Beijing Aug 2007

Travels for August started off with a trip to Beijing to participate in the Middle Manager Program.

First of all - look at the display at the KL airport. The transport ministry promised to reduced late flight take offs. Seems like they are achieving it BECAUSE they have been cancelling MAS flights that night!! :)

First thing I did on Monday was to go to my regular tea merchant. Had to get some tea for some Friends and to replenish my stock. I am only consuming Loong Jin (Dragon Well), Oolong Char Wong and Pu Er. Pu Er can be kept for years and their price has been escalating over the years. I buy mine in loose form, not the discs pancakes. The loose form is cleaner and does not require a tool to take chunks out of the disc when brewing tea. Spent 4 hours sampling different tea in the shop and almost 1000RMB on tea purchases. The shop also sells oolong char in balled form. The balls are a little bigger than a basketball.

The MMP started on Tuesday and we were assigned to 2 universe - a BLUE and an ORANGE universe. I was in Blue 1. Here's my team. We had a good mix from Korea, Scotland, China, Malaysia, coming from backgrounds of Support, Finance, HR, Manufacturing and Marketing.

In the evening, the China Support team invited Yu Sung Han (Korea CSM) and myself out for dinner. We had it at a place called Kung Iichi(sounds something like that). Food was great. They had an in house yellow wine which was sweet and easy on the throat. It was served in a warmer as seen above. We also took in a bottle of white rice wine. it was a wonder that nobody got tipsy, though there was certainly a lot of loosen tongues. After dinner we had a boat ride around the lake and finished off close to midnight!!

As if that was not enough food for the week, we ended the Program with a cocktail and dinner. The food below was just half of what we consumed!

Looking back at the weeks and the amount of food consumed - with Asam Laksa, Char Kway Teow, Crabs, Mum's birthday lunch and then the group dinners and MMP cocktail and dinner, this month has definitely been a Middle Management Month - My Middle, my waistline!!