Multi-media Association

Last week we were officially presented with a sign saying Keyframe Shanghai is a member of the Shanghai Multi Media Association.


Our Keyframe Shanghai team.

News Release

We (Keyframe US) wrote a news release about the Suzhou project and it was picked up on the Animation World Network site.

Nice job Keyframe Shanghai!

Suzhou Skyscreen Grand Opening

On January 16th, the skyscreen in Suzhou opened. It's not a Daktronics display, but Keyframe did a bunch of content for it. Here is our favorite piece.

View from the Macau Dak Shack

I wasn't so impressed with the Dak Shack - beds like plywood and no hot water! Adam lives a couple blocks away so we showered there. Hot water is a luxury you take for granted. Also, none of the apartments here have heat. It's only about 60 degrees F but it's damp, so it feels pretty chilly.

Flat Stanley visits Dak Shanghai - Dec 1st

We took Flat Stanley with us to work one day.

Stanley with the company driver, Mr. Huang. Stanley thought the traffic was pretty crazy here!

Stanley at Starbucks - we used to get coffee their every morning. (We just bought an espresso machine.)

Stanley at Daktronics Shanghai.

Replacement display

This is a display at the Sands Casino that is being replaced by a Daktronics HD 16 mm LED display. Right now they are removing the old one.

Bamboo scaffolding is used in all of the construction projects. Bamboo is extremely strong, but it is pretty unnerving to walk on it for the first few minutes because it gives. I didn't have the best shoes on to be climbing the ladders with uneven steps, so I just went up a little bit. I understand now why all of the construction workers wear crocs or canvas shoes - they would grab the ladder better than the hard-soled steel toed boots I think they wear in the US.

Carefully lowering the old display piece by piece.

Dak Shanghai

On Friday, I was going to work as usual when my boss convinced me I should take the day off and go to Suzhou with Esther. (He was right! Thanks Dan.) We showed her around before going to the train station. She really liked the LED displays as a background - I have to agree, it looks pretty cool.

Visitors from the USA

A few weeks ago, we had 3 girls visit from the US. They were student reporters covering the Olympics. Quinn was from Brookings, so they ended up visiting Daktronics Shanghai for a morning. She is writing articles for the Brookings Register - here is the one that she mentioned us in.

She also has a blog of her own where she posted more about Dak Shanghai and some photos.

CCTV

Daktronics has a few displays at the new, famous CCTV building. I went to Beijing to give them software training. It would have been cool to be allowed on site, but the control room behind the display was the closest I got.


The curved HD display is on the left (turned off.)

Beijing Railway South

I went up to Beijing to help with the data part of the displays that are being installed now at the new Beijing Railway South Station. It was a huge construction site, and my "head-back-turn rate" dramatically increased. I don't think many of the migrant worker men expected to see a foreign woman on the construction site.

The Chinese version of the Keyframe logo animation, created by Hugo.


The main hallway - it's HUGE!

Another one of the 11 displays, in the main hall.

Unfortunately, my laptop crashed! I was working the next day and it crashed. Then repeatedly blue-screened before even getting to the login screen. I was pretty freaked out that all of my data would be lost! That day I flew back to Shanghai and our wonderful IT guys Aaron and Michael had a new laptop waiting for me AND got all of my data off my old one. Whew.

Hugo's wedding

Hugo, one of the Keyframe animators, got married on Sunday.

Jasmine and Hugo

One of the cool things about a Chinese wedding is that the bride will change dresses at least three times. So she gets to wear a few of her favorite dresses, not just one.

David, Jimmy, Ryan, Sofia and Yvonne taking a shot of baijiu.

The Dak group with the beautiful, happy couple!

Summer in South Dakota

Last month, a few of my co-workers from Shanghai and Macao went to South Dakota. Judd took a some people from the A/P region to the lake and Andy Tai (from our Macao office) shared these photos with us. Seeing these actually made me homesick for the first time since moving to China. Thanks for letting me put these photos up, Andy!

Beautiful blue sky, blue water... this is what SD looks like at the lake in summer!

Typical SD farm

Andy (PM in Macao), Fred (head of Shanghai repair center), and Gina (process engineer)

Judd driving his boat

the work never ends.... Jon S.

Fred and Gina taking photos of Judd

Jon trying to do a flip

SDSU group

We had a group of students from SDSU visit last week. They were just finishing up a 2-week trip through China. Three of the students had or currently worked at Daktronics in Brookings. We spent a morning talking with them about Daktronics and business in China.

Everyone at the Asia-Pacific Regional planning meeting

We had four tables at the restaurant, on a rickety wooden deck. Here are all of our tables. (anyone who would like a high-res version, just email me.)

Jon's Girlfriends and Boyfriend

Since Jon is the sales manager for China, he is often on the road with Linlin and on the phone with Judd and Aileen (PMs in the USA). Whenever he gets a phone call after 10 PM, I ask, "Is it your boyfriend or your girlfriend?" If he's traveling, I'll ask him if he's going to have dinner with his girlfriend.

Jon and his girlfriends (Geoffrey wanted a kiss too!)

Jon is always on the phone with Judd - I guess Judd is a good boyfriend. :-) I think Judd's wife feels the same way. Since we are 14 hours ahead, it is usually late at night for one of us when they are talking. Judd definitely is on the phone more with Jon than I am!

Judd and Aileen are both PMs in Brookings.

Macau trip

I spent almost a week in Macau and Zhuhai.

Wednesday Pete and I met a client for supper at the casino who she is the brand manager for. We ate the Japanese restaurant there, and it was one of the most delicious meals I've ever had! The chef gave us a starter that was a rose bowl covered with wax paper. We peeled the paper off and it started smoking, as if there were dry ice in it. It smelled like a very fragrant wood smoke, and in the bottom was smoked salmon with a special sauce.

The client loves sashimi (raw fish) even more than I do. We had a great platter that included blowfish and a fish with huge eyes (I can't remember the name), plus the standard tuna and such. We also had Oumi beef, which is similar to Kobe, but even better according to the chef. (Yes, the chef cooked special dishes for us that weren't even on the menu.) He also showed us the certificate that proved it was Oumi. He said many places may claim they have Kobe or Oumi, but they don't have the proof. It was the most amazing beef I have EVER had. By far. (Sorry Dad!) The next morning she told us the bill was a bit more than expected - she implied that the beef alone was somewhere between $300 - $400 USD!! Of course she was way too polite to ever tell us what it actually was.

For more information on Oumi beef, click here. If you are in China, click here. (It's the same site, but on Blogspot so it is blocked on the mainland.)

Friday night we went out for dinner with the Macau office.

Adam, Jon, Dan, Anthony, Carol, Rosa, Yvonne, Geoffrey and Pete at an Italian restaurant.

Pete, I and Dan at a bar in Taipei (another island in Macau.)

I somehow managed to lose my voice on Tuesday, and it was gone for an entire week! When we saw the "Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil" monkeys, we had to take a photo. Pete was tired of hearing the girls all week, and I couldn't talk, so it was easy for us to be like the monkeys!

Singapore Airport

Daktronics just put a new display in the Singapore Airport for EyeCorp. I was there to do training January 7-10. The display looks great.

We had to get special passes to get through security without boarding passes, and more security clearance to go up behind the display.

I wasn't the only one taking photos of the display! It is always funny to me to see other people taking photos. I have the right since it is a Dak display, but I always thought people would wonder why anyone would want to take photos of a billboard.

Random info about Singapore

The one thing that I did close to site-seeing was go to a mall to eat supper one night. In the courtyard is the world's largest fountain. I managed to catch the laser-light show. It was pretty lame. The fountain was just a light mist - I was expecting massive blasts of water shooting through the air!

Singapore was really hot and humid. One interesting thing is that gum is practically illegal. Yes, gum. As in the kind you chew. They want to keep the city pretty. (and it seemed to be working.) In 2004, they lifted the ban, so now you can chew gum IF you have a doctor prescribe it and you register to buy it at the pharmacy.

Singapore was the place where Michael Fay was caned for spray-painting cars in 1994.

Bandung, Indonesia

These are older photos from my trip to Indonesia.

Ira, from MIB, took us to Bandung to see the newest Daktronics ProStar display there. It was a couple hours drive from Jakarta.

First she took up to a restaurant on the top of a hill.

It was what I imagine a rain forest to be like. Each one of the tables was in it's own little shelter, with a low table and cushions. Very tropical. Yvonne or Perk - send me a photo of our group!

There are tons of little tiny shops everywhere, more and smaller than Shanghai. Much more run down and dirty too.

This is the new display! It is owned by Djarum, a cigarette company.

Google me

Ryan, one of the salespeople, told me that if you Google "Daktronics Shanghai" my blog came up. It is pretty funny. The first thing that comes up is a news release. My post about Abram Photoshopping Dan's head onto Mao comes up 2nd, 3rd is a post of mine about Keyframe, then 4th is the official Daktronics Shanghai site, and 5th is my MySpace page.

Digital Content Training

On Monday, Yvonne and I flew to Jakarta, Indonesia to give digital content creation and management training. Perk and Victor from LEDtronics were also there. The local company is called MIB.

Ira, from MIB, like the training the first morning so much that she called a guy who works at this billboard magazine called B&B.

This photographer (who was also the editor-in-chief) actually took about a million photos of me for this magazine. He told me they would put me on the cover, but I’m not sure if he was joking or not. In one issue, they had a 4 page spread of a new LED billboard in Bandung (which happens to be a Dak ProStar.) 4 pages is a little excessive….. it wasn't a very large or unique display. On Thursday, two journalists interviewed me.

Perk and I during V1500 training.

Gabriel (photographer) took 181 photos the first day, and 86 during the interview. I think that is a little excessive!!!

Gabriel gave me all of the photos too. I don't have so many of me on the blog so I thought I would post a few.

the Blue Frog and crazy taxi drivers

Lonnie and Ed (from the customer service department at Daktronics corporate) were here for about a week. Friday night we were going to eat near our apartment. They got in a cab and called us to instruct the taxi driver how to get there. Jon's phone locked up and he couldn't answer, so the taxi driver kicked them out of his cab because they didn't know where they were going. They walked to the Blue Frog and asked us to meet there. (The Blue Frog is an expat bar and grill. )


This shouldn't have been a problem. Perk, an animator from LEDtronics, was visiting too. Perk, Jon and I grabbed a cab and told him to go to Da Ning Lu. After telling him the first several turns, he exited the elevated road. Suddenly we were going to Pudong (the way to the airport, WAY out of Shanghai.) Perk speaks Chinese so he was telling him where to go, along with us. However the guy didn't have a clue. He kept speeding the wrong way.

He took us to Da Ming Lu, and next saw Da Lin Lu, but just kept going. We called Grace, one of the sales people, and told him exactly how to get there. He kept going in the same direction on the same street, the same wrong way. We started looking for another cab - we didn't want to get out without another cab to get us out of that strange part of town. I was starting to get very creeped out with a very bad feeling about this guy.

Luckily, we were at a stoplight when I saw one on the other side of the street. I said get out now! and we all jumped out (yes, without paying) and jumped into the other cab as quick as we could.

We told the other cab driver to drive away quick and we'd give him a big tip. Perk explained the situation and told him where we started and where we were trying to go. The new driver thought the other driver was insane for taking us where we were. Then, the first driver started following us. He was pulling up next to us on the wrong side of the lane, shouting at us, honking, etc. Jon was just furious and told the new driver that if they other guy followed us all the way there, he'd take care of it.

Our new driver had to backtrack for a very long way before getting on the right track to Da Ning Lu. Ed and Lonnie had been waiting for us for over an hour, when we should have been there in about 15 to 20 minutes.

The Pearl TV Tower

The first part of the week, Dr. Al Kurtenbach (the founder of Daktronics) was here visiting. It was his first time in China. It was very interesting to be able to learn from the person who started the company! Judy, Ning and I took him to the Pearl TV Tower on Sunday. It was pretty cool and there was a museum of old Shanghai in the bottom, which was interesting.



This is the tallest building in Shanghai now. It's the Shanghai World Financial Center, and should be finished in 2008.

More photos from Macau

I am really playing catch up tonight. These were from about a month ago.

Dan, Geoffrey (Macau senior project manager), me in my qipao (traditional Chinese dress) which I had made at the fabric market, and Axel (sales guy that lives in Hong Kong.)

Rosa, an intern with a Japanese name (sorry I can't remember) and Veronica.

Andy, Pete Egart (Keyframe manager from the USA) and Abram.

Mr. Ning's Holiday

Abram likes to send out something fun each Friday. Last time it was Dan's face on Mao. This time it is Ning, a head engineer, on Mr. Bean's body.

Lane's trip - July 15th

Lane Munson was at Dak Shanghai for about a week. On this day we took him to Yuyuan Gardens, which has lots of traditional architecture and tons of little shops selling mostly to tourists. We had some jiaozi for lunch. They have beer girls that walk around with a cart of beer too. The girl is always covered head to toe in that beer's brand.

Unfortunately, about 3 days before he left, he got food poisoning. Really bad. After an IV and multiple shots and pills of antibiotics at the Worldlink clinic, he was doing a bit better. He is pretty sure it was from some chicken. I've noticed they don't cook chicken here like we do at home. If you are eating a leg, there is almost always red meat by the bone. (I've stopped eating chicken if it is still on the bone.) Poor Lane. What a way to end his trip.

Jon and Dan could probably live on jiaozi. They are steamed dumplings and there are many different kinds. It's the food that had the big story about how someone was making them from chemicals and cardboard in Beijing. The government jailed him for false reporting.

Dan thought we should attempt a Chairman Mao pose. I think we just look silly. But - Dan is the chairman, if you had forgotten. Scroll down to July 13th for that post!

Chinese guys playing a game, probably Mahjong. Very common. (photo credit belongs to Lane)

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.

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.

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.

Saturday Outing

After our bedroom furniture was delivered, we went to the Fabric Market. It's four floors of hundreds of small shops that custom tailor anything you'd like. Here Jon got 3 shirts, for 125 yuan each. He also had a summer suit made and I had a traditional Chinese-style shirt made. We also got a duvet cover. We pick them up next Saturday.

Next we went to People's Square to check out the new LED display that a competitor put in. It is really horrible. The color is very bad, the modules all need to be calibrated, and their control system can't control the whole thing. BUT - it's cheap. Jon is texting Dan about the display here. The building in the background has terrible feng shui, and we heard that it's had many deaths and suicides!

Soon we got caught in a downpour! This is right after it. We went to Haagen-Dais to enjoy some ice cream while we waited for it to let up. People's Square is the Times Square of Shanghai. Many things are still neon so there's a huge market for LED displays.

So I be a Hooter's girl (actual lyrics)

Monday and Tuesday all of the sales people were in Shanghai for sales training. Everyone went to Hooters for some wings and beer. The Hooter's girls dance here - they stood up on stools and did the YMCA, they did the chicken dance (with some of the guys at the table, only they sang "I don't wanna be a chicken, I don't wanna be a duck, so I be a Hooters girl"), and they danced to "Keep Your Hands To Yourself " by the Georgia Satellites (the Chinese girls were very impressed that Dan sang and played air guitar to the whole song.) The slogan is: Hooters makes you happy.

Since they do the embarrassing birthday thing, everyone said it was Larry's birthday...

Aileen, Louise, Judy, Lin Lin, Kelly and Grace having a good time singing to Larry.

Quaker Square

Yesterday morning, I flew into Columbus, Ohio with another account manager to meet with Clear Channel Outdoor. They currently have a digital network in Cleveland, and ones are going up in Columbus and Akron too. It's been nice to meet the people we will be working with daily.

Jon is a Priority Club member, which means he earns hotel points at the Holiday Inn and affilates. He is platinum so we get any available upgrades. Last night I got a jacuzzi suite and tonight I have an executive suite. The hotel here in Akron is really cool - it was a mill for Quaker Oats, and they've turned all of the silos into the hotel! Everything is round. You can see some photos here. The Clear Channel Office is about 2 blocks from here so it is very handy. I like being in a downtown area; they are usually pretty interesting.

V7000 Training at Shreveport

Tuesday through Thursday I was in Shreveport, LA. Their new convention center purchased a ProAd (pictured for those of you who aren't up with Dak products) and two ProStars (video boards.) I trained Michael (advertising) and Chuck (IT) on the displays and our Venus 7000 software/control system. I really like getting out of the office and meeting clients. These guys were super nice and they loved the displays. Comments they wrote on their training surveys included: Everything was clear, concise; Great job! Very professional - an asset to the company; Emily was very knowledgable about the system and explained things in a logical progresion.

It was SO warm there! Beautiful. Shreveport seemed to be known for the casinos - there were several big ones there and everyone kept asking me if I was going to try my luck. (No, not really any time for leisure.) I did go to the Lousiana Boardwalk one night for dinner at a place called Sushiko. I sat at the sushi bar and talked to the chef and a guy named David from Taiwan who owned a deli here. Somehow we got talking about traveling and David was absolutely amazed that I'd backpacked. He said he'd be too scared. Well... he moved here from Taiwan! I thought it was kind of funny he'd be intimidated by traveling in Europe. The sushi was really good, but I did order one thing that I didn't really like. It was salmon eggs (the big kind, not the tiny ones) and quail egg. Somehow when I ordered I didn't realize how big quail eggs are - the chef cracked them open like chicken eggs and they sat on top of the other eggs, bright yellow yolks and all. Lots of big raw eggs. I won't be ordering that again. The eel was the best I've ever had though; I think eel is my favorite!

The Always Cafe

Ritchie and a beer girl. We've seen these girls in various bars - they dress up in short skirts and tall boots and promote their brand of beer. Most of the American guys are quite a bit larger than the Chinese girls....

Ritchie thought it was funny that Jon was still working.

Jon and I - check out the new pearls!

(photos courtesy of Ritchie Hart - thanks!)

Wednesday - Hangzhou

This morning Dan, Jon and I boarded the train to Hangzhou. The south railway station is extremely modern – very clean, spacious, and beautiful. It cost 44 RMB for a ticket for a two-hour train ride. Of course everything but the numbers are in Chinese, but we managed to figure out that we were on car 1, seats 54, 55 and 56. We thought that car one should be at the front of the train, as we passed 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2. At car 2, we were told that car 1 was between 8 and 9 though. Lesson learned – just show someone your ticket right away.

The train was not as modern as the station. It had two levels and every seat was full. There was this curtain by me that had mildew or dust or something that I was allergic to in it. I didn’t want to breathe. You see people wearing surgical masks around occasionally. I was told it was to help filter the pollution, or to prevent them from spreading their cold. I wished I had one then. In the US you would get hundreds of stares, but here it is fairly common.

In Hangzhou, we took a taxi into town. Grace sold her first large video board there, and it was being fired up. Once in the taxi, Dan called Grace and had her tell the driver (in Chinese) where to go. This also is very common, among Chinese as well as foreigners. All businesses have a map to their location on their business card or any other printed material.

We met Pete Johnson, Stephanie, Grace, Gary Gregg (US tech), Larry (Chinese project manager), and William (Chinese tech) there. The sign was almost totally up – two blocks of modules were out, but William replaced a power supply and fixed some wires and it was totally up and running. We only have one standard animation for China – it is the Chinese flag rippling. It looks good but we just need to have more variety.

The display is on a building still under construction. It will be an entertainment complex, with discos and KTV (karaoke). It is owned by a very important man, Mr. Lu (I think). He actually saw our displays in Macau and sought Daktronics out because he was impressed with them. We are also proposing a ProAd display for the other side, so a couple hours were spent discussing this proposal, pricing, etc. Mr. Lu met us at the hotel in the afternoon. We sat in booths looking directly at the display and discussed the possibilities for it, along with content creation. He did not speak any English so Grace translated everything. There are actually two other owners, who came later, but he is the decision maker.
Mr. Lu owns several restaurants throughout the city. He took us to one near the hotel. It had a waterfall flowing down two stories of smooth rock, with a glass staircase going upstairs. We were shown to a private room. There were a couple of special dishes that would cost hundreds of dollars back home. One was abalone, and the other was some type of mollusk that have to be alive until the chef cut it up, minutes before it was served. Another interesting dish was whole smelt fried. It was hard to get the meat without getting bones using chopsticks. Many of the dishes with fish have the entire fish including head and tail.

We also drank several bottles of sweet, warm wine. It was used for toasting with the miniature wine glasses. I learned there is a certain way you must toast with important people. The non-important person must always keep their glass under the important person’s glass as they toast. So, when Mr. Lu toasted Dan, they clinked their glasses together, Dan’s under Mr. Lu’s. Mr. Lu then made his lower, then Dan did, etc. Basically, the important person is lowering the glass trying to say they are not important, but the other person insists that they are.

The only time Mr. Lu wasn’t the highest glass was when he got up from his seat and toasted Gary Gregg. He said Gary was very important and he must be very smart (referring to him helping put the display up.) Mr. Lu’s driver then took us to the train station.

The 8:30 train was sold out, and the next one was at 10:00. A group of people with red shirts said, oh, the busses are this way. They led us to a group of mini-vans! We said no way and started to leave. They started bargaining with us, and we said we’d pay 400 yuan for a ride to Shanghai if they had a big van. They showed us, but wouldn’t give us the price we wanted.

So we went back to the ticket counter and discovered only hard seats were left on the late train. These people kept trying to bargain with us and get us to take their transportation. We said we’d only take a real bus.

Somehow they managed to find a real bus. We agreed to the ride for 60 yuan each and left at 9:10. It was a charter bus that probably took a group of tourists from Shanghai to Hangzhou, and the driver was going to make a few bucks on his way back to Shanghai. Dan said the vans they were trying to give rides in were probably company vans and they were basically stealing from their employers.

Photos from dinner Tuesday

Emily, Maggie and Sai

Jon eats the duck head - not only fish are served with the heads here.

Judy, Dan and Ning

Tuesday

Jon and Dan went on a business call together. The hired driver got them lost so they were delayed in getting there. They sent the car back for Sai, Maggie (the HR/Office assistant here) and I to go look at furniture for our apartment. Yes, we have decided to move here. Maggie translated prices and such all day for us. She is so cute – she giggles frequently and covers her mouth while doing it. That is quite common among the Chinese women. She and Sai LOVE to shop. It was a lot of fun. We had lunch at Papa John’s. It is the most popular pizza place here. KFC is the most popular fast food, followed by McDonald’s.

Furniture here ranges from cheap to outrageous, just like anywhere else. I didn’t find anything that was really soft – most of it was modern and hard cushions to sit on. We did find a couple Slumberlands and a Serta dealer, so we will be able to get a soft mattress. I saw a couple of western recliners and couches, and they were about what you’d pay in the US. Everything else was about half of that.

Sai bought a huge hand-made vase. It was priced at 830 RMB and she got it for 400 RMB ($50). You have to bargain and walk away a few times and usually they will follow and barter more. Even meals are negotiable – Grace (Dak Shanghai saleswomen) won’t let up if she thinks she is not getting a fair price. When we buy furniture, we will pick it out first and then let Ning or another Chinese person go bargain for it later. The assumption is that all foreigners are rich and we will definitely get ripped off.

I got my nails done again – they glued on acrylic nails, painted them pink and then painted three tiny flowers on each nail, with glitter for a center. It was 50 RMB ($6.50).

The three of us met Dan, Jon, Ning, Judy and two guys from Dak Canada (Ritchie and Gislain) at Lu Lu Restaurant. It was another huge meal! I don’t believe I explained how the meals are served. In the middle of the table is a huge round piece of glass on a turntable. The dishes are set, one by one as they are ready, on the glass and people turn it slowly throughout the meal so that every is able to sample every dish. With the ten of us, probably 20 to 25 dishes were served. One course is always soup, although it is hard to count courses since the food just keeps coming and is not taken away until the dish is empty.

Dan bought a bottle of Maltese, which is traditional liquor that is quite strong. It is poured into a decanter, which is used to fill what look like tiny wine glasses. You drink them like shots. Our group managed to finish off the whole bottle, although I didn’t try it.

After that we went to the Blue Frog for a couple drinks. It was a very modern bar, although it was very smoky. 80% of the men in China smoke, and China consumes one-third of the cigarettes produced world-wide. People smoke everywhere. In one of Jon’s sales meetings, the guy chain-smoked in a conference room. The lobby of every building has people smoking… really, anywhere it is permissible, it seems. The Dak office is non-smoking though.

The Big News....

.... is that Jon and I are going to Shanghai, China in a week.

We leave about 6 PM on Thursday. We'll arrive in Shanghai at 3 PM the next day, and it is 14 hours ahead of Central Time. Trying to figure out actual travel time has thoroughly confused me. United.com says that the flight from Chicago to Shanghai is 14 hours and 35 minutes. Definitely the longest flight I've been on.

Daktronics has an office there, and Jon's old boss Dan Chase is the manager. He has been living there for a year with his family. He's been recruiting Jon to come over and manage/build the Chinese sales team. I'd be able to work for Daktronics too. (or maybe I'd be a women of leisure and spend all of my time wandering the city taking photos. Probably not though.) We're going to go to decide if we want to do it for sure. We'd be there for 2 years.

If it's a go, we'll sell our house, put things in storage and go! How exciting.