game...set ...match

Shanghai…..I swear you have to love this town. There are so many things that I have not had the opportunity to do while living in the States due to lack of time and convenience. One of them is play tennis. Well, after about 12 plus years I was invited by the CEO of Haworth to the inaugural ATP Tennis Tournament and to their annual tennis clinic at the Shanghai International Tennis Training Center.

It was here that I got to play with some serious heavy hitters, not tennis players but captains of industry! The CEO of Pepsi, Ford, Pricewater House Cooper, etc…. (see attached photo). A couple of players that were decent but for the most part most of them were mediocre. With that, I got a standing invitation from the CEO of Pepsi to start playing with his group.

Who knows, I might be peddling soda pop by the end of the year…

Fat Boys

This is dedicated to all the Fat Boys in the "Dena". Found this little gem in Prague.

Have you ever made a list of things that you wanted to do or have with the expectation that you would never have the opportunity to fulfill it then find yourself in the middle of it manifesting in front of your eyes. This has happened to me a couple of times in my life.

One was of me standing at the chancel a beautiful church watching the girl of my dreams march down the aisle towards me. The other happened just a few weeks ago while I was looking out the airplane window watching the plane squeeze inside a valley between the peaks of the Himalayas. It was a surreal experience watching the terrain zip past you at the same altitude as the plane and the runway at the same level of the clouds in front of you.

I always daydreamed of coming to Tibet. I was in 10th Grade English class when I had put a list together of places that I wanted to visit before I died. Little did I know back then that this would be the genesis of my “Bucket List”. The list has been modified several times with age and wisdom however the number One item has always remained the same: Lhasa, Tibet then to Base Camp Everest!

So there we were, Christina and I standing outside the airport struggling to breathe because the air was so thin at 12,000 feet above sea level. The skies were so blue and the clouds so white, the only place that I have seen anything this beautiful before was hiking in Alaska or driving down the solitary east coastline on the South Island of New Zealand. To date, the three most spectacular landscapes that I have ever experienced.

I sent a text message to my friend Rich back in California who is quite the skilled photographer and told him I wish that he were here with us because I could not capture the shear beauty that was in front of me. He responded back via text “…no one can”. It was comforting to know ahead of time that any attempt to harness the ethereal beauty of this place was going to be futile. I have attached some pictures but they do no justice. Just know that this place is beyond words and pictures.

To be continued…

The Jinx and the Can

The following is some funny ass shit! There have been some significant changes in our professional lives the last few weeks in Shanghai and so I had written a ‘”Our Next Steps” email to my family and to a couple of friends that were asking us when we were returning to LA. The note was a serious letter that was optimistic yet somewhat somber. I provided a synopsis of our thoughts of our future including all our contingency plans:

This is the response I got back fron the Jinx and the Can:


I concur with stevo regarding:
"we really can’t vet this out unless we get a chance to sit down at a bar and have a few before discussing non-sensically for a few hours… "

But as you can see from the livid iratenessness tone of Stevo's e-mail that Steve has not fully completed his 12-step anger management classes. He has not been the same since you guys left. You’re not the cause, but maybe the proverbial catalyst to his self-destruction and rage.
Stevo’s call for help in his e-mail may have not been obvious to you due to the NOx and SOx and SARS and Swine infested air you breathe, so I will attempt to break down Stevo’s contemptuous libel about L.A. and construct a comparative analysis of the libel to Stevo’s own self-deprecating loathing hate:

"Not to be a downer"
(right off the bat Stevo brings his alcohol, depression and drug addiction into your wonder plans).

"but some anecdotal food for thought on why LA is going down the tubes"
(He conveniently uses LA and food in the same sentence subconsciously knowing of your constant yearning for some Angus tube steak complimented with a port wine reduction sauce-native only to LA).

"not to say we don’t want you back."
(“Or do we?” Another convenient double entendre)

"Our backyard is burning down (Angeles Forest)"
(“OUR?”…don’t get me involved with your pyrohateism we all know those trees were too old and we need more homes up in them hills).

" income taxes just went up again"
(we all need to help our fellow citizens get the proper health care and new Hummers).

"sales tax went up a few months ago (up to 10% in parts of LA)"
(To pay the fire fighters OT and supplement my retirement…thanks)

"unemployment is near 12% (highest since great depression)"
(“88% of people have jobs...lowest since the great depression”. If you move on quick enough, no one will catch it).

"normal peeps can’t afford any decent homes here,"
(Either he is a racist or elitist…Shaquisha Brown just bought a home at 2342 E. 103rd St.)

"Wahoo’s Wed are on hiatus"
(but Fernie and Mario love Hooter’s Tuesdays and BJ Thursdays

"and the Dog is sending nakd pix to Nathan’s cell"
(This is true. The dog’s got toilet management issues)

The General

With the economy taking the turn that it did, my role in my office has slightly changed. With many of our significant projects going on hold, we have focused more on trying to get more exposure in the Chinese market. With this, I’ve become more involved in Business Development and Marketing. Easy enough I guess I’ve done a bit of this in LA. Meet, greet, smile and talk about your credentials…blah…blah…blah……WRONG! Your not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.

In Asia it’s all about the Guanxi; personal relationships. If you have close relationships with powerful government officials then you are as good a gold. You could be a bi-polar retard with both legs missing but if you have the Guanxi, you could actually be a candidate to run the relay in the next Olympics. No joke, it’s that blatant.

So how do you attain this “Guanxi”? How do you become best friends with someone in the Communist Party? Well, you eat, drink, and get shit faced with them of course. Isn’t that how BFFs are made. I mean it worked in high school and college so why not now?

This is where the General comes in. Somehow, we made a key contact with this gentlemen that used to be something like the Attorney General of Shanghai. Mr. X as I’ll refer to him, has been critical in setting up meetings with high-powered government officials and captains of industry that have more money and power than God (ehhh…well they do in secular China at least).

Needles to say it has been interesting. I’ve found myself standing in parking lots of private dining clubs surrounded by Ferraris and Lamborghinis or in private restaurants choking down Great White Shark fin soup (I detest this but…) and expensive Russian caviar and washing it down with $300 bottles Bordeaux.

On paper, it sounds glamorous and exciting right? WRONG! It’s fricking hard ass work because what precedes and follows the shark fin soup, caviar and Champagne dreams is typically all sorts of crazy freaky dishes and terrible corn moonshine called Bie jiu . The dishes range from whole frogs and pig lungs floating in chicken blood to some sort of gross looking slimy sea creature oozing some ungodly mucousy liquid. I have to shovel his stuff down with a smile and say Hao Chi (DELICIOUS!).

Then there’s the drinking. Normally this is where I excel. This is my sweet spot, however years of training with best (the BBGA) has not prepared me to (and I’m not exaggerating about what is to follow) Gambei (down in one gulp) a full glass of Bordeaux. Now this is not one of those classy pours in a cheesy restaurant wine glass, this is a Crate and Barrel mega red wine goblet filled to the rim with a ridiculously expensive vintage. This is followed with a shot of Bie Jiu then immediately after a sip of beer or Remy Martin XO. Basically, you have about three or four glasses of different types of alcohol in front of you and you are constantly taking a drink out of one.

There was one night in particular that stood out. This night we were invited by Mr. X to have dinner at an exclusive private club that once was the British Consulate in the 1930’s. It reeked of the 1930’s glamour when Shanghai was considered the Paris of the East. The art deco mansion that we had dinner in is currently owned and managed by the Chinese Air Force for high-ranking Military officials to stay or for entertaining government officials. If only these walls could talk.

As we were introduced to Mr. X’s colleagues, my co-worker whispered to me the credentials of each of the men. These guys were no joke. I mean here we are as architects about to have dinner with the men that approve all of the Construction in Shanghai. One of these cats was the chairman that held the purse to billions of money that we are gunning for.

Then there was the host, The General. He is a massive mound of a man with a very imposing stature! He stood about 6’-6” with shoulders like a linebacker and was a retired four star General of the Chinese Air Force.

In China, there is a very specific order in which one sits. Therefore, as it happens, my boss’s sat directly at the center of this long table with Mr. Money bags and his cohorts directly across from him. Then you sit progressively away from the center by your position (or lack there of). Needless to say, I was at the end. Due to this seating arrangement, I was at the far end situated right next to the General who was sitting at the head of the table.

The General didn’t speak much English however as the dinner and drink progressed he asked me if I was Japanese. I said no and that I was, essentially, American. As the drinking continued, he kept insisting that I was Japanese so he kept calling me “Moshi Moshi” (this means hello in Japanese and kind of derogatory when put in the current context). Every time we would “Gambei”, he would say something in Chinese and end with “Moshi Moshi”. I leaned over to my co-worker and asked her what he was saying and basically he was saying that he wanted to bomb Japan so he was going to keep filling my glass until “moshi moshi” (me) was bombed!

Mind you, this dude was a big boy and there were all sorts of drinking and eating going on already; however, I wasn’t going to take this laying down. I remembered what my good buddy and functional alcoholic roommate Jeff would do when we were going to spend the night marinated in alcohol. He would always say it’s all about the pacing and to add taking shots of water in between drinks to stay hydrated and to make it seem like you are drinking a lot.

With that, I went on the attack and took on the General. I was the aggressor. Gambei after gambei. From red wine to whiskey to beer to bie jiu. It was all a fuzzy blur. As the night went on and business was being discussed at the center of the table, the General and I were going mono e mono.

After one bottle of 750 ml of bie jiu, six beers, nine bottles of wine and one bottle of Remy Martin XO, I was spinning and slurring. So was the General, in fact, he was wavering in his chair and that’s when I saw my opportunity to take him down. Dinner was winding down and I knew I had about 30 minutes before I passed out. This was the only chance I had to strike when the iron is hot! I knew if I took two more Gambei shots of red wine, I could end it and I figured I would be in the car by the time it hit me so I went for it. I had the waiter fill his glass and mine to the rim with read wine. We downed it then I asked to fill another round to the rim and that’s when I broke him.

He said “bu shi…bu shi…gou le!” which means “no more…no more…enough!” I kept on insisting that we finish the bottle but he couldn’t take anymore that grabbed one of his chopsticks placed a white tablecloth on it and raised it in surrender!

Needless to say, it was a ruckus-filled evening and as we walked out the door, he put his arm around me and said (in Chinese) you are a good friend and a good drinker. You are welcome here anytime. The only problem is that I hope he remembers me when I come back.

When the car dropped me at my apartment, I rushed in and headed straight to worship the porcelain god.

All kinds of Amazing!

It is spring in Shanghai. The bone chilling wet winter has slowly dissipated and is giving way to longer days and cherry blossoms. I’ve been able to run outdoors more so the humdrum days of training for the Great Wall Marathon on a treadmill are behind me.

This morning was nice. It was a misty morning when I left the apartment. As I hit my stride about 2.5 km (sorry, I’ve been using the metric system now) the sun started to peek through the haze and the early morning wet market was in full swing on Ningbo Lu. As I dodged through the hustle and bustle of the morning market; I had a spring in my stride, my heart rate felt strong, a cool breeze against my skin and the smell of freshly steamed dumplings coursing through my nostrils. I thought to myself “it doesn’t get better than this” then right at that moment my IPOD shuffles to Jack Johnson’s “ Upside Down”….man, this was all kinds of amazing!

I usually carry a camera when I run but this morning I decided not to because it was a longer than usual run. It’s a shame because there were so many photo-ops. Having said that, I’ve attached pictures from this past weekend race. It was an 8km race in the Jinqiao District of Pudong in which we decided to wear Pajamas.

I think these spell out what running and training is like in Shanghai…..it's all kinds of amazing.

Eventide

My good friend Jessica has a blog called Sweet Eventide. As she explained it to me, Eventide is that transitory part of the end of the day that is magical. It’s her favorite moment of the day and I agree that it is magical.

Impressionist painters were obsessed with this time of the day because it was so ephemeral. They would use the fading light like acid to change and define everything even subjects that were deemed immutable. Whether it was to “melt” the past or redefine the future, it inevitably connoted change. This transformation, however, was always encompassed in beauty.

It’s a time of the day that one can look into the sunset and pat oneself on the back and say “good job today”. It’s a time of the day that wraps up all the pragmatic issues and allows us a sense of accomplishment. It’s a time of the day when a ritualistic bathing in the golden glow of the sun cleanses the day’s events and prepares us to dream of tomorrow.

I bring this up because last Friday April 10, 2009 approximately 6:15pm, I had a surreal “eventide moment”. I was in the countryside about an hour and a half outside of Shanghai when I stood on a road that seemed to be aligned perfectly east to west.

Unlike California, this part of China is perfectly flat so all I could see was open farmland and countryside for miles around. As I stood on this road basking in the sun’s golden glow on the west, I noticed a perfect full moon to the east. The amazing part was the alignment of these two empyreal bodies.

Both orbs where perfectly aligned at their respective ends of the road and both orbs were about the same size and almost at the same azimuth and altitude. I wanted to reach out; grab them both, switch them, and see where destiny would take me and what change in beauty would this bring.

Barbie...Savage Garden & Tootie Rolls

In the midst of one of the worst financial crisis, the world has seen in decades, what does China do? Open the biggest (and pinkest) Barbie Flagship stores in the world of course!

I went into this wonderful monstrosity the other day and thoroughly enjoyed myself. We all have our guilty pleasures and as a designer; this is mine. It’s so over the top and ridiculous that I actually liked it.

The experience was like listening to Savage Garden while downing a Henry Weinhard’s vanilla cream soda with a mouth full of tootsie rolls and pop rocks, all while wearing a full body day glow spandex outfit laced with sequin. The place is a 6-story sugary lollipop that is so decadent that my teeth hurt when I left. To that end, shear stupidity and absolute superficiality sometimes has it’s place in our lives.

I was not allowed to take pictures but I snapped a few off with my camera phone when no one was looking.

Big Fish in little Pond or Little Pond with lots of Bigger Fish

Yesterday I had a huge reality check. Well, let me put it in terms that are more honest. “Yesterday, I had a huge reality validation of something that I found out after I moved to China.”
You see prior to moving out here, I thought China was at least 10 years behind the US in everything. In many respects it is, so I thought I would be able to come in and dominate. I thought I would walk into my new office and start kicking ass. I thought that when I walked unto the basketball court (or any sport for that matter) I would push and shove their skinny asses around. Basically, I thought I would own this 2-bit town. Well, about 10% percent of that came to fruition. What I did not expect was the “X-factor”.

You know all those Chinese kids with rich parents that live in Beverly Hills, San Marino, Tiburon, Walnut Creek and every other filthy rich Suburb in the North America; well, they are all here too! They are the X-factor! Not only are they armed with their damned Harvard and Yale MBAs (seriously every frickin’ rich Taiwanese or Shanghainese kid here seems to have gone to Harvard – it is ridiculous!) they also have the cash to back them up. To top it off, it seems like all their parents know someone in the Chinese government. They all got the damn Guanxi!

So back to yesterday, you see, I organize and run a group here called yodeng (young designers networking group). I started this when I first got here because I didn’t know anyone and it was a way to meet, network and get the pulse of the design industry in China. As our groups popularity grew so did our reputation. Since then, several other people and entities trying to tap into the network of designers that we’ve built have approached me. One in particular, GIGA (Green Actions Green Ideas) struck my fancy and we have now collaborated in organizing series of “talks” or lectures on sustainability and more specifically aimed at the grass roots level in China.

The GIGA guys are amazing and there are really no words that I can use to describe their drive and passion. They are involved with so much here in regards to Green design and getting the Chinese government involved that what they have done in such a short time in China has completely blown my mind. What blows my mind even more is the fact that they have embraced me and yodeng to help them bring their agenda to fruition. I mean, yodeng, a group that started (and continued) as few architects and designers going out and having a drink to forget about work. Here we are now having a goal and purpose beyond fun…WTF…but I digress.

With this new GIGA + yodeng marriage I’ve found myself surrounded by so may Type A, obsessive compulsive, Ivy league overachievers that I’m having a huge complex about what I’ve done and accomplished in my life. These kids are amazing! I mean not only are some of them like Carol Chyau co-founder of Ventures in Development and Shokay alleviating poverty with the Tibetan Yak herders but she’s making a ton of cash while doing so. What the hell did I do in my early 20s?

Yesterday, during Carols lecture, I was reminded that I am a not so big fish in a little pond with tons of really ginormous, intelligent and cash rich fish.

The Bricklayers

After a 7-month hiatus from any sports related activity due to my ruptured Achilles, I am finally back on the basketball court. This is a picture of the Bricklayers, my basketball team in Shanghai. Just look for the oldest, shortest most out of shape person (and the only one that looks Chinese) and you’ve found me.

We are called the Bricklayers for two reasons. One, we are a team mainly comprised of Architects or architectural graduate students and two…have you seen our jump shot?

Playing basketball here in China has been interesting to say the least. First, they play under the FIBA (International basketball association) which is a totally lame system. Second, the referees suck ass and none of them have ever played the game before in their life. Finally, since I’m the only person that looks Chinese on our team, everyone from the refs to the stats guy talks to me. Ironically, I’m on a team of Americans (and one Belgian) that can all speak Mandarin fluently except for me.

At any rate, the guys are a good bunch and we are having a great time losing our asses in the open division. I think next season I’ll drop down to the recreational league where all the 40 somethings play.

Architects in Motion

After sitting on my ass for over 7 months, Christina and I decided that we should run the Great Wall Marathon again this year. So I joined a running group called Architects in Motion. They are a great group and we meet every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and sometimes Sunday to train. It’s been good for me because I’m not the kind of person that was built to be a long distance runner nor do I have the discipline to maintain such a rigorous and time-consuming schedule.

It’s been grueling at times. Ryan, the young kid (he’s 26 and I consider anyone under 30 these days to be a kid) is a machine. I’ve met type A and obsessive-compulsive people before but this kid takes the cake. I wish I had his mental fortitude and discipline.

He’s scheduled some amazing runs. Last week we ran through the historic Old Town in Shanghai. Weaving through dark dank and narrow alleyways dodging pots, pans, and everything you can think of including the kitchen sink (there was one in our way at one point) keeps things interesting. Next Saturday he is making everyone take the subway to the last station and run back on an alternative route, which he meticulously selected. This way, he says, we will be forced to run back and not catch a taxi.

As I said, it’s been tough however, the toughest thing isn’t waking up at 5:30 am or the long 32km runs in the freezing cold. The toughest thing about training is getting into the elevator every morning and smelling the scent of freshly baked bread and pastries wafting up the elevator shaft.

You see our new apartment is right over Paul’s, a French Bakery that makes and bakes some of the most amazing confections, deserts and pastries this side of Paris! The temptation to skip the run, the freezing cold, avoid the aching knees, and sore back and to sit inside this haven of flour and dough encompassed by the warmth of the ovens is overwhelming.

As I take my first stride onto the cold crisp polluted air of Shanghai, I look back at the warm glow of the storefront with the bakers dressed in white filling baskets full of freshly baked baguettes and croissants. I can imagine myself sitting in the corner reading the Shanghai Daily sipping on a cup of freshly brewed Kenyan Medium Roast Coffee and taking a bite of a flakey buttery heart-stopping croissant with orange marmalade jam dripping off the side….

…as I turn on Nanjing Xi Road, a bus full of local commuters pass by spewing some god forsaken black gunk from its exhaust that chokes me. Once the fumes are gone, the scent of steamed buns and oil manifest themselves in the air. Thump…thump….thump…my heart rate matches my stride. I forget about Paul’s and I’m off to meet the other Architects in Motion.