sushipanda

I received some horrible news from the department admin yesterday: they have decided to move my cubicle again. This is the second time in the past few months that I’ve had to move. At my original desk I had the wall behind me, and thus absolute privacy from people walking up and down the aisle. I was distressed and concerned about having to sit in the middle of the row at my new location. Because I do about 15 minutes of work every day when I’m in the office, I would certainly have to figure out a way to look busy with people now able to see what I was doing while walking to and from the cubicles behind me. Thankfully, I was put a separate from my superiors and in what turned out to be the “lay-off” zone, with many of the people assigned to sit around me having suddenly left the company or finished with their overseas assignments.

That left me back in the position I thrived in before; totally isolated and free to stare blankly at my fantasy baseball page for the bulk of the work-day without any disturbance. As the weeks went by, my colleagues slowly forgot that I even existed, completely bypassing me on their way to lunch, which left me sitting alone in my cube, snacking on my lunch-box and blissfully listening to my iPod.

But all of that is going to change. As of next week, I am being moved back to sit with the rest of my finance comrades. This also means that the senior controller, who is my boss’s boss, will now be three cubes behind me, and almost everyone will see what is on my computer screen as they walk toward the bathroom, on their way to a meeting, or to simply stretch their legs.

This has three major, major implications on my life going forward:

1) I now actually have to be in the office. This sounds very basic but it’s not. My good friends actually have to ask if I’m home or not each morning because I’m so often sitting in the comfort of my own study…usually in nothing but my boxers and pantyhose.

2) When I’m in the office, I actually have to do work. This is also a big deal because I’m totally incompetent and am typically only stressed out when the refrigerator is out of free Diet Coke.

3) No more farting in my cube

These three changes to my life are what have kept me up the past 48 hours, rocking back and forth on my bed with an ashen look on my face. If you find me blogging even less than I do know, you’ll know what happened to me: the mighty arms of the karma gods.

On Saturday I had dinner with Tina, who was in town for a couple of weeks. One of her high school friends was also in town, so she set up a big dinner at South Beauty. Lydia and I braved the massive lightning storm and were a little surprised to see so many people at the table. Turns out her friend, Chris, had just completed a one-month internship at a hospital in Taizhou, about a 6 hour train ride away from Shanghai. He brought with him four of his fellow interns, who like him were coming off their first years as med students at Chicago Medical school.

It wasn’t until we trekked over to Abbey Road for post-dinner drinks that I was able to actually start engaging in conversation with them. Given that one of my recent projects has been on IT investments in the PRC healthcare industy, the first question out of my mouth was how advanced the Taizhou hospital’s IT infrastructure was. Soon, however, it became clear that they had much more interesting things to talk about.

Chris got things going by asking his fellow classmates: “What was the most f**ked up thing you guys saw?” Apparently, this was one topic of conversation that escaped the one month they lived together and the 6 hours on the train it took to get here.

Robert made a gesture with both his arms so it looked like he was cradling an invisible baby. “Remember the tumor that they removed from that one dude’s pancreas? It was seriously THIS big!”

Brian started talking about how many of the patients they saw had lung cancer from smoking too much. He recounted one man who was spitting up blood and had a week to leave, but kept smiling because neither the doctors or his family were willing to give him the news. Chris talked about his stint in the orthopedics department, which regularly treated patients with damaged bones who would scream when the local anesthesia began to wear off. Sadir mentioned how surprised he was to see how much the human body could take, and described how the Chinese doctor had asked him to vice the ribcage apart so they could perform open-heart surgery.

It was amazing, hearing these med students talk about all the crazy shit they saw in the hospital. They shared more interesting stories about Chinese peasants who just never bothered to get themselves checked out, like the 80 year-old man whose leg had been decaying for the past 20 years but never thought to have it fixed. Or how men had their pants down in the corridor getting their hernias checked because there wasn’t enough space or he didn’t have enough money to get a private examination room. Both Lydia and I were impressed and had a ton of questions, but being the gentleman that I am I let her go first.

“Which one of the characters on Grey’s Anatomy do you like the best?”

I have to admit I was a little nervous that Chris and his friends would think we were both stupid for asking this question after they had spent so much time talking about life and death situations, so like the asshole that I am I interrupted.

“You’re probably interested in talking about the serious medical issues, so just ignore Lydia’s question because I have an important one that I’ve been dying to know the answer to.”

“Sure, go ahead,” one of them said.

“So…how many of the nurses do you think actually shaved their armpits?”

I’m positive they were impressed with the depth of my inquisitiveness. Just as I’m sure they were impressed when, in response to their question of what it was like working at the company that I do, I told them: “My office building now has free Diet Coke. And I take naps under my desk.”

I’m so special.

I haven’t been posting much, on this site or on Shanghaiist, because I’ve actually been busy with work. I know that most of you may be pausing for a punchline, but there really isn’t one. Yes, I’ve actually been working, hunched over my laptop with my brows furrowed and rows and columns of numbers staring back at me from the cluttered mess of my pricing spreadsheet. Ah, the life of the corporate financial analysts: numbers and numbers and more numbers.

On top of that, we just concluded a 3-day finance management retreat at the Renaissance Hotel here in Shanghai. Yes, a retreat here in the town in which I’m living. Tons of our “senior finance leadership” flew out from around the world to do “coaching” and “mentoring” to senior finance folks across Asia. What this entailed was workshop after workshop of hearing white men who have been around for over a decade rehash old stories about what made them recognized as being successful leaders. I would have to say the highlights of the event were limited to the few precious moments when I was able to step out and get free dumplings and espresso from the spiky-haired Renaissance hotel staff.

This morning we closed out the event the way folks at our company always do: with a series of mind-numbing Powerpoint presentations. One of the slides, however, caught my eye and awoke me from my stupor. It was a quote from someone named Steve. I can’t remember his last name, but I’ll quote it here:

if you’re using all the buzzwords and reading all the latest leadership books, and holding forth at every meeting on the latest management fads, but you’re not experiencing that visceral churning in your gut, and you’re not scaring yourself every day, and you’re not feeling that OhShit!Moment as regularly as clockwork, then you are not doing anything significant-let alone changing the world-and you are certainly not leading anyone else.

I did a quick Google search and concluded that the Steve responsible for this quote is either leadership consultant Steve Farber or former strip club owner Steve Kaplan who pled guilty to fraud and prostitution and also watched live as Patrick Ewing received oral treatment at one of his clubs. I’m pretty sure it’s the 2nd one. Anyway, the reason this quote jumped out at me is because I’m AWESOME at using buzzwords. Just this afternoon, I was telling someone: “I don’t have the bandwidth right now to boldly engage or empower my team to resolve fundamental misalignments within the greater ecosystem.” Since it was the taxi driver I was telling this to, I didn’t get much of a verbal response, but I was absolutely convinced that he saw me as a highly intelligent and effective manager.

Regarding the “visceral churning” in my gut: that’s something I feel every day after gorging myself on crap cafeteria food downstairs in our building. Workdays almost always conclude with literal “Oh Shit” moments, as in “Oh that’s a lot of shit” as I watch it flush down the toilet. I thought to myself “Steve is speaking about me! I’m the perfect management role model!” Turns out I didn’t really need all those workshops after all.

So add that to the highlight list of the first half of this week: dumplings, espresso, and knowing that my stomach troubles and ridiculous use of English vocabulary are actually helping to change the world.

Another one of those swanky fashion events that we had no business crashing. How long can we keep going to these things, drown in free-flow champagne, snack on caviar and mousse, and mingle with all the beautiful people in the fashion and entertainment industry? Forever!

Click on the image to the left to visit the entire Flickr gallery. Note that Flickr is still blocked for those in China; see here for a Firefox fix.

When Clint, Keith, Mike and I visited Chengdu last May and checked out the Panda Breeding Center, I knew that I had come home to my kind. I could feel the distinctly powerful connection while pressed up against the smudgy glass, watching brown-assed pandas lumber about their terrain, looking for a cozy place to sleep away their 20 hours a day. Once we made eye contact, I knew that they sensed the same thing too, and wanted desperately to reach out and communicate to me.

Now, they are silent no more.

“Cement box…no sky…no friends…hate life…no want this life…for baby.”

Panda Demands Abortion

When I first came to Shanghai nearly four years ago, my Frommer’s travel guide basically called out the following places for halfway decent nightlife: Pegasus, Park 97, Xintiandi, and Windows. Flash forward to present day: the list of bars and clubs that have risen up, only to be battered down by Shanghai’s fickle citizenry, is long and not exactly low-profile. But still standing is the dumpy franchise that is Windows, which now comes in three distinct flavors: Too, Tembo, and Scoreboard. And it was at Tembo where we found ourselves Friday night for a relatively toothless Guys Night Out.

Windows is the site of many a tear-inducing memory. I can still vividly recall Keith being pushed into one of those hideous group dance circles, looking bewildered for a second, and then launching into what can only be described as an existential rendition of the dancing chicken. There was also that time Steve went missing for half an hour, only to be discovered on the steps outside, trying to fend off a strange creature of unknown gender trying to cram his/her/its tongue in his ear.

Through thick and thin, one can always depend on Windows for insanely cheap drinks, throngs of exchange students, English teachers looking for their respective diamonds in the rough, and warmed over hip-hop tunes fresh from the Pegasus and Guandii tours of two years prior. Chace, Mike, Peter and I peeled labels off our 10 kuai beer bottles, repeatedly complained about being shoved in the “old people’s corner,” and gently nodded our heads to the beat where, in our younger days, we might have been gyrating on the dance floor. It was fun. Safe and clean fun, but fun nonetheless.

And then, as if the Maxim gods above were exhausted by our utter boringness, a gift was bestowed upon us. Chace came back from the men’s bathroom, flush with excitement.

Chace: There’s a dude passed out on the crapper, spread eagle for everyone to see. You guys have go to go check it out!

Normally, the prospect of seeing Chinese dicks out in open air doesn’t really fan my flames of interest; I’ve been to Babyface too many a time to know that there are plenty of Chinese dicks out there. But given that this was Windows, endearingly rotten to its core, we all had to go see what Chace was so excited about. Lo and behold, a toad-like being indeed was near comatose on the shitter, the door kicked open for all to see his glory. This was definitely a change of pace from the rest of the evening. And since all of us had downed a fair amount of beers, one of us always had to go back the bathroom and take care of business, and then return to the table to provide updates on our new, exhibitionist friend. Afterwards, we spent 15 minutes Bluetooth-ing each other’s cell phones, trying to save what come to represent the perfect visual symbol for the consequences of a mass of 10kuai beers:

I sincerely hope Windows stays open forever. I can’t imagine this town without it. And, heaven forbid, if it ever does close, the four of us will have these wonderful images to bring back these terrific, down and dirty memories.

It’s Friday afternoon, I just finished up some work, and tonight promises to be dizzying but very enjoyable (wings at Gillie’s, some Wii playing, beers with Chace and Mike, and then a traipse over to Volar to wish John a happy birthday). In that spirit of closing out the week, here are some thoughts swimming through my head on this early summer afternoon:

• I dearly love my mom, but she should not have the power of e-mail at her fingertips. Now that she’s wiling her early retirement years with other bored couples in the suburbs of Las Vegas, I’ve been the recipient of countless e-mail forwards and attachments that she has found amusing and decided to send my way. I typically delete this type of crap when I get them from co-workers, but since she’s my mom I dare not upset the forces of filial piety, and find myself compelled to go through each animal blooper, dancing horse, or inspirational aphorism lest she somehow find out that I loathe these things and renounces me as a son. I hope she doesn’t read my blog. Oh wait, no one reads my blog.
• I’ve completed seasons 3 of both “The Office” and “Lost.” Damn it, I knew I never should have started watching this crap. I’ve got a very addictive nature; once I find pleasure in something find myself obsessing over it. And indeed, these two shows are very, very pleasurable. One pleasant byproduct of having to watch TV shows in China is that it’s easy to enjoy them in an insulated environment. I was very pleased to have been enraptured by the season finale of “Lost” without having any clue as to what was coming next. No commercials for upcoming episodes, no bulletin-board discussions, no spoilers revealed. I must say that the second half of this season of “Lost” has really redeemed itself. And yes, I’m now officially a convert to the American version of “The Office,” as it has taken on an identity of its own. Check it out if you get a chance. Now it’s on to “Weeds.”
• It’s a strange feeling to not want anything. I did a mental inventory when I was in Hong Kong, and realized that there was absolutely nothing material that I really desired. After many years, I’ve finally accepted the fact that no matter how many new clothes I’ll buy, I’m going to end up wearing the same 3 or 4 ratty T-shirts anyway. Recent trips to the triumverate of megapopular Shanghai mainstream retailers (H&M, Zara, Uniqlo) have resulted in me staring blankly at the same old striped polos, cargo shorts, and arty Japanese-designed T-shirts. On the electronics front, my Macbook Pro is still as sleek and enticing as ever, I still use my iPod nearly 3 hours each day, I’ve got three sets of headphones (buds, Sennhesier open-ears, and BOSE noise-canceling), I haven’t even figured out all the functions in my nifty Nokia smartphone, and despite owning over 30 games I still end up bowling on the few occasions I play my Wii. It’s a refreshing feeling, going out on the town and not really needing to buy anything. Tragically, this is not the case with Lydia, who can probably open up her own Zara by now with all the stuff she’s bought there in the past year and a half.
• Can’t stop listening to Voxtrot the new Arcade Fire. Looks like my Christina Aguilera days are well behind me, just as she’s coming to Shanghai and showing off her goods.