Just a Few Updates on Life in China

Well, the time has come to vacate our home for the past 10 weeks. In fact I have actually stayed at this hotel for almost 100 days in 2008. It’s bitter sweet as I think about leaving this wonderful hotel. On one hand, we will finally be in our new home for the next 2-4 years but on the other hand, I have gotten to know the staff here at the Intercontinental Chengdu and they are like family. They have been extremely good to Kim and I during our long stay.

Anyway, I conducted the walkthrough at our new house yesterday and although it’s not perfect, it’s good enough to move in. Remember, This is China! With keys in hand, I met the moving crew this afternoon so that they could deliver all of our belongings from the states. Believe it or not, it doesn’t appear anything was damaged. I also started to move in this afternoon and after 2 carloads, I have just about everything out of the hotel room. I will stay at the hotel for another night because the internet isn’t hooked up at the house and I need a day to shop for the essentials before I start living there.

To backtrack a little, last week we held our official grand opening for the office here in Chengdu. Grand Openings of a new business is a big event here in China. This event required a full PR Team to assist me with the planning and coordination of the media. Turned out to be an exciting event, with city and district government officials, the U.S. Consulate and the American Chamber of Commerce as well as our executives from Dallas in attendance. We also had a representative form our parent company there as well. After a whole bunch of speeches including from yours truly, we concluded the event with a champagne toast to celebrate the opening. The local and national news media took their turns at interviewing me and others. I actually gave an interview to a local TV station, my 1st time to hit the tube. Must be the Expert Certificate they gave me a few weeks ago that made me news worthy.
The day ended with a great Sichuan diner, with the all of our company employees, at one of our favorite restaurantsLots of food, drinks, and laughs were had by all

It was a lot of fun reading the translated news articles about the opening. They certainly like to embellish in their articles. Did you know we are building a factory in China and we are going to help the Chinese compete against our customers? NOT!

In closing, I just have to share a few more pictures with you. Today while driving to the office, I couldn’t help but to take a few pictures of a man on a motorcycle carrying a very odd piece of cargo. See if you can figure out what he’s carrying.

Well if you haven’t figured it out it’s a full size pig less its head and its innards. I guess he’s on his way to the local butcher or maybe someone is having a luau.

Post a comment to let me know where you think he’s going with that pig? Remember TIC.

By the way, as you know from the previous post, my lovly wife is visiting our vacation home in Grand Prairie this week. All I can say is that she missed out on the best closet space. Dear, I ran out of room in the master bedroom closet so I had to move your clothes to other bedrooms. Love you & miss you!

Take care and god bless from China.