Navigating through China, part 3: Check for easy way out

As I have explained in the previous post, Maps.app just would not do it for me. While it has it's uses, I needed something more fitting my purpose.

The next logical step was to look for some free navigation apps.

Jewish jokes and Chinese business, or It's all a joke!

You know that joke about the guy marrying nice Jewish girl? It goes like this:

“The guy rushes into the surgeon's office:
– Doctor, please castrate me! It's urgent!
After trying to persuade the guy not to make drastic decisions, the doctor does the operation.
While washing hands afterward, he asks:
– Pray tell me, what made you to do this?
– Why, there's that nice Jewish girl I'm going to marry, and they have that custom...
Doctor pales and asks in small voice:
– So you needed the circumcision?
– Why, yes! Wait... what did I ask for?”

And this joke is a perfect model of the way one of my suppliers communicate. Like the day before yesterday when he called me saying: "We're shipping your container on Monday!"

Navigating through China, part 2: Assess your resourses.

If you have an iPhone, you know that it comes with Maps.app pre-installed. So why on earth would anyone need anything else? Well, life is hard and Maps.app has its shortcomings, and severe ones.

Navigating through China, part 1: Know thy enemy!

Have you ever tried to find a needle in the haystack? Well, neither did I, but here's the second best thing for you: Finding some place in China. Speaking the language does help a little. You see, they have, like, a dozen dialects only around Ningbo. So when you say something you can't be sure that the driver has got it right. Sheraton may be heard as Shangri-La by them (which happened to me – just when I was running late, obviously). Solution? Get yourself a GPS!

Going… going… gone nowhere.

So the boss came, messed things up a bit and — as any polite natural disaster should do — left for Wenzhou. Leaving me with all the results of this visit.

He was here for only one day and met only two suppliers and managed to scare one of them speechless with quite a minor problem. The second one was threatened with all the terrible things we can think of and managed to shrug it off and forget everything almost before the boss spoke to him.

Now guess who will be the living reminder? Riiight, that will be yours truly. And they won't even give me a cattle prod!

To each one one’s own, or, {Cr | H}appy Halloween

As you have probably noticed, on October 30th lots of people have celebrated Halloween. That was not the case for me. All I've got was take a look at the party nearby and then – back to work... Or was it so?..