Entry 3 (Saturday June 18)

Nǐhǎo!! That is hello in madarin!  Sooo since we last talked quite a bit has happened I'm going to have to try to update this more often so things do not slip my mind!  Let me think..

Okay so thursday was a pretty good day except for the fact that it was pouring outside all day, lol.  However even though it was raining, it was a sunny day because the BRUINS DID IT BABY WHOOOOO!!!  I'm so jealous I did not get to watch it live, however at work for the first two hours I was really useless because all I was doing was watching the GameCast on ESPN and updating my Twitter and Facebook, haha.  Champs!!! I get goosebumps just thinking about it.  7 Championships for Boston Sports since 2000, my teams, WOW we Boston fans are blessed!  From there work was great the Bruins won I got to sit in on a candidate phone interview with one of my co-workers which was really neat too.

 So as I was saying it was raining all day here, thats because right now is the rain season so it rains almost everyday ranging from 5 min to all day.  We have not had a day that rained all day luckily so far.  They categorize the rains here too, which is kind of interesting.  There are  3 rains, Amber, Red and Black.  An AMBER rain is just a average rain, your normal average joe type thing. A RED rain is a bit harder and the very young school children will actually have school cancelled. A BLACK rain is like a different story apparently you can barely see, when it is a BLACK rain all school is cancelled and you are supposed to stay where you are, so work can be cancelled or if you are at the office stay there till its done.  I have not seen a black rain yet but I'm told i will.  It is also typhoon (which is like a hurricane i guess)season and people at work tell me I will almost certainly be here for at least two typhoons!  At work Chris and I had lunch at this sandwich place that we both decided really wasn't that great.  They loaded my chicken sandwich with mayo which I also hate along with fat.  I complained about it later on, during our train ride home and Evonne our other intern who is from China (mainland) asked me if I am a picky eater... I told her no there are really only two things I hate Mayo and Fat and unfortunately its everywhere here!  

So our event on thursday was to go to the avenue of the stars, which is where they have the Bruce Lee statue!  I originally planned on wearing my new Bruce Lee cut off shirt so I could take a pic in it with the statue, however the Bruins won so there was no chance I was not repping my Bergeron shirt (thank you Tara) and my B's hat, and with my Livestrong Nike Sneaks (thanks again Tara lol) I was covered in "BLACK AND YELLOW", looking freeeesh, haha.  So I decided to put my Bruce Lee shirt in my knapsack my Mom packed (thank you Mom ;) ) for me.  At the avenue of stars which is along the Bay there is a laser show every night at 8pm.  However us at Global Sage got there late b/c we went home to change from work first and ended up missing it.  However the train ride to the avenue of stars was hilarious because I had Melissa use my camera to make a video of me singing that song from the Little Mermaid to this couple on the train(which I dedicated to Tanya Chiari, she loves that movie).  The reason this idea came about though is because idk why but there is so much PDA in China (Tara's kind of place! lol) and every time I'm on the train there is a couple like holding each other or making out.  So I thought this video would be funny.  It came out alright but I think I'm going to practice and maybe try it again. 

So we missed the light show and I decided to take the Bruce Lee pic another time because it was raining a lot.  So from here Maya one of our staff lead us to this place where she said we could eat and drink.  So we get to this area where there are a ton of restaurants and go into this one building that on the elevator buttons are pics of each restaurant so you know which level. We go to this bar on the top floor that is supposedly an American type bar with food.  However let me tell you this menu freaking sucked and I was really pissed.  There were like 10 things on the freaking menu, no burgers however it said burgers and they had 3 fry options only 1 of which you could get with the meal, even though they were all the same price??? Like wtf so if I wanted these skinny fries with black pepper (which I did) I had to order just fries???! I was not a happy camper.  So I order my fries they were okay but I was still starving so I did another round of ordering and got a chicken sandwich which also kind of sucked b/c the chicken was little chicken poppers instead of like a piece of chicken!  However they did have a good beer deal promotion going on which we took advantage of.  It was 6 of these "Blue Girl Beer" bottles for 140 Honky, which is a good deal.  For the promotion they also gave us sick lighter and a laser pointer/flashlight, Ross took the pointer and I got the lighter.  We went to a different bar after for a drink but I was wicked tired so myself and a few others went hope at like 12:30. 

Friday morning was by far the hardest day to wake up so far I was so tired. However, of course it was a super busy day at work.  I had a meeting with Andrew Miller my boss and he assigned me a project to do, I have to update there Private Equity deck.  It's basically a macro and micro look at the PE industry, key companies, key players in each company, what they are producing and so on.  If I complete this well it will look really good on my resume.  Andrew is a great guy with a lot of knowledge and I asked him if at some point I could as my DAD always says " pick his brain" and he said absolutely and that we would have lunch and he would also invite us all to his house for dinner.  Andrew also has German Shepherd named Sheila so we have that in common, and his son is picking up Lacrosse!!! I also have something in common with my co-worker Jaimie Couter who I got to sit in the interview with on thursday, we are both Vinegar lovers for salads hahaha, random but it came up at lunch when he got a salad for lunch and was using it.  He said he loved the states because they have vinegar in all the restaurants.  I told him I would have to get his address and send him a bottle of the one I use because I had a salad on Friday for lunch and used the vinegar they have here and its just not as strong, kinda sweet which is weird.

But anyway so I got a new project on top of a bunch of other stuff, but I decided I really like what they do at Global Sage its like the perfect mix of Finance and Marketing. I love how you meet new people everyday and your job is to promote them to huge companies.  So I think I will talk to John Wright the Owner/CEO what I have to do to perhaps end up at Global Sage.  Friday was a busy day for us at 4 we had a field trip over to the Bloomberg building where we were sent to learn how to use the Bloomberg system for our research at work.  That place is sooo cool, they have huge salt water fish tanks with everything living and they give you free food and drinks!  They have this area when you walk in off the elevator and its a space of like aisles of snacks and foods and refrigerators stocked with drinks, for free! This is the best pic I could get because they do not allow picture taking for some reason, so this was covert ops!

The lesson at Bloomberg was very interesting and you can use their service to find all kinds of information from stock returns, company info, people bio, weather updates around the world, to where to eat, which is why there service is so expensive.

                               (The above are Sweet Dynasty pics which i took holding my camera!)

After Bloomberg we went home got changed then went back on the train to meet a co-worker of ours Stanley Suh (real good dude) who invited us to come out to eat and meet some friends of his! So we went to this place called Sweet Dynasty, the food was great we all ordered a dish we wanted then the whole table shared everything which is very common here. I didn't mind to much but I would have preferred to just eat my dish b/c it was awesome spicy prawn (shrimp) with walnuts and green beans!  After dinner Ross and myself headed back home to get ready for the night and we wanted to go pick up Ignacio and Mike before we left.  They all had to shower which I already did so I just took a nice little nap to get ready for the long night!  We left at about 12 which is perfect because we were out till 5!!!! Yes they do it late here.  We went to Lan Kui Fung again and had a absolute blast.  We went to about 4 bars and stayed at 2 of them Skybar again and Liquid the longest.

(This is a pic of part of skybar, not the outside, I have not taken any outside pic from there yet b/c it rains everytime! I will tho!  If you look a bunch of the dream career crew is in the pic! my camera flash lit this place up! cause its dark in there)

  These were like real clubs so everyone is dancing and going nuts, I literally had a soaking wet shirt from sweat! (and a drink someone spilled on me lol)  However the night was successful we had fun and I made a CONTACT!  Another American who struck up a conversation with me at the bar trying to order drinks.  He is a Private Equities manager at a firm called AR Capital in Singapore (which is the fastest growing country in Asia Pacific).  He gave me some great advice and asked for my email so he could introduce me to some people to help find a job out here.  So that was very exciting for me.  This morning I woke up and I had a email from him! So I wrote him back thanking him and we will see what comes of it.  Aside from writing the email and this blog thats all I have done so far today, o and I loaded my pics on my computer now I have to upload them to facebook which I hate doing.  But after I finish writing this entry I am taking my dress shirts to the dry cleaners to be washed and I am going to do a few loads of laundry here.  Tonight we have an event which I will tell you about later on.  So for now I say goodbye! Or zài jiàn in Mandarin!