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!!