Kenaz 14 M, Akiva 34 M

Kenaz and Akiva are getting bigger every day.

Kenaz is 14 months old now. He is able to walk by his self. He can say “Wow Wow” when he sees dogs or any other animals. He can wave his hands for good-bye. He can move hands for come over here. He communicates with us to point his finger and says “Uhu Uhu”. Sometime he means pick me up. Some other time is look at that. Kenaz wants to do everything Akiva does. He thinks he can jump off from sofa like his brother. He wants to walk on a top of fence like his brother too.

Akiva is 34 months old. He will be 3 years old at January. Today in the morning when Jesse was putting him dress to get ready for kindergarten. Akiva said “I want to wear underwear”. He has been wearing only pants nothing under. That way is easier to pull down his pants and go to a bath room. He never wanted to wear underwear anyway. Now he is a big boy. He needs to wear underwear. Today he wares green color underwear Spiderman picture in front.
He knows how to say Two PIECES of clothes in Chinese. There are many quantifiers in Chinese language. Perhaps I know how he learned. By this time of winter local kids wear at least four layers of clothes. Akiva always wear two. His teacher must say to him every day “Oh no, Akiva wears only two pieces of clothes.”
Akiva gets a little punk some time. Last weekend we went to a Chinese restaurant. Jesse and I sat at a round table. Akiva was between us (Kenaz sat on my lap). A waitress came by to pour some tea for Jesse. Her arm was shaking she couldn’t pour. She tried again. Her arm was still shaking and she was giggling. I didn’t know what was going on her. Then I saw Akiva. He was the one grabbing her arm and shaking.

Kenaz and Akiva are wearing a matching outfit for early Chanukah gift from grandma and grandpa.

Sports Day

Akiva had a Sports Day at his kindergarten.

He run to get a color bottle to match with other colors.

He jumped farther away.

He bounced higher.

At the end, everyone got a gold medal.

Copy Market in Shanghai

As Jesse mentioned in previous his blog, my visa was expired for three months and I had to pay USD500. In addition to that, I went to Shanghai four times to apply a new visa (counseling, physical exam etc.). Yesterday was my last day. I will finally get a new visa on next Tuesday.

The visa administration office is at a subway station “Science and Technology Museum” in Pudong where the famous Shangyang Copy market moved. I shopped around every time after the visa applications.

You can find any copied good. LeSportsac bags are everywhere. Abercrombie & Fitch clothing seems a hottest copy. I saw a local woman negotiated a Nike shoes from RMB300 till RMB80. I asked the vender I want to buy the same shoes. She told me that price is not available for me. I kept negotiated. Finally she agreed to give me the same price. Then I tried on the shoes. Oh My God! That Nike shoes doesn’t even have a value of RMB30. I told her I rather pay RMB800 to buy a real. She tried to convince me Adidas shoes is much better quality. I paid RMB120 for FAKE Adidas shoes. (by the way, the Adidas shoes were fine for a week…) When I came back to Suzhou, every my friends say I paid too much for fake.

I bought an Abercrombie & Fitch sweater. It had a real price tag “USD49”. I told a vender I would pay RMB80. She didn’t agree. She needed at leastRMB120. I stepped out the store. She chased me all way and finally gave me the price I wanted. The sweater was totally good buy. It is very cute.

I bought another sweater supposed to be an Italian famous brand. I don’t care the name brand. I thought the sweater looked pretty. The original price RMB160 went down to RMB60. I thought it was good buy too. When I came back to home, I looked at it more carefully. The end of sleeves and bottom weren’t stitched. The yarn keeps coming out. One winning and one lost.



I bought a ton of Akiva’s Winter sweat shirts and pants. He is growing tall. He cannot wear his clothes from last year. They were all made for exports. Local clothes for boys are always in gray, black and brown. That is what Chinese people think what are boy’s colors. Akiva is a bright boy. He should wear fun color clothes. These clothes are Outlet clothes. It is OK quality but there have some small problems. Somehow quality controllers/checkers always have some way to sell these clothes in the back door.

I bought a police car, ambulance, and police tow track. They were fine for a month, but their wheels came off. Jesse often tells me I should stop buying made in China toys (the type for only-China market).

Oh...another thing unrelated to shopping. While in Shanghai I was on subway at 8 am, there was a grandma and grandson sitting on chair. The train was crowded by commuters. Every time the grandson excited to see trucks or bridge out side of window. He screamed. The commuters were all smiling at him (In Japan, salary man would frowned at him to be quiet). I was happy to see how Chinese people are friendly to kids. Then the grandson told the grandma “Pee!” She opened his legs. The crowd around him stepped away. She went “pee ro, pee ro, pee ro”. He peed on the floor. No one said anything. At the next stop more people got in and stepped on his pee.

SuzhouOutlet

It was beautiful autumn weather on Saturday. We went to check a new SuzhouOutlet factory.
The Outlet has popular brands like Adidas, Nike, Rebook, and NineWest, but they are so expensive. The SuzhouOutlet is more like a high-end shopping mall like Stanford Shopping Center or Santana Raw in Northern California.Akiva wasn’t interested in window-shopping. He wanted see a boat in Jinji Lake. Jesse and Akiva ride a electric boat for a half hour. Kenaz and I hanged around at playground.
On the weekend We noticed Akiva now knows how to connect Lego blocks stronger. He likes to do Kanfu. He goes “Haa, Haaa” with Kanfu like movements. He also imitates holding gun and goes "pian-pian pian-pian". Kenaz is very much into walking. He grabs my finger and walks around for long time.

Work Stories 1

I realize that lots of my readers do not know what I do. You know…for like…making money. Well…I’m a consultant. I help companies with their culture and leadership problems. But basically I do sales.

I have decided to post some of my more interesting meeting notes on this blog once-in-a-while so that people can get an idea about what problems companies in China have, what I do for a living, and what BS I have to put up with. All names of people and companies have been changed in order to protect the guilty.

I had a two meetings with ABC USA (Suzhou) Ltd. Company this week (10/29/07)

To update you [my coworkers], I developed a proposal and program based around the goal of creating more proactive behavior among the Genius Expert Dorks (GEDs) – both towards their sub-project team and for in support of the whole Engineering Department. To do this, we will run The Lion Hunters full day simulation, but instead of emphasizing Change Management, we will emphasize proactive behavior traits as the main learning point. I suggested that either Adul (The Engineering Dept. Director) or Sara (the Managing Director) was to give a speech at the beginning of program to emphasize these behaviors/values or whatever we are to call it. Having a big-shot open it up will have more impact. Also, if Adul wants, I will coach him on his speach.

Meeting #1 on Monday with Marry Zhao (the new, current HR Manager) and Adul (EngDir). At that meeting, I basically reviewed the proposal. I also told them we could do a completely custom simulation, but it may not work and there is risk involved. Therefore we recommend the Lion Hunters proposal. Marry liked it. Adul said it’s OK but he wants to emphasize how special these people are. I said that will happen in the speech.

During the week…
Phone Call #1, Marry called to tell me that Adul’s ***dotted-line*** boss will be giving the speech. That man’s name is Hernandez and he is the ABC USA (Suzhou) Ltd. Company China Engineering Director…but Hernandez sits in the Suzhou plant. (Hernandez used to be the Suzhou Plant EngDir, but he was promoted to his new position because no one liked him as the Suzhou plant director but he could not be fired because he has a dotted-line relationship to powerful people in other parts of the company)

Phone Call #2. Marry called to complain about the price. After consulting with Gene [my boss], I reduced the price from 1200RMB per person to 1100RMB per person. She also said that Sara (the GM) wishes to meet with me on Friday. BUT, I’m not to tell Sara that I ever suggested that she give the speech at the beginning of the program. I said…OK…whatever.

Phone Call #3 Marry called to say that the price is still too high. She also heard that we did a bad program for ABC USA (Shanghai) Ltd. Company in Shanghai and so she is wondering about the training quality. So let’s settle this issue by dropping the price. I said that I like her but please don’t ever try to negotiate with me in this way again. I also said the price is already lower than the price-per-day of our more standard leadership programs. And if I drop the price, it would be saying that I do not respect the hard work that my coworkers put into making this product into what it is today. She then said I can discuss this with Sara on Friday.

Meeting #2 with Sara, Managing Director, and (later) with Marry (HRDir). I went in and started recapping the I learned from Meeting #1. Sara then pointed out that they have Change Management workshops and Influencing Skills workshops. I tried to emphasize that our point here is to not emphasize the change management learning point but to emphasize pro-active behavior. And because ABC USA Ltd. has so many internal training resources, I would not dream of providing a program that would duplicate their own programs...even if my service would most probably be better than what they could do themselves. Sara laughed at that.

She started off talking about culture and that this whole thing is about culture (she wrote culture, behavior, and some other words on the board to emphasize her point…I really don’t understand why some people feel they need to write these things on the board for me to understand it...she really needs to diagram everything). I mentioned that some of these things will be addressed in the speech. She asked who is giving the speech. I said Hernandez. She said “NO! I SHOULD BE GIVING THE SPEECH. AND ADUL SHOULD HAVE CAME TO ME ABOUT THE PROGRAM FIRST. I cannot have every manager going external for consulting like this”. I said, “um…sorry… I don’t really know about this issue. I did suggest and I still think that Adul should give the speach...in order to show his leadership.” Then she called Marry to the office.

So Marry came in and Sara said that she cannot have the different competencies (that means different departments in ABC USA (Suzhou) Ltd. Company-speak) each getting their own outside consulting and Adul should have come to Sara first. Sara then asked Marry to explain how I was contacted. Marry went on to explain that the chain of communication went like this:

Adul>Marry>Maggie (the former HR manager who is still maybe the HR manager and is maybe corrupt and now married to a fat white guy) > Summer Wang (my favorite person in the company… a nice woman in charge of training for ABC USA (China) Ltd. > Bertha Ma…a trainer>J esse. Sara said it should have been Adul>Sara>Summer …when she gets back from PregLeave…>Jesse.

Sara is also annoyed because this program addresses a general culture problem that needs to be faced at all levels, not just for Adul’s group. We talked about culture some more. Then she wrote on the board “树大招风” , which means that the biggest tree catches the most wind (the nail the sticks out the highest gets hit the hardest concept). “This is what we have to fight here at ABC USA (Suzhou) Ltd.” Sara said. Then the conversation shifted to what is the real reason for the course; she thinks Adul is having retention problems and that is the real reason why he wants this program. Sara said these retention problems are not Adul’s fault… but more because of the external environment of Suzhou and mostly because of the effects of Adul’s boss Hernandez, who used to be in Adul’s position until recently. So the retention issue is a left-over issue, but Adul is getting pressure because of this. The underlying problem here is that “Hernandez’s chair is in Suzhou and I [Sara] do not want his chair to be located here”. Oy.

So in the end… Sara says she has confidence in Proway and trusts that what I designed is really good. But she needs to talk to Adul about this program and correct proceedures on how to start something like this. She also said she is interested in custom simulations and wants to hear more from us on that in the future. I left with the feeling that there is a 50/50% chance this program will be scrapped. We will find out on Monday. Things will hopefully get better when Summer gets back from PregLeave.