I suppose once you've been somewhere for a while, you have to look a bit further for new and exciting things. Carol and I spend plenty of time in the Brisbane CBD and inner suburbs throughout the week and on the weekend. We have our favorite cafes, favorite places to lay in the grass on the weekend and favorite place to watch the footy, through we aren't compelled to always go to the same places. We decided it was time to take a long weekend trip to get away from Brisbane for a bit and see a bit more of a city we've been wanting to get to know - Melbourne.
We wanted enough time to get a feel for the city, rather than just enough time to see a few museums. It's one thing to be familiar with a city, it's another to get to know it, as if meeting a new friend. The English language allows us to be quite verbose, but I find Spanish does a wonderful job of separating two different concepts - having awareness of topic or concept versus being acquainted with a person. The verb 'saber' means to know, as in knowing right from wrong. But the verb 'conocer' is used to indicate knowing or meeting a person. So taking my cue from the Spanish, this trip was our opportunity to 'conocer' Melbourne.
Domestic flights are easy and relatively inexpensive in Australia. Carol and I have both done Qantas and the low cost carriers several times and have found each get you to your destination quickly and comfortably. Qantas usually has a few more inclusions, while the discount carriers are fully a la carte (have to pay for that ginger ale) and often have more families. If you prefer to swing with the business crowd and avoid having twenty children and two crying babies on your flight, I'd recommend paying a little more to fly Qantas. One more twist I wish they'd bring to the US - the discount carriers board from the front and the back. If you're in the back half of the plane, you have to go down to the tarmac and climb the stairs to board from the rear. I actually love it - reminds me of flying in little regional planes as a kid.
Arriving in Melbourne, we had four days to conquer the city. I won't claim we did everything, but we hit many of the highlights and recommendations from friends. Our first day was a Friday and we got started with a walk around the CBD. My first impression: Melburnians love their coffee. There is honestly a coffee shop every block, sometimes two or three. And, the coffee is great. None of that percolated, granulated, or artificially caffeinated stuff. Having heard great things about the laneways, we quickly started exploring the area around Bourke and Collins. Laneways are the roads between buildings, what Americans would refer to as alleys. Some time ago, shops started popping up in the streets between the major roads running through the CBD. These streets often take on the name of the major road next to them, for example Little Collins is next to Collins Street and Flinders Lane is next to Flinders Street. Between these parallel streets are the laneways. Rather than being filled with rubbish bins (garbage cans), rats and vagrants, they have cafes, boutique clothing stores and rather inspired looking graffiti. It gives wonderful character to the city and is a much better use of the space.
Carol and I found our way to a cafe just off Little Collins on a particular laneway, Block Place, that we ended up revisiting several times. The chairs from the cafes spill out onto the tight laneway, competing for the crammed space between the buildings and giving the area all the more character. Thinking about it now, we never once looked up to see what buildings were there - everything interesting going on was all down at the pedestrian level. Not much light gets down between the tall buildings, which made the laneways a bit dark, though something is really enjoyable about ducking into a dark cafe on a rainy day and sitting down for a coffee, displaced enough from the main roads to avoid the honking horns.
Once we fueled up on coffee and breakfast, we toured the city for a few hours before heading to the Taste of Melbourne. Held at the historic Royal Exhibition Building just on the north side of the CBD, the Taste of Melbourne was much like any other food festival. It showcased fine restaurants, wines, cheeses and desserts. There were a few corporate tents but most of the exhibitors were local. The food was great and we attended a few presentations from a French chef and the head cheesemaker of a nearby cheese farm. If there was one dish that stood out from the taste it may have been the beef cheeks - it was the second time we'd had beef cheeks in a few weeks and both times it was just amazingly tender. I understand its a tough piece of meat if cooked quickly, but when slow cooked for 10+ hours, it doesn't need a knife.
We met up with a local friend that afternoon who took us around a few of the northern neighborhoods and brought us to one of his favorite local cafes up on Brunswick street. After yet another delicious, filling meal (too much food!!) we headed off to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG or the 'G') to watch a finals game (playoffs that is, not the championship game) between the Hawthorne Hawks and Sydney Swans. The stadium seats about 95,000 in a big bowl. We enjoyed the atmosphere, though the stadium was about a third empty. For some reason there were seagulls all over the field the entire time, moving around when the players came near. We later found out they brought in two eagles for the next match to scare off the seagulls.
Saturday had an open itinerary, so we spent time checking out St Kilda, one of the suburbs south of the city. We heard a lot of hype about St. Kilda before going there, though I found it to be somewhat similar to most of the areas we visited around Melbourne. There is a beach there facing into Port Phillip Bay, which I can't imagine gets much use most of the year due to the weather. Again, fun little cafes and boutiques abound in the area. We sat in some wicker egg chairs at a place on the beach and killed a few hours and few glasses of wine. On the way back to the city we elected to spend some time walking around the botanic gardens at the south end of the city. Whereas the Sydney botanic gardens have large open lawns, the Melbourne gardens are a bit more compact and hilly. You can almost get a feel for Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne just from walking around their botanic gardens - Sydney's is grand and is oriented towards the harbor, Melbourne's is hilly cordoning off little areas of similar character and Brisbane's city garden incorporates the river and is a bit more utilitarian. We spent the evening at the James Squire brewery, trying various pints of the local brew.
Sunday was like Christmas for Carol. We took a day trip down to Phillip Island, about two hours south of Melbourne. The island is known for its fairy penguins, the smallest of the thirteen penguin species. Carol has always had a love for penguins and this was her first real chance to see them in the wild. On our way out of Melbourne we stopped at the Queen Victoria Markets to pick up a few nuts and snacks for the day. The market is quite good, though you have to sort through a lot of knick-knacks to find anything. The penguin 'show' starts at dusk so we decided to stop at a winery on Phillip Island for a few hours. They had some sweeter cool climate reds and some tasty whites. We took a quick trip to the end of the island, called the Nobbies, where there are an outcropping of rocks home to many seabirds and large colony of seals.
There are several packages available to see the penguins. We elected to get one of the deluxe packages, which includes a private guide and special seats. The event itself is to watch the penguins coming in from the water, crossing the beach and heading for their nests for the night. We got kitted up with our beach seats, our headsets, lanyards, binoculars and plenty of cool weather gear. We certainly didn't look fashionable, but we knew we had the best seats for the big event. The guide gave us all the info we could want and answered our questions as we made our way to the beach. We sat down near one of the paths where we would have penguins crossing right in front of us. After a few minutes, we could see them swimming in the water, getting ready to come to shore. They came in to shore in small groups, gathering together just at the edge of the water. By this time the light is getting very dim. The penguins naturally wait until dark, when predators are less likely to spot them. It must have taken at least ten minutes for the first group of penguins to finally get the courage to get completely out of the waves and make a break across land. It's quite a funny site - they all look like little commandos with the heads down and arms out wide. Over the next half hour or so we saw many groups go past, some only a few feet away from us. Carol could barely contain her excitement! We spent a bit more time walking around and seeing the penguins heading to their nests and listened to their chirps as we returned to the car and drove home.
Monday gave us a chance to head back to our favorite laneway and spend a bit more time around the city before heading back. It ended up being a great trip. I think we would really enjoy living in Melbourne - it's a city with character and plenty to do. Sometimes our whole experience living in Australia feels like a vacation, but it was nice to take a few days away from work and our usual places to see somewhere a bit different.
09 October, 2011
07 April, 2011
If You Can Plan an Event in China... You Can Do Anything!
Really.. the title of this post sums it up.
I just returned from 17 days in Shanghai. After 6 months of full on planning, my food and beverage conference finally arrived and is now gone. I have post event blues, and caught quite a strange bug from Asia. Could just be from pure exhaustion! I've found that each event I plan I put my full energy (which if you know me, that's a ton!), heart and soul into the planning and implementation of each and every detail. Once you are on site, and making it happen, it is completely emotionally and physically draining. Though, you don't realise it until you are done, because you are on such an adrenaline rush, you forget what you are actually feeling and you forget to take care of yourself - especially when you are responsible for 400 + people. Yes, this is totally possible, though I know some people who would argue with me. Anyway, and thankfully, I had the most amazing team on site to help take care of me - simple things like getting me something to eat.
The demographics and layout of the conference are as follows:
The conference was for 300 executive chefs, food and beverag managers of 5 star venues, general managers of such establishments, and various exeuctive level individuals as well. My company's job was to create a 3 day learning program consisting of world reknown speakers presenting on various topics. This was coupled with a trade show of top suppliers of the food and beverage world along with 3 social functions. Our focus was on authenticity, technology and innovation in the Asia Pacific region for food and beverage. Needless to say, the food was out of this world.
I had the privlege of working with one of the executives of food and beverage for the asia pacific region. I also worked with a hand selected 20 person council of Executive Chefs and F&B Directors to create the culinary experiences. Each meal was well planned and themed, educational and inspiring. There were 3 breakfast and lunch venues that delegates rotated through as well as 3 morning tea breaks and 3 afternoon tea breaks. The Council was also very involved with the menu selection of the 3 social functions. As you can imagine, being an F&B conference, food was the focal point! The concepts were delicious and incredible - from creme brule in santized egg shells to sushi wrapped in US dollar bills, it was nothing I have ever seen before. Too bad I didn't get to enjoy it that much as I was so busy!
While liaising with 20 council members for the last six months, I've also been the main point of contact for 56 sponsors, 19 speakers, 3 social functions and all of the delegates/sponsors on site (400 + people in total). Obviously I couldn't do this by myself. Thankfully we had a wonderful team on site to help.
My team consisted of 10 people, including my boss. Six of which, were on the job I did last June in KL.
Shane: Trade Show manger - responsible for assiting all sponsors with their booths (43 booths!), custom designed some booths, designed the set for the conference and the gala dinner, and assisted with the AV, set and trade show suppliers.
Maria: Registration Manager - managed the registration desk, collected money, managed name tags and social function tickets and general enquiries (geez people have a lot of questions)
Jen: External Events Manager - responsible for the evening functions
Chris: Design Director - was the producer of our conference daily highlights video and did all conference branding leading up to the event. Wrote scripts for the opening video of the conference
Mark: Technical Director - stage managed and called the show for the plenary sessions (damn this is a really really hard job)
Dave: Technical Director Assistant/Graphic Designer - made the on screen presentations and managed all computers running the show in the ballroom
Nicky: On site help - there to help with whatever needed. Also a FANASTIC singer and sang for the opening of our celebrity chef and at the gala dinner. She also kept me sane. Police woman by day and jazz singer at night!
Trevor: In house designer - helped with our buffet design presentation, custom designer for social functions, dance coordinator, and again another one who kept me sane
Sally: Local - lovely Sally was our local guide and runner! Whatever we needed she'd find it 10 times faster than us and cheaper! She ran around Shanghai for us getting things we needed and helped translating
Ryan/Michelle - film crew of the week. Filmed and edited all the conference highlights and comedy points.
Me - event manager. Responsible for everything that happened during the plenary sessions, all sponsor fulfillment, and chef liaising.
Unfortunately, only Shane and I were full time on this job. In retrospect, we needed at least 2 other people full time on this. Jen only came into the picture a few weeks ago to take the night jobs off of me. If she wasn't there, I probably would have literally gone insane.
I got to Shanghai 8 days before the conference started and it still didn't feel like enough time! Shanghai is a 10 hour flight direct from Brisbane. I had a lay over in KL and upon landing in China I had to take a 2 and a half hour bus ride from Hangzhao to Shanghai. Got to Shanghai with Shane at 3:00 AM on a Sunday. We were both up for our 9:00 AM breakfast meeting ready to go and plan for the week! Meetings with the AV, trade show, set design company, prop house, chefs, General managers, sponsors, speakers, our client, ahhh the list goes on and on. We hit the ground running and little did I know but 18 hours would be the shortest work day I'd get in 15 days. All the prepping went reaonsably well, except with the set company. First of all, they bumped in 18 hours late, built a really crappy set, so after much argument, Shane makes them redo the entire set. Time is a funny thing in Asia. They usually start when you tell them they should finish, and half the time the crew is asleep! I have no idea how these companies work their employees but it is something I've seen in Shanghai, Bangkok and KL! After redoing the sett all is fine.
Another little adventure before the conference started was electronics shopping. Electronics shopping in China is like putting 10 Home Depots together! You have to first find what you are looking for, and then you have to determine if it is ligit. You always walk out buying something you never knew existed and wonder what the heck you were doing there in the first place! I walked in to buy a few cheap cell phones, we didn't make it past the first aisle, and managed to buy a Wii, 35 wii games, a keychain that is a video camera, a mouse, and well the cell phones. Which, to my utter suprise, by the end of the week I could only read half of my screen! So I'd get a text that said "can you please urgently confirm _____ or else I'll die?" ... it wasn't that serious but you get my point.
Day 1 really started on Sunday with the bump in of the set and trade show. We were also preparing for registration. Had 350 satchels to stuff with sponsor brochures and we had 24 hours to find 350 luggage tag holders for the satchels as they didn't come with them. Sally, our lovely local, found 400 for US$50 along with black hair ties to make them. We were up until 1:30 in the morning stuffing satchels on Sunday evening.
Monday, the rest of the trade show was getting moved in. Let me step back a bit as I don't believe I mentioned the venue this was held. It was held at a very large hotel in Shanghai (1,000) rooms, with a massive ballroom. A U-shaped hallway outside of the ballroom was used for the bigger sponsors booths and a third of the ballroom was used for smaller booths. The rest of the ballroom was used for plenary sessions. Bumping in 43 booths and checking in 400 people isn't easy. We messed up here. Big time. Well we were supposed to have this big beautiful registration desk made by a company that supplies tupperware and large containers - but instead they showed up with their trashcans and brooms! Our plan B was to use the cloak room at behind our first allocated spot, but one of the booths was taking up more space than they should have been! So we got stuck with just a few tables for registration. It looked ugly, and we weren't prepared for the registration to start. We didn't get a lot of our printing from our suppliers until Sunday night which caused us to be stuffing satchels and tickets until the second the desk opened at 3:00 PM. So the conference kind of started off on a bad foot with very angry people waiting in line. There was literally a consistent line of people for 4 hours straight. My phone was rining every minute (I'M NOT EXAGGERATING) from delegates, sponsors, speakers, my boss, etc. I was spread so thin it was very stressful and difficult to place priorities. On top of that, we had the welcome party starting at 7:00 PM. We concluded registration and herded the masses on the buses to the welcome party at another venue. I unfortunately was unable to attend as I was trying to sort out issues with customs for our sponsors. Bribes were made and agreed, but it all got there! On top of this, we had our first full day of business sessions starting at 8:00 AM the next day, which I was responsible for the master running order, making sure speakers were there, and getting them on and off stage. We also had massive directional signs (about 8 ft tall) and I noticed a typo on one of the signs for day 1. We had to fix all the signs which caused us a very late night.
Day 2 - Tuesday - Business Sessions and Dine Around
Went to bed at 3 and got up at 5:00. Take a shower do my hair and make up really well as you can never show anyone how tired you are! Again the addrenaline is pumpin..... but I know my body was getting ready to kill me. Go downstairs for our 6:30 am daily breakfast team meeting, check out the lovely buffet displays, then head straight to the ballroom. 7:00 AM technical director is running through the presentations, slides, music, videos, to ensure we are all on the same page. Now the ballroom work is very interesting. It really is a thankless job and most people can't see the wonderful and amazing work these people do! You have to hire a local company for all the equipment. We hired a guy who is from Singapore and spoke fluent english. Though his crew of 7 spoke no English (that's what I was told). Therefore, he had to translate everything our technical director was saying. The Technical DIrector is the one who calls all the ques, lights, cameras, music, slides, etc. Our translator's name was Elton but his lead guy on his team was Mr Meow. Well, at least that's how it was pronounced. So Mark and Dave sat in the back in a row alongside Elton and 4 of the Chinese men while the remaining 3 sat with me next to the stage micing people up and throwing them on stage. We had all headsets on so we could communicate. Though there were times when delegates were out of the room and we were in rehearsal. Our stage manager would always have to que Mr Meow first during rehearsal. So he'd say "Mr Meow?" Then the 4 Chinese men next to Mark would say, "Meow, Meow, Meow, Meow!" All in a row and right after another. Oh the little things you remember and keep you entertained!
The day went on, until 5:00 PM, relatively smoothly, and all were happy. In the evening we shuffled all delegates on buses which took them to one of two very famous restaurants on the famous Bund. We of course, stayed in the ballroom and kept rehearsing people for the next day.
The two restaurants we chose were in walking distance (about 10 minutes). We decided to host an afterparty at the conclusion of dinner at one of the venues. Therefore, the other group had to walk or get themselves over to the party. Due to street regulations, buses, etc it wasn't an option to bus over the attendees from one venue to the after party. Therefore, we needed to personally escort the 125 delegates from the restauarnt to the aftery party. With that amount of people and keeping in mind the numerous traffic lights and people getting lost I needed help with walking people from one place to the other. Therefore, I took Maria, Dave and another hotel staff member to assist. We get to the restaurant and escort the delegates to the other venue. All went pretty smoothly. We walk them into the after party and then me and Maria headed on the bus back to our hotel (as there was bus parking here). Looking back, I definitely shouldn't have let some of my other crew actually stay out with the delegates.
Day 3 - Buiness Sessions and Free Night
Got my normal 2 hours of sleep, went to the 6:30 AM breakfast meeting, and to the ballroom for the run through of the days presentations. Our Technical Director is there but no Dave. Dave has the master computer with ALL of the files, videos, presentations, graphics, pretty much the show. 7:15 AM roles around and I'm starting to freak out a bit, calling his room a million times and his phone. 7:20 AM - I send a search party for him. Is he in an alley way with his head cracked open somewhere in Shanghai?? Did he get kidnapped? Did he get drugged? All of these thoughts crossed my mind. 8:00 AM (when we were supposed to start), people start coming in and NO DAVE. Then, at 8:10 AM Dave walks in, looks terrible. I decide not to give him crap and to just get the show up and running ASAP. Well the rest of the morning did not go smoothly. Wrong videos were played, presentations and sound got a bit messed up, one person gave us 100 photos to load on the computer 5 minutes before his presentation, people decided to take the clicker with them and run off the other side of the stage so I had to run on stage and give people a clicker (just looks bad). It was so stressful and a lot of it could have been prevented if we would have had that extra hour to run through everything. The afternoon went well so we were all very glad about that. The evening consisted of running through rehearsals for the next day and running through all the presentations, videos, graphics etc. The rest of the crew was setting up at an off site venue for our 1930s themed gala dinner. This consisted of a full day of set construction, dance and band rehearsals, set up of cooking stations, bars, etc. Thankfully the ballroom crew got 30 minutes for a sit down dinner that evening as it was a "free night" for delegates and sponsors. However, there was a special VIP dinner that took place for the top sponsors, my client's company executive and the celebrity chef! As the celebrity chef is a western food expert, we decided to collaborate his dishes with a well known Chinese Chef in Shanghai to create an east meets west fusion menu. Apparently, it was delicious, I wasn't there, but I wish I was! However, I did become good friends with the celebrity Chef and he offered a free dinner at his restaurant as a wedding gift when I get back to the states! I'm def going to take him up on that!
I believe I got 3 or maybe 4 hours of sleep on Wednesday night thankfully.. I really really needed it.
Day 4 - Business Sessions and Gala Dinner
Got up at 5:30, 6:30 breakfast meeting, 7:00 run through rehearsals, and an 8:30 AM start time! 30 minutes later - woooooohooooooooo. The day went really really well and smoothly. Our client concluded the conference with thank yous and recognizing people on stage. Unexpectedly he called me out to come on stage and gave me the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen. It was a very nice gesture. Our whole team was brought on stage too (those who weren't at the gala dinner venue rehearsing) so it was great to recognize all the amazing efforts our team made to make this conference a success.
The day of business sessions concludes at 5:30 and there is a 7:00 PM departure for the gala dinner. I had just enough time to get all dolled up (black tie attire) and actually take off my glasses and wear my contacts that I hadn't work in the 15 days leading up to the gala. I kept getting really bad eye infections each time I came back from China from my site inspections leading up to the event. The smog really hurt my eyes and I'm sure long working days didn't help. Regardless, I was told I had an ulcer on my eye 3 days before I left for Shanghai. Needless to say it didn't end up being as serious as it sounded but I still couldn't wear my contacts for a while. Anyway, I was happy to not have to wear my glasses!
So the gala dinner was very very interesting to plan. It was a huge group effort as the venue was a blank canvas that we had to turn into a 1930s black tie theme party! The venue we chose was originally constructed as a slaughterhouse and has been reinvented as one of Shanghai's most unique event centers. Ferrari, Mercedes Benz and all kinds of fashion show launches have been made here. Oh, and if you walk around to some of the back areas, the pathways where the piggies used to walk up, you can still see blood stains. The venue can "comfortably" stand 1,500 people (so they say.. maybe 1,500 small asian women), is circular, cieling height of about 30 feet, and all the windows are floor to cieling glass, and has a raised circular floor in the middle that is made of glass and you can see all the way down to the ground floor (6 floors down).
To make this event happen, we worked with a totally different team of chefs apart from the chefs I worked with at the hotel. For inspiration the chef team researched common food served in the 1930s clubs. We had to order cooking stations and build bars (remember, empty room). We worked with an absolutely fantastic bar consulting company that designed all the drinks, did mixology tricks, wore 1930s gansta costumes, etc. Actually, all staff were costumed in 1930s gear. Shane designed the sets and we worked with the same set company that did the set for the ballroom. It was an art deco type stage with two stair cases. We also worked with an AV company for the music. The hardest part was coordinating the food stations and getting all the equipment the chefs needed as well as staying within food and safety regulations. We also worked with a local entertainment company who recommended performers for our cabaret entertainment! The event took about 30 hours to set up and rehearse. The venue doesn't heat the room until an hour before the event starts so our poor dancers, Jen, musicians, etc were FREEEEZINGGG while setting up. Thankfully Jen was smart and said our event started at 6:00 instead of 8:00 so they got it turned in earlier!
The event began with the arrival of guests. 8 buses in total arrived outside the venue, and the guests did the same walk the piggies did when it was a slaughterhouse. It's a long windy, bumpy (i took the elevators I had stilletos and did that walk so many times anyway!), dark, a bit creepy walk that ends at the entrance of the circular venue. Guests walked in the room to a cabaret show, some small tables with lanterns, food stations, bars, mixologists (all in white and suspenders), and each guest received a white, red, or black scarf. The rest of the evening consisted of scantily clad girls doing 5 minute random routines, the most beautiful aerial act I've ever seen, Chinese mask changing act, a xylophone act, and a big band to back it all up. It was great and I was able to enjoy myself and have a drink.. even better. I actually got to talk to the guests for once as well and they had great comments which I really appreciated. I guess they really don't see all the bad things that happen in the background!
The evening concludes and everyone boards the buses. The buses were making a stop at a 1930s venue to continue the party. I was staying on the bus to go back to the hotel but as everyone is getting off I literally got dragged off the bus! So I got to mingle some more with the delegates and have a great time.
Day 5 - Wrap Up
Day 5 consisted of cleaning up, wrapping up, sending things back, getting things in order, debriefing, and trying to get a second to finally breathe! I went to bed at 8:00 PM and didn't wake up until 9:00 am saturday.
Saturday me, Shane, Maria and Jen stayed to explore the city some more. We even made friends with one of the speakers who came shopping with us at the markets! In the evening we all had a celebratory wonderful dinner in downtown Shanghai (thanks to our boss!).
Sunday, we decided to take a road trip. Our local help, Sally, grew up in Hangzhou which is 2 hours outside of Shanghai and the city where Shane and I flew into. We heard from numerous people how beautiful Hangzhou is so we decided to make a trip of it! Sally hired a driver for us and we hopped in a van and drove to Hangzhou for the day! Unfortunately it was very rainy, wet and cold, but that didn't stop us! We walked along the beautiful lakes, temples, and local homes. I wasn't wearing very good shoes to wet weather so my feet ending up freezing so I asked Sally if we could go back to the hotel so I could get more suitable shoes. It wasn't very far away and on our way Sally was speaking Chinese and kept saying something that sounded really similar to "bull sh*t." All of us were kinda looking at each other like what does that mean!?!? So I asked Sally!
"Sally you keep saying bull sh*t. What exactly does that mean" me
Sally giggles and replies "soggy shoes"
Great.. add that to my very limited Chinese vocabulary - nihao (hello), xie xie (thank you) and soggy shoes!
We had a good laugh about that one. Sally proceeded to take us to lunch which I couldn't even tell you what we ate. But it had eyes, maybe some legs, something spongy, and something that might have still been alive. Ha, it was definitely an experience but great.
After a great day with Sally, Maria and Jen, Shane and I had to say bye bye as they drove back into Shanghai and we stayed in Hangzhou as our flight took off the next day. Shane and I had a great dinner as we reminisced about all the crazy things that happened... we even got some laughs out of things that just did not seem funny at the time!
We left for the airport the next day. I sat down in my seat and as I was looking around minding my business a big cockroach comes zooming across my arm rest!!! I looked at the cockroach and said, "nihao" as I figured it understood Chinese.
Well It's been one year and 3 weeks since I started working in Australia. Living here has been great for both me and Jason personally and professionally. Looking back to the first week we moved here, I'd never thought that in the upcoming year I'd execute 2 medium sized conferences, 4 concert tours, travel to Asia 9 times (Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai), create a small network of 6 wonderful friends, return back to the US for a week for a wedding, explore Queensland, see an opera at the Opera House, gone camping, pet dingos, koalas and kangaroos.... that now I think I really need to start planning my own wedding! Under three months to go. Shit, if I can plan an event in China, I can do anything
13 February, 2011
The Brisbane Flood
It must have rained every day in December. Winter was mild, spring was comfortable but summer quickly turned wet. By the time Christmas came around, I just expected it to rain every day. Sure enough, we had a wet Christmas, wet Boxing Day, and not much better into the New Year. Somehow, it just never crossed my mind that all that rain might add up to something.
On Tuesday the 11th of January, we first heard about the disaster in Toowoomba, a good 120k from Brisbane. The city is located on the side of a mountain but a torrential downpour caused what was later called an inland tsunami. A wall of water about two meters high came ripping through the downtown area of the city, taking everything in its path. Home videos and camera phones showed cars being easily swept away, some with people still inside.
Toowoomba and much of the surrounding Lockyer Valley all drain towards the Brisbane river. It didn't take long for meteorologists and disaster management teams to predict terrible flooding as more water accumulated into the Brisbane river. After the 1974 flood, the Wivenhoe Dam was built outside of Brisbane that supposedly would keep another flood from reaching the city. Unfortunately, the same dam which was nearly empty two years ago, which scientists said would take 10 years of above average rainfall to reach 100% capacity, reached near the 200% capacity mark and had no choice but to give controlled releases to prevent a massive overflow. Between the surge coming from the Lockyer Valley and the overflowing Wivenhoe Dam, several Sydney Harbours worth of water were going to pass through Brisbane in a matter of about 72 hours.
That afternoon, a message went out at my office to tell everyone to pack up and go home. I didn't honestly think it would flood that badly in the city, especially considering my place of work and our apartment are at least five or ten meters above the river. Roadways and railways were filling up with people trying to get home before the flooding started and transportation lines were closed. I got home about noon and turned on the news. All the national stations were tuned to flood coverage. The early word was that waters were already high and would continue rising into Wednesday, peaking some time on Thursday. To make matters worse, the huge amounts of rainwater coming downstream were being matched by a king tide.
Our building is on the river, though it sits slightly higher than some of the neighboring buildings. A look out our balcony that afternoon showed the river was already at its banks and was beginning to cover the pedestrian sidewalks that line both sides of the river throughout the entire CBD area. The rest of the day was a bit anti-climactic, though interesting objects were already starting to float down the river. Pontoons (what I would usually refer to as docks) would float by one after the other, some with covered boats and lawn chairs still on them. There was an amazing amount of debris from trees, plants and manmade structures. Huge chunks of polystyrene (Styrofoam) would float along at the fast pace of the river. It was already churning quite a bit with little whirlpools along the edges and near rapids in the middle.
That evening I got in touch with friends to make sure everyone was alright. Several had either evacuated or had decided to wait it out, knowing they lived on a high floor. They knew it might be a few days before they could leave but didn't want to stay in an evacuation center. I went down to the river after dark and watched the river for a bit. It was a bit strange, feeling like you're in the middle of a natural disaster and yet there was no panic, no sense of urgency. A few others were down there as well, watching unmanned boats float by.
The next morning the river was up considerably. It really started to raise quite quickly at this point and I knew it would be days before I was back at work again. My client occupies one of the buildings on the river and I could see the water line getting close to the building, even with a further one to two meters of flooding still to come. I watched more news coverage and decided to go out that afternoon to take a few pictures and let everyone know I was alright. By this time, the floating walkway that connects the CBD to New Farm, one of my favorite running trails, was destroyed. It buckled under the pressure from the river and the constant debris hitting and pushing against it. I watched several of our favorite restaurants go under water. Jellyfish, where we've had great seafood, Groove Train, which we've visited a number of times and the Boardwalk, our favorite place for a beer after work, were all gone. I later heard they weren't able to get insurance because of their locations right on the river and that they may never be back.
All throughout the day, the debris kept getting bigger and weirder. I watched a local restaurant float by. Perhaps the strangest thing I saw went floating by at dusk. About 6pm I heard a loud whistling noise that I assumed must have been some kind of boat. I went out to the balcony to have a look and saw something large and white coming into view from down the river. As it got closer, I realized it was a LPG tank! (liquid propane) This wasn't the small home barbecue size, this was the 20 foot long gas station size tank. Not a minute after it passed the apartment, I could smell the gas 200 feet in the air. I stood there for a few minutes just waiting to hear an explosion but nothing happened. At some point it must have simply run out of gas and floated into the bay, like everything else.
I woke up Thursday morning and took a few pictures of the river at its peak. It was such a beautiful sunny morning but looking out the window was just so odd. The walkway from our building all the way to the botanic gardens was completely submerged, my client's building was clearly flooded, Kangaroo Point had taken on enough water to submerge a few unlucky cars, the ferry stop across from us was destroyed and perhaps the worst part, the floating walkway had broken away and become a missile floating down the river. A few local tug boat captains managed to corral it and escort it down the river and out to sea.
I went out again that day. Our building was very lucky throughout the ordeal because unlike most of our neighbors and many of our friends around the city, we had power. We did however lose the elevators. I went to New Farm to have a look at the damage and ended up helping a few guys carry a kayak full of ice back to edge of the water. The only way they could get in and out of their place was in a boat.
The water receded quickly Thursday night and into Friday. By Friday night, I left for Sydney to meet Carol for the weekend and was more than ready to take a break from 24 - 7 flood coverage. I did get a chance to see some of the cleanup before leaving town and was very impressed by the Queenslanders sense of mateship and resolve to get things done. Volunteers were everywhere and everyone was lending a hand. It was amazing how quickly many people were able to get back to their lives and move on.
It's been several weeks now and things definitely aren't 100% back to the way they were. Nearly every construction project around the city has been delayed or possibly cancelled. The floating walkway is gone and there's no indication if they're going to rebuild. The Eagle Street Pier area is still closed off, which between that and floating walkway have severly limited my running routes. City Cat and City Ferry services finally returned to the river, one month later, though it may be longer for stations that were destroyed. At my client site, we had to roll out our full disaster recovery plan. There are still some leftover issues to resolve, especially with technology that was based in Brisbane.
The floods have been an experience I will always remember. I would never wish a natural disaster on anyone, but I'm glad I was here to experience it.
On Tuesday the 11th of January, we first heard about the disaster in Toowoomba, a good 120k from Brisbane. The city is located on the side of a mountain but a torrential downpour caused what was later called an inland tsunami. A wall of water about two meters high came ripping through the downtown area of the city, taking everything in its path. Home videos and camera phones showed cars being easily swept away, some with people still inside.
Toowoomba and much of the surrounding Lockyer Valley all drain towards the Brisbane river. It didn't take long for meteorologists and disaster management teams to predict terrible flooding as more water accumulated into the Brisbane river. After the 1974 flood, the Wivenhoe Dam was built outside of Brisbane that supposedly would keep another flood from reaching the city. Unfortunately, the same dam which was nearly empty two years ago, which scientists said would take 10 years of above average rainfall to reach 100% capacity, reached near the 200% capacity mark and had no choice but to give controlled releases to prevent a massive overflow. Between the surge coming from the Lockyer Valley and the overflowing Wivenhoe Dam, several Sydney Harbours worth of water were going to pass through Brisbane in a matter of about 72 hours.
That afternoon, a message went out at my office to tell everyone to pack up and go home. I didn't honestly think it would flood that badly in the city, especially considering my place of work and our apartment are at least five or ten meters above the river. Roadways and railways were filling up with people trying to get home before the flooding started and transportation lines were closed. I got home about noon and turned on the news. All the national stations were tuned to flood coverage. The early word was that waters were already high and would continue rising into Wednesday, peaking some time on Thursday. To make matters worse, the huge amounts of rainwater coming downstream were being matched by a king tide.
Our building is on the river, though it sits slightly higher than some of the neighboring buildings. A look out our balcony that afternoon showed the river was already at its banks and was beginning to cover the pedestrian sidewalks that line both sides of the river throughout the entire CBD area. The rest of the day was a bit anti-climactic, though interesting objects were already starting to float down the river. Pontoons (what I would usually refer to as docks) would float by one after the other, some with covered boats and lawn chairs still on them. There was an amazing amount of debris from trees, plants and manmade structures. Huge chunks of polystyrene (Styrofoam) would float along at the fast pace of the river. It was already churning quite a bit with little whirlpools along the edges and near rapids in the middle.
That evening I got in touch with friends to make sure everyone was alright. Several had either evacuated or had decided to wait it out, knowing they lived on a high floor. They knew it might be a few days before they could leave but didn't want to stay in an evacuation center. I went down to the river after dark and watched the river for a bit. It was a bit strange, feeling like you're in the middle of a natural disaster and yet there was no panic, no sense of urgency. A few others were down there as well, watching unmanned boats float by.
The next morning the river was up considerably. It really started to raise quite quickly at this point and I knew it would be days before I was back at work again. My client occupies one of the buildings on the river and I could see the water line getting close to the building, even with a further one to two meters of flooding still to come. I watched more news coverage and decided to go out that afternoon to take a few pictures and let everyone know I was alright. By this time, the floating walkway that connects the CBD to New Farm, one of my favorite running trails, was destroyed. It buckled under the pressure from the river and the constant debris hitting and pushing against it. I watched several of our favorite restaurants go under water. Jellyfish, where we've had great seafood, Groove Train, which we've visited a number of times and the Boardwalk, our favorite place for a beer after work, were all gone. I later heard they weren't able to get insurance because of their locations right on the river and that they may never be back.
All throughout the day, the debris kept getting bigger and weirder. I watched a local restaurant float by. Perhaps the strangest thing I saw went floating by at dusk. About 6pm I heard a loud whistling noise that I assumed must have been some kind of boat. I went out to the balcony to have a look and saw something large and white coming into view from down the river. As it got closer, I realized it was a LPG tank! (liquid propane) This wasn't the small home barbecue size, this was the 20 foot long gas station size tank. Not a minute after it passed the apartment, I could smell the gas 200 feet in the air. I stood there for a few minutes just waiting to hear an explosion but nothing happened. At some point it must have simply run out of gas and floated into the bay, like everything else.
I woke up Thursday morning and took a few pictures of the river at its peak. It was such a beautiful sunny morning but looking out the window was just so odd. The walkway from our building all the way to the botanic gardens was completely submerged, my client's building was clearly flooded, Kangaroo Point had taken on enough water to submerge a few unlucky cars, the ferry stop across from us was destroyed and perhaps the worst part, the floating walkway had broken away and become a missile floating down the river. A few local tug boat captains managed to corral it and escort it down the river and out to sea.
I went out again that day. Our building was very lucky throughout the ordeal because unlike most of our neighbors and many of our friends around the city, we had power. We did however lose the elevators. I went to New Farm to have a look at the damage and ended up helping a few guys carry a kayak full of ice back to edge of the water. The only way they could get in and out of their place was in a boat.
The water receded quickly Thursday night and into Friday. By Friday night, I left for Sydney to meet Carol for the weekend and was more than ready to take a break from 24 - 7 flood coverage. I did get a chance to see some of the cleanup before leaving town and was very impressed by the Queenslanders sense of mateship and resolve to get things done. Volunteers were everywhere and everyone was lending a hand. It was amazing how quickly many people were able to get back to their lives and move on.
It's been several weeks now and things definitely aren't 100% back to the way they were. Nearly every construction project around the city has been delayed or possibly cancelled. The floating walkway is gone and there's no indication if they're going to rebuild. The Eagle Street Pier area is still closed off, which between that and floating walkway have severly limited my running routes. City Cat and City Ferry services finally returned to the river, one month later, though it may be longer for stations that were destroyed. At my client site, we had to roll out our full disaster recovery plan. There are still some leftover issues to resolve, especially with technology that was based in Brisbane.
The floods have been an experience I will always remember. I would never wish a natural disaster on anyone, but I'm glad I was here to experience it.
21 November, 2010
I've Turned Tree Hugger
Sorry for the long delay in this blog post. Between working, travelling and wedding planning it has been difficult to keep up with our blog recently!
I returned from a two and a half week sales trip through Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It was terrible! Successful business wise but terrible work
Let me back up a bit before I get into the details...My latest project is managing a four day 350 person food and beverage conference and trade exhibition in Shanghai and it is by far the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. Besides the fact that Asia is just a completely different beast to do business in my company is completely understaffed. My company has 2 full time people (me and my boss) an accounts lady and another Manager who is part time who does more of running the business than project detail like me. We have two contractors who are assisting us with this job as well. One is responsible for all the artwork/design/printing and the other contractor runs the registration engine that collects all data for the delegates. Therefore only me and my boss are working on this project full time. Due to the fact that my boss’ skills do not lie anywhere in the organization/attention to detail/coordination/communication with people, implementation... this all completely lies on me. Therefore I am doing sponsorship coordination with over 100 companies (and fulfilment), creating a 3 day speaker program for the conference and communication with all speakers, working with the hotel staff about conference packages, ballroom and break out room rentals & accommodation, storage for conference materials, working with 4 external venues for the 3 social events (boat cruise, dine around on the famous Bund River and a gala dinner), all while working with 20 chefs to ensure the food and beverage completely WOWs these F&B professionals! It’s a bit intimidating when I can barely make mac & cheese and these people are some of the best chefs in the world. They come up with the most beautiful menus and drinks. It’s really incredible and inspiring to work with such creative well known chefs. I’m also working with bar tender “champions” from around the world, tea, wine and coffee sommeliers too. Did you know there is such a thing as a WATER sommelier? Weird. Anyway, thank GOD our other Manager (the part time one) used to own his own set designing company as he is designing our stage and trade show exhibition space. He is amazing and the sets he builds are incredible. We are very lucky to have him be part of the team.
So that is my project. It is pretty cool but is just a ton of work to put on one person. I have all the confidence in the world in myself to pull off an awesome experience but I am faced with challenges and questions and situations everyday where I feel like a duck.. calm and cool on the surface but peddling my feet like crazy underneath.
Back to my trip...The point of this 2.5 week trip through Asia was to meet with potential sponsors and secure some who were wavering. My boss decided a week and a half before we left that we would just do a sales trip. I had to coordinate 30 meetings in four different cities – and of course everyone is busy so it was just a whirlwind putting everything together on top of taking care of all the other things mentioned above. Fine, no worries, it's part of the job.
My boss got to Singapore on a Saturday and decided to bring his “friend” with him who he recently met online. She also happens to be a Japanese translator and told me that’s why he brought her alone. Ummm too bad we didn’t meet with any Japanese companies? She was good company but also a bit of a princess and another hotel and transportation I had to worry about 2 days before we left. I ended up taking an overnight flight on Sunday landed in Singapore on Monday morning after a 9 hour flight with 1 lay over in Kuala Lumpur. Thankfully in KL at the airport you can get a 30 minute massage for 10 ringgit ($3) so it was good to have that after sitting in coach for 8 hours overnight. I had one hour in my hotel room to get ready in Singapore and then went into 6 hours of meetings. My boss did all the talking, I all the minuting, and trying to not cringe every time he over exaggerated or promised something that I knew would give me a new 10 hour project. He is a fantastic salesman, probably the best I've heard, but at times the things we sell can be extremely difficult to do. Definitely possible but very time consuming and difficult. Remember, he has no idea what goes into implementation. After all the listening and note taking all day my job didn’t start until after the 6 – 8 hour days of meetings. I’d go back to my room to anywhere between 50 – 200 emails from potential sponsors or delegates as the registration deadline happened to be in the middle of this trip. On top of that, I had contracts to draft from the meetings and all the follow up. These weren’t just quick emails either.
I spent two days in Singapore then had another night flight to our next destination – Shanghai; a 1:30 AM flight. Oh and don’t forget my boss sat business class and put me in the back. It’s only a five hour flight but getting to an international flight at 11:30 PM at the airport, waiting, and then sitting on a plane just isn’t comfortable. Needless to say I might have gotten an hour of sleep. We landed in Shanghai and were off and running doing meetings all day and then I’d go back to my room and do all the follow up, etc. Needless to say after all this traveling and working I was very very cranky and angry by the end of the trip. I don’t know how anyone expects someone to be able to perform their best under circumstances like this. I made two pretty big mistakes on this trip too but I just couldn’t hold myself to feel bad about them because I was just exhausted, overworked, and underappreciated. I didn’t book his “friends” hotel dates correctly as they were flashed at me two days before leaving while I was thinking of a million other things. His friend flew to Shanghai a day before us so I realized while she was in the air that I messed up her booking and car transfer so I called the hotel to try and fix it and they said there were no rooms left because it was the last week of the World Expo. This was the case at EVERY hotel in Shanghai! So my boss is freaking out worrying how bad this will make him look in front of his “friend” so he used his “GM get out of free card” as I call it.. and called the General Manager of the hotel we were staying at (our conference hotel) and the GM bumped a guest for her and had her picked up by his personal car. Ugh, a good favour wasted on a chick. Awesome. Awesome. The other mistake I made was writing a company’s name incorrectly on a contract but that was quickly forgotten.
Our last location was Hong Kong which is by far my favourite place in Asia that I have been. It is clean, modern, the skyline is amazing and most people speak English. We stayed at the new W hotel – wow... WOW! It was very modern as were our rooms. I kept finding new buttons that did cool things. The staff even made me two chocolate pyramids that said “Welcome Miss Dasdjfkl;asdfkj” just one letter was out of place but I wasn’t going to make them do it again! Especially after the manager specifically sought me out and said that he had to fix it once.. hehe
I’ve been to Asia 5 times now for work and I’m going back tomorrow for a presentation I have to give on Thanksgiving. After visiting and staying in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai I have a new look on the world. I have completely become a green freak. I was never really into the green movement, I love our planet, but I guess I was always very fortunate to live in the US – where poverty, disparity of wealth, government corruption and filthy living conditions are not everywhere. Americans are so lucky and I wish more of them could see the rest of the world and understand how good they have it. Of course we always want to improve things in our country but I feel so many things have been taken for granted and people just complain to complain. Anyway, the biggest thing I have taken away from my trips to Asia is taking care of the environment. In most places in Asia the rivers and waters are untouchable because they are so filthy, government and other authorities are looking for every way to make a dollar off of you and their people (I can tell by working with local vendors), there are no public trash cans, my eyes literally hurt after days in most of these cities because of the smog, and people are running around with masks on. Which always makes me wonder.. are they sick or do they think I’m sick? I generally have had very pleasant experiences with the people I have worked with in Asia but we always have to be very careful when working with vendors. They are always trying to rip off “rich westerners.” Very frustrating for honest people!
That’s been my experience thus far. You probably won’t hear from me for another few months as I will go in total conference mode from now throughout the conference in late Feb. We are trying to get so much done now so things aren’t too crazy around the Chinese New Year! Everything literally shuts down in China for about 3 weeks in Jan- Feb. Not great for our project but we’ll make it work!
I returned from a two and a half week sales trip through Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It was terrible! Successful business wise but terrible work
Let me back up a bit before I get into the details...My latest project is managing a four day 350 person food and beverage conference and trade exhibition in Shanghai and it is by far the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. Besides the fact that Asia is just a completely different beast to do business in my company is completely understaffed. My company has 2 full time people (me and my boss) an accounts lady and another Manager who is part time who does more of running the business than project detail like me. We have two contractors who are assisting us with this job as well. One is responsible for all the artwork/design/printing and the other contractor runs the registration engine that collects all data for the delegates. Therefore only me and my boss are working on this project full time. Due to the fact that my boss’ skills do not lie anywhere in the organization/attention to detail/coordination/communication with people, implementation... this all completely lies on me. Therefore I am doing sponsorship coordination with over 100 companies (and fulfilment), creating a 3 day speaker program for the conference and communication with all speakers, working with the hotel staff about conference packages, ballroom and break out room rentals & accommodation, storage for conference materials, working with 4 external venues for the 3 social events (boat cruise, dine around on the famous Bund River and a gala dinner), all while working with 20 chefs to ensure the food and beverage completely WOWs these F&B professionals! It’s a bit intimidating when I can barely make mac & cheese and these people are some of the best chefs in the world. They come up with the most beautiful menus and drinks. It’s really incredible and inspiring to work with such creative well known chefs. I’m also working with bar tender “champions” from around the world, tea, wine and coffee sommeliers too. Did you know there is such a thing as a WATER sommelier? Weird. Anyway, thank GOD our other Manager (the part time one) used to own his own set designing company as he is designing our stage and trade show exhibition space. He is amazing and the sets he builds are incredible. We are very lucky to have him be part of the team.
So that is my project. It is pretty cool but is just a ton of work to put on one person. I have all the confidence in the world in myself to pull off an awesome experience but I am faced with challenges and questions and situations everyday where I feel like a duck.. calm and cool on the surface but peddling my feet like crazy underneath.
Back to my trip...The point of this 2.5 week trip through Asia was to meet with potential sponsors and secure some who were wavering. My boss decided a week and a half before we left that we would just do a sales trip. I had to coordinate 30 meetings in four different cities – and of course everyone is busy so it was just a whirlwind putting everything together on top of taking care of all the other things mentioned above. Fine, no worries, it's part of the job.
My boss got to Singapore on a Saturday and decided to bring his “friend” with him who he recently met online. She also happens to be a Japanese translator and told me that’s why he brought her alone. Ummm too bad we didn’t meet with any Japanese companies? She was good company but also a bit of a princess and another hotel and transportation I had to worry about 2 days before we left. I ended up taking an overnight flight on Sunday landed in Singapore on Monday morning after a 9 hour flight with 1 lay over in Kuala Lumpur. Thankfully in KL at the airport you can get a 30 minute massage for 10 ringgit ($3) so it was good to have that after sitting in coach for 8 hours overnight. I had one hour in my hotel room to get ready in Singapore and then went into 6 hours of meetings. My boss did all the talking, I all the minuting, and trying to not cringe every time he over exaggerated or promised something that I knew would give me a new 10 hour project. He is a fantastic salesman, probably the best I've heard, but at times the things we sell can be extremely difficult to do. Definitely possible but very time consuming and difficult. Remember, he has no idea what goes into implementation. After all the listening and note taking all day my job didn’t start until after the 6 – 8 hour days of meetings. I’d go back to my room to anywhere between 50 – 200 emails from potential sponsors or delegates as the registration deadline happened to be in the middle of this trip. On top of that, I had contracts to draft from the meetings and all the follow up. These weren’t just quick emails either.
I spent two days in Singapore then had another night flight to our next destination – Shanghai; a 1:30 AM flight. Oh and don’t forget my boss sat business class and put me in the back. It’s only a five hour flight but getting to an international flight at 11:30 PM at the airport, waiting, and then sitting on a plane just isn’t comfortable. Needless to say I might have gotten an hour of sleep. We landed in Shanghai and were off and running doing meetings all day and then I’d go back to my room and do all the follow up, etc. Needless to say after all this traveling and working I was very very cranky and angry by the end of the trip. I don’t know how anyone expects someone to be able to perform their best under circumstances like this. I made two pretty big mistakes on this trip too but I just couldn’t hold myself to feel bad about them because I was just exhausted, overworked, and underappreciated. I didn’t book his “friends” hotel dates correctly as they were flashed at me two days before leaving while I was thinking of a million other things. His friend flew to Shanghai a day before us so I realized while she was in the air that I messed up her booking and car transfer so I called the hotel to try and fix it and they said there were no rooms left because it was the last week of the World Expo. This was the case at EVERY hotel in Shanghai! So my boss is freaking out worrying how bad this will make him look in front of his “friend” so he used his “GM get out of free card” as I call it.. and called the General Manager of the hotel we were staying at (our conference hotel) and the GM bumped a guest for her and had her picked up by his personal car. Ugh, a good favour wasted on a chick. Awesome. Awesome. The other mistake I made was writing a company’s name incorrectly on a contract but that was quickly forgotten.
Our last location was Hong Kong which is by far my favourite place in Asia that I have been. It is clean, modern, the skyline is amazing and most people speak English. We stayed at the new W hotel – wow... WOW! It was very modern as were our rooms. I kept finding new buttons that did cool things. The staff even made me two chocolate pyramids that said “Welcome Miss Dasdjfkl;asdfkj” just one letter was out of place but I wasn’t going to make them do it again! Especially after the manager specifically sought me out and said that he had to fix it once.. hehe
I’ve been to Asia 5 times now for work and I’m going back tomorrow for a presentation I have to give on Thanksgiving. After visiting and staying in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai I have a new look on the world. I have completely become a green freak. I was never really into the green movement, I love our planet, but I guess I was always very fortunate to live in the US – where poverty, disparity of wealth, government corruption and filthy living conditions are not everywhere. Americans are so lucky and I wish more of them could see the rest of the world and understand how good they have it. Of course we always want to improve things in our country but I feel so many things have been taken for granted and people just complain to complain. Anyway, the biggest thing I have taken away from my trips to Asia is taking care of the environment. In most places in Asia the rivers and waters are untouchable because they are so filthy, government and other authorities are looking for every way to make a dollar off of you and their people (I can tell by working with local vendors), there are no public trash cans, my eyes literally hurt after days in most of these cities because of the smog, and people are running around with masks on. Which always makes me wonder.. are they sick or do they think I’m sick? I generally have had very pleasant experiences with the people I have worked with in Asia but we always have to be very careful when working with vendors. They are always trying to rip off “rich westerners.” Very frustrating for honest people!
That’s been my experience thus far. You probably won’t hear from me for another few months as I will go in total conference mode from now throughout the conference in late Feb. We are trying to get so much done now so things aren’t too crazy around the Chinese New Year! Everything literally shuts down in China for about 3 weeks in Jan- Feb. Not great for our project but we’ll make it work!
02 September, 2010
One Night In Bangkok
Ok, actually make that four nights of haggling, partying, getting massages and hanging around with an Indian business mogul. Seriously, I don't know how Carol gets paid to do this stuff, but she had to go to Bangkok for work to coordinate a few hours worth of live entertainment for about 500 Indian guests that managed to rent out the ENTIRE Grand Hyatt in Bangkok. That's 380 5-star hotel rooms.
The event lasted four days and Carol's firm was essentially subcontracted to provide entertainment on Friday night. That night, she played "band mom" for a few hours (her words, not mine), paid the performers and then we all hit the bar for some top shelf booze poured by three Swedish guys that Carol and I couldn't agree if they looked more like Cary Elwes from the Princess Bride or Val Kilmer from Top Gun. Maybe the world really is our oyster.
Random birthday parties aside, what an interesting city! Since Carol's flight and few nights of hotel were covered, we decided it would be fun for me to come up and we'd take a long weekend. It turned out to be an awesome trip. My impression of Bangkok and Thailand in general is definitely different than our last trip to Kuala Lumpur. The most evident difference is the religious culture. Malaysia is an Islamic state governed by the laws of Islam while Thailand is 95% Buddhist. The city of Bangkok is absolutely blanketed in statues and symbols of Buddha and numerous Hindu gods that play an important role in Buddhism (Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, etc). Mosques dot the KL landscape and some are rather impressive in size, but the temples in Bangkok are just amazing.
To set the stage for our trip, we were met at the airport by Ms. Poo (seriously) who was helping run the overall event and arranged a cab for us. Getting into the miniature cab with Ms. Poo, Carol and I both grabbed for seatbelts and found... no seatbelts. Yeesh. This would become a theme.
We settled in on Wednesday night and got up early on Thursday morning to do some sight-seeing before Carol had to go check out the venue later that night. We started our day by going to the nearby river pier from our hotel area in Silom (pronounced see-lohm) with the intent to take a boat up to the area near the Grand Palace. The river is, well, pretty gross. It's brown, there's trash mixed with chopped up river weeds floating everywhere and dark smoke billows out of most of the boats. The smaller boats are actually pretty funny to see - bright rainbow colored cloth tops with huge car engines that have been Frankensteined into boat propellers.
When we arrived at the pier we also got another taste of something else that would become a theme. We were immediately presented by a tourist station where you can buy a 1 day pass to go along the river for something like 600 baht. Given that its 30 baht to the dollar, that's about 20 bucks for a day of transportation. Not great, but not terrible. Then, we happened to run into a nice local lady who seemed to work for one of the tourist companies that for some strange reason, decided not to try to rip us off. She actually told us that if we were just going to the palace, we should hop on the public boat with all the local people and go there. Price? 14 baht. Now we're talking.
I got on the boat and immediately panicked when I realized my smallest bill was 1000 baht. Great, now I'm that guy. I watched her go up and down the boat with each person giving her exact change or maybe a 20 baht bill. When the lady came to me, I sheepishly showed her the money and gave her my best dumb guilty tourist face. She took one look and walked away. She didn't ask us to get off, just walked away. After the next stop, she ended up coming back and asking again for a ticket, to which I showed her the same bill. She took it, miraculously made change and even gave me a rather courteous smile! Surely she saw what an idiot I was and decided to get everyone else's fares so she could make change for me. Honestly, it was extremely nice of her and not something I would expect from an American or Australian bus driver. Not sure what it is about people in Thailand, but in our experience, they were either really nice (90%) or complete a-holes (10%).
We arrived at the palace, which contains the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. It's the site of the royal family of Thailand and has several hundred years of history. Walking inside, we were absolutely blown away. I can honestly say the palace and temple are grounds are probably the most unique and fascinating man-made place I've ever seen. Everything about the grounds has an enormous amount of flair. The trees are uniquely trimmed, the roofs have spikes, mosiacs and murals cover the walls, spires reach up into the sky, statues of evil spirits guard entryways, statues of Buddhas are absolutely everywhere and to top it all off, real 24k gold covers absolutely everything. Wow.
I could write forever about the palace and the temple inside, but a few pictures would probably tell a better story.
Carol and I were smart enough to bring sunscreen with us but somehow dumb enough not to put it on that day. It was about 85 F, muggy, and very sunny. We got burned. At the end of our adventure through the palace, we stopped and had a quick water break to find where we wanted to go for lunch. We scoped out a restaurant district and headed there on a walk that seemed to take forever in the heat. When we got to the area we were supposed to be, we couldn't seem to find the places we were looking for so we just settled on going into a random little restaurant who didn't have a word of English anywhere. The lady who served us was very cordial and spoke just enough English that we could point to dishes and tell her shrimp, pork, chicken or beef. She served up some delicious fare that probably ended up being my favorite Thai food of the trip. Total bill? 138 baht. That's an excellent lunch for two for under $5. Sweeeet.
Next stop was the Wat Pho, a temple that holds several records including the most Buddha statues in a single place and the largest reclining Buddha in the world. The big reclining Buddha is about 150 feet long and barely fits in his building.
There were so many Buddhas everywhere! Big Buddhas, small Buddhas, standing Buddhas, seated Buddhas, reclining Buddhas, Buddhas under trees, and Buddhas kneeling to even bigger Buddhas. Some of the Buddhas were being repainted in an initial layer of black and then covered with gold, of course.
We took a cab back to the hotel, which had seatbelts this time but no buckles. Cabs are stupid cheap in Bangkok, 35 baht for the first kilometer and something like 8 baht for each kilometer after that.
That night we met Ms. Poo again, who took us to see the setup at the Grand Hyatt and then out for a local Thai dinner. Again, great food. At this point I should probably mention that traffic in Bangkok is horrendous around rush hour. Our hotels are exactly 5k apart (3.1 miles) and it took us about 45 minutes to get there. Good thing we had a nice cushy conversion van with, you guessed it, no seatbelts.
Friday was pretty slow in the morning but we had the party in the evening. Carol was busy with the entertainment for most of the afternoon. While she was working, I did a little shopping and got a 90 minute Thai massage from a reputable looking place for 450 baht ($15). Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with the awkward 'happy ending' question. If you've never had a Thai massage from a real Thai woman, I suggest you stretch before the massage and make sure you aren't on a full stomach. My massage was on a mat on the floor and for good reason. I'm pretty sure it was more like 90 minutes of WCW Raw than a nice relaxing massage. She seemed to put me in all sorts of crazy tap-out positions and definitely stretched muscles that probably haven't been stretched like that since the day I was born. I actually felt very good when I was done and I didn't have that gross oily feeling since Thai massage doesn't use any oils.
I grabbed a quick dinner and met Carol for the birthday bash. To make a long story short, we watched the entertainment, had some top shelf cocktails and then stayed drinking with the band until about 4am. Somehow, the 70 years young birthday boy and about 50 of his elderly friends managed to still be partying and watching traditional Indian dancers when we left. Apparently this isn't abnormal for this kind of function. My hats off to Indian birthday parties.
Getting the band back to the hotel turned out to be quite a chore. The bassist and drummer were absolutely smashed. To make matters worse, half the band still had equipment on the stage behind the performers and we had to restrain the bassist from attempting to dry hump the belly dancer. We got the band back to the hotel around 4am, helped two of singers with their room key and put everyone in bed, about 45 minutes before they had to get up again to go catch their early morning flight. We did not envy the headaches they must have had on their nine hour flight back to Melbourne.
Saturday morning came around and we went to the Weekend Market that is just north of town. I have never in my life seen a market like this. It has some 15,000 stalls. We spent an entire afternoon there and I don't think we saw more than 20% of the stalls. Clothes, decorations, kitchen items, ceramics, beads, jewelry and tons of food. We ate, we shopped, we haggled. It really was fantastic - I just wish we had brought our camera!
That night we had dinner at a nice little local restaurant and got ourselves a 60 minute foot massage from the same reputable place for $300 baht. I specifically say reputable because 1) some places offer 2 hour massages for 200 baht - that's just sketchy 2) some of the massage places look like the cure for cancer is on their floor, 3) I've heard numerous stories about being offered a 'happy ending', even at hotels. The only time I honestly felt unsafe in Bangkok was during our massage - not because of anything the masseuses did but because we heard loud cracking sounds coming from outside. It was election night I had completely forgot about the insurrection that had happened just a few months before. The loud sounds stopped after about 5 minutes and I still have no idea what they were, but it turned out to be nothing.
Sunday flew by. We visited a temple in the morning, the Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn). It's big, it's pointy, and it has ludicrously steep stairs.
After that, our sightseeing was complete with a trip to a final temple at Golden Mountain, a man-made hill with wonderful views of Bangkok. The temples really are spectacular and there's something about taking off your shoes and sitting in front of Buddha with both travelers and local Thai people that really makes you feel a common sense of purpose.
We spent most of the afternoon throwing back beers and eating well at a western style Thai restaurant near our hotel before heading back to the airport. My only advice on things to avoid would be the Patpong Market in Chinatown or any other tourist market. Initial prices are astronomical and the quality of nearly all the goods is absolute crap. If I could recommend two things to do while in Bangkok they would be 1) the Grand Temple and 2) the Weekend Market. The city really left a positive impression on me and there are tons of fun things to do, but just make sure you don't miss those two.
The event lasted four days and Carol's firm was essentially subcontracted to provide entertainment on Friday night. That night, she played "band mom" for a few hours (her words, not mine), paid the performers and then we all hit the bar for some top shelf booze poured by three Swedish guys that Carol and I couldn't agree if they looked more like Cary Elwes from the Princess Bride or Val Kilmer from Top Gun. Maybe the world really is our oyster.
Random birthday parties aside, what an interesting city! Since Carol's flight and few nights of hotel were covered, we decided it would be fun for me to come up and we'd take a long weekend. It turned out to be an awesome trip. My impression of Bangkok and Thailand in general is definitely different than our last trip to Kuala Lumpur. The most evident difference is the religious culture. Malaysia is an Islamic state governed by the laws of Islam while Thailand is 95% Buddhist. The city of Bangkok is absolutely blanketed in statues and symbols of Buddha and numerous Hindu gods that play an important role in Buddhism (Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, etc). Mosques dot the KL landscape and some are rather impressive in size, but the temples in Bangkok are just amazing.
To set the stage for our trip, we were met at the airport by Ms. Poo (seriously) who was helping run the overall event and arranged a cab for us. Getting into the miniature cab with Ms. Poo, Carol and I both grabbed for seatbelts and found... no seatbelts. Yeesh. This would become a theme.
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| A Frankenboat |
When we arrived at the pier we also got another taste of something else that would become a theme. We were immediately presented by a tourist station where you can buy a 1 day pass to go along the river for something like 600 baht. Given that its 30 baht to the dollar, that's about 20 bucks for a day of transportation. Not great, but not terrible. Then, we happened to run into a nice local lady who seemed to work for one of the tourist companies that for some strange reason, decided not to try to rip us off. She actually told us that if we were just going to the palace, we should hop on the public boat with all the local people and go there. Price? 14 baht. Now we're talking.
I got on the boat and immediately panicked when I realized my smallest bill was 1000 baht. Great, now I'm that guy. I watched her go up and down the boat with each person giving her exact change or maybe a 20 baht bill. When the lady came to me, I sheepishly showed her the money and gave her my best dumb guilty tourist face. She took one look and walked away. She didn't ask us to get off, just walked away. After the next stop, she ended up coming back and asking again for a ticket, to which I showed her the same bill. She took it, miraculously made change and even gave me a rather courteous smile! Surely she saw what an idiot I was and decided to get everyone else's fares so she could make change for me. Honestly, it was extremely nice of her and not something I would expect from an American or Australian bus driver. Not sure what it is about people in Thailand, but in our experience, they were either really nice (90%) or complete a-holes (10%).
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| The Temple of the Emerald Buddha |
I could write forever about the palace and the temple inside, but a few pictures would probably tell a better story.
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| A guardian spirit |
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| Beautiful mosaics and gold sculpture everywhere |
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| The palace grounds |
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| Crazy trees at the Grand Palace |
Carol and I were smart enough to bring sunscreen with us but somehow dumb enough not to put it on that day. It was about 85 F, muggy, and very sunny. We got burned. At the end of our adventure through the palace, we stopped and had a quick water break to find where we wanted to go for lunch. We scoped out a restaurant district and headed there on a walk that seemed to take forever in the heat. When we got to the area we were supposed to be, we couldn't seem to find the places we were looking for so we just settled on going into a random little restaurant who didn't have a word of English anywhere. The lady who served us was very cordial and spoke just enough English that we could point to dishes and tell her shrimp, pork, chicken or beef. She served up some delicious fare that probably ended up being my favorite Thai food of the trip. Total bill? 138 baht. That's an excellent lunch for two for under $5. Sweeeet.
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| The giant Buddha's head |
There were so many Buddhas everywhere! Big Buddhas, small Buddhas, standing Buddhas, seated Buddhas, reclining Buddhas, Buddhas under trees, and Buddhas kneeling to even bigger Buddhas. Some of the Buddhas were being repainted in an initial layer of black and then covered with gold, of course.
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| The reclining Buddha |
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| More Buddhas |
We took a cab back to the hotel, which had seatbelts this time but no buckles. Cabs are stupid cheap in Bangkok, 35 baht for the first kilometer and something like 8 baht for each kilometer after that.
That night we met Ms. Poo again, who took us to see the setup at the Grand Hyatt and then out for a local Thai dinner. Again, great food. At this point I should probably mention that traffic in Bangkok is horrendous around rush hour. Our hotels are exactly 5k apart (3.1 miles) and it took us about 45 minutes to get there. Good thing we had a nice cushy conversion van with, you guessed it, no seatbelts.
Friday was pretty slow in the morning but we had the party in the evening. Carol was busy with the entertainment for most of the afternoon. While she was working, I did a little shopping and got a 90 minute Thai massage from a reputable looking place for 450 baht ($15). Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with the awkward 'happy ending' question. If you've never had a Thai massage from a real Thai woman, I suggest you stretch before the massage and make sure you aren't on a full stomach. My massage was on a mat on the floor and for good reason. I'm pretty sure it was more like 90 minutes of WCW Raw than a nice relaxing massage. She seemed to put me in all sorts of crazy tap-out positions and definitely stretched muscles that probably haven't been stretched like that since the day I was born. I actually felt very good when I was done and I didn't have that gross oily feeling since Thai massage doesn't use any oils.
I grabbed a quick dinner and met Carol for the birthday bash. To make a long story short, we watched the entertainment, had some top shelf cocktails and then stayed drinking with the band until about 4am. Somehow, the 70 years young birthday boy and about 50 of his elderly friends managed to still be partying and watching traditional Indian dancers when we left. Apparently this isn't abnormal for this kind of function. My hats off to Indian birthday parties.
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| The band in their best 70s getups |
Saturday morning came around and we went to the Weekend Market that is just north of town. I have never in my life seen a market like this. It has some 15,000 stalls. We spent an entire afternoon there and I don't think we saw more than 20% of the stalls. Clothes, decorations, kitchen items, ceramics, beads, jewelry and tons of food. We ate, we shopped, we haggled. It really was fantastic - I just wish we had brought our camera!
That night we had dinner at a nice little local restaurant and got ourselves a 60 minute foot massage from the same reputable place for $300 baht. I specifically say reputable because 1) some places offer 2 hour massages for 200 baht - that's just sketchy 2) some of the massage places look like the cure for cancer is on their floor, 3) I've heard numerous stories about being offered a 'happy ending', even at hotels. The only time I honestly felt unsafe in Bangkok was during our massage - not because of anything the masseuses did but because we heard loud cracking sounds coming from outside. It was election night I had completely forgot about the insurrection that had happened just a few months before. The loud sounds stopped after about 5 minutes and I still have no idea what they were, but it turned out to be nothing.
Sunday flew by. We visited a temple in the morning, the Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn). It's big, it's pointy, and it has ludicrously steep stairs.
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| Wat Arun |
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| Find Carol! |
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| View from the bottom of the steep stairs |
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| Carol hitting the gong on Golden Mountain |
After that, our sightseeing was complete with a trip to a final temple at Golden Mountain, a man-made hill with wonderful views of Bangkok. The temples really are spectacular and there's something about taking off your shoes and sitting in front of Buddha with both travelers and local Thai people that really makes you feel a common sense of purpose.
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| View from the top of Golden Mountain |
We spent most of the afternoon throwing back beers and eating well at a western style Thai restaurant near our hotel before heading back to the airport. My only advice on things to avoid would be the Patpong Market in Chinatown or any other tourist market. Initial prices are astronomical and the quality of nearly all the goods is absolute crap. If I could recommend two things to do while in Bangkok they would be 1) the Grand Temple and 2) the Weekend Market. The city really left a positive impression on me and there are tons of fun things to do, but just make sure you don't miss those two.
15 August, 2010
A Busy July
Wow, was July a busy month. Only now, half way through August, do I feel like I can finally catch my breath. Several major events happened one after the other, namely the Gold Coast Marathon, my CISSP exam and our trip back to the US for Carol's cousin's wedding.
The marathon went like a dream. In my last post I talked about how this new lifestyle has given me time to run. My training regimen was actually not too rigorous, running about three days a week on average. There are so many trails to choose from around our apartment, which helps keep it interesting. For about the month before the marathon, my regular training consisted of two, maybe three weekday runs averaging somewhere around eight miles each and then a long weekend run anywhere from 10 miles to somewhere around 20 miles. The training runs definitely got easier as my body got more accustomed to longer distances. When I started training, my average run was probably about 5 miles at 8:00min/mile. I thought that was good. It's amazing how much you can accomplish if you go just a little further and little faster each week. By the time the marathon came around, a 13 mile run at 7:30 pace seemed simple.
When I first committed to run the marathon, my target finishing time was four hours. Anything in the ball park of a four hour marathon is something to be proud of. I stand by that now, having done one. As my training went on and I started to get more comfortable with a quicker pace and longer distance, I decided it would be good to shoot for 3:30.
Traditionally, two weekends before a marathon is the 'test run' where you go out for your longest training run. For first time marathoners the recommendation is somewhere around 80-90% of the full marathon distance. I decided to set my watch for three hours and see what happens. Well, at about the two hour mark I had to start walking. This was only two weeks til the big day. Not good.
I racked my brain, talked to my Mom and did plenty of reading to figure out exactly what was wrong and decided it was nutrition. I wasn't eating during my training runs and the body only has so much glucose available until it has to start burning fat directly, which is much more difficult to burn. This is what it means to 'hit the wall'. The body simply doesn't have the energy to keep going. On top of that, drinking more water seemed to actually slow me down. It felt like it would just sit in my stomach rather than rehydrating me.
That led me to put together a race day water and nutrition strategy, which turned out to be a saving grace. I did a few test runs with Goo packs (little gooey glucose squeeze tubes that pretty much taste like Gatorade flavored toothpaste) and had pretty good success. I also figured that drinking sports drinks rather than water would help with faster, smoother absorption. For the marathon (42.2k, 26.1mi), I decided to have one Goo pack every 10k and drink a half cup of Gatorade every 5k.
The marathon started at 7:00am Sunday, so Carol and I went down to the Gold Coast a day early to relax and see some friends. We had a great, and very relaxing evening. The race was on the 4th of July, so I drew some American flags on my bib with the help of our friends four year old daughter. Marathon runners were given the opportunity to put a nickname on their bib, so naturally I chose 'Happy B-Day USA'. That night, the last thing I wanted to do was to introduce any unknown variables into race day, so I brought my own food for dinner and breakfast the next morning. I had an early breakfast (just cereal and some juice) and we headed off for the starting line.
July is the middle of winter here, so it was relatively cold that morning. Getting to the starting line involved plenty of muscle rubbing and jumping up and down to keep warm. I thought I would be nervous at the starting line, but I wasn't. I knew I was prepared and I was ready to go. The gun went off, I crossed the start line, and the race was on.
There were about 5,000 participants, so there were plenty of people to pick through at the start. Pace runners with balloons were set up at the 4:00, 3:45, 3:30, 3:15, and 3:00 marks. I started somewhere in the 4-4:30 area and had some catching up to do. The first 5k was shoulder to shoulder with other runners but I managed to get past the 4hr balloon pretty quickly. The 3:45 balloon took more effort. That one went down around the 10k mark. After that, things started to loosen up and I could really run at my own pace. That's when the fun started. I really felt great for the first half of the marathon, chasing down one balloon at a time. I love to set little goals when I'm running - catching certain runners, speeding up to a certain point on the horizon, picking up pace for one song on the mp3 player - all these keep me entertained and help my overall time.
Before I knew it, the 3:15 balloon was in sight and I was closing. I started to wonder if I wasn't getting out too hard, too early. Most of the content I read before the marathon described the ideal first half as nothing more than 'an exercise in holding back'. I decided my pace was within reason and kept going. I passed the 3:15 balloon somewhere around the 25 or 30k mark. My nutrition and hydration strategy seemed to be working well. Two hours in, I felt hydrated, had good energy and the sun came up to give everyone a beautiful day looking out over the ocean.
Just as it was all coming together, I knew I had hit the hardest part of the race. The same sages who warned me about holding back at the beginning of the race also told me that 'the real marathon begins at 30k'. I believed them and I prepared for it. Sure enough, the last 10k is the hardest. The joints are starting to feel it, the feet are starting to feel it and it starts to be more work than fun. Still, being prepared, I kept on pushing. Towards the end, I passed fewer people and there seemed to be large gaps between runners. I counted down each of the last 10k, mentally marking off one by one and getting that much closer to my goal.
The last kilometer flew by. I wish every kilometer felt like that last kilometer. I was tired, but I suddenly had energy. All the work of the 41k before it was nearly forgotten. People were everywhere, cheering loudly. Kids were pushing to the front to get high fives. The sun was shining, my heart was racing and I could see the finish line coming.
Sure enough, I bounded down the final straightaway beaming with excitement, fist pumping. I caught Carol in the audience yelling her loudest. Right on cue, the announcer rang out "Jason Porter - Happy Independence Day!", and I crossed the finish line. What a feeling. The few minutes after that were a bit awkward. I felt quite nauseated at first but got a drink of water and had a seat to relax before taking off my timing chip. A nice volunteer came over and actually offered to undo my laces and take off my chip for me! I can't say there is any other occasion where I'd ask someone to untie my shoe laces for me but that was awesome. My legs were pretty stiff for the next 24 hours and I felt pretty close to 100% in 48 hours.
I can honestly say I don't think I've ever been so proud of myself in my whole life. This was a competition with myself, something that I wanted really bad, just for me. Looking back now, the whole thing just feels great. I got amazing support from Carol - saw here once in the course and at the finish - and also had support from a few friends who came to watch. It really meant a lot to have them there in my big moment.
When it was all said and done, my net time (start to finish) was 3:07:22. Here's proof! It was even good enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2011! I doubt I'll make it back to the US for it, but I hope someday things work out and I get the chance to do it.
I'm beginning to understand the connection between exercise and highly successful people. Motivation and persistence are without a doubt the biggest factors behind success and it sure takes a lot of both to run a marathon. It's all a matter of personal motivation. If you enjoy running (and that may be a big if), there is nothing like the rush of race day and the feeling of accomplishment crossing the finish line. I would estimate that some 95% of people in their 20's are physically capable of finishing a marathon, the question is simply a matter of motivation.
With that big accomplishment under my belt, it was time to switch from exercising the body to exercising the mind. The next weekend was my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) exam, for which I'd been studying for about three months. I took study leave the day before the exam to get in a last bit of studying and then went to the exam on Saturday. It was hard - probably harder than any exam I took in college. Total scheduled exam time was 6 hours, I probably used all of 4:30. I'd studied hard but many of the questions seemed to have more than one good answer.
This weekend, to my surprise, I got an email saying I passed! I can't believe it - I'm so excited. Now I just have some paperwork to finalize and I'll have my first major professional certification.
The day after the exam, Carol and I left for the US. It was a whirlwind of a trip, stopping in Denver, then Bethlehem, then New Jersey in the space of a little over a week. We had an amazing time, but I'll save that for another post. Since then, we've been to the Ekka (basically the state fair of Queensland), did our first trip to Ikea and got new housewares and furniture, bought a used dresser and are re-staining it, saw an amazing Beatles cover show at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) and there's lots going on at work. Carol just signed a huge contract that will have her busy til February and there have been several changes at my job that could have an interesting downstream effect.
This has already been a busy winter, but I'm sure there's more to come.
The marathon went like a dream. In my last post I talked about how this new lifestyle has given me time to run. My training regimen was actually not too rigorous, running about three days a week on average. There are so many trails to choose from around our apartment, which helps keep it interesting. For about the month before the marathon, my regular training consisted of two, maybe three weekday runs averaging somewhere around eight miles each and then a long weekend run anywhere from 10 miles to somewhere around 20 miles. The training runs definitely got easier as my body got more accustomed to longer distances. When I started training, my average run was probably about 5 miles at 8:00min/mile. I thought that was good. It's amazing how much you can accomplish if you go just a little further and little faster each week. By the time the marathon came around, a 13 mile run at 7:30 pace seemed simple.
When I first committed to run the marathon, my target finishing time was four hours. Anything in the ball park of a four hour marathon is something to be proud of. I stand by that now, having done one. As my training went on and I started to get more comfortable with a quicker pace and longer distance, I decided it would be good to shoot for 3:30.
Traditionally, two weekends before a marathon is the 'test run' where you go out for your longest training run. For first time marathoners the recommendation is somewhere around 80-90% of the full marathon distance. I decided to set my watch for three hours and see what happens. Well, at about the two hour mark I had to start walking. This was only two weeks til the big day. Not good.
I racked my brain, talked to my Mom and did plenty of reading to figure out exactly what was wrong and decided it was nutrition. I wasn't eating during my training runs and the body only has so much glucose available until it has to start burning fat directly, which is much more difficult to burn. This is what it means to 'hit the wall'. The body simply doesn't have the energy to keep going. On top of that, drinking more water seemed to actually slow me down. It felt like it would just sit in my stomach rather than rehydrating me.
That led me to put together a race day water and nutrition strategy, which turned out to be a saving grace. I did a few test runs with Goo packs (little gooey glucose squeeze tubes that pretty much taste like Gatorade flavored toothpaste) and had pretty good success. I also figured that drinking sports drinks rather than water would help with faster, smoother absorption. For the marathon (42.2k, 26.1mi), I decided to have one Goo pack every 10k and drink a half cup of Gatorade every 5k.
The marathon started at 7:00am Sunday, so Carol and I went down to the Gold Coast a day early to relax and see some friends. We had a great, and very relaxing evening. The race was on the 4th of July, so I drew some American flags on my bib with the help of our friends four year old daughter. Marathon runners were given the opportunity to put a nickname on their bib, so naturally I chose 'Happy B-Day USA'. That night, the last thing I wanted to do was to introduce any unknown variables into race day, so I brought my own food for dinner and breakfast the next morning. I had an early breakfast (just cereal and some juice) and we headed off for the starting line.
July is the middle of winter here, so it was relatively cold that morning. Getting to the starting line involved plenty of muscle rubbing and jumping up and down to keep warm. I thought I would be nervous at the starting line, but I wasn't. I knew I was prepared and I was ready to go. The gun went off, I crossed the start line, and the race was on.
There were about 5,000 participants, so there were plenty of people to pick through at the start. Pace runners with balloons were set up at the 4:00, 3:45, 3:30, 3:15, and 3:00 marks. I started somewhere in the 4-4:30 area and had some catching up to do. The first 5k was shoulder to shoulder with other runners but I managed to get past the 4hr balloon pretty quickly. The 3:45 balloon took more effort. That one went down around the 10k mark. After that, things started to loosen up and I could really run at my own pace. That's when the fun started. I really felt great for the first half of the marathon, chasing down one balloon at a time. I love to set little goals when I'm running - catching certain runners, speeding up to a certain point on the horizon, picking up pace for one song on the mp3 player - all these keep me entertained and help my overall time.
Before I knew it, the 3:15 balloon was in sight and I was closing. I started to wonder if I wasn't getting out too hard, too early. Most of the content I read before the marathon described the ideal first half as nothing more than 'an exercise in holding back'. I decided my pace was within reason and kept going. I passed the 3:15 balloon somewhere around the 25 or 30k mark. My nutrition and hydration strategy seemed to be working well. Two hours in, I felt hydrated, had good energy and the sun came up to give everyone a beautiful day looking out over the ocean.
Just as it was all coming together, I knew I had hit the hardest part of the race. The same sages who warned me about holding back at the beginning of the race also told me that 'the real marathon begins at 30k'. I believed them and I prepared for it. Sure enough, the last 10k is the hardest. The joints are starting to feel it, the feet are starting to feel it and it starts to be more work than fun. Still, being prepared, I kept on pushing. Towards the end, I passed fewer people and there seemed to be large gaps between runners. I counted down each of the last 10k, mentally marking off one by one and getting that much closer to my goal.
The last kilometer flew by. I wish every kilometer felt like that last kilometer. I was tired, but I suddenly had energy. All the work of the 41k before it was nearly forgotten. People were everywhere, cheering loudly. Kids were pushing to the front to get high fives. The sun was shining, my heart was racing and I could see the finish line coming.
Sure enough, I bounded down the final straightaway beaming with excitement, fist pumping. I caught Carol in the audience yelling her loudest. Right on cue, the announcer rang out "Jason Porter - Happy Independence Day!", and I crossed the finish line. What a feeling. The few minutes after that were a bit awkward. I felt quite nauseated at first but got a drink of water and had a seat to relax before taking off my timing chip. A nice volunteer came over and actually offered to undo my laces and take off my chip for me! I can't say there is any other occasion where I'd ask someone to untie my shoe laces for me but that was awesome. My legs were pretty stiff for the next 24 hours and I felt pretty close to 100% in 48 hours.
I can honestly say I don't think I've ever been so proud of myself in my whole life. This was a competition with myself, something that I wanted really bad, just for me. Looking back now, the whole thing just feels great. I got amazing support from Carol - saw here once in the course and at the finish - and also had support from a few friends who came to watch. It really meant a lot to have them there in my big moment.
When it was all said and done, my net time (start to finish) was 3:07:22. Here's proof! It was even good enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2011! I doubt I'll make it back to the US for it, but I hope someday things work out and I get the chance to do it.
I'm beginning to understand the connection between exercise and highly successful people. Motivation and persistence are without a doubt the biggest factors behind success and it sure takes a lot of both to run a marathon. It's all a matter of personal motivation. If you enjoy running (and that may be a big if), there is nothing like the rush of race day and the feeling of accomplishment crossing the finish line. I would estimate that some 95% of people in their 20's are physically capable of finishing a marathon, the question is simply a matter of motivation.
With that big accomplishment under my belt, it was time to switch from exercising the body to exercising the mind. The next weekend was my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) exam, for which I'd been studying for about three months. I took study leave the day before the exam to get in a last bit of studying and then went to the exam on Saturday. It was hard - probably harder than any exam I took in college. Total scheduled exam time was 6 hours, I probably used all of 4:30. I'd studied hard but many of the questions seemed to have more than one good answer.
This weekend, to my surprise, I got an email saying I passed! I can't believe it - I'm so excited. Now I just have some paperwork to finalize and I'll have my first major professional certification.
The day after the exam, Carol and I left for the US. It was a whirlwind of a trip, stopping in Denver, then Bethlehem, then New Jersey in the space of a little over a week. We had an amazing time, but I'll save that for another post. Since then, we've been to the Ekka (basically the state fair of Queensland), did our first trip to Ikea and got new housewares and furniture, bought a used dresser and are re-staining it, saw an amazing Beatles cover show at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) and there's lots going on at work. Carol just signed a huge contract that will have her busy til February and there have been several changes at my job that could have an interesting downstream effect.
This has already been a busy winter, but I'm sure there's more to come.
23 June, 2010
3 Weeks of Dancing, Drinking and Dining around Asia... for work!
I just returned from a very long but fun 3 weeks of work in Asia. It was an amazing experience and I really look forward to planning more events in Asia. There were lots of times of fun, some struggles and frustrations with communication and cultural differences, but overall it was a great experience and opportunity.
Upon starting a new job in a new country I was thrown into the middle of a project right away. I was given the opportunity to be Conference Manager for a well known alcohol marketing company in Australia. All of the marketing, branding and registration had started but none of the details of planning, implementing and executing had been initiated. For the past 4 months this is what I have been working on and it has been mentally and physically challenging but I’ve loved every minute of it. As Conference Manager I oversaw a 6 day conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (KL). There were also post-conference trips planned to Vietnam, Cambodia and Langkawi.
I took the 8 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur with my boss and his son (who was my apprentice) 3 days before delegates arrived and 4 days before the conference actually began. The rest of our team came up a day later. Let me introduce to the phenomenal group of individuals who consist of our on-site staff:
Maria – A beautiful Italian woman who has 20 years experience in the event industry. She served as the delegate/registration liaison, coordinated accommodation and airport transfers. She is the perfect Italian – she speaks Italian, is very outgoing, hugs everyone, easy to get along with, fun to be around, partier, uses lots of gestures, but speaks with an Australian accent
Chris – Tall, slender European looking man who drinks about 8 espresso shots a day. He was the creative design team of the conference. He designed all the logos, branding, and any other printing collateral. He likes Scotch and dancing with Asian women as they are about half his size so it was quite a funny image. He is very handsome, articulate and probably the most creative/artsy person I have ever met. He also worked the multi-media during the business sessions. One would never guess that he is 34 with 4 kids! He looks 28 and has a lot of energy... maybe it’s all the espresso
Shane – Part retired Shane was the master-mind behind the big trade show we hosted. He used to own an event management company and specialises in designing sets. He is an expert in sound, lighting and AV as well. He is a very kind man, a little soft spoken, but tells dirty jokes all the time. So it takes you for a whirlwind at first! He is very funny and kept our team laughing the whole time.
Nicky – Brisbane Police Academy Cadet trainer by night and jazz singer by night! This incredibly multi-talented, confident, kick-your-ass lady is the best person to have on site at an event. If you need something, she will find it. If someone is bugging you, she will get them to shut up and get out of the way. If there is an accident, she can direct traffic. She is also extremely thoughtful, very articulate, to the point, no non-sense-kind-of-chick. But yet once she puts on a sparkly dress at night for a performance, she is elegant, graceful and has everyone’s attention.
This was our team (plus my boss and his son) for the week. I couldn’t have done this conference without them. I’m sure you can tell they are a solid group of people! My job was to manage the conference, manage food and beverage, coordinate the master timeline so people know what they are supposed to be doing and where they should be at all times, making sure staging/equipment is bumped into venues and bumped out, coordinate with all hotel staff and our client, and most importantly look over all the alcohol that was shipped from Australia to KL. This included alcohol distribution to every event, coordinating transportation of alcohol to each venue and counting all the empties at the conclusion at each event.
For the 3 days leading up to the arrival of delegates I met with key people at the hotel who would be assisting with our event – operations manager, sales manager, rooming managers, the general manager and food and beverage staff. Here is an overview of the week:
Day 1 and 2
200 hoteliers, publicans and alcohol suppliers arrive from Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and in between.
Day 2
3:00 – 6:00 PM Registration
6:30 – 9:30 - Opening Party
Day 3
8:30 – 3:00 PM Business Sessions
7:00 – 10:00 PM Dinner at the Petroleum Club in the Petronas Towers
Day 4 (free day with many different activities)
7:00 AM – 2:00 PM Golf Outing
10:00AM The Royal Selangor Pewter Factory Tour
5:00 – 6:00 PM Wine Tasting
7:00 – 10:00 PM Tastes of the World
Day 5
4:30 – 7:30 Trade Show with a Difference!
8:30PM Chinese night markets
Day 6
8:30 – 3:00 PM Business Sessions
7:00 – 12:00 AM Closing party/gala dinner
Day 7
Departures (yes people missed their flight because they were participating too heavily in the closing party!)
Before I go into detail about each event let me tell you about Kuala Lumpur. KL is a very unique city. It is truly the crossroads of Asia. It has a fusion feeling to it- a combination of modern architecture with old traditions. It is a Muslim country with a mix of Chinese, Malay, Thai and Indian people. The city is full of more designer shops than I have ever seen. On one street there will be massive shopping malls and the next will be alley way with tiny outdoor restaurants that have play-school looking outdoor furniture. There are people walking around in burkas with Louis Vuitton purses amongst children, men and women begging in the street with missing limbs and other deformities I have never seen before. The amount of women in burkas was a shock to me and my delegates. It really is something very hard to get used to seeing. These women who are fully covered walk with their men (about 3 feet behind them) who are wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. The women in the Tiffany stores and Dolce and Gabbana shops are the women in burkas. One night I was walking through the busy/haggling Chinese markets and a women in a burka nearly knocked me over (accidentally) and this black covered thing startled me so much and it was so strange to hear a voice behind it. It was a very kind and apologetic voice but a very strange experience.
The Malay people are very kind people. They smile a lot and are extremely hospitable. I would say their demeanour is similar to the Caribbean culture, they are always on island time. And in the event industry that can really make my job difficult. This cultural difference brought a few obstacles. For instance, I’d tell people to bump in their equipment at 9:00 AM and they would get there by 11:00 AM. I had to have alcohol delivered to a venue at 2:00 PM but they wouldn’t answer their phones for me to let them know it was going to be late as they pray every Friday between 12 – 2. The King’s birthday happened to be a few days before our conference so of course everything was delayed. And the traffic in KL is insane! It is worse than NYC. If you get in a cab you have to tell them to turn the meter on or you will get screwed. It is a hustle and bustle city.
We stayed at a 5 star hotel, but you still had to be careful about things like drinking the water. Apparently the city is downhill from a sewage plant and hospital and people have gotten different forms of Hepatitis from the water. So, as you can see, the city is truly a mix of modern and old.
Day 2
Opening party – the opening party was designed to introduce and integrate our delegates into the Malaysian culture as this was the first time most of the attendees have been in Malaysia. We had the party at a venue called Feast Village. It is attached to an adjacent hotel and is a massive open space with 11 different themed restaurants – Spanish tapas, Malaysian, Chinese, Korean, Thai, just to name a few. It is literally a village of restaurants all gorgeously and elaborately decorate and themed with the food. It was a very glamorous food court. There was a main stage in the open common area where we had all different kinds of entertainment. We had a colourful Malaysian drum symphony, a Chinese mask changing performance, acrobatic man, a contortionist, and an Indian Bhangra Troupe performance. We wanted to bring all the cultures of Malaysia to our delegates at once. They absolutely loved it! And were very full and thirsts were definitely quenched! It was a fun evening and I had the pleasure of staying late at the event to count all the empty bottles to finalise corkage fees. This is something I had to do after each event.
Day 3
Business Sessions and Petroleum Club VIP Dinner – This day began with rehearsal at 7:00 AM for a day of business sessions and keynote speakers. We opened the sessions with a funny video that Chris and Nicky made. I guess I forgot to mention the video on the pre-conference days. Our client has a really recognizable costume character as a logo. It is a massive foam beer bottle, one that you need another person to help put on over your head and then comes with suspenders and bootys. We wanted to make a funny opening video revolved around this costume man. So my boss and I took the massive costume (in a coffin size box, not kidding) on the plane with us! Nicky offered to be the person in the costume. So for 2 days Nicky, Chris and two of Chris’ camera man professionals hired a car and drove all over KL filming the logo man in all the landmarks in KL. Keep in mind Nicky was wearing this costume for 8 hours and it was 95 degrees and HUMID. Needless to say the video was definitely well worth it. It should be on Youtube soon and I’ll send it out when it is. We showed the opening video, everything from arriving in the airport to arriving at the hotel, and the audience loved it! They did a fantastic job and was a great way to start off the conference.
My client organised the speakers and they were phenomenal! They had speakers discuss entrepreneurship, success, memory training, and of course sessions related to their business specifically. It was a great program that concluded at 3:00 PM that day. After the sessions I rushed around to get things together for the dinner at the Petroleum Club in the famous Petronas Towers. Let me tell you, it was extremely difficult to work with this venue. The Petroleum Club is a member only access club that is run by a handful of conservative traditional men. I believe the club used to only be open to men. I got one of those weenie handshakes when I met the manager and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. It was very frustrating and made m experience planning it extremely challenging as I was responsible for coordinating the food and beverage and planning the night. The club also has a very strict formal dress code that must be met so thankfully none of our delegates got turned away. As my client is involved in the alcohol industry they provided their own alcohol for each event. We had all the alcohol shipped to our hotel and then distributed to our off-site venues. As the Petroleum Club has strict security our hotel representatives has to scan every single case of alcohol (all 79 of them) through the security scanner! So it took a while to get all of that through. Thankfully that was delivered a few days in advance so it would be properly chilled.
Anyway, I got to the Petroleum Club two hours before the group to coordinate table place cards and last minute food and beverage coordination. Our attendees arrived at the Petroleum Club and enjoyed cocktails with a jazz pianist for the first 30 minutes. They were then seated at the floor to ceiling window view overlooking KL (the club is on the 42nd floor of the 82 story towers). As a surprise, our team member Nicky, came walking down the large staircase and walked throughout the 12 tables and sang 3 songs. They absolutely loved it! Everyone was eating and then all of the sudden they hear this wonderful voice and when they look up it’s Nicky! Wow! It was great. After dinner we had an Australian comedian do a 20 minute stand up. It definitely pushed the envelope a little bit but thankfully most of the crowd enjoyed it and had a great time.
Day 4
Tastes of the World – during the day of Tastes of the World was pretty hectic as I had my team and I running a golf outing, a tour of the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory and a wine tasting. The day concluded with cocktails in the open atrium of the living room. Then the group was split in half and half of the delegates went to a Chinese restaurant and the other half went to an Italian restaurant which were both in the hotel. After the delegates were in their restaurants Maria told me I was taking a night off to go have fun so Chris, Nicky, my boss’ song and Chris’ two camera pros went out in town. We went to this beautiful bar on top of a 35 story hotel that is wide open and has a pool in the middle of it. There are booths outlining the sides of the bar that are clear boxes that hang over the edge of the hotel so you can see straight down to the street! And you have the best views of The Petronas Tower and the KL Tower. I was still nervous the entire time being out thinking something would go wrong but Maria insisted I go do something to get out of the hotel for once. We then walked the streets found some back packer reggae bar and had a beer. On our way back we scoped out the DVD sellers on the streets and headed back to the hotel to check on the delegates at the third restaurant/bar for the after party. Each night attendees could go down to the Latin American themed bar to mingle and have fun (in the hotel). It is a fantastic bar with cigar lounges on the first floor, full service restaurant, beautifully decorated, with a live Columbian band! We had so much fun dancing with the delegates here! I would dance for a little bit.. run to the kitchen and count some empty bottles.. then run back and dance some more. The band was a ton of fun and they would come out and dance with everyone and it was a blast!
Day 5
Trade show with a difference! This was the capstone event of the conference. Our client came to us in the beginning of the planning stages and said that they needed to do something to spruce up their trade show, to make it fun and interactive and truly create an experience for the suppliers and delegates. Our team came up with the concept of having 4 themed-bars to display all the alcohol products. Shane designed the bars and they looked AWESOME!
The event started with a presentation from the GM of the company... which Maria and I were asked to participate at the last minute. Boy did I not know what I was signing up for! My client has this ongoing joke about fitness that helps promote products. They have a whole program designed around this and the main characters consist of the two main executives and two girls named Push and Pull who are fitness instructors. Our client needed two girls so Maria and I volunteered. Now, I didn’t bring any work out clothes with me and I didn’t have time to get any so I asked Nicky if she could buy me a pair of shorts. She comes back with these teeny tiny biker shorts just before the event begins! We were given an XL shirt by our client to wear and head bands. Once everyone was in the ballroom we had to start the show by running in to Rolling Stones music, running on stage, and lead the crowd in exercises to Olivia Newton John’s song Lets Get Physical. It was hilarious... but I didn’t like how the delegates were looking at me after seeing me in that gear! Especially since I was in blacks all week!
After the 30 minute presentation it was time to reveal the bars! Let me back up a minute... Our set designer Shane created the sets and sent the construction drawings to a local supplier in KL. He was overseeing the construction of the sets this whole week and had to teach the local suppliers how to do a proper curtain reveal – a kabuki drop! The massive bars were covered with beautiful white curtains and were revealed one by one with an amazing multi-media show Chris put together that listed each product and had a sexy video to go with the introduction. The four bars were an ice bar for white wines, sports bar for beers, vineyard for red wines and an art deco Manhattan themed bar for swishy cocktails! The ice bar had actual ice sculptures that were designed to put the wine in to keep it chilled, the sports bar had 2 flat screen TVs, one underneath the glass table, the vineyard had wooden barrels and shelving, and the art deco was just designed beautifully in a black and white checkered them. We had the head chef design a finger food menu that matched each theme. After each bar was revealed we brought the comedian from the Petroleum Club back to the stage along with Nicky. We had live cameras and did interviews around the trade room and made it an interactive event. We also raffled off prizes. It was a very fun event and our client loved it! Score!
After the 3.5 hour show Maria and Nicky took a group of people to the haggling Chinese markets and got lots of cute hand bags and accessories and had fun bargaining. I was assisting with concluding the event and doing the bottle counts! Man, there were a TON of empty bottles!!! And of course, after all that everyone ended up at the Latin American themed bar for some fun dancing!
Day 6
Final day of events! Wow I could not believe how fast everything was going. We had another full day of business sessions – 7:00 AM rehearsal – 3:00 PM. Our final event was the gala dinner which was held at the adjacent hotel. In retrospect, I’m really glad we decided to switch venues, get out of our current hotel, and display this amazing ballroom! A little strange that the two hotels are competing properties, but oh well.
This whole day was just crazy because I was running around the different venues, securing final payments, corkage, bills, tidying up loose ends before everyone left the next day, and checking on the musicians rehearsal/sound check for the gala dinner. Well, when I went over to check on the equipment at first (10:00 AM which was 30 minutes after equipment was supposed to be bumped in) nothing was there! So I immediately called our AV contact and had him get his people there ASAP. I went to check on them an hour later and half of the equipment we requested was not there, the lighting guy disappeared somewhere, only 1 person spoke English, and things just were not looking good at all. Thank God we had Shane and Vanitha there. I forgot to talk about Vanitha! She is a KL local and a friend of Robert’s so she was a gem to have on site and help us with communication problems as she speaks multiple languages. The kerfuffle pushed back rehearsal by 2 hours but the musicians were able to finish in a hour. They were even able to enjoy the sit down dinner I arranged for them!
The other aspect of this event is that the headline artists were all a surprise to the delegates so we had to keep them artists hidden!
Jason arrived just before the dinner began so I was happy that I could bring him to the final event. We had all the delegates congregate in the hotel lobby and we had a human tunnel of staff from the other hotel leading the guests through the other hotel lobby down a set of stairs and down two really long escalators. They were each given a drink at the top of the escalators so it was a fun site to watch all the smiling faces go down with drink in hand! After some pre-cocktails we opened the gala doors and everyone found their seats. It was a nice relaxing event and I got to enjoy it while Maria and Shane kindly offered to stage manage. Nicky did some singing in the beginning and after dinner the main event began! We had 3 huge Australian rock stars.. one of which was part of INXS. You probably wouldn’t recognise the names but let’s put it this way... everyone was on the dance floor once the music started! It was a great site. At midnight the event concluded and of course everyone ended up at the bar in our hotel dancing and smoking cigars. It was a wonderful night.
Overall, it was a very very successful event and I am so fortunate to have been managing this international conference. The delegates were so much fun, our client executives were wonderful, we worked our butt off but it was fun. I worked 20 hour days for 10 days straight but it was definitely worth it... especially for the next three days....
The next day, Friday was departures. I had some de briefing meetings the next day and things to finalise with our client but I was checked out of my hotel at 3:00 PM with Jason. My boss met me in the lobby to wish us well and he handed me a sock.. yes a sock... that had a bottle of Dom Perignon in it! It was nice enough that he was sending me to Langkawi with Jason to oversee 26 other delegates in case they would need any assistance. I made so many good friends from the conference that Jason and I ended up sharing the bottle with one of the delegates. Langkawi was superb, the resort was amazing, Jason haggled the price of a ring he got me from a department store, we ate great Malaysian seafood, and had drinks by the pool. Yea.. definitely worth working 20 hour days!
On Monday, Jason and I said our goodbyes and I headed off to Shanghai for a site inspection for another client. Not too much to report there as I was working the entire time. I got to see the World Expo though! Which was amazing. The pavilions were incredible. Morocco was my favourite. The Saudi Arabia pavilion was a 9 hour wait! I said no thank you! Shanghai is an amazing city. Lots of smog though... kind of irritated my eyes after a few days. The city is massive, people have no sense of personal space, the streets are wide, and nobody speaks English! Crazy city. But that is for another blog post as I hope to be back there in the near future.
Upon starting a new job in a new country I was thrown into the middle of a project right away. I was given the opportunity to be Conference Manager for a well known alcohol marketing company in Australia. All of the marketing, branding and registration had started but none of the details of planning, implementing and executing had been initiated. For the past 4 months this is what I have been working on and it has been mentally and physically challenging but I’ve loved every minute of it. As Conference Manager I oversaw a 6 day conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (KL). There were also post-conference trips planned to Vietnam, Cambodia and Langkawi.
I took the 8 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur with my boss and his son (who was my apprentice) 3 days before delegates arrived and 4 days before the conference actually began. The rest of our team came up a day later. Let me introduce to the phenomenal group of individuals who consist of our on-site staff:
Maria – A beautiful Italian woman who has 20 years experience in the event industry. She served as the delegate/registration liaison, coordinated accommodation and airport transfers. She is the perfect Italian – she speaks Italian, is very outgoing, hugs everyone, easy to get along with, fun to be around, partier, uses lots of gestures, but speaks with an Australian accent
Chris – Tall, slender European looking man who drinks about 8 espresso shots a day. He was the creative design team of the conference. He designed all the logos, branding, and any other printing collateral. He likes Scotch and dancing with Asian women as they are about half his size so it was quite a funny image. He is very handsome, articulate and probably the most creative/artsy person I have ever met. He also worked the multi-media during the business sessions. One would never guess that he is 34 with 4 kids! He looks 28 and has a lot of energy... maybe it’s all the espresso
Shane – Part retired Shane was the master-mind behind the big trade show we hosted. He used to own an event management company and specialises in designing sets. He is an expert in sound, lighting and AV as well. He is a very kind man, a little soft spoken, but tells dirty jokes all the time. So it takes you for a whirlwind at first! He is very funny and kept our team laughing the whole time.
Nicky – Brisbane Police Academy Cadet trainer by night and jazz singer by night! This incredibly multi-talented, confident, kick-your-ass lady is the best person to have on site at an event. If you need something, she will find it. If someone is bugging you, she will get them to shut up and get out of the way. If there is an accident, she can direct traffic. She is also extremely thoughtful, very articulate, to the point, no non-sense-kind-of-chick. But yet once she puts on a sparkly dress at night for a performance, she is elegant, graceful and has everyone’s attention.
This was our team (plus my boss and his son) for the week. I couldn’t have done this conference without them. I’m sure you can tell they are a solid group of people! My job was to manage the conference, manage food and beverage, coordinate the master timeline so people know what they are supposed to be doing and where they should be at all times, making sure staging/equipment is bumped into venues and bumped out, coordinate with all hotel staff and our client, and most importantly look over all the alcohol that was shipped from Australia to KL. This included alcohol distribution to every event, coordinating transportation of alcohol to each venue and counting all the empties at the conclusion at each event.
For the 3 days leading up to the arrival of delegates I met with key people at the hotel who would be assisting with our event – operations manager, sales manager, rooming managers, the general manager and food and beverage staff. Here is an overview of the week:
Day 1 and 2
200 hoteliers, publicans and alcohol suppliers arrive from Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and in between.
Day 2
3:00 – 6:00 PM Registration
6:30 – 9:30 - Opening Party
Day 3
8:30 – 3:00 PM Business Sessions
7:00 – 10:00 PM Dinner at the Petroleum Club in the Petronas Towers
Day 4 (free day with many different activities)
7:00 AM – 2:00 PM Golf Outing
10:00AM The Royal Selangor Pewter Factory Tour
5:00 – 6:00 PM Wine Tasting
7:00 – 10:00 PM Tastes of the World
Day 5
4:30 – 7:30 Trade Show with a Difference!
8:30PM Chinese night markets
Day 6
8:30 – 3:00 PM Business Sessions
7:00 – 12:00 AM Closing party/gala dinner
Day 7
Departures (yes people missed their flight because they were participating too heavily in the closing party!)
Before I go into detail about each event let me tell you about Kuala Lumpur. KL is a very unique city. It is truly the crossroads of Asia. It has a fusion feeling to it- a combination of modern architecture with old traditions. It is a Muslim country with a mix of Chinese, Malay, Thai and Indian people. The city is full of more designer shops than I have ever seen. On one street there will be massive shopping malls and the next will be alley way with tiny outdoor restaurants that have play-school looking outdoor furniture. There are people walking around in burkas with Louis Vuitton purses amongst children, men and women begging in the street with missing limbs and other deformities I have never seen before. The amount of women in burkas was a shock to me and my delegates. It really is something very hard to get used to seeing. These women who are fully covered walk with their men (about 3 feet behind them) who are wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. The women in the Tiffany stores and Dolce and Gabbana shops are the women in burkas. One night I was walking through the busy/haggling Chinese markets and a women in a burka nearly knocked me over (accidentally) and this black covered thing startled me so much and it was so strange to hear a voice behind it. It was a very kind and apologetic voice but a very strange experience.
The Malay people are very kind people. They smile a lot and are extremely hospitable. I would say their demeanour is similar to the Caribbean culture, they are always on island time. And in the event industry that can really make my job difficult. This cultural difference brought a few obstacles. For instance, I’d tell people to bump in their equipment at 9:00 AM and they would get there by 11:00 AM. I had to have alcohol delivered to a venue at 2:00 PM but they wouldn’t answer their phones for me to let them know it was going to be late as they pray every Friday between 12 – 2. The King’s birthday happened to be a few days before our conference so of course everything was delayed. And the traffic in KL is insane! It is worse than NYC. If you get in a cab you have to tell them to turn the meter on or you will get screwed. It is a hustle and bustle city.
We stayed at a 5 star hotel, but you still had to be careful about things like drinking the water. Apparently the city is downhill from a sewage plant and hospital and people have gotten different forms of Hepatitis from the water. So, as you can see, the city is truly a mix of modern and old.
Day 2
Opening party – the opening party was designed to introduce and integrate our delegates into the Malaysian culture as this was the first time most of the attendees have been in Malaysia. We had the party at a venue called Feast Village. It is attached to an adjacent hotel and is a massive open space with 11 different themed restaurants – Spanish tapas, Malaysian, Chinese, Korean, Thai, just to name a few. It is literally a village of restaurants all gorgeously and elaborately decorate and themed with the food. It was a very glamorous food court. There was a main stage in the open common area where we had all different kinds of entertainment. We had a colourful Malaysian drum symphony, a Chinese mask changing performance, acrobatic man, a contortionist, and an Indian Bhangra Troupe performance. We wanted to bring all the cultures of Malaysia to our delegates at once. They absolutely loved it! And were very full and thirsts were definitely quenched! It was a fun evening and I had the pleasure of staying late at the event to count all the empty bottles to finalise corkage fees. This is something I had to do after each event.
Day 3
Business Sessions and Petroleum Club VIP Dinner – This day began with rehearsal at 7:00 AM for a day of business sessions and keynote speakers. We opened the sessions with a funny video that Chris and Nicky made. I guess I forgot to mention the video on the pre-conference days. Our client has a really recognizable costume character as a logo. It is a massive foam beer bottle, one that you need another person to help put on over your head and then comes with suspenders and bootys. We wanted to make a funny opening video revolved around this costume man. So my boss and I took the massive costume (in a coffin size box, not kidding) on the plane with us! Nicky offered to be the person in the costume. So for 2 days Nicky, Chris and two of Chris’ camera man professionals hired a car and drove all over KL filming the logo man in all the landmarks in KL. Keep in mind Nicky was wearing this costume for 8 hours and it was 95 degrees and HUMID. Needless to say the video was definitely well worth it. It should be on Youtube soon and I’ll send it out when it is. We showed the opening video, everything from arriving in the airport to arriving at the hotel, and the audience loved it! They did a fantastic job and was a great way to start off the conference.
My client organised the speakers and they were phenomenal! They had speakers discuss entrepreneurship, success, memory training, and of course sessions related to their business specifically. It was a great program that concluded at 3:00 PM that day. After the sessions I rushed around to get things together for the dinner at the Petroleum Club in the famous Petronas Towers. Let me tell you, it was extremely difficult to work with this venue. The Petroleum Club is a member only access club that is run by a handful of conservative traditional men. I believe the club used to only be open to men. I got one of those weenie handshakes when I met the manager and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. It was very frustrating and made m experience planning it extremely challenging as I was responsible for coordinating the food and beverage and planning the night. The club also has a very strict formal dress code that must be met so thankfully none of our delegates got turned away. As my client is involved in the alcohol industry they provided their own alcohol for each event. We had all the alcohol shipped to our hotel and then distributed to our off-site venues. As the Petroleum Club has strict security our hotel representatives has to scan every single case of alcohol (all 79 of them) through the security scanner! So it took a while to get all of that through. Thankfully that was delivered a few days in advance so it would be properly chilled.
Anyway, I got to the Petroleum Club two hours before the group to coordinate table place cards and last minute food and beverage coordination. Our attendees arrived at the Petroleum Club and enjoyed cocktails with a jazz pianist for the first 30 minutes. They were then seated at the floor to ceiling window view overlooking KL (the club is on the 42nd floor of the 82 story towers). As a surprise, our team member Nicky, came walking down the large staircase and walked throughout the 12 tables and sang 3 songs. They absolutely loved it! Everyone was eating and then all of the sudden they hear this wonderful voice and when they look up it’s Nicky! Wow! It was great. After dinner we had an Australian comedian do a 20 minute stand up. It definitely pushed the envelope a little bit but thankfully most of the crowd enjoyed it and had a great time.
Day 4
Tastes of the World – during the day of Tastes of the World was pretty hectic as I had my team and I running a golf outing, a tour of the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory and a wine tasting. The day concluded with cocktails in the open atrium of the living room. Then the group was split in half and half of the delegates went to a Chinese restaurant and the other half went to an Italian restaurant which were both in the hotel. After the delegates were in their restaurants Maria told me I was taking a night off to go have fun so Chris, Nicky, my boss’ song and Chris’ two camera pros went out in town. We went to this beautiful bar on top of a 35 story hotel that is wide open and has a pool in the middle of it. There are booths outlining the sides of the bar that are clear boxes that hang over the edge of the hotel so you can see straight down to the street! And you have the best views of The Petronas Tower and the KL Tower. I was still nervous the entire time being out thinking something would go wrong but Maria insisted I go do something to get out of the hotel for once. We then walked the streets found some back packer reggae bar and had a beer. On our way back we scoped out the DVD sellers on the streets and headed back to the hotel to check on the delegates at the third restaurant/bar for the after party. Each night attendees could go down to the Latin American themed bar to mingle and have fun (in the hotel). It is a fantastic bar with cigar lounges on the first floor, full service restaurant, beautifully decorated, with a live Columbian band! We had so much fun dancing with the delegates here! I would dance for a little bit.. run to the kitchen and count some empty bottles.. then run back and dance some more. The band was a ton of fun and they would come out and dance with everyone and it was a blast!
Day 5
Trade show with a difference! This was the capstone event of the conference. Our client came to us in the beginning of the planning stages and said that they needed to do something to spruce up their trade show, to make it fun and interactive and truly create an experience for the suppliers and delegates. Our team came up with the concept of having 4 themed-bars to display all the alcohol products. Shane designed the bars and they looked AWESOME!
The event started with a presentation from the GM of the company... which Maria and I were asked to participate at the last minute. Boy did I not know what I was signing up for! My client has this ongoing joke about fitness that helps promote products. They have a whole program designed around this and the main characters consist of the two main executives and two girls named Push and Pull who are fitness instructors. Our client needed two girls so Maria and I volunteered. Now, I didn’t bring any work out clothes with me and I didn’t have time to get any so I asked Nicky if she could buy me a pair of shorts. She comes back with these teeny tiny biker shorts just before the event begins! We were given an XL shirt by our client to wear and head bands. Once everyone was in the ballroom we had to start the show by running in to Rolling Stones music, running on stage, and lead the crowd in exercises to Olivia Newton John’s song Lets Get Physical. It was hilarious... but I didn’t like how the delegates were looking at me after seeing me in that gear! Especially since I was in blacks all week!
After the 30 minute presentation it was time to reveal the bars! Let me back up a minute... Our set designer Shane created the sets and sent the construction drawings to a local supplier in KL. He was overseeing the construction of the sets this whole week and had to teach the local suppliers how to do a proper curtain reveal – a kabuki drop! The massive bars were covered with beautiful white curtains and were revealed one by one with an amazing multi-media show Chris put together that listed each product and had a sexy video to go with the introduction. The four bars were an ice bar for white wines, sports bar for beers, vineyard for red wines and an art deco Manhattan themed bar for swishy cocktails! The ice bar had actual ice sculptures that were designed to put the wine in to keep it chilled, the sports bar had 2 flat screen TVs, one underneath the glass table, the vineyard had wooden barrels and shelving, and the art deco was just designed beautifully in a black and white checkered them. We had the head chef design a finger food menu that matched each theme. After each bar was revealed we brought the comedian from the Petroleum Club back to the stage along with Nicky. We had live cameras and did interviews around the trade room and made it an interactive event. We also raffled off prizes. It was a very fun event and our client loved it! Score!
After the 3.5 hour show Maria and Nicky took a group of people to the haggling Chinese markets and got lots of cute hand bags and accessories and had fun bargaining. I was assisting with concluding the event and doing the bottle counts! Man, there were a TON of empty bottles!!! And of course, after all that everyone ended up at the Latin American themed bar for some fun dancing!
Day 6
Final day of events! Wow I could not believe how fast everything was going. We had another full day of business sessions – 7:00 AM rehearsal – 3:00 PM. Our final event was the gala dinner which was held at the adjacent hotel. In retrospect, I’m really glad we decided to switch venues, get out of our current hotel, and display this amazing ballroom! A little strange that the two hotels are competing properties, but oh well.
This whole day was just crazy because I was running around the different venues, securing final payments, corkage, bills, tidying up loose ends before everyone left the next day, and checking on the musicians rehearsal/sound check for the gala dinner. Well, when I went over to check on the equipment at first (10:00 AM which was 30 minutes after equipment was supposed to be bumped in) nothing was there! So I immediately called our AV contact and had him get his people there ASAP. I went to check on them an hour later and half of the equipment we requested was not there, the lighting guy disappeared somewhere, only 1 person spoke English, and things just were not looking good at all. Thank God we had Shane and Vanitha there. I forgot to talk about Vanitha! She is a KL local and a friend of Robert’s so she was a gem to have on site and help us with communication problems as she speaks multiple languages. The kerfuffle pushed back rehearsal by 2 hours but the musicians were able to finish in a hour. They were even able to enjoy the sit down dinner I arranged for them!
The other aspect of this event is that the headline artists were all a surprise to the delegates so we had to keep them artists hidden!
Jason arrived just before the dinner began so I was happy that I could bring him to the final event. We had all the delegates congregate in the hotel lobby and we had a human tunnel of staff from the other hotel leading the guests through the other hotel lobby down a set of stairs and down two really long escalators. They were each given a drink at the top of the escalators so it was a fun site to watch all the smiling faces go down with drink in hand! After some pre-cocktails we opened the gala doors and everyone found their seats. It was a nice relaxing event and I got to enjoy it while Maria and Shane kindly offered to stage manage. Nicky did some singing in the beginning and after dinner the main event began! We had 3 huge Australian rock stars.. one of which was part of INXS. You probably wouldn’t recognise the names but let’s put it this way... everyone was on the dance floor once the music started! It was a great site. At midnight the event concluded and of course everyone ended up at the bar in our hotel dancing and smoking cigars. It was a wonderful night.
Overall, it was a very very successful event and I am so fortunate to have been managing this international conference. The delegates were so much fun, our client executives were wonderful, we worked our butt off but it was fun. I worked 20 hour days for 10 days straight but it was definitely worth it... especially for the next three days....
The next day, Friday was departures. I had some de briefing meetings the next day and things to finalise with our client but I was checked out of my hotel at 3:00 PM with Jason. My boss met me in the lobby to wish us well and he handed me a sock.. yes a sock... that had a bottle of Dom Perignon in it! It was nice enough that he was sending me to Langkawi with Jason to oversee 26 other delegates in case they would need any assistance. I made so many good friends from the conference that Jason and I ended up sharing the bottle with one of the delegates. Langkawi was superb, the resort was amazing, Jason haggled the price of a ring he got me from a department store, we ate great Malaysian seafood, and had drinks by the pool. Yea.. definitely worth working 20 hour days!
On Monday, Jason and I said our goodbyes and I headed off to Shanghai for a site inspection for another client. Not too much to report there as I was working the entire time. I got to see the World Expo though! Which was amazing. The pavilions were incredible. Morocco was my favourite. The Saudi Arabia pavilion was a 9 hour wait! I said no thank you! Shanghai is an amazing city. Lots of smog though... kind of irritated my eyes after a few days. The city is massive, people have no sense of personal space, the streets are wide, and nobody speaks English! Crazy city. But that is for another blog post as I hope to be back there in the near future.
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