Mike and I Cross Paths

So Thursday the 9^th, I took a little trip to Shanghai. Almost missed my flight due to waking up 17 minutes after I planned to leave the apartment to catch my cab to the apartment, but no big deal, I ended up making it on time (thank God that there weren’t any traffic jams on the way J).

Anywhoo . . . the first day and a half of the trip was spent working. I went to observe an event and sub-event that we were throwing to get some ideas for new things to start researching. It was interesting stuff and I had some new ideas come to mind for Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) stuff that we’re working on, but it’s probably not interesting for anybody reading this, so I’ll skip it.

Thursday night, after my first ever trip to Hooters (with four of the big bosses in HighTeam), I met up with Mike. The first night was basically just chill-time. Catching up, chatting, walking around Shanghai, etc.; nice and relaxing. Friday after I finished working we traveled around Shanghai to the Bund, Peoples Square, a history museum, etc. During that time I learned that Shanghai is a completely different world from Beijing. In the very commercial, touristy areas, we couldn’t walk for more than five minutes without being asked if we wanted a “lady massage,” or being approached by “art students” who wanted to show us some of the work they were exhibiting. Also, the cab drivers were terrible! They weren’t any crazier on the road than Beijing drivers, but they would do anything to rip off westerners (or “big noses” as the Shanghainese seem to like to call us). I’ve had one bad cab experience in Beijing in the whole three months that I’ve been here. But in four days in Shanghai, three cab drivers tried to rip me off. After a certain amount of yelling, though, I was able to work the second two back to a reasonable fare (for the first one, I was just too lazy and tired to bother).

Saturday, Mike had to work for a while so I met up with a Shanghainese friend of mine named Orlando. He did an internship in Madison in the summer of ’05. With him and a buddy of his, Benny, we went to a couple of commercial/tourist areas and just walked around; I didn’t really care to buy anything since almost all of the same stuff exists in Beijing (and often at lower prices, DVDs being the exception). We then temporarily parted ways so that Orlando could go home for dinner with some relatives, but not before planning to meet up for some awesome bar-time that night.

So, after freshening up, meeting up with Mike, having some dinner, and drinking three nice sized bottles of beer while watching Underworld Revolutions (we made a rule that we had to take a drink whenever Kate Beckinsale looked hot . . . good game), it was off to enjoy the Shanghai nightlife. We went to club DKD, and again had a bad encounter with a cab driver who dropped us off about three blocks from our destination and pointed vaguely in the direction that we were supposed to go. After several calls to Orlando, though we eventually made our way to the club and began the fun.

Johnny Walker Black and green tea is a drink of choice for the Chinese, but I personally find it disgusting. So I was stuck with Johnny Walker on the rocks . . . mmm. After a little bit of that and a wonderful dice game, we (meaning I, Mike, Orlando, and some of Orlando’s friends) hit the dance floor. It was a good time. The DJ was good, the music was decent, and dancing was fun. Too bad none of us had any game, so after a couple of hours of that we went to McDonalds for some late-night food.

The game that we (we now being Mike, Orlando and I) played on the way there was the “Try to get Mike to say funny things in Chinese” game. So that provided plenty of entertainment for Orlando and me. I don’t know if the actually phrases or Mike’s wacky drunken pronunciation were funnier . . . some combination of them kept us giggling like freaks the whole way to McDonalds, though.

At McDonalds, Mike started insisting that he could speak Chinese with the best of em, and proceeded to push us out of the way to order for everybody. Apparently he got his point across, even though the cashier kept laughing whenever Mike turned around to show us that he could order, because we got our food. And man was it delicious.

After that, it was time to head home so the three of us caught a cab. Mike insisted on us dropping Orlando off first even though he was 30 minutes in the opposite direction of my hotel and Mike’s apartment. We kept telling him that it didn’t make any sense, but Mike was the only one who knew where he and I had to go (so now he really did know the most important Chinese phrase as far as I and Orlando were concerned). However, Orlando, being the crafty guy that he is, agreed to go towards his home so we could drop him of there, and then promptly direct the cab driver in the general direction of my hotel. After about a 10 minute drive, he stopped and got out leaving Mike dumbfounded and with no choice other than to direct the cab driver to head towards my hotel. So I got home at the reasonable hour of 4am.

The next day I had my flight home at 2pm, so I gave Mike a call around 10:45am to grab some lunch before I left, but he was too tired. Lame, but whatever . . . we had a fun time. So I grabbed some lunch and headed back to Beijing!

This past week has been another relatively normal one at work. I’m now working as a strategic consultant on a year-long marketing plan for four Ferrari and Maserati dealerships in China. We give our initial ideas next Friday, and we’ll see where the project goes from there!

P.S. more photos will be up soon at http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger.

P.P.S John Tucker Must Die wasn't as bad as the previews made it out to be, exept for the ending, and Scrubs may be the greatest show ever.