7-13-2009

Today was a nerve-racking day! I got up at 5am to finish practicing for our presentation to management. I felt like the presentation went pretty well…although we didn’t place in the top 6. I understand this is probably more political than realistic. I’m just glad it’s over! Consulting is not easy work!

We were on our plane to head to Beijing, waiting for about an hour to take off, when they finally told us there would be a delay for weather. We ended up being delayed by 6-7 hours. I was doing my best to not have to use the squatty potty. I was certainly not helping myself out any by drinking the Tsingtao. I loved it that you could buy beer really cheap and take it with you throughout the airport. Makes life so much more simple. :)

Time to sleep for 3 hours before getting up to go to the great wall tomorrow. Should be fun!

7-12-2009

Today was spent entirely on revising our presentations. I think we were a little more optimistic than we should have been. None of us had any idea how long it would take to make all the changes. I think we were all burned out and frustrated….ready to be done! That was really the extent of the day…I did learn that City U students are just using the preset charts in Excel…not as special as I thought. Obviously I need to get with the times and get Excel 2007!

The only fun thing was going to the “hot pot” restaurant. They bring you a pot of boiling broth/soup base and a plate of fun things like prawns, shell fish, sausages, potatoes, etc. You just toss in whatever you want and let it cook. You’re basically making your own soup. Very fun to experience and tasty too! We also stopped by a little pastry shop called bread world. It was so yum.

7-11-2009

I love the way we give presentations. At the end, instead of Q&A, there is only Q. No talking back or trying to answer or justify. I think that’s the way it should be. Take the feedback then go back and work on it w/your supervisor. Tai hao le.

I felt relieved to see a lot of the City U teams going well over their presentation time limit. Qiong and I practiced this morning and with both of us giving the English and Chinese versions together, we took a little over 12 of our 20 minutes. I feel comfortable now that we can slow down a little bit and really emphasize some key points.

I am pretty impressed with the City U presentations…they seem to do a good job of putting in interesting graphics and things. Sitting through the presentations, which were all in Chinese, I felt really excited to be here (as always). I feel very fortunate to have this amazing experience. Again, I am reminded I need to learn more Chinese.

After the presentations, we were invited by the Min Sheng management to a 2^nd banquet. This one was much more fun! There was no karaoke, but there was a little singing. We were also ganbei-ing some sort of rice liquor that was somewhere around 53% alcohol. They said only government people can get the particular kind we were drinking. The stuff was terrible! It burned my lips so bad! We all got owned “Chinese-style”. It also happened to be Anuj’s 25^th birthday, so the management had the restaurant owner bring up a birthday cake. Appearently it is common for everyone to wipe icing on the face of the birthday person. At first I was sure this was something they just made up for this one occaision with us….but found out it was for real!!

7-10-2009

Worked on presentations again all day. Wrote the script and practiced….happy to be under 7 minutes for the English version. This means Qiong will have a little more wiggle room for the Chinese version.

Tonite we took our translators to Pizza Hut. It was a very fun experience. I assumed the Hut would be very similar to the US, but it was so much nicer and offered lots of interesting menu items. We were all really excited as we poured over the menu to decide what to order. We tried seafood supreme, teriyaki chicken, Hawaiian, and sausage roll pizzas. Of course we looked like a bunch of wierdos taking photos of all of our pizzas. Mike kept taking selfies…then proceeded to teach our translators how to take selfies. This was hilarious, and yes, there is video. We all really had a lot of fun.

We also saw a show going on with actors from the show Xian Jian Qi Xia Zhan. I’m hoping to find some episodes of this when I get back to the US so I can practice my Mandarin. Qiong said this was one of her favorite shows. Since I’ve been here, it has made me really want to practice my Mandarin more and become fluent. I cannot wait to come back here to live! My only worry is that my first impression, being of Kunming, will be completely different from life in Beijing. We’ll see soon enough!

After dinner, we were back to the hotel. I think we’re all starting to experience a little burnout. Or maybe it could be that we are still working on the translations at 1130pm!

7-9-2009

Today we spent all day working on our presentation and data analysis. I’m starting to get nervous about getting everything finished in time. We have to finish the English version, then write the script, then translate both to Chinese. I think being away from home is starting to wear….as well as eating the same food everyday. We are at least being somewhat adventurous and trying different places everyday. For dinner tonite we went to a really cool restaurant near the hotel called Bluebird. I love hearing Qiong say “fuwuyuan” to the waitresses. I’m going to have to learn how to say it.

7-8-09 Dynamic Yunnan

Advice to future students: Do not plan anything for early morning the day after the banquet. Or maybe just don’t drink too much at the banquet….and definitely do not go out somewhere else afterwards. We made a special trip to McDonald's to cure our hangover. most interesting thing of the day was our visit to the cultural show Dynamic Yunnan. It was so amazing! I almost felt emotional watching the show because I felt I was experiencing a rich culture with lots of deep meaning. I also kept thinking about how proud I would be to bring my family to something like that if I get to move here. There was an amazing dancer that did the “Moonlight dance”…I have officially put learning to do this dance on my list of things to do once I move to China.You can see parts of the show here on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ko3Ax6L9A8 I heard they have also traveled around the world.

Those Chinese folks really like to 干杯！

We had a great day today of interviewing and surveying customers at the store. We are really making great progress! I was quite nervous about this project in the beginning, but I’m pleased to see how things are coming together.

Surveying customers is tough work! I felt pretty helpless since I could not speak Mandarin well enough to survey the customers myself. Instead, our translators did most of the talking. We found that a lot of times the housewives did not want to talk to us.

In the evening all of the students, faculty, and Min Sheng employees gathered at the hotel for the banquet. The purpose of the banquet was to build “guanxi” (relationships). We had been warned about how this usually works, but were not in any way prepared for what ensued. Toast after toast after toast was made, and if someone said 干杯! (ganbei) it meant you had to drain your glass. Needless to say it got ugly fast. Everyone was singing karaoke and having a great time. I was a bit shy about talking to people first, but by the end of the nite it seemed we were all friends.

Our biggest mistake was going out after the banquet. It should have ended there. But we were having such a great time, we didn’t want it to end. Several of us went to a nearby expat bar where I was able to practice my Mandarin. It was so awesome! We also went to a karaoke (KTV) bar where I learned how to buy a bottle of vodka in Mandarin and also encountered my first妓女(jinu – prostitute, or as Mike would say prostie). She was the one that waited on us, but when she got off her shift, she stopped back by our room and left her phone number with us. Maybe that’s why she’d been so helpful!

Found out I had some pretty cool teammates…