New Company Direction, Sandra's B-Day, and Club SOHO

1031 5-15-10 (the day after)

So today at work I got some clearer directions for the assignments I've been given.  The main focus for the next week will be on the company introduction which I thought was simply a revamping of their current one (which is badly needed).  But it ended up being quite a bit more than that.

It has come to the attention of the company that they can't compete as a "80% company," which is to say they can't create a lower cost piece of machine that these other major manufactures can.  It makes since, these other guys ship out millions of these things a year, while we celebrated getting an order for 10,000.  Not only that they can pour massive resources into higher end design specks that call for less parts being used.  So in other words are mom and pop shop can't compete with Wal-Mart on low prices.  Duh

Anyways so my boss asked me to decide on a new direction for the company based off an outsider's opinion and create a company introduction that reflects this.  He suggested with go with a "we're unique and flexible approach" which I agree is the exact course the company should take.  Luckily the company in some ways has begun to move in this direction already.  We can pretty much customize our product to a customer's exact needs, as well as taking some steps to make sure our product won't become a "legacy" object (meaning it'll keep up with gradual changes in technology) anytime soon.

But we have a problem.  The company currently does this, but the company currently doesn't tell anyone about it.  Nor does the staff necessarily keep this in mind as they work.  Essentially we tell people we do this one thing really well, but we really don't (we keep up with the competition as far as prices go, not much more then that), and instead we do this other thing rather well, but we don't really acknowledge it.  Kind of like that cool trick you can do that you're kind of embarrass to tell other people about.

So that's that.  After work I got home and quickly changed and then waited for 40 mins for the girls to finish getting ready (some things cross all cultural lines).  Once everyone had all their things together we headed out into the night to celebrate Sandra's Birthday at the Radisson!!

The Radisson is kind of like Dallas's Reunion Tower but instead of a giant ball it's a disk.  The place was nice, and the view was great.  The food wasn't too bad either; pumpkin seed crusted chicken with ham and parmesan cheese in the middle.  In my humble opinion the food was not worth the 385RMB I ended up spending on it though, especially when 50RMB was spent on stupid fucking water.  WATER!!!!!! $7.30 8oz bottle of WATER!!!  Don't go telling me it's special "Evian" water from France that has awesome minerals in it that help the body yadda yadda, I've already had this argument with the Frenchies, it's utter marketing bullshit.  The sheer amount of this stuff you would have to consume in order to help your body would be staggering, and that's if the marketing has a grain of truth to it.  It's H2O; as long as it's pure I don't really care where it comes from.  It should be noted that 50RMB would buy me 12 Gallons of normal bottled water I buy down the street.  The business man inside of me was drowning in the obvious Marketing Bullshit that Evian has somehow convinced the world of, I'm truly jealous of their skill.

But the night was fun, and we had a good time, I just can't afford to have such a good time again.

After the Radisson we high tailed it (the cab ride was 15RMB cheaper than my water, I'm not bitter, I swear) over to Club SOHO that the group had gone to a few times but I had always missed out on.  It was pretty cool, still standard Chinese set up which I still dislike, BUT the place was pretty "hip" and they had some cool gimmicks that made it entertaining.  They had people like dress up in space suites and do some cool like laser dance and even had them suspended from the ceiling.  Also their singers could actually sing (in English on top of that), and they even had a stage which they encouraged people to dance on.  But more important than anything else they had the best Mojito (MS does not view that as a word) I've found yet and for only 55RMB, that's right, almost the same price as "water."

It also happened to be the gayest club yet.  Which I'm totally cool with, you'll never find any place in China that has a 100% gay population, it's just simply not done, so there will always be plenty of girls to dance with regardless.  And since China has a pretty strict "homosexually is almost a crime" it's nice that they found a place where they're allowed to just be themselves.  But even I have my boundaries, by boundaries I mean these really small lines in the sand far off into the distance, across large deserts and a small mountain range.  A German guy putting his hand up my shirt as I try to wiggle my way past the bar crosses one of those elusive boundaries that my friends have been trying to find for years.  At least buy me a drink first. =P I joke.

All in all it was cool, Nina got really drunk though so half of us went home a little early (2:30) to make sure she was ok.  This was fine by me.  And by 3:20am I was asleep in my bed.

(part 6 has been posted, pics will come eventually)