Down by the Cashier

Ahh, the fresh smell of unicorn droppings.  Cut southwest this morning after sitting there for hours, fretting with the folks back home about the holidays.  I thought I had a plan.  Now I don’t have a plan.  Completely dissatisfied with the way these plans have changed.  My DiDi driver arrives reasonably fast.  Always a question as to how to time your request. If you press “request” for a car from the 41^st floor, he may be down there fuming at you, dialing you complaining, before you get there.  Or you could request when you’re in the lobby and find that the four minutes suggested by the app, is really more like twelve.

My colleagues have arrived two or three minutes before me.  They are speaking to the guy I was just texting with.  This is one of hottest new companies around, in our space. And what’s more and what’s fascinating to me at least is that they are, through a successful subsidiary one of the hottest companies in the U.S. as well.  Their office has a cartoon mascot, of course.  That must be a requisite part of the official incorporation process.   The desks are crowded, the everything is new and the team from Silicon Valley are also on the call, when we arrive.

Two meetings later we’ve left the Hong Qiao area and made it way out east to the Zhang Jiang Software Park in Pudong.  I have a weekly call that overlaps with my hosting of clients today and I spend the call, heading back west, walking through the pipeline for a completely different product, with people from a different country and when we arrive at the restaurant, sooner than I’d expected in Xintiandi, I have to ask my guests to head up and take the table I’d reserved, by themselves.  I remain down by the cashier and order a scotch.

I announce I have a hard-stop as the call looks likely to drift over the scheduled time and make my way up to the second floor.  I was at this same table, just a month ago, with a different group of visiting clients.  I’ve invited an old friend to join us.  He’s wonderful and like one of the gentleman I’m showing around he’s smart and from the New England, and as suspected, they get on well.  It is with some embarrassment, that I hop on to yet another call as we wrap up our meal and send them on their way.  This time it’s not the Middle East but Sao Paulo.  My local friend and I find a table, and I try to make it quick, though it is awfully hard to hear what this person is saying and I don’t suspect I’m making a good first impression. 

Wednesday 10/30/19