me the invitation to her wedding, and we talked a lot about life. Apparently this girl who she’s been having problems with (the “two timing hussy” that I referred too in a previous post) is causing more problems.

Yiyi has been very sick and this girl made her go with her to buy her bride’s maid dress where upon she argued with the people for over four hours! Afterwards Yiyi became much sicker. Yiyi is also worried that this girl will do something to embarrass her during her wedding, hopefully this will not come to pass, but never the less I offered my services to “take care of the problem” if this girl starts making problems. :P I can just see me, this unknown white kid, grabbing her by her hair and dragging her out of the wedding. Now wouldn’t that be fun!!

Coming back home a guy asked to talk with me after I left my station and was walking back towards campus, and apparently he’s also from ECUST! We talked back and forth while we walked, exchanged numbers, and agreed to meet for drinks when we both had a free moment. He seems cool, and his English is pretty good. He is very fond of the phrase “Oh My God!!” He’s also a big Michael Jackson fan, which is why I think he chose Michael as his Western name, but that’s just a guess.

Alright sorry this is a little too short, I really should start flushing these out more, but I have work tomorrow and I’m super exhausted.

Got a Hair Cut

1854 4-21-10

Well today was spent mostly trying to answer e-mails and cleaning my room.  Did some laundry, mopped the floor, that kind of thing.  I also a bit of a problem pop up, Deloitte (one of their partners in fact) e-mailed me back and asked what exactly was a I researching and who was I researching it for.  Well now I'm in a little bit of a bind.  Deloitte has the information I need, and now I have to decide on how to get it. 

On one hand I can lie and tell them it's for class and make up some paper that I'm writing.  But… there are some major risks with that.  One is that my name is highly public on the internet, you can basically google my name and find me pretty easily.  Second I've had contact with this company in the past and will continue to have contact with them in the future as I start looking for my first job.  Third this puts me and my current employer in ethical jeopardy.

All of those risks are not outweighed by merely finding out the data I need for this assignment.  Instead I'm going to go with option two, merely tell the truth and hope that he'll help me out.  Something like this (which thanks goes out to Booz for writing this for me):

"I'm currently a student intern at Blue Bamboo, and my task is to do research on markets that have a high amount of convience stores and QSRs as part of a much larger project looking at transit systems.  I believe a great company like Deloitte has access to the information my task needs.  However, I am concerned about a conflict of interest in using information provided by Deloitte for the potential benefit of my current company. I definitely do not want to jeopardize the business practices of both Deloitte and my company, because I am highly interested in obtaining a full time position with Deloitte once I return to the U.S. and finish my bachelor's degree."

We'll see just how well this actually goes over.

O I also finally heard back from Kim (my previous boss), apparently she is extremely swamped because my other boss at the company walked out!!  I guess for her that's good because as a consultant they now need her more than ever.  But of course for Kim it still sucks because she's already worked there for around eight months now which is much longer then she usually likes to work for a client.  And on top of that the other consultant I worked with has breast cancer!  :( very sad

Spent also a large amount of time talking to Booz and Trang online, it's nice that I have them to converse with, it helps ease the loneliness.  I also continue to give Trang "shock therapy" in her adjustment to my personality.  My perverse nature takes some getting used to before you can get to "me," hopefully Trang will be willing to play long enough to get there.

Once I was done with lunch I went on another adventure, to the barber!!  Trying to order my lunch is a little hard, trying to tell someone how to cut my hair is nigh impossible.  Sooo I didn't.  I just kind of walked in, made scissor cutting hand gesture on my head, and just kind of nodded with whatever they asked me.

First they had four women near the front of the store; one of them took me to the back, put on a facemask, and sat me down at a sink and began washing my hair.  She even scratched my head, it was nice… ^_^  Afterwards she took me to my hair stylist, sat me down, and with her job done she went back to the front.

My stylist was pretty hip, in fact almost all of them were.  Very well dressed mimicking something you might see on a runway with extremely well groomed hair (they look similar then the people at the Avon Salon).  All in all I felt much more comfortable in his hands then I did with most people that I allow to cut my hair in the US, even if I couldn't communicate with him I knew he probably wasn't going to let me walk out of there with crappy looking hair.

The fun started as soon as he realized I couldn't speak Chinese, and also didn't care how he cut my hair.  By the time I was done I think I had everyone in the entire place come and look at how he was cutting this curly red hair.  At one point had eight people surrounding me!  There's was also much laughing and joking, I'm sure most of which was at my expensive but hey that's part of it and I'm glad I got to be part of making someone else's day just a little bit more interesting. 

I'm also much more willing to be laughed at when my hair actually comes out looking pretty decent (I even got Ping Pong approval and she's our local French fashion guru), and I only paid 15RMB which is about $2.18.  $2.18!!!!!!!!!!!  I almost wish my hair would grow faster.  I did go ahead and go against custom and tipped my stylist, but I just couldn't help it.  A risk that paid off.

Today is also the second day of our HR class.  Sadly the professor is a lecturer, and even though I like him I'm not a fan of his teaching style.  I'm also not a fan of people talking in class!  *grumble grumble*

Nothing to Write

2032 4-20-10

Hrmm I don't really have much to write.

I did finally get my pictures from the park uploaded; you can check them out at this link:

http://s64.photobucket.com/albums/h175/skal42/China/China%20-%20Century%20Park/

Most of the day was sent sending out e-mails.  I decided that my current way of searching out information just wasn't working and that maybe sending out e-mails was a better way to go.  We'll see if anyone actually responds.

Today was also my first English Lunch at work.  Gotta say it's going to be a tough.  For one I've never tried to teach people English, nor do I know Chinese.  But the real challenge lies in just trying to get them to be a little bit more confident and to actually speak. 

I think I need to change my approach, I had thought they might have had a little bit more of the language under their belt and I was just going to help them learn how to converse with expressions and lingo.  What I'm finding out is that we should actually start with just simply learning how to actually "speak."  I don't mean as in passing air through your vocal cords but to actually pronounce and articulate the words that you are saying.  Much like you would if you were a public speaking.  I also will need to find a way of making sure everyone is speaking equally and that one person is dominating the entire conversation… ^_^

Anyways that's all I have today, enjoy the pictures.

I Sucked on a Chicken's Foot and Gave a HR Presentation

2207 4-19-10

So I didn't get a ring, I didn't get my hair cut, and I didn't get Yiyi's wedding present.  I did suck on a chicken foot though.

Liang (my Chinese friend who went out with me today) said it would be better to buy the ring online because it would be much cheaper.  Well I couldn't argue with that and I did in fact a top to my hookah which was much cheaper than I expected but I couldn't really find a ring that I wanted, so I'll just have to keep looking.  Also I found out that it would be very strange to give Yiyi anything but cash at her wedding.  This made me a little sad because I wanted to get her a necklace or something.  But it's her wedding and I would rather her not feel awkward or anything because she's been having a pretty tough time recently.

For lunch Liang, Clement, and I went to a hot pot restaurant, which was fairly tasty.  Basically it's a giant pot of intense flavored soup with a hacked up chicken in it, and you then order some other vegetables or beef and throw it in there.  I would have loved it so much more if there wasn't a bone fragment in every bite, but that's just part of it I guess.  O I also tried to eat a chicken foot, Liang said that you just put it in your mouth and nipple on it and then just spit out the bone.  Well after about 40 seconds of it rolling around in my mouth I finally had a chicken toe nail scratch my mouth for the last time and I was done.  I TRIED!!

For the rest of the day I worked with Clement on our presentation which we gave in class today.  Kind of bummed that I had to spend my day off preparing for class (and going to it), really wished I could have spent more time outside… well ok it was raining but I could have at least had time to clean my room!

Class was a little boring I have to admit, I like our teacher (who's from Germany) a lot as a person but his teaching style is just a little boring.  He lectures instead of involving the class more and that of course just drives me nuts.  After an hour though it was time for our presentation and luckily I was in one of my "moods" so I didn't feel anxious or anything.  In fact I think Clement and I rocked it.

Our slides looked pretty good, and I think we did a good job of using energy in our presentation.  I will say though it might not be a great idea to slide across the floor when it's super slippery in the middle of a presentation… but I did it anyways.  I'll probably have a bruise tomorrow from where I fell.  ^_^  It was fun though and I think the teacher was glad that we put so much effort into making it interesting.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Today I Wore a Bow and Carved an Apple

2244 4-18-10

2nd to last day of class and I wore a bow on my head. A large part of me wants to end the post right here.

Anyways so the reason behind this is multifold, one being that the bow belongs to PingPong who let it to me for the party we went to at Louie’s a couple of days ago. The theme was tacky or flashy and I had been working all day and just didn’t feel like going out and buying clothes for this one event. Well of course the others thought this would not due and so PingPong let me her bow to wear for the party, which I thought was very pretty, and I also sported a nice small stick-on jewel on my forehead (which I decided to wear the entire time at the park the following day, I would have been curious to know what the random Chinese people thought about that).

So I thought to myself, “Hey you should probably bring this to class so you can give it back to her.” But then I was walking to class and suddenly the image of me walking into class with it on hit me and I thought it was pretty funny image. Well… why shouldn’t I? I mean it’s not like I’m ever going to see each other again, they would probably get a laugh out of it, and what the hell I began to get curious as to what exactly their reaction would be.

Well I got to admit it was pretty fun. I didn’t mention it, I didn’t mess with it, and I acted perfectly normal. To their credit they held it in pretty well but I could see that every once in awhile when the teacher would look at me her mouth would twitch into a grin, and when I would talk to the students they were having a hard time holding back their laughter.

Well come to find out one of the girls had also left another bow at Louie’s and he had brought it to class to give to them (o and by the way almost all of the girls were absent for some reason, so I never did give it back to PingPong). Well Clement snatched up that bow and pretty soon there were two of us sporting them. Eventually the teacher just had to ask, “so is this some part of Western culture?” Man we all burst out laughing. Louie quickly explained that no it wasn’t and that most Westerners were not like me at all. ^_^

Life is serious. We all have serious problems: working hard at school and work, wanting a good job or even if we already have one we want one that is better, trying to find a husband/wife or trying to make the one we have work, and constant new problems always arising. I’ll be damn if I lose my since of humor. Doing little crazy things helps me hang on to it.

Got some lunch after class with the few of us that showed up for class and ate at the Mao. But they were talking mostly in French and I had some things I wanted to check on so I left after I finished my meal. One of things I wanted to do was see what the hell was wrong with my internet because it had just been really slow and supposedly I was supposed to be on a 2Mbit connection and it seemed more like a 56k.

I called up their 10000 number and spoke with someone who said that they would have a techy call me back, and of course when he did he didn’t speak a word of English, super. So I considered the matter over and done with and I would just have to deal with it. But no… about an hour later suddenly there was a knocking at my door and there was some guy from China Mobile standing outside my door, and of course he didn’t speak English either. Well luckily Nathan lives three doors from me so I popped over to his dorm real quick and got him to come translate for me. But long story short I don’t think he really did anything but tell me I might be over using my bandwidth. *grumble grumble* ANYWAYS Clement and I worked on our presentation a little bit and I watched some shows on my computer.

But anyways I figured I wouldn’t be able to replace my bowl on my hookah anytime soon which sucked so I decided I just needed to make my own out of an apple. Luckily it was kind of easy, went out and bought a kitchen knife and a spoon from the school store, picked up a couple of apples and went to work making me a small bowl. Found a good apple to do it with too, not to soft but workable and really fat providing me plenty of meat to work with. Overall it worked really well and Clement and I hung out on my balcony for about 40 min and just played with my laser and smoked. It was a lot of work but worth it if you only do it once in awhile. After he left I watched Shutter Island which was a lot better than I expected it to be. I thought it was going to be a horror film but really it was more suspenseful then anything else, but disturbing. I wish the new Alice and Wonderland had taken more of this approach instead of its wish washy stance.

Just got a text from Yiyi she just came back from the hospital, I’m now super worried about her and hopefully I’ll go visit her tomorrow. Life is serious.

Louie's House Warming Party and Century Park

 2127 4-17-10

Well I finally skipped a day, sorry about that. I got home to late last night and had to wake up early the following morning so I just didn’t feel like writing the blog this time. Sorry I know you’re probably devastated.
Anyways so yesterday I went to work. We redefined our objectives and I’ve been sent on a slightly different direction, focusing on just one market and only one market. From there we’ll use that as a bench market for the rest of the markets. Fun stuff.

After work I grabbed some dinner and was joined by the German kids, Simon and Filiz. They have to do projects for their school, which is their big grade thing here so they haven’t been able to go to Chinese classes either. Projects seem to be going well but I got the feeling they were feeling a little home sick.

Once dinner was over I hung out in my room for a few minutes and then it was off to Louie’s House warming party. The gang had bought a ton of beer, but I really hate bear, and luckily so did Yierm so we found some good stuff at the local store, she even introduced me to her favorite Korean alcohol. With the goods in hand we caught a cab and headed for Louie’s pad.

To be honest the place was pretty sweet. Set on the 27th floor his apartment overlooked a nice portion of the city and was rather spacious. He pays about 2700RMB a month for it, and shares it with two other roommates. I’m not sure if that’s like 2700RMB a piece or is that a total amount.

Overall the party was fine, just kind of hung out and listened to music. It’s weird I feel like these French kids party a lot, but in America we party… “harder” I guess. I mean there parties are pretty tame compared to what I’m use to in the States. I was a little angry that Luc tried to make a move on Yierm while she was drunk, I mean it’s one thing if it’s just some random girl at the club but like a friend? For me that crosses some sort of line there.

That pretty much wraps up my Friday.

8:30am the next day I was on the 1st floor of my building ready to head to the park! It took us a little while to actually get there because our group moves really slow (what takes me 20mins to walk it took us an hour). But we more or less arrived at 10:30am at the Century Park station.

The park itself was great. The weather was perfect, I got some sun, and we set up a small plastic blanket and played Uno for a while and had snacks. But I had my camera and soon I was off by myself exploring the park while the others just hung out.

Honestly it was the most fun I had had in a long time. I got out in some great weather and was just taking pictures of everyone I could find just doing normal things. I think my idea was this: I often feel like my friends and family think of China as this far away place with people in it that they can’t relate too. My experience here is that in fact the Chinese are almost exactly like us, and even if they do things a little differently or come to different conclusion about things the fact of the matter is we’re all human, and that was what I was trying to capture. I suck at photography, but that’s besides the point. I also tried to get a little bit of the scenery as well, but people were my main focus.

Nathan and I left a few hours early, we had heard of this place nearby that served burritos and we were dying to try one. In all honesty it wasn’t that good, it was way too over stuffed with rice and not enough cheese, but when you consider the fact that rice is super cheap and cheese is really expensive it kind of makes since. But
Nathan and I did have a super good conversation which was worth it.

We talked a lot about previous girlfriends and such. What we liked, what we didn’t, swapping stories, and bitching a little bit. We are actually really similar in a lot of ways so our experiences in a lot of things are very similar. His mom is like a self made real estate investor who’s done quite well, and he himself took an interest in investments before he got sucked into learning Mandarin which gave us a lot to talk about as well. He sucks at directions by the way, which I’m kind of happy about because it gives me some way of being useful.

Another nifty fact was that growing up, he was heavily involved in this mega church in Florida. But then around the age of 16 or so broke away because he began to see the techniques they use to get money and convert people were really manipulative. Now he considers himself an atheist and in many ways breaking away from the church, he feels dramatically changed the way he tackles things because he felt like he had just missed out on a large portion of his life and now that he’s free he’s trying to desperately catch up by doing everything he can possibly do, which is a large reason why he wound up in Shanghai and how he got so good at Mandarin. Obviously his tales about growing up in a mega church were supper fascinating to me.

Alright well now it’s getting late, I’m still trying to upload the photos but I’ll get them posted asap.