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Published: August 3rd 2006
I left work around five this evening in order to attend the 2nd Centre Grand Opening Party for The Executive Centre. I must admit that I was not looking forward to the event, as I was going by myself to represent a company for which I have only worked 18 days. However, the evening turned out all right. The first hour and a half was meant to be an open house so that people could see the facilities. The open house was for The Executive Centre's new addition of offices to Beijing. The Executive Centre specializes in providing office spaces for international companies. Since I got there right at the beginning, the manager was free to give me a personal tour. They showed me the various sizes of offices, the luxuries and technolgy available to renters, and the meeting facilities. My guide made sure to point out that the office chairs were imported from Italy and the doors from Australia, only first class furniture 😉 Then I was taken down to the Beijing American Club where the cocktail party was to be held. Once there, I was soon ushered to meet the manager of the Club and then shown around the club's facilities. The club consisted of a piano bar, western dining room, party rooms, Chinese dining room, cigar room, library, and gym. The whole building was very posh. Finally people started arriving for the cocktail party and I was able to mingle. I enjoy the business card ritual because it is an easy way to introduce yourself and it makes telling people your name less awkward because this way you do not have to spell it. The one difficult thing I ran into was that the crowd was mainly Chinese and on occasion I would come up to someone who hadn't a clue what I was saying so I just had to politely walk away. I did make two good contacts though, more for personal use though. One girl was with the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and had studied for a couple years in Switzerland. The other was from a real estate company and she had studied finance in Sweden for a couple of years. Both were excited to keep in touch, which makes me feel like it was truly a successful evening.
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jessica
non-member comment
wow
You must really be a bigwig in your office to get all this specialized attention. Maybe they were just watching you to make sure you didn't eat the cheesecake!