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
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