Lovely Sunday

Today it was a very efficient day. I woke up at 8:30am for waiting the cleaning lady to clean my apt. I finished a presentation outline and watched a cheesy Thai TV series on tudou.

Then I went to Chef Too and had an American Brunch with friends, I tried to introduce my coworker Dan to Vivian, my best friend in Beijing. It seems that they did not spark off any chemistry yet. Anyway I will keep trying.

After brunch, I went to the Dior Mobile Arts Exhibit myself. Dior invited Chinese artists to create an arts exhibit with inspiration from Dior design. The exhibit showcase different Dior Heritage Dresses from 1955 to 2007.

There are a couple Arts piece that I like most. For example, there are a corridor with two-sided video wall. The left side of the wall is projecting the real pretty Dior model and the right side is projecting the fat Asian women wearing fake dress. I am sure if this is teasing for the Asian fake products can never be as good as the Original Dior, or they said that even ugly women can fit into the beautiful Dior dress.


The other one is a huge baby (25 feet tall) sew by the leftover fabrics from clothes. It had such a dramatic contrast with the glamorous Dior dresses around. It provokes thoughts on "Luxury versus Wastefulness", "Classics versus Recycling" and "Beuty versus Ugliness". It was a worth-spending 2 hours.


And I got myself some Christmas gifts at the hawkers around the exhibit - two fake Burberry's and Polo's lamb wool scarfs, just RMB$100 each. I love China!

Beijing or Shanghai

Recently I am struggling whether I should stay in Beijing or move to Shanghai. I think I would like to work culture in Shanghai and learn more from my boss. But I do really enjoy the life in Beijing now, especially I have some good friends here.

I enjoy the freedom and mixed culture in Beijing. But in Shanghai, there are so many Hong Kong people, I would hang out with the Hong Kong people, so why not I live in Hong Kong then?

Stay or Leave? I hope it can be as easy as throwing a dice.

Sad...

Today I just knew that my agency cut off the digital unit, over 20 people are laid off. I knew the economic situation is bad, but it always seemed so distant, suddenly it felt so close. What a shocking news!

And we discussed with my boss, we may have further headcount reduction soon, some of other coworkers will need to leave as well.

Sad... Sad... Sad..

Originally I would like to ask my boss to review my salary, I guess now it was not a good time. I need to think about how to address the issue.

Miss My Flight

Today I flew to Shen Zhen for a pitch. I supposed to wake up at 7pm and take the 8:50am flight. But I was too exhausted after the week of hard work, I woke up at 8am and called my coworker.

Luckily I could catch up the 9:50am flight, but when I arrive at the airport of Shen Zhen, everyone was teasing me what I did last night. Luckily the pitch went well.

This is the first flight I missed in China. Gosh!

华丽上班族之生活与生存

This week is very exhausting week, I only slept 5 hours per day on average. Tonight I gave myself a break to see a drama "华丽上班族之生活与生存" by a Hong Kong director 林奕华 . Originally I hope my brain could take a break, I felt I had more questions in mind after the drama. The leading character was performed by 张艾嘉.

The story was about the dark side of office relationship. When you think people love you, in fact people approach you with an intention behind. 张艾嘉 was the CEO of the company. Because her husband had an affair with one of her staff, she divorced her husband. Since then she never trust men anymore, only using men as her puppet in the office battle. She was playing a few men at the same time, using one to control the other - making them feel envy, nervous, scared. Therefore she could achieve her goal of listing the company and keeping her superior status in the company. 郑元畅 was a newbie in the business world with an innocent view towards relationship. Soon he become one of puppets of 张艾嘉.

At the end of the show, 郑元畅 was killed by other puppet from 张艾嘉, both of them fell out of roof from the office building. Although 张艾嘉 did not kill both person by hand, but her game cause both of innocent men's dead. 张艾嘉's goal of listing vanished and she needed to live under the shadow of being invisible killer.

The drama has unveiled the darkest side of career women and office relationship. People trade their honesty and consciousness with money & status. Though I felt lucky that I had never been involved in these office politics, I did remind some scenes from my client's company. This made me want to leave the business world. I guess the drama was coming from the insights of business women in Hong Kong and the stories what 张艾嘉 heard in her 30 years experience in entertainment business. The story was very sad but true, especially in the current China situation. Lots of women and men does not climb up their career ladder, but built their status & connection through "opening their legs for the right person". The drama pinpointed the "Sex for Trade" culture.

This drama was 4 hours long, the longest drama I ever saw. Though the pace of the drama is a bit slow, the acting was excellent.and the idea was very intense. I felt that I was more exhausted after the drama.