That Time Arrives Unexpectedly

Heading into the city as I’d promised myself I’d do today.  Two meetings before me. Jet lagged, I’ve had two micro-naps this morning.  I went to bed last night at 8:00PM and woke back up sometime after midnight.  Up, downstairs, I set about working.  But the internet shut off not long after I began so I could only focus on offline activities.  By 5:00AM or so I was droopy again, ready for nod though I knew I had a call pending at 8:00AM.  How was I going to do that without connectivity?

The internet has disappeared.  Happens sometimes.  I picked up the landline phone on my desk.  Indeed.  That’s dead too, so the bill hadn’t been paid.  It doesn’t link to a card nor does Unicom assume you should be notified by mail.  Rather you need to drive over to the Unicom store (that won’t be open for hours) and charge up the account.  How much to charge?  I don’t know.  How about a thousand RMB?  But when will that run out?  I don’t know.  Some time off into the future.  Many moons from now in a time to be determined.  And then, like it always must that time arrives unexpectedly, on a day like today.

So, you won’t be doing anything on-line this morning.  Good thing you got up early with the intention of getting so much done.  You won’t.  You can’t.  There are of course other things to do off line.  Aren’t there?  I can meditate and read and sort out all the photos so their flagged for the screen saver. 

My first meeting is with a fast moving, disruptive Chinese startup.  Crisp, upbeat, intelligent, one gets the sense that this company has attracted some of China’s greatest young talent.  Then I had to head to see a smaller Chinese company that wants to take their business into the U.S.  A young CEO, likely in his twenties acts a bit imperious.  How young?  Young to me.  He’s invented something remarkable and wants to sell it in the U.S.  And the further I go the more I realize how different this is from selling to U.S. companies. He wants all the risk and all the ambiguity removed ahead of time and that is absurd.  The longer I spoke with him the less likely it seemed that he would ever really pay for anything.



Tuesday 8/07/18