Hey guys!
Apologies in advance for the lateness of this post, but the last week has been MANIC! Because of that I have decided to split this up into two posts (plus I can keep you on the edge of your seats hehe).
Work last week was as busy as always with lots of preparations not only for my companies weekly offline events (Wednesday Night Mixer and their Sunday Coffee Meeting) but for their special events over the next few weeks such as ShanghaiExpat’s 3rd Stampede Karting – Halloween Edition on Friday (still don’t have a costume to wear wah), their Photostory contest and up and coming proposals (sorry I have to keep details under wraps I'm afraid) for their biggest event of the year – their 11th Anniversary Party that I’m unfortunately going to miss by a couple of days as it’s on Dec 2nd (I leave Shanghai on Nov 30th booo). One of my tasks as their intern is to not only chase and follow up their current sponsors for events, but also to find new potential sponsors. At first this seemed incredibly daunting (What if I mess it up? What if they never want to sponsor us for an event ever again because of something I said?), but what definitely pleasantly surprised me is how easy it can be to find a general contact number for a company on the internet (lets say Grand Marnier cough cough), and the next thing you know you are talking to its regional manager! Without a doubt it would be so much harder to do that back home… If you were lucky you would have been able to have left a message with a secretary with little chance of receiving a reply! Gotta love China for that… J
Last Wednesday night I attended my first SHEX (ShanghaiExpat) Wednesday Night Mixer in the Pudong area (the area with the fancy smancy tall skyscrapers). This didn’t only include a lot of networking (guan’xi – of which is a very important part not only of business culture but also daily life here in China) but our second beerpong tournament (think we are going to make it a regular event at our weekly mixers)!!! All in all there were a lot of misses, a lot of beer drinking, a lot of cheering and shouting and a whole lotta fun with not only expats taking part but local Chinese too J. Getting into work the next day was definitely hard for all of us lol…but as the saying goes, people in Shanghai definitely work hard AND play hard! Here are some pics that I took of the event…
Cynthia's (part of the sales team at SHEX) attempt...
Smiles all round...
Flora (my supervisor) celebrating with her team mate...
The winning team with Flora (my supervisor) and Mike (SHEX's editor) who are both in the middle...
As well as work, Mandarin lessons have also been going well (we’ve had 4 now since we’ve arrived, every Tuesday & Thursday), although as they are after work it can be very difficult to maintain concentration! But our teacher is very patient and makes us feel very comfortable despite our mispronunciations. We have also found 2 good local restaurants in the area, which despite our basic language skills in ordering food has been extremely successful! Out of the two, my favourite has to be Golden Hotpot. Here you order a range of food along with your choice of hotpot and cook it (boil it) yourself at your table! The two times I’ve gone we have definitely provided entertainment for all the locals inside due to our terrible chopsticks skills (before coming I thought I was pretty good at using chopsticks) but it was all good fun.
Anyway I’d best be off… keep a look out for my next post on my recent Hangzhou trip with my fellow CRCC interns!
Zai jian!
Marie xox
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