Getting lucky !!

Imagine walking in to a WAR room, where the experts working hard for hours to get to root cause.. not having any context, and first thing you notice among thousands of lines of information is the Root Cause of the issue ???


Yes it happens !!

Culture Shock ...

Entire last working week, been in a real cross culture room of executives, assembled in Beijing. Americans, Indians, Chinese, Singapore, Australians, Malaysian.

Easily 2-3 meta cultures in that room. The schedules were crazy too. Everyone need to get to the room at 7:45AM and can only get out at 6:00PM. No real breaks in the middle, no laptops, no iPhones to fiddle with. Just focus on what you doing.

And if you could not have your breakfast in the morning, then you ll have to wait till lunch.

Here, one of the local executives from Beijing, used to get nicely packaged breakfast and coffee, by his admin, a petite and pretty young woman - who would time to time sneak in to the room, tip-toe through the desks and hand over the stuff to her boss !

And you got to look at Amerians and Australians that time. What ? Your office admin does that ?

Selling experience ..

Cloisonne handicraft in China is very famous and extremely pretty. I saw quite a few in a good shop, but did not buy any. There was some amount of intention in me to get one, but for some reason ended up not getting any.

Next day - on my way back from "Great wall of China" - in the rural area, I stopped by a "Cloisanne" factory. It has chambers for each phase of copper-smith, coloring, polishing etc. You see one piece getting done over a day. The pipeline, the people who work, the fire, the furnace, the artist, the molten metal and the stone colors.

Right next to it there is a counter with perfecting English speaking sales person and symbols saying "all sorts of credit cards accepted".

The same piece I could not convince my self to buy, ended up buying at this place. It was a holistic purchase of "experience" - not just the final product !

After a long day - heading to an open kitchen restaurant, where we are going to point to the raw material that would be cooked  behind transparent glasses. Another "experience" purchase I guess !!

Oh China !!

My first opportunity to come to Beijing, China.

While I would like about other experiences, this one experience is worth mentioning right away !

China does have dubious record of producing "duplicate" Global brands. And in Beijing there is a place called "Silk Market". This place is a good old china market. Everything is available. And you have to be shameless at bargaining. For example if a Sony PSP they say 1800 RMB, you can actually get it for 130 RMB. A Chinese silk formal Scarf of price 300 RMB, can be bought for 30 RMB with proper bargaining.

A lot of people warned me of duplicates, cheating etc. when I went in there. But I was thinking, its ok - "China Cheez, Chale to Chaand Tak -- Na chale to Sham tak".

So, found some cute silk dress for the cute lil girl of my neighbor back in Bangalore, few puzzles, scarfs etc. and bargained them all down to a 5th of the price in each case or even better. When I was about to pay, I realized I ve to withdraw some local currency. The ATM is right there in the same market, so when the shopkeeper was packing I decided to withdraw money  !

Got 500 RMB. But the ATM card never came out. Just like that it went in ... and I am like helpless. ATM card eaten up after a *Successful* transaction ! Why ?

In any case, I handed over the money to shopkeeper and she says, this is "duplicate money" can not accept.

I was like - "wow" !

While trying  to come back and contact HSBC back home to block the card, I saw these two BIG posters in the market - intended to increase consumer confidence ;)