When my co-worker Kasper was out here last year for a brief assignment, he told me that he tried as hard as he could not be an “ugly, American expat.” He would use the term intermittently throughout his stay, and it sorta stuck with me. Ugly. American. Expat. I couldn’t change the last two, but I would follow Kasper’s lead and do my best not to be described as the first. Which, as the blessed few who have actually seen m with my shirt off know, can sometimes be an imposing challenge.
I was thinking very U.A.E. thoughts yesterday while crammed in a conference room for an all-day meeting at Shanghai Mart. Shanghai only has on average 12 days a year when the weather is actually enjoyable, and yesterday was one of those, so it was beyond miserable that I had to stay indoors staring at a painful procession of Powerpoint presentations. What made it worse was that the meeting attendees were all Chinese engineers.
Now, in my 3.5 years here I’ve met many Chinese professionals who have an excellent command of English. None of them have been engineers. I’ve also met my fair share of Chinese professionals who know how to make concise and lucid presentations to a roomful of people. None of them have been engineers.
Sure, I’m one to speak. I’ve gotten by on my lazy Mandarin for most of my time here, always avoiding anything above 3rd grade vocabulary by using its English counterpart (i.e. 你的 open-toed sandals really match those hideous socks that 你 are wearing). Still, I almost started crying when a very nice engineering manager named Frank unveiled his 35 slide behemoth. Frank is a happy, smiley engineer, but he is an engineer nevertheless. Which means he talks…
(wait five minutes)
…like this.
To top it all off, Frank decided to read every single thing written on every single slide. Perhaps this decision on Frank’s part was merely a reflection of a supplicant upbringing of sorts, not uncommon in Chinese culture; but on this beautiful day it really made me want to throw my laptop at him. And then stomp on his ears until radioactive slime oozed out. And then jump out the window and get picked up by a winged Jessica Alba.
Ok, so at that point I was the embodiment of U.A.E., so I stopped myself and pared it down a little. I would throw my laptop at him, but then rush over and make sure he was OK. Decent compromise, I guess. I could feel less guilty about that one. Sometimes, courtesy should take a backseat to efficiency, and we shouldn’t let people talk for the sake of talking. Unless it’s me, of course.
Here I sit reading your blog, its much better than preparing for my next POR review……