Personal Dork Assistant

Life of a Salesman

Tagged along with our sales guy to downtown Shenzhen for a Supplier Business Review with a big American CPU/motherboard company. Chien was there, too, but we were more there as warm bodies than anything else, in order to show proper respect for the Big American Corp. Got there an hour early in case of traffic jams, so we had some time to wander around the upscale mall at the base of the gleaming office tower. On a weekday afternoon the people there were either suited business folks or 太太s with money to spend. In that steel-and-concrete bubble, the place didn't seem all that different from any other Asian metro. There were Boss and Escada boutiques, an Asus notebook display in the courtyard, food court upstairs, and a restaurant complete with big fish tanks out front (couple of tiger sharks swimming). Saw a Häagen Dazs shop and had to stop by for a couple scoops. It's been ages since I've had decent ice cream and it hit the spot, even if it was 45RMB for two small scoops. Spent the rest of the time before the meeting at an Illy coffee shop upstairs, with another 25RMB for a cup of cap.

FYI: $1 = 8.2765RMB, as of today, and every day.

I guess if you're used to California costs of living, $5.50 for ice cream at an upscale hotspot and three bucks for a cup of coffee isn't all that. But it does highlight the economic dichotomies when one can easily spend an average person's monthly salary for an afternoon snack. Well, I wasn't spending money on anything else. It was either ice cream or cheap whores and ice cream tastes better. Headed up to the 55th floor and met their reps in the conference room (great view of Shenzhen) for a mutually beneficial exchange of PowerPoint presentations. They wanted us to cost-down by 5% a quarter, and Stanley had to come up with a nice way to say "Screw You." At least they were nice about it, unlike the brutal item-by-item grind at the Foxconn Quarterly Price Review meeting. Other than that it was pretty much an empty-suit meeting, but it had to be done and it's nice to get away from the factory once in a while.