It is a widely held belief that the majority of personal blog entries begin with an apology for not being more dedicated to the narcissistic pursuit of blogging about ones life. Excuses abound and really, no one cares. The millions upon millions of people who follow this ever-changing, fast-paced, super sweet blog-o-fun wait with bated breath for the next hot update on the hot and balmy South China city. It's true.
Please refrain from fan mail as Google is starting to bug me for hogging bandwidth.
True story.
The eye of the July storm was over us this weekend and the team here jumped at the chance for a little rest and relaxation. It has been one of our busiest and most productive months, and the team has been all over the globe spreading our message and turning people on to our clients. This will no doubt be a busy summer and we could not be happier about that fact.
Tonight begins the work anew, and the week will turn our team into pitch-men and the brief window that allowed us sleep will soon seem a distant memory.
What is interesting outside of work is the fact that Shenzhen will be hosting the Universiade games very soon. I have mentioned this event in the past and for those of you not versed in International quasi-olympic games that only the most seasoned obscura-hunting hipsters are privy to, the Universiade are essentially the collegiate Olympics. Well, Shenzhen is extremely proud to be hosting this prestigious event, behind Beijing and Guangzhou and has built a slew of stadiums and additional metro stops.
SZ has undertaken an enormous expansion and beautification project to make the city internationally presentable. The completed stadiums are truly beautiful, and the new metro system is impressive, though many of us here are frustrated with the updated 'security measures' (see: ridiculous bottlenecks), but something much more impressive has been going on. SZ has been spending at a breakneck pace to re-facade the city's less than impressive or slightly older buildings/store fronts/apartments. We like to quip that they must have important the geniuses behind Las Vegas and Disney. It's truly impressive and also saddening at the same time. I've never seen such work up close and personal: sheet metal flashing pressed and matte-sprayed to look like stone facade, entire apartments covered of their heinous tiled exteriors to emulate their cousin structures in the West, and all form of small town street lights and homey-feeling public decorations.
The part of this that bugs me is that this large sum of money has been poured in to make the city SEEM nicer, while not a cent has gone to improving the lives of anyone inside the buildings. Small ground level shops have had their businesses quite literally covered to make concessions to aestheticism and symmetry, being forced to temporarily close down or perhaps use the time to remodel and renovate as many have.
I'll leave it at that, but regarding the games, we're very curious to see what the city will transform into during the games. It should be exciting.
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