Greetings from Guangzhou

I'm sitting in my outrageous room at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, in a bathrobe, CNN morning (or, rather, evening) news droning on in the background, dawn still yet to break over the Guangzhou.  For 36 hours, I've turned into a jetsetting business man (only to turn back into the pumpkin I really am this evening, when I have to fly back to Shanghai in time to teach my class tomorrow morning).  This little excursion to Guangzhou has brought back certain memories of being a paralegal -- here I am, in a new city, and will have spent the vast majority of my time here in hotel conference rooms (there's nothing inherently wrong with that - they're really nice conference rooms).  Before descending downstairs to the zoo that will be J.D. Power's Annual Client Seminar, figured I'd record a few memories of this bizarre business jaunt:

• Unlike some of its American counterparts, which tend to trade off the famous brand rather than provide actual luxury service, the Ritz Carlton Guangzhou is pretty exquisite.  My room is enormous, the bathroom is almost as big, and there are more staff milling about making sure I'm perfectly happy than I think I've ever seen at a hotel.
• I spent most of yesterday afternoon assisting the marketing team with the sorting of over 200 client names, 90% of which were written in Chinese.  It came as an impressive surprise to everyone, including and especially myself, that I was able to recognize most of the characters and actually be of some help.
• My new favorite Chinese character is 彧 (pronounced yu, 4th "falling" tone).  First, in means "of high literary talent", which of course is very descriptive of yours truly.  But even better: my Chinese colleagues couldn't even recognize it yesterday while sorting through the names.  I got a disturbing amount of pleasure from whipping out my cell phone dictionary and looking it up for them.
• 36 hours (and the few days leading up to the trip) in close quarters with my colleagues are more than enough to bring out some of the nasty and scandalous office politics that exist, in any office, I'm sure, but most certainly here at JDPA.
• Guangzhou seems like the new Shanghai.  Everything is under construction, and you get the feeling that before long, this will be another 20+ million people megaplex, particularly considering the close proximity to Hong Kong and Macau.

Time for me to scarf down some breakfast before watching what is sure to be poetry in motion, as the hordes descend on our meeting.  I'll leave you with the few shots of the Guangzhou Tower and skyline that I managed in the 30 minutes or so that I have spent outside since arriving here.