Work consumes me...

It's been a long time since I have had the chance to write. Apologies to those 3 people that actually read this :) haha...Anyhow, work has been consuming my life and I am seriously in dire need of a vacation. Speaking of vacation, China's holiday is coming up. In China, we get one week off in Oct and one week off in May so I'm soooo looking forward to my upcoming vacation! I've just bought tickets to go visit family in Taiwan and then to see my sister in Hong Kong. Just learned that a long lost friend of mine from GW has been living in Hong Kong for the past year and I will be seeing him on this trip as well. That should be exciting considering that I have not seen him since 1998!
OK so back to the story at hand...how work is killing me. I have been trying to seriously figure out how to work with the Chinese people here. I know that sounds funny considering that I too am Chinese (although at times I tell people I am anything but Chinese) but it seriously is extremely tough to work with the people here. Let me just give you the short version of why I don't think I can ever do business here. So basically my job is to go and meet people in the healthcare/pharma world. China is so backwards with the way they conduct business. We are given the opportunity to go and hear an agency briefing to see what new drugs the pharma companies are coming out with. They ask us to go and help them get the word out pretty much. They also want all of these "insider information" on how to work with the government. I basically don't know diddly squat about the government and really don't care to. But I have to do what I have to do...
So I have to talk about some nightlife...I have been having a pretty damn good time here in Shanghai. When people ask me what there is to do in Shanghai, I always say eat, sleep, party, and start all over again. The other night, my roommate and I went to a housewarming party where three girls from England and Australia live in this gorgeous huge place near Plaza 66 (a very well known building in Shanghai). It felt so good to be away from a bar and just hanging out at a person's house. A crap load of people showed up and most of them are from overseas. There was only one local person there and of course, she was with this white dude. Everyone was looking at her and whispering to each other how she was after his US passport. Ha! I know that's mean, but it's so damn true. I met these really cool guys from Atlanta and Mexico so we decided to ditch the party and go out to see the city. These guys have been in Shanghai for a long time now and are well known around the city so we didn't have to wait in line for anything. We went to this bar on top of the roof of a building called Bar Rouge and the entire bar is lit on fire! It was a show. Plus the weather is getting so nice here so being outside was fantastic. The bad thing was that I did not intend to stay until 4am because the next morning I had meetings with some business school folks at 8am! Let's just say the next morning was not a pretty sight. :-) Anyhow, the party was great and we stayed forever.
So until next time...