Pre-Flight Checklist

I am a lucky soul.  I get to fly home a few times each year to visit family and friends and forget the world that exists beyond the Pacific.  I also never have to deal with flying on or around the Thanksgiving melee and generally avoid the also-hectic Christmas flying season.

Flying is a marvelous human invention, and those who do it frequently have a culture all their own, with stories and traditions and etiquette that is passed from generation to generation.  In Shenzhen we are surrounded by many of these people, all eager to tell their tales and impart their sagely wisdom to younger ears.  The few expat bars that exist here are not dissimilar from airport bars in that they are frequented with regular travelers, often only in town for a week or so.  It's a weird little world meeting the random men and women (but really mostly men) that fly into Shenzhen multiple times per year to check on a factory, meet with a supplier, do something nefarious for Apple (I'll write on the world of overseas Apple people someday), or to check on a logistics operation.

These are the international warriors of the skies, and people for whom I have greater respect than the consultant who flies from New York to Kentucky every Monday for 3 months.  They have been to every international hub, have religious routines, and can fit their world into a set of carry-ons.  Conversations revolve around a 2 big topics: upgrade strategies and health/jet-lag issues.  The upgrades I'll leave out of this post, but the health one is something that is interesting.  We all seem to agree that hydration is first and foremost on the notoriously dry flights, which is an interesting story in its own right.  But general health is largely a topic that most people either deal with by way of vitamin C supplement or just resign themselves to a bit of the sniffles after 15+ hours in the air.

The holiday flight season comes with articles from all over about flying, and I came across one on a Gawker site this morning:  http://io9.com/5862234/why-flying-on-planes-can-make-you-sick-+-and-how-to-stop-it

It's more eye-opening than I had expected and definitely worth a read if you fly, or worth forwarding to someone who does.

Soft Peaks

2011: Where has it all gone?  Thanksgiving is next week and the local malls have Christmas tree-structures out and ready.  Pies and meringue and turkey and overeating are all what we should be thinking about but short of a few passing comments to each other, the Holidays are nowhere to be seen on our collective agendas.

The ball is rolling again over here in Shenzhen.  Growing up in my parents store, I learned the fickle nature of shoppers and the tendency for people to show in hordes.  Any businessperson I can think of desires a steady stream of work, as it is consistent, manageable and predictable.  The real world rarely affords us such luxuries, and we actually dig it.

That's all to report on now, look for me come December, I'm on an open trip back to the US at this point.

September Weather

After record temps in Shenzhen this fall, the weather is finally starting to get in tune with the seasons, however mild they may be here.  As the weather cools and jackets find their way out of closets, it seems that business too is cooling, even as we hunt for new clients and new opportunities.  The global economic situation has altered the investment strategies of even some of the largest capital firms as they rethink plans in China and the region.  Interesting and frustrating at the same time, but I digress from my main point of this little post.

I'll preface by talking about the gut instinct.  There's a fair bit of science and a heap of pseudo-science backing this as a more legit thing now that they've discovered a relatively large neural network down there. I can't back this up with citations so I'll relegate my comments to the 'crazy' sphere of the web.  Regardless, they say you cannot teach or train a gut feeling, but you can learn how to heed its warning.  We were recently made aware that a client had filed for bankruptcy even when their balance sheet was clean and they had a steady business model that was generating revenues that would give no indication of duress.  What we had no way of knowing, short of full disclosure by the company's chairman, was that the chairman himself had taken out 8 million USD in personal loans backed by the company, off balance sheet.  Yaayy.

I cannot in good faith say its a lesson we've learned because the deal had always been less clear than we would have liked, but a retainer can do wonders to calm the nerves.  Once that dried up, we poked and prodded, and 2 months later discovered this issue that I write about today. Would a strong gut instinct have prevented us from taking on this client: perhaps, but I'll wager that our experience through it has been worthwhile and that in hardships, new opportunities present themselves.  Our opportunity is now to structure an outright sale of this client, and in a shortened time frame as well.  We will continue to see how this situation unravels and are pushing to keep our ship upright.

On a side note, I've managed to compound several small incidents on the soccer field into a nice mural of bruises on the lower half of my leg.  I consider to be my painful homage to the colors of fall we so sorely miss out here in china.  Quite literally covered in all the most beautiful autumnal hues of purple brown red and orange.  Unfortunately this has rendered my leg  useless as a serious heel bruise combined with a lower calf collision has combined to seize up most of the goings on down there.  Fortunately! I discovered through an American friend a sports therapy place.  I would post photos but I feel a shot of a bruised leg with 15 needles hooked up to an electro-stim machine might stir up some of that gut feeling stuff I was blabbing about before.