Our customer wanted to have a Team Building Activity and they sort of “invited’ us to join them. 
More accurately, they Challenged us. For those uninitiated in the business of Team Building, this usually means somebody in the organization thought up something fun to do with all the employees and managed to convince others to support the idea and have the company pay for it. Sometimes this can get expensive (Merrill Lynch running off to Florida for a week of R&R disguised as a management retreat) but sometimes it doesn’t cost much more than a good rope. We had a Tug-of-War. Our local team kept calling it a Tag-of-War. We could never really figure out why nor could we convince them it was a ‘tug’ versus ‘tag’. 
Whatever you call it, we all assembled Thursday afternoon after work on the front parking lot of the building. Of course it would have made too much sense to do this in the large grassy area out back next to the basketball and tennis court (yes, they have those on-site) so we ignored normal logic and lined up on the concrete.
Each team was required to have 20 people, five of whom had to be female. As I looked around, I realized we only have 7 ladies and maybe 20 men, so in order to compete in a best 2 out of 3 tugs, we were going to have to use most of the same people each time. Our customer, on the other hand, has 5 times that so we knew they could use fresh people each tug whichmeant it already wasn't looking too good for the visitor team. The winner was determined by pulling 5 feet. The center line of the rope was marked in a manner that can only be found in China; a red string with a bottle of water hanging from it (the water served as a weight to hold the string vertical so the winner could be determined as the string crossed the finish line). Ok, it was effective, but I did chuckle at the water bottle. 
We won the 1st pull mainly due to the mass of 5 big Americans anchoring the end. The 2nd pull was competitive, but since our competition substituted fresh legs, we eventually lost that one. The 3rd round? Well, let’s just say that one wasn’t competitive and was over in about 8 seconds. I think our team was out of gas. We tried to sooth our loss by rationalizing that it was probably better to let the customer win (like customer golf). Yeah, that’s it. Sure. I can buy that.
It was fun, but in the 90 degree heat, I’m sure our van didn’t smell too nice as we drove back to the hotel.
Saturday, we all drove to Changsha to a driving range. This was a fairly nice place. It was one of those double decker places you may have seen before on TV (popular in China due to space limitations). They had some nice clubs we could use and the balls were in good shape. We hit a couple of hundred balls each. Our GM, a local Chinese, probably hit 400. We did enjoy the driving range logo … they took the Master’s logo and
instead of the outline of the USA and flag positioned in Augusta, this was the outline of China with the flag positioned at Beijing. I’m sure it was purely coincidental with no copyright infringement intended. We had a little watermelon break and socialized then headed into town for a nice lunch along the river and then back to the hotel by 05:00. 
After a short nap and small dinner, we all walked to the billiards room here at the hotel where our two English Chaps (Ian and Peter) taught Drew and me how to play Snooker. It’s not as hard as it looks and I admitted it was much more enjoyable than playing American 9 ball or standard pool. Scoring gets a little complicated because in addition to scoring points (1 point for each red ball and the colored balls are worth various points) there are also penalty points if you hit the wrong color ball in the wrong order along with some other little detail rules.
But it was a nice way to enjoy a relaxing evening. The hotel didn’t care that we brought our own beverages (to avoid high hotel pricing) and with my little Travel iPod Player, we had our own tunes (thanks to Clarke and Gayle), so we played a few hours (won some, lost some) and called it a day.
Today, I have discovered a few muscles I had forgotten I had (from the golf, I imagine) but had a good day and a good night. You add that up with Tech's win over Clempson (sorry, Jeffa), UGA win over Gamecocks (tough loss, there) and Auburn win over Miss St (Yea, Elise) we had a good weekend of International Sports.
More accurately, they Challenged us. For those uninitiated in the business of Team Building, this usually means somebody in the organization thought up something fun to do with all the employees and managed to convince others to support the idea and have the company pay for it. Sometimes this can get expensive (Merrill Lynch running off to Florida for a week of R&R disguised as a management retreat) but sometimes it doesn’t cost much more than a good rope. We had a Tug-of-War. Our local team kept calling it a Tag-of-War. We could never really figure out why nor could we convince them it was a ‘tug’ versus ‘tag’. 
Whatever you call it, we all assembled Thursday afternoon after work on the front parking lot of the building. Of course it would have made too much sense to do this in the large grassy area out back next to the basketball and tennis court (yes, they have those on-site) so we ignored normal logic and lined up on the concrete.
Each team was required to have 20 people, five of whom had to be female. As I looked around, I realized we only have 7 ladies and maybe 20 men, so in order to compete in a best 2 out of 3 tugs, we were going to have to use most of the same people each time. Our customer, on the other hand, has 5 times that so we knew they could use fresh people each tug whichmeant it already wasn't looking too good for the visitor team. The winner was determined by pulling 5 feet. The center line of the rope was marked in a manner that can only be found in China; a red string with a bottle of water hanging from it (the water served as a weight to hold the string vertical so the winner could be determined as the string crossed the finish line). Ok, it was effective, but I did chuckle at the water bottle. 
We won the 1st pull mainly due to the mass of 5 big Americans anchoring the end. The 2nd pull was competitive, but since our competition substituted fresh legs, we eventually lost that one. The 3rd round? Well, let’s just say that one wasn’t competitive and was over in about 8 seconds. I think our team was out of gas. We tried to sooth our loss by rationalizing that it was probably better to let the customer win (like customer golf). Yeah, that’s it. Sure. I can buy that.
It was fun, but in the 90 degree heat, I’m sure our van didn’t smell too nice as we drove back to the hotel.
Saturday, we all drove to Changsha to a driving range. This was a fairly nice place. It was one of those double decker places you may have seen before on TV (popular in China due to space limitations). They had some nice clubs we could use and the balls were in good shape. We hit a couple of hundred balls each. Our GM, a local Chinese, probably hit 400. We did enjoy the driving range logo … they took the Master’s logo and
instead of the outline of the USA and flag positioned in Augusta, this was the outline of China with the flag positioned at Beijing. I’m sure it was purely coincidental with no copyright infringement intended. We had a little watermelon break and socialized then headed into town for a nice lunch along the river and then back to the hotel by 05:00. 
After a short nap and small dinner, we all walked to the billiards room here at the hotel where our two English Chaps (Ian and Peter) taught Drew and me how to play Snooker. It’s not as hard as it looks and I admitted it was much more enjoyable than playing American 9 ball or standard pool. Scoring gets a little complicated because in addition to scoring points (1 point for each red ball and the colored balls are worth various points) there are also penalty points if you hit the wrong color ball in the wrong order along with some other little detail rules.
But it was a nice way to enjoy a relaxing evening. The hotel didn’t care that we brought our own beverages (to avoid high hotel pricing) and with my little Travel iPod Player, we had our own tunes (thanks to Clarke and Gayle), so we played a few hours (won some, lost some) and called it a day.
Today, I have discovered a few muscles I had forgotten I had (from the golf, I imagine) but had a good day and a good night. You add that up with Tech's win over Clempson (sorry, Jeffa), UGA win over Gamecocks (tough loss, there) and Auburn win over Miss St (Yea, Elise) we had a good weekend of International Sports.
5 comments:
Do you have an american football, or softball and bat over there? Just to throw the ball around a little, have a tag game? Dad
Was the misspelling of Clemson (Clempson) an inside joke that us people outside of the Mercers don't understand?
BTW, I think both GA & Tech got lucky with their wins. Both teams had moments of excellent play and periods of not so good. GA has to do something about defending the short pass.
...Whitmj
Clempson was for Carpenter. I always spell it that way for him.
... Mitchell
I was waiting on the comments from the Clemson game .It is like Clemson just can't beat the weaker teams for some reason.
Clempson is how they say it and spell it over there, since they are all a bunch of Clampetts who go there! Tech was not luck, skill. UGA was luck. Mitchell, how did you enjoy your Sunday am wake up text?
And, btw, who are the "anonymous" people commenting on Mitchell's blog. It's not like his blog is a highly sensitive political page, just tell us who you are!
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