Procrastination

Well I am back in China after a 3 week hiatus stateside, and I'll admit that it has been tough for me to get back into the blogosphere. Not that I was hampered by the heightened security which precedes one of China's largest holidays, I was instead handcuffed by my old friend, procrastination.

Actually, it's rearing its ugly head again, and rest assured a legitimate update will be here soon, I leave you with a video I just stumbled upon and absolutely had to post. Apologies to some as it is a nod to me sciency-nerd side. That and with the autotune craze that is everpresent on the internet, some may find this annoying, but I assure any real nerds and geeks that this is pretty damn cool. Hell, Steven Hawking makes an Autotuned cameo on this.

End of (Summer) Days

The summer is now over, and I was lucky enough to see it pass in the US.
I've been in Boston over a week now and am itching to get on the road and see some friendly faces. It's been surprisingly quiet around here, and perhaps it is my own fault for forgetting that everyone has jobs now, and no one really wants to hang out on weeknights.

The trip will be some work mixed with some play, as I wait to here back from colleges in Western Mass, CT, and elsewhere.

Maybe 3 weeks was too long in the states, I'm almost anxious to get back to China to continue getting our business moving forward. Things feel far too stagnant here.

We'll do it live!

Afternoon everyone,
I have arrived in the US, and it's pretty sweet. Our consulting company is up and running and the website is LIVE, in fact you can check it out here if you like.

Expats have interesting ways of viewing and approaching homecomings, some planning out vague plans or outlines of their trip on a calendar, others take great care alotting their relaxation and visits, while some, plan menus. Of particular interest was a man from Spain named Victor. Victor had prepared not only a list of the restaurants he would visit while home, but also a list of friends that he deemed appropriate fits for the restaurants he would attend. Victor worked pairing the friends to restaurants much the way a sommelier would with wines and entrees. It was fascinating to hear him speak of his plans, the meals he would order, and why he would chose a particular friend for a given restaurant.

While I cannot say I have laid such elaborate plans, it is an intriguing concept, and one I would recommend this for anyone who has spent time out of the country, but also to people looking to reconnect with old friends. This excercise really forces you to think about your friends, your relationship with them, and then of course, think of the food that you two can or have already bonded over. I think if you spent some time making this list, you might realize how important some friends are to you or at the very least be forced to look at why you may be friends with some people. Combining relationships with food, whether it be fine or fast, is a very interesting way to relate to people you may take for granted.

Homecoming

Today has already been fraught with scrambling, cursing, anxiety and general running about as we prepare to head home for a few weeks. We present our first assessment in an hours' time and begin the final stages of editing on the new website. Our curriculum for SCLI is completed and is being edited for advertising to schools in the states. The brochures have been finalized and will be printed in the US for lack of a better service here, and I probably need to pack some clothes at some point.

Here's a teaser of our new projects website



For those of you who may actually read this, I'll be in the states tomorrow, NYC then most likely straight home to Boston. Get excited folks.

It's hard not to love China with Headlines like these

There is never a break in the interesting and outright absurd headlines that come to us daily here in China. Whether it be the old man that pushed a potentially suicidal man to his death because he was annoyed the man was seeking attention and holding up traffic, or the large apartment building in Shanghai that simply tipped over one smoggy morning because of shoddy foundation work.

This article epitomizes all that is hilarious and a bit cruel at times in China. Suicides seem to be fine here. The rule is, if you messed up bad enough, no one is really going to care, as long as you don't hold up traffic and slow down progress for others. It is a grim reminder that the value of a human life in this overpopulated country is far less than we are accustomed to in the West. I don't care if you do it, just don't do it where it will bother others... comedy noir would thrive here.

If I can find a link, I will post a small article I read a couple months back about a hilarious and somewhat scary mishap at a yogurt plant. The story reads that a woman went in to a local convenient store to buy her favorite yogurt drink, and noticed it tasted funny. When she approached the clerk, he said it was a new flavor, no need to worry. She kept drinking and when something wasn't right, she took her complaint higher. It turns out what she thought was yogurt was in fact white paint.

I pose a serious question to China: HOW is it possible that a factory producing yogurt drinks or any product for human consumption could possibly get mixed up with paint.... Which leads me to question how factories multi-task... or do anything really. Hilarious on paper, but kind of disturbing at its core.

Anemoi & Co. is Growing

Apologies for the recent lack of entry quality, it has been very busy here in the SZ apartment-turned-office. We are currently wrapping up our first assessment of a small company operating in Shenzhen and are gathering our forces and resources to present to a behemoth of industry, but thankfully to a small sector of its Shenzhen Operations. This is rather daunting as we are currently unknowns in the truest sense, but... we have planned for this.

We have been working to create a list of advisors and partners, by soliciting those we know and those we know peripherally to come join our humble company. The response has been very good, and by weeks end, we could (stressing here COULD) have 2 more partners on board in the company. Our current company is comprised of Anemoi Holdings and two partners, plus a group of several non-executive directors (a term I had never heard before but essentially means their resumes are on our site and they advise us on strategy and execution). Cool stuff right? Well it's exciting knowing people here are willing to get behind us.

The hard work is now getting work. And doing this while two of us will be in the states for 2 and 3 weeks respectively. It is interesting to say the least, but late nights writing assessments and trying to contact colleges at the same time has made us remember that hard work is unavoidable, and perhaps welcome, as it has been some time since we've had to pull this much work together so quickly and (now more than ever) professionally.

I return home soon to Newark, the airport of Continental, and will immidiately head to Boston pending some unforeseen inability to stay awake long enough in Penn Station. Get excited, I certainly am, and if anyone has any requests for souvenirs and the like, get em in now, because time is running out.

Healthcare Road Map

Apologies for the deceptive title. Only reading MSNBC, Boston.com, and BBCNews, my information is limited to how much time I feel like spending on those sites, but it seems that the healthcare issue is stirring up good-ol' fashioned mobs with pitchforks and torches. I cannot even begin to have an opinion on it, since I really have enjoyed distancing myself from the American Media (it's actually very refreshing not being bombarded with garbage 90% of the time).

I am really posting to lay out an ever so small portion of my trip home, mostly because it gives me an excuse to play with some screen-capture software that I purchased, and because I'm putting off doing some work at the moment (yeah midnight right?).



I'm thoroughly convinced there are only 3 people who still read this, so it seems like a lesson in futility but who cares, it's the internet

Sunrelenting

It is August and the heat is really on. The humidity too, extra even.

That's not really news though. There is little new to report on. We are grinding away at getting this new company moving forward, and the prospects look promising. We have several partners lined up, and two are already committed. We also we're able to secure some gravitas with the help of some senior figures both in China and abroad throwing their names under ours.

That is exciting, but not money-in-my-pocket exciting. My Macbook is still dead and the more research I do on it, the more it looks like 6 years of music and 3 years of documents have been all but erased thanks to a tiny needle scratching a tiny disc in a rather compact little computer.... That is frustrating to say the least.

On a happier note, this American adventurer is coming back home, not for 1 week, not 2, but three weeks. I expect my home coming to elicit a response similar to this:


And if you call in the next 30 minutes we'll include a full sit down face-session with this guy himself, something we've never offered before on this show. But wait, there's more (Billy Mays and Ron Popeil would be proud) I am multi-tasking this trip. Mixing business with leisure with family time with wedding time. It does of course mean a road trip (work related for a solid 75% of it), which means that if anyone who still actually reads this is on the northeastern seaboard, they should let me know when they are free between Sept 7th and the 21st.
The trip will be interesting to say the least as we find ourselves dealing again with our humbling South China Learning Institute summer program. But it's new, improved, with a curriculum and of course a snazzy powerpoint that details all of our wonderful opportunities. Folks if you've got kids in college or just out, they cannot afford to miss a summer in arguably one of the most important cities of the next 20 years.