Weekend Update

Who doesn't fondly recall snowcones? Except for the end, when it was kind of a purple/black slush mess.

Well Molave caught everyone a bit off-guard and hit full typhoon status right before making landfall. We caught the brunt around 3 am as the eyewall came directly over Shenzhen. Yes, it was Saturday, but none of us would have been able to fall asleep anyway. 37 stories up, a typhoon is a whole different animal: the wind is unbelievably loud, rain is forcing itself in wherever possible through sills, air conditioner vents, so on and so forth. It was really quite something, the roads competely flooded and trees were down everywhere, we even saw an unfortunate VW with a rather large piece of flora digging into its hood.

Pretty neat stuff.

On more topical notes, the Anemoi Partners are moving forwad into some interesting directions. The SCLI programs all remain up and running, and the curriculum is beginning to take shape. Our teacher Jess is learning quickly by Shenzhen standards, and is slowly becoming more dependant with time. It's exciting and frustrating at the same time. We learned some hard lessons this summer with our applicants, and will not make those same mistakes again, the only problem is that again isn't until this winter and next summer. "The meantime" is what makes life all the more difficult. We were not slated to last more than 6 months sans some cash flow. SCLI's real potential for revenue will not be realized until November at the earliest, and that is where life gets tricky. Our other directions are mum at the moment, but I am happy that the boys are moving projects in a direction that better suits our core skill set and allies us with more established figures in and around China.

It looks like I will be applying to teach English (while not a terrible thing, it was something I had told myself I wouldn't have to do), and I'm excited to imagine what I would be like in charge of a class. In fact, I think a lot of people are... maybe not excited, let's say, amused and slightly scared, of what I would be like as a teacher/mentor. As I seem to be saying a lot on this blog, the next few weeks will be interesting, it seems the current day never is.

Molave set to make landfall

Ever since Hurricane Bob made swept through Boston in 1991, I've been fascinated with hurricanes and tropical weather in general. Morbid curiousity abounds as stories rain in of trees, vehicles and various household pets go flying around neighborhoods. I imagine my excitement about storms like these will subside (if only slightly) once I own property in a storm's path, but until then, I anxiously await the chance to sit inside some heavily fortified structure and watch Mama Nature wreak havoc on poorly built structures and those flaura and fauna which Selection has decided against.

We have had a couple bruhes with Typhoons/tropical storms already in Shenzhen, and tonight it looks like another will be making landfall righ on top of us. Molave (only at about 70mph sustained winds right now) will be making landfall sometime late this evening. We're all pretty excited, and for two real reasons. One, awesome rain and wind is a break from the dreary pattern of humid & sunny and bleak tropical rainfall; and two (probabl incorrect usage of a semicolon, but whajevs) typhoons knock the smog out for a couple days leaving us with gorgeous views, clear skies, and mildly reduced humidity.

Awesome.

If things start getting intense, don't worry, they've already inspected our windows for typhoons.

Side Projects

The expat community out here is well-known for having is(are?) well known for having its(their?) finger in many pies. Most folks out here keep up with a regular day job, and have side projects ranging from importing gourmet food from Australia, to running sites like yours truly started one random weekend evening. While this isn't a monetary game yet, the concept is fun, laid-back, and gives locals an opportunity to waste time on the internet with Shenzhen relevant inside jokes.
Beijing is next, followed by Shanghai, and then if it hits, we take it stateside. Random? Quite. Interesting? Probably not to a lot of folks, but that's not really the point. Though making money is a point, and that's where some of my other time is being spent. It looks like this American may have to bite the bullet and get into teaching English like so many post undergrad students who go abroad do. While I don't see it growing permanent or even long term legs, it will support the next few months, and allow me to get some much needed classroom experience that will in fact be essential to where some of our future plans are taking us. Mum is the word right now, and in no way is the South China Learning Institute vanishing or being pushed aside. We currently have one Anemoi partner back in the states on the Eastern seaboard to keep in touch with schools as they gear up for their 2009/2010 season begins.

Like anything that develops on the ground, plans shift. The original college prep business still sounds good, but we lack the connections to build us into a profitable company, and we are not here to step on toes and alienate ourselves from fellow Americans abroad. The next 2 months are going to be very interesting, and will, for better or worse, dictate the next year or two of our lives.

Serious stuff right? You have to keep it light, in fact, we recently discovered the joys of bowling at a significantly reduced cost to its American counterpart (and oddly enough everything at the alley is made in the US). Open mic nights have proven interesting to say the least, but there is talk of getting a small group of lads together for some good ol a cappella.

On a side note, the VPN is great, but I've now caught up with all current cartoon series (Family Guy, South Park, American Dad) Any suggestions out there besides Dexter and Mad Men?

(Around the censors) and back online!

Apologies for the delay, but China saw fit the need to block all US-hosted blog websites, in an effort to force its people to use Chinese-based hosts. This was tolerable, then Google started popping offline every now and then, and then everything went south the other week when riots broke out in Urumqi. Then a whole host of sites became inaccessable such as The Wallstreet Journal, Facebook, and a few other news blogs as well.

I'll be posting info to fill everyone in on the last 2 months shortly.

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.