I Have Arrived!

(Written on Thursday, August 24, 2006, 10:56 p.m.)

The wait is over; I have finally arrived!!!

The trip was good . . . not too many tears were shed beforehand (which makes me happy since I really wanted to view this trip as a new adventure rather than a sad departure from my friends, and the smiles and hugs that I received have certainly helped to sustain that image). I flew and had layovers for pretty close to 24 hours. I left Madison at 10:01 a.m. for Chicago. Then I flew Air Korea to Seoul, and finally Air China to Beijing, arriving at 9:00 p.m. (either 8:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. Wisconsin time . . . I don’t remember). Luckily, there were no delays, hold-ups or anything like that, so the trip was smooth with the exception of the two arm-rest hogs I was stuck between on my 14 hour flight to Korea.

After arriving in Beijing, I was picked up by a girl named Vivian who works at HighTeam and a driver. They took me to the Hotel where I met my new supervisor, Allen. Allen is a very nice guy who just recently moved to HighTeam from Kodak (based in Shanghai) because he used to work with Alex (my connection to China) and wanted to work with him again. We talked a little bit about work and then I went to bed so I could catch up on the sleep that I lost.

Thursday morning started at 7:40 a.m. I had breakfast with Alex and Allen and then sat in on a meeting with a prospective client who is working with a Spanish telecom company that wants to throw a bunch of events for the upcoming “Year of Spain” here in China. As it turns out, I’ll have a little niche in the team that is completing this project because I am the only member of HighTeam that speaks Spanish. Hence, I may come to be a translator/interpreter for this project. Go figure: I travel half-way around the world to speak Spanish. I could speak Spanish at Woodman’s or the Vilas Zoo if I wanted. Ah well, It may get me involved in this project at a fairly deep level pretty quickly, which would be nice.

Immediately after that, Allen and I went to another meeting with a real estate consulting firm to woo another prospective client. And who’da thunk it . . . the owner of this company was a Frenchman. So hey, I got to speak another non Chinese language today.

After that, I got my first assignment: Research all of the major Spanish holidays (festivals, etc.) so that I can give a presentation on them today. But I certainly didn’t have any time to work on that during the early afternoon because I had to learn where to buy groceries, how and where to set up and work with bank accounts, and other general logistics such as that. But don’t worry, I got to go back and start that project at 4:00 p.m. I worked on it until about 7:00. After that, it was time for a team dinner. We sat around discussing some projects (I even got to throw out some ideas that were received very well by the others), eating delicious food and drinking beer until about 10:00. It was a good time. The people who work here seem to be very fun and very motivated. They complain about having no free time but laugh as they do it. I like that; it will certainly make work bearable if not fun. So yeah, in at 7:40 a.m., out at 10:00 p.m. It’s my first day at work and I’m already doing overtime. Haha . . . I guess I couldn’t have expected anything less. Oh yeah . . . and none of it was mathematical computer work (like I thought I’d be doing).

So I guess it’s fair to say that I hit the ground running. Luckily, I am not suffering from the effects of jetlag. Otherwise, today would’ve been pretty rough. Despite my sarcastic tone, I have a strange feeling that this job is going to be a pretty good fit for me. As some of you know, I have a rather short attention span and I tend to get tired of projects (and things in general) very quickly. I can tell already that this personality feature will not be at odds with my current job. The work is fast-paced and spontaneous. I’m sure that there’ll be times that I’m cursing the job because of my level of fatigue, but I am excited to be working right now. We’ll see what the future brings.

Tomorrow will be another full day. Finishing the Spain project is number one on the list, then I look at apartments, then I’ll probably get another project which I haven’t heard of yet, and then there’s talk of paintball after work. Yes, paintball. Then it’s the weekend and next week I start taking Chinese classes and working! Hurray!

Oh yeah. The company also gave me a phone. If you want to reach me to actually talk, just go to your local post office, buy an international phone card and email me to get my phone number. Bam! It’s that simple.