Arriving in Seoul (8/18/10)

A smooth and easy flight on China Air brought me to Incheon Airport outside of Seoul.  It was late afternoon and was thrilled to find an incredible selection of canned/bottled/boxed cold coffee beverages in the airport convenience store.  Any country offering this many cold coffee options is bound to be a good fit for me.

After a caffeine fix and an ATM stop, we jumped a cab into town.  The ride wasn't particularly scenic and the traffic grew worse as we moved closed to the city center.  In fact, about 45 minutes into the ride, the driver turned around, shook his head and noted "one more hour"...unfortunately he was almost right on with that prediction.  Right around that same time, he flipped his GPS over to TV to watch a baseball game so at least we had that going for us.

Google's recommended hotel  in Seoul is the Ritz Carlton so life has been tough ;-)  The negotiated rate is less than what I'd pay to stay at the Westin or Hyatt in Seattle so I don't feel too bad about it.  While the rooms are quite standard, there are some great features...The gym includes a driving range (yes, you read that correctly) and the lobby has live piano in the morning and a live classical trio in the evening.  The staff is excellent and the location is quite nice as well.



First impression...Seoul is fun!  It seems people are always happy and they live for nightlife.  The city is full of dozens of sidestreets which are packed with bars and restaurants.  These streets are also packed with young people.  The bars advertise Beer (or HOF), Whisky, Wine and Soju.  While they call some of these places "bars", they are really more like cafes as people almost always eat while they drink here.  The food has been great so far and enjoying spending time cruising around town.

Last Call for China (8/16-8/17)

Monday and Tuesday were my last two days in Beijing.  After having delivered training the week prior, I was now a bit more free in regards to "on" time.  I spent my days catching up on a lot of emails and strategizing for clients back in the states.

We learned over dinner on Monday night that it was our colleague Danh's birthday on Tuesday.  We'd already been planning to go out in a fun area called Houhai on Tuesday night to celebrate our last night in China but we now had reason to celebrate, Danh's b-day!  

Houhai is a man made lake in central Beijing.  The lake itself is nice and full of recreation (boats, swimming, etc. but the area is really known for it's nightlife.

  It's full of bars and restaurants...many of which have lake side tables and then 2-3 stories of restaurant inside.  They also have cleverly built in a bunch of rooftop bars.  We had a great dinner at a Hotpot restaurant.  Hotpot is basically a Mongolian way to eat...they give you boiling broth and a bunch of raw meats, noodles and veggies and you cook them up in the broth.  Pair that with some Yanjing Beer and a wet nap or two and you are in business.  Steak and lamb are common, tons of greens and mushrooms as well.

They also served min-kegs of beer which was quite novel.  After dinner we walked around the lake and found a quiet rooftop bar to relax at.  It was hot but nice to relax outside in a quiet little spot in an otherwise very busy city.  We managed to stay out past midnight which was our "biggest" night since we'd been in China.  

I slept hard and then hit the office on Wednesday morning for one last hour of emails and goodbyes before heading to the airport and off to Seoul!  I was excited to have the chance to thank and say goodbye to the Chinese Googlers who had helped us with and attended the trainings.  They were all incredibly warm and fun spend time with.  They also were incredibly appreciative of our time and efforts.  One of the folks even sent me an email that read "Elliott, Thank you so much. It's really helpful. You are really a great sales man.  Have a nice day!"  That quick email was a highlight for me.  Good reminder to thank people when they help you!

Next post...Seoul!

National Day of Mourning

As you may have seen in the news, China has been hit with some very serious rains in some regions. As a result of mud slides and other issues, many people have died or gone missing. The Chinese Government declared Sunday, 8/15 a National Day of Mourning. Interestingly part of the observance of this day of mourning was to shut down all tv stations that were from outside of China. This is a picture of my hotel room TV when I tried to turn on HBO. Even CNN was shut down for the day...

Sunday in Beijing

Sunday was spent with my 3 Google US colleagues hitting the rest of they key Beijing tourism attractions.  We started the day at Tiananmen Square.  The square is obviously most well known for the tragedy of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.  The wikipedia entry offers a lot of info in regards to the Square and the incidents that have occurred there.  What I find interesting about Tiananmen Square is that it's basically famous for being a gathering place...and little more as far as I can tell.  The government reporting that 241 people died that day.  Some other reports soar to near 10,000 dead.  It seems most likely that somewhere near 1000 died.  It's amazing to think that this happened in 1989.  A lot has changed in the last 20 years and my sense is that the Chinese people are happier and that the government is much more "reasonable" now than it was then.  The Square is massive and is fairly well guarded today.  They have metal detectors at the entrances, guards (both uniformed and undercover) and LOTS of cameras all over.  I believe Tiananmen Square may even one up Vegas in regards to eyes in the sky.

Directly across the street from T Square in the Forbidden City.  This area is where the Imperials lived for a long time.  It's named Forbidden City as normal Chinese people were forbidden from entering during the time when the Imperials lived there.  It's a massive area (nearly 1000 buildings) but nearly all of it is closed to tourists.  So, we basically spent an hour + walking through the giant courtyards and checking out a few small exhibits of Imperial Jewels, etc.  Overall didn't find it all that interesting though the architecture was certainly noteworthy.

After checking out the Imperial City, we had some lunch in a local Hutong and then walked around for a while.  The Hutongs are full of restaurants, bars and shopping.  Great way to kill some time.

We wrapped up the day at Silk Street which is the big shopping "mall" in China.  It's actually not really a mall but more like a flea market that is indoors.  It's stall after stall of clothing, accessories, sporting goods, toys and basically any other type of crap you can imagine.  It's pretty well understood that everything they sell is fake and it's all about negotiating.  The women who work there are incredibly aggressive shouting "Hello! Hello!" and "Sir, you need shoes?", etc.  Some would even grab your arm in hopes of dragging you into the 5x8 "store".  I pretty much hated the entire hour I spent here but some of my colleagues did buy some pearls (they say their real) and a few other small items.

That's how we wrapped up the weekend!  Next entry will be about Houhai and my last night in Beijing.

The Summer Palace - Beijing 8/14/10

After the Great Wall visit our guide (Tracey) for the day took us to a well known neighborhood Fish restaurant in one of the small towns out near the wall.  They actually had a small pond/pool just next to the dining area where the fish were swimming around and enjoying their day.  Tracey took care of ordering for us and we eat like kings!  The fish (Rainbow Trout) was coated in some great spices and grilled to perfection.  It likely went from alive to my stomach inside of 10 minutes.  We also had a chicken dish, rice, pancakes and a vegetable dish...all delicious.  We rounded that out with 3 large Yanjings (local beer) and our bill came to a total of 122 RMB or about $18.  Huge meal with drinks for 3 people = $18.

Cabs are also particularly reasonable...you can ride for 30 minutes all the way across town and it costs you $5...no tip either.

Once we made our way back into "Beijing City", we visited the Summer Palace.  Very beautiful place to visit.  While the architecture and gardens are beautiful, the highlight of the Summer Palace visit for me was a boat ride across the massive man made lake on a dragon boat.  The boat driver let me sit on the bow of the boat...fun times!

I'll leave you with a few pics...one of me presenting last week and one from my visit to the Great Wall!
Oh, and if you haven't seen it yet, here's video of how I got down after walking around on the wall.

Next post: Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City and the Silk Market.

The Great Wall – 8/14/10

On Saturday morning we jumped in a van and headed (slowly) out of the city towards the Great Wall.  Even though I’d been in town 5 days, I hadn’t had a chance to venture out much so was really excited to hit the road!  Beijing is a sprawling city and while there are some major roads, our driver seemed to prefer local roads.  As we made our way through the city, I continued to be amazed at the sheer quantity of people in the city.  Every single block sees people walking, biking or using their scooters to get around.  Many of them are hauling food, drinks or other things…everyone seems to be selling something.

It took us about 2.5 hours to make it to the Mutianyu section of the wall.  The first half of the ride was in largely urban areas.  As we headed north we noted lots of farms and even more construction of buildings between those farms.  There is construction seemingly everywhere!  It certainly has to do with population growth but also that construction quality doesn’t seem to be very high so they are constantly rebuilding.

The Great Wall is up on the top of a mountain as it was used to help defend the greater Beijing metro from invaders.  As a result of being high up, a car can only get your fairly close.  There is a small village at the base of the mountain where locals try to get you to buy anything from bottled water, soda and beer to t-shirts, match boxes, etc.  They shout “hello, hello!” in hopes to getting you to potentially buy something.  All the sellers are VERY aggressive!

Once you make your way through all the stalls you buy a ticket to take a ski lift up the mountain to the Great Wall…actually, they offer two options, I ski lift which takes you to one particular section of the wall or a Gondola which takes you to another section.  We went with the ski lift and it was a pleasant ride.  We spent about an hour climbing the wall.  It’s intensely steep in areas and tiny steps make it quite a tough walk…but it’s worth it!  The views are amazing and it’s incredible to think about how it was built by over a million people and w/o assist of any advance machinery.  We spent about 90 minutes climbing around on the wall.  It was a blast.

As much fun as the Wall itself was, the way down may be the best part.  I call it Luge, they call it Toboggan!  Whatever you call it, it's a damn good time.  I took my Flip down with me and despite getting yelled at by one of the check point guards, it's a solid 4 minutes of entertainment.  Please excuse the action shot of my calf...I was trying to keep the camera down until I got away from the guard.  I hope you enjoy! 

Next post will be about our post-Great Wall meal and visit to the Summer Palace.

Day 5 in Beijing (8/13/10)

It's Friday and with two days of training folks behind me and a fun weekend of tourism ahead, feeling good. It also happens to be Take Your Child to Work Day here @ Google Beijing so the place is crawling with cute little ones. In some cases they aren't that little and actually could be Googlers...tough to tell! The picture included in this post is my colleague Qi-Feng's little girl. She's into Google in a big way. She's also into bananas.

I'll leave you with little tour of part of the 8th Floor at Google Beijing. I focus on, as usual, the food...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sukw8SN9Gws

Beijing - Day 3/4 (8/10 and 8/11) - "Working on a delay"

Seems we are all incredibly tethered to our inbox these days. I know I'm in it all day and I know that the constant flow of email (both important and not) hurts productivity greatly. So, when I started to figure out the time difference between SF and Beijing I was pretty intrigued by the idea that I'd be working on pretty much the exact opposite schedule of those I do business with day in and day out.

I had a feeling this would be good for me and if today was any indication of how good, I may never go back (just kidding mom)! This morning I came in to a giant stack of emails but since they were all there, I was able to plow through them in an orderly fashion and fairly quickly since there weren't people IMing me or tons of new emails flowing in. I've sent all of my replies which will be awaiting folks when they hit the office on Tuesday morning. I do, of course, have others on the CC line who can help clients should they need real time assistance but I think we all know that most requests don't really need an immediate response. That said, I'm a big believer that those who can get back to clients quickly and fully stand to win.

We did our first round of trainings today and they went quite well. We had about 70 folks attend from Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Even though YouTube doesn't exist in mainland China we spent time reviewing YouTube opportunities and positioning for the "export" business. Export business is when they initiate buys from China with the ads appeared outside of China. It's a big part of their business here and represents a big growth area as Chinese companies look to market their products globally.

One more day of training on Thursday before a day off on Friday. Hoping to take some of our Chinese supporters out for some drinks on Thurs night.

Lastly, a Google colleague just forwarded me this NY Times article of interest ->

Police in South Korea Raid Google’s Office

Why am I here?

I'm in Beijing with our training team to conduct YouTube and Google Display Network training to the sales team here (and then in Seoul). It's an interesting challenge in a few ways. First and foremost, I'm a seller, not a trainer. I actually think this works for me as I prefer to be taught by those with first hand experience as opposed to those who learn materials just so they can turn around and teach others. That said, our training team is well versed on "human learning theory", etc...this is where I'm more challenged... I am trying to quickly understand how the Chinese like to learn AND what their base knowledge level is. I've been warned that if I come in too basic, I'll have a lot of unhappy people in front of me. My discussions with the folks here on Monday showed an intense desire to learn. I have 1-2 local allies helping me understand how I can be successful in front of 70 of their peers. Today (Tuesday) is all about honing my presentations and some practice tonight.

The weather today is a bit better. The smog has lifted a little and I can actually see some mountains from my 8th floor perch at the Google Office in the Haidian District of Beijing. It's also 5 degrees or so cooler which is a very welcome trend.

Some additional observations:

• Recycling in Office: Yes for glass and cans. No for plastic.
• Starbucks: Yes it's here...no I haven't been.
• Smoking: Yes, all over including my hotel which has 7 smoking floors and 3 non-smoking floors.
• Bicycles and Skooters: Everywhere.
• Honking of car, bike and scooter horns: Very popular.
• The sound of those horns: Lame

I'll leave you with my food photo with the day. Korean last night in my hotel. Based on price of 40 Yuan (about $6), I ordered two dishes as I thought one might be really small...needless to say, I was full come the end of two dishes and a bunch of appetizers/salads which come free with any meal purchase!

Beijing - Day 1 (8/9/10)

Yes, it took a trip to China to get me to restart my blog which I began at Google New Hire training in December of 2006. I'm not sure if the name is gonna stick but for now it will. Why am I writing on blogger this morning? Well, I was going to log-in to Facebook this morning to post a "I'm here, it's hot and here's a picture of some food" post when I got a "This Webpage is not available" message. Oh yeah, I forgot. Twitter is also not happening here in China. And when I say not happening, I mean not "allowed" to happen. The good news is that I'm already feeling more productive without Fbook and Tweets to suck me in, etc. I'm happy to note that it appears YouTube is up but folks I've talked to note that's not always the case. (update, it's only up for me as I'm in the office on Google servers. Real Chinese folks can't watch YouTube)

Anyway, I left SFO at 12n on Saturday, arrived 12 hours later in Beijing at 3:15p on Sunday. Only slept an hour but had a pretty pleasant trip otherwise.

I tend to pride myself on managing well between time zones so I challenge myself to stay up til 9p (local) which was 6am Sunday morning in San Francisco. Thanks to a new friend of a friend, I managed to get out for dinner (hot pot!) which got me through the few hours I needed to stay awake. After 22 hours awake (sat/sun blur), I slept 10 and I'm now at Google's office in Beijing where it's easy to feel at home. Included below is a picture of my first Chinese breakfast. I'm digging the cold coffee in can...

I'm starting to get a bit long-winded so let me end with a bunch of words/phrases that have occurred to me since I got here almost 20 hours ago.

• Hot
• Chaotic
• Commerce
• "Aromatic"
• big
• growing

Will try to post more as the mood stikes. Sorry Facebook, I'm blogging now...