Meeting with Cathay

Ray is wrongly accused and punished

So Sean and I get up on Wednesday to go to Cathay, and our biggest concern is that the taxi driver takes us to Cathay's headquarters and not to the Cathay terminal at the airport. So the cab driver knows exactly where we have to go and we arrive at 9:15 for a 9:30 meeting. Perfect timing. As we are checking in, one of my contacts comes up and asks if either of us are Ray. Not a hard deduction since we are the only Americans in the lobby. She then informs us that we are late and the meeting was at 9:00. I begin to feel like an ass because not only have I made the mistake and feel embarrassed but Sean is guilty by association.

We arrive to the meeting with roughly 20-25 people waiting to hear our presentation. I jump right in and am flying through my slides which is making me nervous because I need to make it last the entire morning and I've already made it through 10 slides in like 10 minutes. Thankfully an Australian dude with sweet glasses begins to break the ice and ask questions. His inquiries open the door for others to ask questions and stretch the first half of our presentation to almost noon which is great.

With the embarrassment of being late still in my head I didn't think the day could get worse. Then we went to lunch. We take a shuttle bus over to the air port to have lunch at a Dim Sum restaurant. The Cathay team orders a bunch of stuff for the table to share, very similar to Tapas. So as stuff arrives they are polite and wait for Sean and I eat first. They are also very persistent with filling our tea cups which never seemed to reach half full. I'm not kidding, two of the guys with us were literally jumping across the table to fill our cups every time we took a sip.

So as I was saying, the food arrived and they wait for us to begin. I ask the logical question of, "what are each of these dishes?" to which they responded; "eat first and we will tell you later".

So being a good account director, and not wanting to come off as an ignorant American I begin to try everything on the table and fumble with my chopsticks. I am proud to say I refused utensils. So there is one dish on the table that just looks nasty. Very similar to the following pic:


So my first assumption is that it was cooked in curry. I like curry so I am thinking that it will mask the taste but I still don't know what the hell it is. It has these sort of pockets and reminds me of Sponge Bob Square Pants so I think to myself, it's probably some sea urchin that I am unfamiliar with. So I take as little as I possibly can and begin to eat it. While it is loaded with curry, it is the most vile texture I have ever tasted and I do a quick mix of chewing and swallowing to get this down. I quickly take a huge gulp of tea to get rid of the taste and feeling. The tea is scalding hot since these dudes are not letting my cup cool off. Regardless, It was a blessing in disguise because I burned my taste buds and didn't taste much after that.

While there was a part of me that didn't want to know what the hell I ate, I am just to curious and had to ask. I don't know what my face looked like when they said Cow Stomach, but I'm sure it wasn't good. Now looking back I realize that I am the only person at the table that actually ate it. They must have been punishing me for being late.

So as we get back to Cathay I am still bothered by the cow stomach and the fact that we were late. Sean and I have some time before the second half of our meeting begins so I go back to my email to check the meeting times. What I am happy to find is that I was correct. Proof below:


So now I am left with the dilemma of vindicating myself or letting it go. Since my laptop is hooked up to the projector I leave the email up on the screen for a few minutes as people filter in but decide to pull it down since it has passed and they didn't seem too concerned.

Flight to Hong Kong

So my flight to Hong Kong was no where near as nice as last time. Sean and I are unfortunately booked on 4 flights to get here. My trip takes me from Philly> Salt Lake City > San Francisco>Taipei>Hong Kong. The first two legs of the trip are on Delta and are fine. Sean and I meet up in San Francisco since he flew out of Albany. The next two legs are on China Air. Additionally, Sean and I aren't sitting together so I have nobody to talk to which sucks, but I guess is no different than last time when I sat next to William the entire trip. ZING! Actually William slept the entire trip but I couldn't help myself.

So I typically judge an airline by whether or not they still have ashtrays in the armrest. Not only did they have ashtrays but they were big ashtrays. The plane is very dated and doesn't have the sleep pods like North West. By the time I got on the flight to Taipei I was exhausted and slept for about 4 hours. When I awoke I figured I'd watch some in-flight entertainment. To my dissaoppointment, all the good movies are being played on return flights. In addition, I had no control over what I watched. They had 8 channels that just played movies in a loop. I watched Wanted with Angelina Jolie. Sucked. I then watched Death Defying Acts which starred Catherine Zeta Jones and Guy Pearce and was about Harry Houdini. Sucked. I am looking forward to Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder for the ride home.

After the movies I decided to play some video games. The inflight games were Super Nintendo Games from 1993. Agian, giving indication as to how old this plane is. Now for nastaligic sake you may think this is cool, but they had the worst choices of games. Other than Super Mario and Street fighter they sucked. Give me some Tecmo Bowl or RBI baseball please.

Looking at the big picture, the plane got us there safely and with very little turbulance so score one for China Air.

Irony?

So while I was waiting to board my first flight for my HK trip I was standing next to a mother, daughter and the daughters son. So the mother was concerned because a guy they were sitting with had left his bags and didn't return. So she is conveying her concern to her daughter who replies with "I don't care, it doesn't effect me and my life". I understand that she doesn't want to cause an airport evacuation and I'm sure it was probably nothing, but the irony of the whole situation was that her son is standing there wearing a Ground Zero 9/11 baseball hat.

Trip to Pittsburgh

William and I came to Pittsburgh to present Social Media opportunities for PNC Bank. So, far nothing much to report on. Unfortunately, we are not here to site see so we won't be able to enjoy what the city has to offer.

We got in pretty late, got stuck in traffic, didn't eat until late, food was not good and stayed up late making last minute changes. Today, waking up early to get ready and present for two hours from there we'll eat lunch and off we go back to Philly. See told you not much to report on.

Although, ironically I ran into a few alpaca instances. Now, I believe alpacas are following me. See for yourself.

LOL! Who wears an alpaca t-shirt? Especially if your a guy. It seemed this guy had this t-shirt for a few years. I think I could be a good paparazzi. My flash went off and everyone was staring at me.

Then I was looking for something to watch while I was waiting for room service and what do I see on TV an alpaca commercial. It was offering people the opportunity to start an alpaca business. No, don't even think that I will call this number or go onto their site.

Mmmm, carpet!

Ray and I agree that the San Jose suburbs look like New Jersey, but cleaner and with palm trees. There are tons of chain restaurants and strip malls here.

Some other observations:

This place is called MMM Carpet. "Mmm, carpet!" Sounds filthy.

We also saw a Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man. This is not it, because I couldn't get my camera out in time. But this is a reasonable facsimile.

We also saw a giant metal Tyrannosaurus Rex on the side of the road.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

Well, Ray and I have accomplished our number one goal in our trip to San Jose. Because, you know, the client meeting is secondary.

When we pulled up to In-N-Out, we both heard angels singing. No joke. I housed my double double, animal style fries and vanilla shake and it was heavenly. Oh. yeah, you bet your ass we both took photos of the food on our trays.

This is my double double with animal style fries and vanilla shake.

Ray's double double with fries and a Coke.

Now I'm at the Fairmont, groggy from the long day of travel (woke up at 4am) and all the junk food in my tummy. The view from my window is amazing (you'll have to take my word for it). I bet Ray's is even nicer, he's 8 floors up from me. We're having an early dinner with the folks from TiVo (just what I need, more food) and then we've got a long meeting with them tomorrow morning.

Here is Ray eating his Double Double:

And here is the view from my hotel room. Purdy, huh?

First Class Again

I just checked in online and found out I was upgraded to first class again for my flight to Seattle. This is my 4th first class upgrade in a row. I am beginning to take back all the negative things I have said about US Airways in the past as they are doing a great job of making up for all of their past mistakes with these upgrades.