Nice Weather for Ducks

I lied folks, the most exciting thing about being back is the unbelievably nice (and unexpected) weather.  The humidity is low for southern China, and it's managed to keep below 85.  This of course means that we have spent several afternoons getting work done outside.  Outside is too vague though, because we have had the luxury of doing this work over at the Intercontinental Hotel, at their pool, which is less hotel pool and more family vacation resort theme park.  The corporation responsible for hotel dumped more than $1 billion USD into the project and while it has yet to see anything but red, we do get to enjoy their sprawling campus of a complex.  It is themed to resemble a Patagonian ranch, but really is more of a summer getaway spot to pamper executives from Office Depot and similar companies.  It also sports a full size replica of both the Pinta and the Santa Maria, which I am happy to report have finally found their way East.  

I apologize for not having pictures yet.  It seems that since I no longer have to procrastinate school assignments, I had to find something to put off for as long as possible, and a digital camera purchase fits that bill nicely.  It will be soon though, and the pictures will be award winning, and by award winning I mean, I will actually take some.   

Tuesday's Back and Bi's

Short of some exciting business news, there is little to report in the last few days here over in China.  Applications for our program continue to come in, and we finally have a Western looking payment process thanks to the fine folks over at PayPal.  Still waiting on those first transfers to roll in, but with a payment deadline of June 1st, we're going to have to wait a bit longer.   

Much to my lazier half's chagrin, I have finally joined a gym over here.  There are two types of gyms over here it seems: the glitzy glam well-air conditioned ones with TV's and Chinese nationals not doing much of anything, and the prison-gym-looking spots in apartment complexes where the floors are questionable at best and the equipment seems borrowed from a Rocky set.  Given the less-than-favorable financial statements lately, the latter was the only real option, but it does have the benefit of being frequented by several other expats, one of whom is a southern boy from Virginia with a savvy for lifting.   I have found a bit of comfort in the fact that I am far from the weakest, but my American dietary habits make me a bit of an oddity around here (something I aim to fix in the next few months).    

The concept of the gym here is pretty interesting.  The first type I mentioned cost in the thousands of RMB per year, some as much as $1200 USD even, and are allegedly worth it.  They sport swank decor, newer machines, and abundant eye-candy.  The problem is that they are less gym and more of a place where membership is all that really matters.  Men will roll in, saddle up to the lounge and watch TV, draped in rather expensive workout attire, as if to imitate their favorite Italian TV mobster, or Long Island native.  They are there because they can afford to do so, and perhaps to admire a pretty young thing walking the hours away on a treadmill.  These gyms are status symbols, and truth be told, a hell of a business model.  It was a concept we had flirted with but decided against due to the high startup capital required.

The gym I plan on frequenting is the other end of the spectrum, contains the basics, and is full of locals ranging from some Olympiad caliber physiques to the spindly stereotype working out in a button down and navy slacks and black shoes.  It is nothing short of amusing, and well worth the 800RMB membership.  And the music, oh the music is not what you want while working out, but it really just ties the package in so well that you cannot help but smile and laugh a bit.   I've been told if it's not super busy you can toss them a CD or iPod and they'll play it for you, and this gets me into my slight supervillain cackle as a imagine the reaction to various tunes pulled from the bowels of my music library.  

It will be an interesting next few weeks folks.  Hopefully more so than this last one has been.

Google is scary

Greetings again from China.  I am back after a 10 day stint in the US, and thoroughly exhausted from a nice little roadtrip up and down the Northeast corridor.  Thank you to everyone who let me crash on their couches and futons, it was a great time seeing everyone if only for a couple nights.  

Everything has been moving fast over here, and after a quick debriefing I was back in Hong Kong the morning after I arrived.  I soon found myself in a chair at HSBC, reviewing requisite forms and putting my overly practiced John Hancock on said pieces of paper.  I must admit, there is something very romantic about signing off on your first business account and getting those little plastic cards put into your hand.  I need to constantly remind myself that I have yet to receive a single cent, and that none of this is real until that first check is made out to us.  But I lapsed for a few minutes to enjoy the feeling, and as a group, we felt that was completely appropriate.  

 The boys on the ground have been busy with our web marketing and our classes are already filling up with potential students.  Interest from the alma mater is less than stellar but after some very productive meetings with Trinity's administration, next summer holds some real exciting potential.  I look forward to continue the dialogue with Career Services and the International Programs department and make some real progress in advancing both my program and helping students get a worthwhile experience.  

Back to the web marketing and technology side:  Google Tracker is amazing, and perhaps our newest time wasting tool.  Much like Facebook and all the gossip websites keep people busy looking up obscure nonsense and random trivia on old friends, Google Tracker for our website has given us a glorious wealth of information on those people visiting our website.  This afternoon we managed to spend over an hour digging through not only how many hits we're getting but what states/countries/regions they are coming from, how long visitors are staying on the page, and which pages they're looking at.  Sounds creepy?  It sure is, and it makes you wonder how much Google really knows.  It is such a powerful entity on the web, and is so valuable because of its ability to track this kind of information.  This stuff is the gold to marketers, and it really sets you in perspective when you think of how hard people are pushing to get into Facebook.  The information on Facebook is perhaps the holy grail for marketers.  I'll go into length on that statement when it seems more appropriate (when it gets really boring here for a couple days)   

Smoggy Shenzhen Town

Good evening, I must first apologize for the delay.  The last week and a half has been very busy and has provided us with some real tangible progress and piece of mind.  This post will be odd for me since I had already written a rather extensive one that managed to disappear from my computer before I could publish it.  Irrelevant at this point!

We finally took a step forward and hired one of the secretaries we first interviewed.  She is not so much a secretary, but more of an assistant/life coach for us boys here in China.  She has been immensely helpful so far in everything we've been needing, from getting our business cards printed out, to finding office space, to helping us navigate our rather complex cell phone contracts.  Cathy works as hard as we do, and it's not uncommon to receive an email from her at 11pm updating us on the progress she's made that evening.  We feel guilty giving her so little, but we are well informed that her price is normal if not a bit generous around here, and she's very excited to be working with native English speakers on something new and exciting.  

Our apartment is also squared away and we have been living there for almost a week now. I'm not sure how to efficiently post the photos I snapped with my phone, so there is a very good chance they'll end up trailing at the end of this post in a rather inconvenient fashion.  That aside, the bachelor pad we now occupy is 154 sq. meters or roughly 1200 sq ft, has central AC in the living room and kitchen and individual units in the bedrooms.  It is 37 floors up and sports a view of the hong kong border, shenzhen downtown, and the mountains not far in the distance.   When the sun is able to overcome our doing, it is actually quite nice.   Perhaps the most impressive thing has nothing to do with the apartment itself but the furniture we put into it.  We were shopping with our super (a great guy named Terry who has been very helpful so far) for furnishings and were looking at some dining room tables.  We came across one that looked great and had great chairs, but was a bit small for us.  The three of us tend to work either in bed or from the kitchen table, so having something large enough to support 3 laptops and requisite work accessories was important.  We said if it were 3 inches longer and 2 inches wider it'd be perfect.  They said no problem, and that it would be ready in two days time.     Linger on that for a second, because we certainly did.   NO PROBLEM?    Apparently not.  Considering the factory that made them was about 2o minutes away, and that custom orders are not unheard of, this was no big deal (something I still am amazed by).    OK, this is pretty cool, but how much will it cost?  And this is why I love China:  no extra cost.  Now, it is also important to note that I am used to Ikea furniture, having had it grace my living quarters for the last 5 years.  their furniture is not famous for its sound structural build or permanence, and anyone thats perused its aisles can attest to this fact.   We half expected a similar build quality but were again really quite surprised, this dining table was pretty damn solid.  I know it may seem an odd thing to dwell on, but imagine going into Jordan's furniture back home and saying "I need this table, 10% bigger, at no extra cost, and I want it in 3 days delivered and assembled at my house"   You would be forcibly removed then laughed at in the parking lot by no fewer than 12 employees.  

Well done China, well done indeed.

Marching Forward

I was afraid the title would be a bad pun, but in my haste I did not realize that it is in fact April (and it is well underway apparently).   Irrelevant.

Short of a good gash on my toe, everything has been running smoothly over the past week and a half.  South China remains cool and everyone is thankful for that fact, and the rainy season seems to be holding off as well.  The apartment has been signed and the furniture picked out.  We estimate a move in date sometime early next week, and of course, there will be pictures.  

We also realized that much of our time was spent figuring out basic logistical questions, and that the only way to make any real progress was to hunker down and get ourselves a secretary/aide to begin making real progress.  As it stands now, True Wind is not on the shelf, but merely taking a bit of a nap while we move forward to get cash in our pockets and experience under our rather tight belts.  

Our new girl, Cathy begins Monday (and will hopefully hit the ground running). Our newest website will begin construction this weekend and may be ready as early as next friday, and I'll be sure to sneak that in somewhere around here.

On a side note, I wish to congratulate the Red Sox on their home opener win.  I am scouring the interwebs for a Red Sox friendly establishment, but a few websites that help fans abroad are inaccessible for some reason.  Hooray odd censorship. Perhaps it is because basketball is so much more popular here.

This is the sound a tibia makes

The expatriate community around the south of China is largely comprised of Britainers, Aussies, Irish and the like.  Rugby is therefore, a big deal.  A really big deal.  We ventured out to Hong Kong last week for the Sevens Tournament, and saw celebrations on a scale I never really thought possible.  Every city has at least one rugby squad, comprised entirely of expats and sponsored by at least one Irish pub in their city.  

We were recently invited to travel up to Guanzhou with the Shekou Dragons (The Shenzhen expat rugby team of which Tom is a part of) to watch them take on their Guanzhou counterparts.  We had a hotel set up and one of the Guanzhou players owned an Irish pub directly next to this hotel, which made everything easy.   Everything was going well, and the game was 5 minutes from stoppage time when a thunderous, ungodly, unforgettable crack rang out from the pitch.  A few screams followed, and everyone went silent.  The largest guy on the Shenzhen team had decided rather than take a hit and go down, to run through two rather beastly Guanzhou boys (as he had been doing quite consistently all afternoon).  Luck had apparently turned her back on this maneuver however, and both his tibia and fibia decided staying whole was no longer an option.   

There are some places I would not mind breaking a large bone, downtown Boston perhaps, and there are places I wouldn't dream of it, maybe rural Africa or China. Guanzhou is really not very high on the list either.  This sentiment was apparently shared by the other members of both squads who flew through their contact lists and phoned up Hong Kong.  In an amazing display of comraderie, the other players organized to have him sent to Hong Kong and have his leg set by a sports injury specialist out there.  It was an impressive display and highlights perfectly the way people are taken care of by their peers in those type of situations.  

For Reference:  Guanzhou is located about an hour by train from Shenzhen, and was rated one of the mot polluted cities in China recently.  It seems that around here the sun only comes out on special occasions, and the combination of pollution and humidity make for an interesting fog/smog situation that keeps the days pretty grey out here for much of the time.  I am told that the rainy season, which will be beginning very soon, should help to reduce some of this, but it is really odd experiencing this level of pollution.  

Busy mind, tired body

Ideas fly around here all the time, and every expat has at least 6 different business ideas/pie-in-the-sky dreams for making it big out here.  The reality is that very few of this ever comes to light.  At night though, after a few pints, everyone gets into the same diatribes about how things here could function more efficiently or how millions could be made on any scheme.

The reality for us is that our original idea still stands, albeit with some modifications, but we have come up against many hurdles, and a new idea is in the works for us.  Time is an issue, as it is a program that would take place this summer, and we are moving quickly an aggressively to get it implemented as soon as possible.  

I am constantly brought back to the jewelry design convention I attended a while back.  One of the speakers kept hammering the mantra that brainstorming and planning are 10% of the picture, you can have a solid gold business model or plan, but you have nothing until you are able to implement it.  You can be smart, the smartest even, but it will get you nowhere without the ability to take proactive steps forward.  This is perhaps the toughest thing for me, and the rest of our group, and I would imagine we share this with 95% of the population at large.  

The next two weeks will be critical for us.

On a side note, I've signed up for rugby, and have a trip out to Guanzhou this weekend to participate/get destroyed by much larger people than me.  This will be interesting.

Foie Gras

I have been quite busy as of late, and will have a good couple of updates to fill everyone in.  In the meantime, I came across some interesting articles regarding foie gras a few weeks ago, and while I don't lean one side or the other, I found two articles that shed a new light on the contentious delicacy.

Incanto restaurant issued a letter in retaliation to attacks on its name (and owners) in this letter titled Shock & Foie

The Village Voice put out a bit more in depth look into the matter and focused its findings on the US market and farm system.  Is Foie Gras Torture?

I look forward to seeing any remarks about it, and will be back soon with relevant updates to China.