Macau Tower

This is the Macau Tower. Geoffrey used to work here, and the photo below was taken in a restaurant there. (on the first floor) You can bungee jump, skywalk, climb, and do all of these adventure things at the top. Geoffrey's jumped off of the thing many times and a bunch of other Dak people have too!

I am in Macau right now. Abram and I arrived Monday evening and met Pete Egart, our manager from the USA. We are meeting with some casinos with our displays about content and will be sending proposals to them later. Yvonne (the other KF account exec) also flew in tonight. This is a photo from lunch. (photo from Axel's camera) I think it is the entire office staff from Macau plus us and Dan from Shanghai.

Macau street

Macau is the Las Vegas of the East. It is so interesting to see the Chinese take on Vegas!! A huge difference is the many prostitutes all over... but then again, they are in "barber shops" all over mainland China too. The places they conduct their business have barber poles on the outside, but the windows are mostly covered.

This street reminds me of photos I've seen of Tokyo because of all of the neon. I used a long shutter speed to capture some movement across the street. Yvonne pointed out that everyone was staring at me. She thought it was because of my camera, but it may have been that, plus I'm white, plus I was wearing a tank top... It went beyond staring to opening gawking, I think.

Wynn Macau

Abram, I and Pete Egart (Keyframe Manager from the USA) went to Macau to visit some of our customers there.

Keyframe did this animation and Daktronics made the display, including the lighting effects around it. They aren't just lighting effects but capable of video too.


The water show doesn't get nearly as much attention as the one at the Bellagio in Vegas. It is really cool though.

Grand Lisboa

The Grand Lisboa is pretty sweet. It's this giant egg that is covered in our ProPuck product. Abram did all of the original content and we created a proposal for more after we got back from Macau. Since it is a pretty low-res screen, we have create the content using certain guidelines.



A close up of the ProPucks. Each dot is the size of a hockey puck, and has about 20 LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) in it. It's pretty cool that the whole building is a video screen.

Stuff on Bikes

You see everything being carried on bikes. People with motorized bikes or scooters will help out by putting a foot on the cart and letting the scooter do the work.

Chinese people are very concerned about the sun. Note the big hat, the white sleeves, and gloves. Most of the women have these sleeves to keep the sun off. It seems to be due to vanity (everyone wants whiter skin) and not health. All of the body and face wash claim to be "whitening."
Many of the bikes have a passenger. This girl was sending text messages from her phone while the guy did all of the work.

A motorized bike - I think I heard that they get 35 km per charge (but that is carrying a slim person.)

Pajamas are fashionable now.

Driving to work

A few buildings that we pass every day on the drive to the office. In the bottom photo, you can see an open space in the middle of the building. It's to let the chi (energy or life force) flow through. No buildings are built without a feng shui master coming in and telling them what is good.

Daktronics Shanghai

I thought it was appropriate to put a few pics of the Keyframe office up. We took some for the next edition of the Keyframe internal Daktronics newsletter.

Abram, one of our digital artists, has been here since October 2006.

Yvonne, who is an account executive like me.

Shelley works at the front desk and makes all of our travel arrangements.

Beijing Duck

A group of about 12 Dak people and family members went to a restaurant that specializes in Beijing Duck. It is so good! We ordered about 100 dishes as usual and were stuffed before the duck arrived. It was a nice place and even with drinks, it only cost about $10 per person. We actually got a certificate with the number of our duck on it.

Scorpion was on the menu so we all wanted to try it! It actually doesn't taste like much - just crisp and crunchy.

Chairman Dan

Abram created a banner to put on the back of a display. In his words:

It’s not propaganda, its art. Behold our herald leader! Chinese translation: Da Ke zui hao (Daktronics is the best).

Dan is the greatest leader of Dak Shanghai. And since Dan leads Daktronics in China, he has looked to the Great Chinese Leader, Mao, for guidance. In return, it appears that Mao has somehow blessed Dan with a similar appearance. ;)

Dan is the GM here. Abram used the above photo from the Dak "stalker pages" to create his art, along with images he found online.

Jin Bei

The Jin Bei is the company van. It's a knockoff of a Toyota. It has a Toyota engine, so apparently that enables the company to use the logo on the van. :-) It's a luxury Jin Bei though, so is pretty nice. The AC works great, which is a neccessity since we load it up well beyond capacity when we have visitors from the US and people in for sales meetings. We can fit 12 people plus Mr. Huang, the driver. (Probably more if it was skinny Asian people instead of fat white guys!)

This morning we saw a knockoff Jin Bei, called a Yun Bei!! It's pretty sad that there's a knockoff of a Chinese knockoff.

There are nail places everywhere here, and they are so talented. I had these flowers hand-painted on my nails. And the best part is that it's very cheap.

Toastmasters Area Governor Training

Our Region's District Governors and Assistant Governors. I'm in Area 23, and am the Assistant Governor of Training and Education. Interesting fact: there is no Area 24 (or any other number with 4 in it such as 4, 14, 34, etc) because 4 is very unlucky. It is pronounced like death (si) only with a different tone. Most buildings don't have any 4th floors either.

Lucy Liu, the AG, and I.

1000 Arabian Nights

A bunch of us Dakkies went to an Arabian restaurant and ordered TONS of food. Before this came out, we were all stuffed already. It was a huge amount of various meats skewered.

People's Square Toastmasters Club

Last night I emailed a couple fellow Toastmasters from the Daktronics corporate club. They thought hearing my new club was interesting, so I'm going to share it with everyone.

Two weeks ago I gave my first speech from an advanced manual and was inducted into my new club at the same meeting. :-) Last week was their "Toastie" awards, which is a big members-only banquet and every dressed up like movie stars and pretended it was the Grammy's, acceptance speeches and all. It was pretty fun!! The photos below are from that night.

This week, Wendy Wang, the new President, asked me if I'd be the club Treasurer, as the girl who was elected was unable to do it. I told her I would, but I was a bit concerned about paying bills that were all in Chinese! Pretty much all that I need to do is pay the room rental fee and collect the entrance fee money from the greeters each meeting. I also wondered if maybe there should be an election. Wendy basically told me that they still were used to appointed officals so it was no problem, and that elections were usually just to appear democratic! Only in China.
Tonight, Lucy Liu, the out-going club President and new Area Governor, asked me to be the Area VP of Education. (The Area is a larger region and fairly important.) Training is Sunday morning at 8:30 to noon. (once again, only in a Communist country!)

So, TM has been very interesting so far! Everyone thinks I am just so advanced, which is a bit embarassing. But it will make me work harder to live up to those expectations! My first few times in front of the new group, I was very nervous about speaking too quickly or using words they didn't understand. I think I was too focused on that, so didn't really appear confident while speaking. I think I am pretty much over that now. They have good English skills, so I just try to speak clearly (which everyone should do anyway.)

One misconception that people had was that USA clubs don't need a grammarian, since English is our first language. Here, one role is Gender Confusion/Ah Counter. The "gender confusion" role really threw me at first. It is counting how many times people use HE instead of SHE or HIM instead of HER. It's a common mistake to make when speaking in English as a second language.

We originally met at an old YMCA, with cracked walls, a window air conditioner and a green chalkboard. The new venue is a bit nicer, with better air conditioning and we have been upgraded to a white board! It would be so great to have a projector. It's a bit different from Dak, where we had a new meeting room built for us, meals catered in, perfect climate control, and a computer and projector permantently installed. :-) All of the members are very enthusiastic though. When giving a speech or evaluation, all eyes in the room are on you. They nod in agreement or answer back out loud. If the speaker asks a question, he or she always gets many answers shouted out.

Any visitors are welcome to come on a Tuesday night to the People's Square TMC! http://shanghai585.freetoasthost.info

Most of the club members. Many people come as guests for a long time before joining. Two of my co-workers have come to meetings, and they are concerned that their English skills are not up to par. I think that they'd be fine though! No one bashes anyone if they use a word incorrectly or anything. The grammarian will list off phrases used incorrectly but not say the person's name who made the mistake.

Top row: Delphy, Mary, Michelle, Wendy, Cleo, Sissi, Rita, me, Amy and Cher. Bottom: Lucy, Amy (up), Xiao Xiao, Helen and Jenny. Wow, that's pretty good that I remembered everyone!

Emma, me, Jenny, Wendy, Mary, Eric (the former Area Governor) Amy, Rita, Helen, Cleo and Amy.

Here is a link to the club's blog. http://tmc585.blog.sohu.com Just scroll down to see more photos.

The Blarney Stone

After Toastmasters, Jon called and said to come to the Blarney Stone. Sai, Dan, Axel, David and Jon had been there for quite a while before I arrived.

Sunday

Sunday was a clear day. Pollution is less on the weekend due to less commuters! The pool at the apartment is surrounded by an outside pool (non-swimming!!) with fountations in it. The fountains don't run very often, so I had to take a photo when they actually were. Streams of water also shoot up behind these bubblers.