Management outing, Chinese style

I know, I know, I should have posted a new message a long time ago!! Anyway, here we go... The past two weeks things have continued the way I thought they would. Everyone still very positive, they want to learn and they want to do a good job. Very often they dont know how to do that though.... For instance... One morning I heard some loud noise coming off of the loading dock/ receiving area. So I go and have look and there is this cook standing with a CHAIN SAW in his hand, cutting a parmesan cheese wheel in two!! HA! So can only laugh very hard and ask him what the hell he thinks he is doing?!?! So he is totally stunned and says that the band saw in the pantry is broken and that he didnt know of another way to cut the cheese!! Can't blame the guy, he just wants to get the job done! So funny! Stories like this are happening all the time. Maybe not as radical, but still, they happen. This weekend we went on a management outing. The GM invited all execs, dept heads and managers to go to a city closeby to discuss strategy and do some teambuilding. So we all get on the buss friday morning and we go for a 4 hr drive to Ningbo. All well, we get there and we have lunch first. The noodle station was so cool, the guy is making the noodles a la minute. This is NOT easy, if though it seems very easy.... I had a video, but it doesnt let me upload it, so pictures will have to do it.

So we have the meeting, very interactive, InterCon stuff, same as in the US. After we are done with the training we all go for dinner. Now, here is where the fun starts. We sat down with the Chairman of the two owning companies and we started the dinner. Obviously everyone is watching us how we eat our traditional chinese food and if we like it or not. Then we get introduced to the Chinese "toasting tradition". They hae wine glasses on the table with 1 sip of wine in it. Someone picks up the glass and toasts someone. They both pick up their glasses and empty it in 1 go. The accompanying saying is Kampai, with meas bottom's up! This goes on for about 3 hours and so literally you toast the entire room. It shows respect if you put more wine in your own glass than your superior. Something like I will drink more so i save you from getting drunk. Really, incredible. I must have had 3 bottles of wine during the dinner. Some people got so drunk they started falling and throwing up!! Nobody seemed to care and thought it was cool to do... At the end of the dinner we took a picture and after that we went to the Karaoke bar. The picture is of my team and the GM and Chairman. Then we went to the Karaoke bar and we went crazy with the Music. The last time I sang on a stage was in Savanah with Meghan and Alison and that wasn't a success, so i was kind of nervous that i would empty the room again by my magnificent singing skills. However, this time it didnt matter. Everyone was so drunk, nobody cared! So all and all a good experience again and really, worth the trip. In the morning we visited some temples and had another lunch. Again, traditional Chinese. Very nice, food is amazing. Only sometime they eat some weird stuff, but overall the food in this part of China is very well balanced and they dont use a lot of spice. I dont want to hold back the one picture where we went on the stage and sang and played with the band in the hotel after we came back from the karaoke bar. We must have thought that it was still ok to sing through a microphone. The guy next to me is the director of rooms, his name is Dean, Australian guy... Needless to say, that the hotel guests weren't as understandinga and accomodating as our colleagues in the karaoke bar, so we quickly went on to yet another ping piju (cold beer). Ok, gotta run, will be back soon!!!