Happiness, Japanese-California style

Ok, early on I kinda decided that I wouldn't talk too much about personal stuff in this blog and I aim to stick to that although this post is a little borderline since it's really not that funny or bizarre in any way. But what the hell!

You see, today I attended Luke's wedding here in Tokyo and I had a great time and was actually surprised of the amount of happiness I felt on behalf of Luke when I saw him and his (now) wife. Since I know that he sometimes observes this blog (at least he goes through the notions of pretending to finding it entertaining when I tell him I posted something new and relevant to our work) I can also extend my congratulations here as well. Even though nothing is certain in life and things can take unexpected turns you can't predict and neither can or should prepare for (you can spend excessive amounts on insurances though it that's your thing), I felt that this was a special occassion and felt honored to have been invited and got to be a part of that (not to mention that the bride looked smashing). Also, the food and wine was excellent, so all in all I had a great time in a really pleasant atmosphere. Luke has been a great support for me, both in work and also helped me out with more personal things as well so he deserves all good things that are coming to him. That he's a good listener has already been document here.

From my lovely little firm, me, the boy, Meg and another person that has yet to be introduced (but deserves an introduction at some stage) were invited and we were surprised to see that we actually got really nice seats just in front of the bride and groom's seats since I was expecting that we would be placed outside the toilet or even inside it in worst case. The Boy also got recruited as the MC for the wedding ceremony which he actually managed to get through without any too serious screwups. All in all, today has been a good day so far.

So, what's the catch? Well, there's always a catch, isn't there? The catch in this case is actually not related to Luke or the actual wedding ceremony as much as it's related to how weddings are conducted here in Japan, and this wedding reception was done very much in a Japanese style. "Well, what does that mean?" you ask. Luckily I'm here to explain it to you.

Since this wedding was not a religious ceremony, at least I could avoid all the traditional and cultural trapdoors that could make me make a fool out of myself even more than usual. However, for a Japanese wedding normal "wedding presents" are not the custom, instead cash gifts are the usual thing and there's strict rules for how this is conducted. If you are a subordinate you need to give 10,000JPY (about $100), friend or same level in work you need to give 30,000JPY and if you are in a superior position you need to pay up 50,000JPY. Not only that, these bills also need to be fresh from the money press and not old used ones so just taking them out of your wallet isn't good enough. No, you need to go to the bank and get this! If this wasn't enough of a hassel to deal with, you also need to get a proper envelope for this occassion which actually isn't as easy as it seems. Fortunately the Boy could guide me on how to do this properly. I actually feel a little bad since I only gave 30,000JPY when I should have given 50,000, but this was not a strategic money management decision as much as it was due to ignorance.

So, ok, you're paying up a not insignificant amount of money for this, but what do you get in return? Well, first of all you obviously get to participate in the wedding ceremony with the drinks, food and that kinda stuff, but there's also the complex Japanese gift giving tradition to deal with. That means that you also get a present in return for you giving the gift and participating in the ceremony. I was actually partially dissapointed at the gift for this wedding since it wasn't a towel... In Japan you get a lot of towels... But it was actually a nice gift of sweets and two nice wine glasses fitting Luke's fetish for good wines.

Now I just need someone to use the glasses together with.

Sex-Ed

One thing I had very much looked forward to for quite some time was a "Sexual Harassment" training that has been planned for quite some time. One would think that this is not something that would come up as an issue in such a small company as ours. But for some reason our beloved management latched onto this and decided that this is highly important, never mind that there are plenty of other things that comes to mind as more important and urgent... We love and trust El Presidente.

After many delays the training will be held tomorrow and unfortunately I due to personal reasons will not be able to be in the office for this... However, my agents will be listening carefully and hopefully there will be some amusing incidents that will be worth mentioning here even if it will be through second-hand sources.

One of the main things we had been looking forward to was to listen to Mr. J have this training for us since his awkwardness could make for some great material. Unfortunately his departure has led to this being outsourced to a professional trainer. For us I guess there's no more jokes about giving someone the Angry Dragon...

One recalls the lyrics of the Sexual Harassment Panda song...

"Who lives in the east 'neath the willow tree

Sexual Harassment Panda!

Who explains sexual harassment to you and me

Sexual Harassment Panda!

Don't say that don't touch there

Don't be nasty says the silly bear"

He's come to tell you what's right and wrong

Sexual Harassment Panda!"

Shock and Awe

There's a lot of stuff going on in my lovely company that can be classified as unusal, crazy or disturbing but rarely do we encounter stupidity in the pure form we encountered today... It was the shock and awe tactics of stupidity, and no surprise, I was shocked and I was awed.

The most recent project I have been working together with Luke, the Boy and Mr. Chin Jr. on has been a complete clownshow with a large number involved parties competing for the role as the lead clown while we have been trying to avoid getting too entangled and as much as possible tried to stay away and watch from the side. Last week we thought we had somehow finished this mess with our honor somewhat intact, granted, some tweaking was done to adapt to the politics of the client but nothing so shameful that it demanded a harakiri session. We looked into the market, did an analysis and provided a decent report for the client which we thought would be the end of it all.

However, now it seems like the project has involved to include a second part where we are going to look more into detail. One of the key findings of this particular market was that getting access to sales channels would be one of the largest hurdles to market entry as well as differentiation of the product. We also recommended the client to develop a product that targeted a certain segment of the market where we saw some potential to grow, and also avoid the heaviest competition. So far so good, today we talked with Mr. Chin about how to proceed over the phone.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's say that this product in question is "potato chips" which is mostly sold by "supermarkets". Now in the phone conference, Mr. Chin very seriously blurts out;

"I think that it might make sense for the client to acquire a supermarket chain to get immediate access to their sales channel, I have heard that there is one that fits the customer segment that we have in mind".

For a brief moment there is just complete silence in the room, we look at each other and just shake our heads and it takes me a couple of seconds to gather myself enough to very mildly ask Mr. Chin;

"Ok, but do you really think that this potato chips manufacturer wants to go into the supermarket business? Isn't supermarkets a little different from what they usually do, and also considering that potato chips is an extremely marginal source of profit for the individual supermarket...?".

A short silence follows whereafter Mr. Chin replies;

"Well, maybe we need to just show them why it's not a good idea to do this".

Again a short silence whereafter I say;

"Really, if they can't understand by themselves why this is a really bad idea I don't think there's any point in explaining it to them... Did the client really say that they thought this would be a viable approach?!"

Again, a longer silence followed by;

"No, not specifically but..."

Thankfully, the topic changed to more meaningful discussions after this and this was not brought up again, but the moment the phone was hung up there was plenty of merriment in the meeting room. Like ambulance drivers and other people in intense professions, humour has become our defense mechanism to survive.

Now, one would think and hope that this would be enough severe stupidity for one day but shortly after this phone conference I had another phone conference with Mr. Chin together with my new team for another project that is just starting up; Meg and Dr. Y. One of the topics we brought up with Mr. Chin was preparations for an interview with a client that we have been planning and we wanted to make sure that he was comfortable with the questions we were going to ask. In the beginning the meeting goes reasonably well, with us outlining our current status in the project and the plans going forward, so far so good. Except for a few comments from Mr. Chin that didn't really make sense and made us do the question mark faces, but didn't seem important for us to really care about. Just when we thought everything was fine and set for the phone interview the following day a question comes up from Mr. Chin;

"So... tomorrow we're going to talk to this guy and ask him questions?"

The whole meeting Mr. Chin had talked and appeared to be listening, but he had never understood one thing about what the meeting was about... Meg and Dr. Y has not yet been as exposed as me to the nature of Mr. Chin so they did not respond with humour but instead with pure disbelief.

Believe me, this is heavy stuff to experience, all in one day...

Since I will be working with them for some time ahead and they might very well appear as supporting characters in my future adventures, here comes brief profiles of Meg and Dr. Y:

Meg is one of those people that almost instantly triggers my inferiority complex in that she's extremely smart, friendly and always nice. She's in a junior position but has relatively long experience in the company and therefore knows a lot of the tricks of the trade. Very "Ivy League" but not snobbish about it. I almost hope to see some really bad side of her since it would be a relief to know that she also got flaws.

Intentional Amusement Level (1-10): 6
Un-intentional Amusement Level (1-10): 1

Dr. Y is a Japanese guy in his mid 30's and in a position just one step below me. He's a Harvard doctor in biology or something similar. He quite recently joined the company and is a really nice guy but has not yet adapted to the work since it's quite different from his earlier area of expertise.

Intentional Amusement Level (1-10): 6

Un-intentional Amusement Level (1-10): 2

Project Management - The importance of mapping Stakeholders

As a part of growing as a company, establishing solid training programmes is a very important cornerstone I've heard. Last week we had a very interesting session which Ms. A led to our amusement, now to be completely fair, she's a pretty nice person and she didn't bring up God once even. However, the training was a mess of constant apologies, messed up materials and excuses for not understanding how our lovely company actually works.

However, one of the big "aha"s I took with me as a key takeaway from that training was a simple tool in mapping stakeholders. This is very important to do so you can make an analysis of the people you are interacting with stand in relation to you and how you can manage them better. In my last project I worked together with Luke, The Boy and Mr. Chin Jnr. and I mapped them out as the image indicates. Now I am eagerly awaiting for the next training that will tell me how to punish them.

Any color you like, as long as it's black

Pretty early on I decided that this blog would not be about my life as much as about the comedy that is going on all around me and my allies in the office and not digress into the details of my personal problems. This was a purely practical decision since I only have so much time each day I can spend on writing posts.

Unfortunately some personal problems that actually are not particularly job related have come up and I haven't been able to write as much as I would've like to write here so I apologize for the lack of updates lately. However, trust me when I say it's not because of a lack of comedy and the material is still coming in faster than I can keep up.

You can look forward to hearing the sordid details of the tragic comedy or comic tragedy of Mr. J and his departure from the company he was part of creating. All in good time.

Gambling with love... and losing...

Now, this is almost a little sad to talk about, but poor Mr. M came back today after his little adventure and the exciting news and outcome of our little bet was... nothing... Nothing happened and apparently everyone was a little too positive in our bets, especially me who thought that things would go far.

I actually felt a little bad for the guy since he seemed so sad today when I asked him, I think he thought he had a good shot at making a real girlfriend. I heard from the Hag today that he didn't want to go to lunch with the rest of the gang since he was afraid that we would give him a hard time about his trip and lack of adventures. Well, I'll try to be nice for a while until he's recovered.

I'm your C***

Just before leaving today I manage to spark an intense debate. One of the ladies in the office was wearing a t-shirt with something written on it which I had taken interest in the whole day since Japanese t-shirts can often be quite amusing...

So just before leaving I took a good look at it and without thinking I happened to blurt out "Does it say "I'm your c***"?" which is very much what it looked like.

Now, it did not come to any definite conclusion what the t-shirt said, The Boy suggested "I'm your lust" and Mr. K suggested "I'm your Punt", but I'm afraid that the risk of it actually saying "I'm your c***" is big enough to discourage her to ever wear it again...

(as for the the picture illustrating this magnificent post it is a real OTC drug marketed here in Japan, "one c*** a day keep the doctor away" as they should say in their marketing! The fun never ends...)

Gambling with Love...

Things are getting exciting now... Mr. M will soon leave for a short vacation to New York where a girl he has been mentioning a lot in the wonderful "love blog" I talked about in the previous post is waiting for him... Among the faithful readers of his blog, which I am obviously a part of, this has sparked heated interest and speculation. This could be the best shot for him to get something done in a long time. The fact that his mother will also be there with him for a some of the time puts a wet blanket over his opportunities, but she will not be watching over him all the time...

Now The Hag (whom I will introduce at the end of this post) took the great initiative and created a bet around any action possibly occuring in New York for him in which I gladly participated. The categories defined were as folllows:

0 - No action

1 - Holding of hands

2 - Kissing

3 - Oral sex

4 - Full-blown intercourse

Now, being the positive and loving soul that I am actually betted on "4", but it was only me that saw the situation in such positive light. Partially because I think he actually seem to have a decent shot at the big league, but partly wishful thinking since I actually think that getting this out of the way would make him more pleasant to work with and generally be around...

Now, as for the promised introduction, The Hag is a Japanese-American from Hawaii (one could argue that it technically could count as part of Japan) in her early twenties in a junior position and she's a strong supporter for Nintendo products (notably the Wii and the DS).

When she is in a good mood she's a great person to be around, to say that she wears her emotions on her sleeve is to say it lightly. One look at her and you can clearly see what mood she is in. Thankfully she's often in a good mood and it's anyway always nice with someone who doesn't hide the emotions. When something amusing has happened to her and she regales the tale for us in the office the delivery is often more entertaining than the actual storie since it often involves her physically reenacting the amusing event due to her enthusiasm. At one specific time involving a story with a man wearing an apron with balls attached to it or something like that, I've forgotten the actual content. The delivery remains though. Unfortunately the part of the work related to working in the land of harmony gets to her more than most of us.

Intentional Amusement Level (1-10): 7.5
Un-intentional Amusement Level (1-10): 3

All aboard the love blog

Earlier in a post I laid out a small gallery of characters who populate my office environment for your entertainment. Some of you might have felt teased by my description of Mr. M, the non-kissed guy, and you might have noticed that he has not populated any of the tales I have spun here since. Well wait no longer, I have something good for you.

There are some major changes going on inside the madhouse where I happen to work, the biggest is the departure of one of the founders, Mr. J, and that whole affair deserves a post later on which revels in the details on how this came to be, but that is such a story that I will leave it for a later date. However, considering that Mr. J is one of our main sources of comedy inside the company, some of my colleagues became a little worried about the entertainment level of the office. During a lunch, in which I, for reasons I cannot recall now, was not present, Luke and several other colleagues boxed Mr. M in and somehow convinced him that he should start a in-house company blog detailing the women he meets and how his quest to do something (*anything*) with them progresses.

The fact that Luke tried to make him do this is funny enough in its own right, but the best part was that Mr. M agreed to do this... So, now there is a blog open for selected members of the firm (me included) that eagerly follows and comments on his escapades. In pure entertainment value I would say that his blog surpasses mine by far. I believe that he is somewhat aware of the fact that he is being made fun of, but I think that this is countered by his need for attention which this amazing blog can provide him.

So far we have had the chance to comment and give our recommendations on several girls he has met and the funny thing is that he seem to meet a lot of girls but somehow always fails miserably before he can "close the deal".

Now he seem to be working on a girl that might give some form of payout and we closely follow this development. I find it especially entertaining that he gladly posts private correspondance and messaging between him and the girl for all of us to see without her knowing. The fun never ends!

First Ranking List!

Ok, after careful market research I have observed that great blogs often have "top ten" lists or similar so I have decided to start doing this as well!

It is with pride that I introduce the "Best ever Male Rape Scenes from movies"

1. Deliverance ("squeal like a pig")

2. Mad Max: The Road Warrior

3. Pulp Fiction (feels a little too much like a tribute to Deliverance to be really great, but still...)

4. Any prison movie (an underrated genre no less)

Thank you for your attention!

Mad Max vs. Waterworld

My Waterworld post seemed to stir something in one of my astute readers and to a certain extent I am ready to offer my apologies. Granted, Waterworld did not have a male rape scene as in Mad Max: Road Warrior and instead of a young Mel Gibson had Kevin Costner which is two large negatives already there. But how interesting is Mel Gibson really nowadays, he's the guy who made "The Passion of the Christ", so any coolness factor that he might have carried in the past is long gone as far as I'm concerned.

So, ok, Waterworld is a complete rip-off of the Mad Max movies, but if we look at the positives, it had a pretty big budget and Dennis Hopper is in it after all and seem to somehow enjoy the silliness. Ok, Lord Humungus in Mad Max 2 is one of the best villains ever, but still.

I am not stupid enough to try and argue that Waterworld is a movie up there with the Mad Max movies, but it's not as awful as some people make it out to be. There you have it!

Staring into the Abyss

I am a changed man now... Gone are the days of playful laughter and snickering at the incompetence that is going around all over the place. We have started a new project and for some reason it is still me, Luke and The Boy on this project as well. We've been working together for so long now that the work style that has developed is quite fascinating in a disturbing way. I might elaborate on this at a later stage more, but it can be summarized in a few key words: Obscenities, Ebonics and Stupid Nicknames. But again I digress.

We gave up on searching for the Bigfoot Management, tired of being ridiculed and laughed at by management experts that refuse to believe that such a thing can exist. However, just when we thought that we were safe the Bigfoot Management style entered a new phase and it's name is Mr. Chin... His prescence became known to us not because of what he has done, but because of what he hasn't done... We are now caught up in a tornado of incompetence and are desperately trying to find something to hold on to while this lasts, it's not decreasing either...

I recall the words of Nietzsche: "If you stare into incompetence long enough incompetence stares back at you"...

Not the most coherent post, I can admit that, but for now I am just trying to survive until "Golden Week" here in Japan. The topic of "Golden Week" probably deserves a separate entry when I get around to it, but in the future I promise to lay out such interesting topics as the sometimes violent relationship between El Presidente and Mr. J as well as the you-won't-believe-it's-true story of Mr. M's in-company "love blog" (it's even better than it sounds!).

Otherwise I am surprised to see that my blog has received a few comments, something which both disturbs and amuses me equally...

Almost...

My whole team is very dissapointed and exhausted today... We thought we had seen some management, we were pretty certain that we had verified some management... All of us were very excited and felt that we had made a breakthrough. But in the end, it turned out to just be a prank that someone played us... Our hunt for the elusive Bigfoot management continues, we are tired but still have not given up on it being out there if we just look hard enough...

Bigfoot Management

The current disaster of a project I talked a bit about earlier is now temporarily on hold, I almost hope that the whole thing will fall apart since that would make a great story for years and years to come.

We have also had some new people joining the company so I might as well introduce them as well. First we have Mr. Chin that joined on management level (which means directly on top of me...), I am still working on figuring that man out. Most distinguishing feature is, as the name indicates, a huge underbite. On a junior level we have also had Mr. Chin Jnr join. He seem pretty relaxed and smart, however, he also has a huge underbite. Apart from that likeness, those two guys seem pretty different.

Anyway, I introduced these two new people into my gallery of characters since it has some relevance to the latest humoristic escapades in the office.

With the previous project put on hold, we are now running a different project that is outside the core of what we usually do. This means that it gets much much more difficult since we basically have no idea what we are doing in the beginning and we have to learn everything about the market dynamics etc. On top of this Mr. Chin is supposedly managing this project and our work as his first real project. He has a very interesting managing technique that intrigues me a lot and also inspires me, it basically consists of not answering questions, generally staying away and when we actually reach him he give very vague answers that are not helpful.

I think this management technique is called "Bigfoot Management" - we have heard that someone is managing the project, but no one has really seen any management, there are rumours flying around and people claim to have experienced some managing, but there is no solid evidence of this. We will continue to investigate this and I might have reasons to come back to this later.

Also, please take note that the "WHATEVER Managing" technique is very much compatible with the "Bigfoot Management" style. It could actually be the ultimate combination.

Land of Harmony

Japan is sometimes labeled a "land of harmony" and the country where delicate and refined arts such as calligraphy, ikebana flower arrangement and the tea ceremony came too. People who have visited this country often talk about the friendly welcome and excellent service they received during their visit. Even though they might not speak very good English, the people always try to help and the hospitality is overwhelming.

However... There is another side to the Japanese mentality as well which we often confront at a certain stage in our work. In our work we often times try to set up interviews with people that can be helpful to whatever thing we might be researching. These interviews sometimes have to be arranged through the noble art of cold calling... For those of you who for some reason are unaware of this interesting technique; it consists of calling a certain company, research institution, hospital or similar place in order to talk to someone who first of all have a clue to what you are looking into and secondly actually are willing to take the time and talk to you.

Gone are all pretense of kindness and helpfulness... The Japanese who answer the phone are not the same people who invented calligraphy and ikebana, I can tell you that for sure. Usually the first hurdle you must navigate is the receptionist who can be anything from having a distant pretense of friendliness to a open hostility. Many of them seem to invest considerable time and effort into making things as difficult as possible, classic techniques are the "wrong connect" when they connect you to a completely unrelated department from which you have to try and sneak your way out of. Other classic techniques are the "put on hold and then just hang up" and when you call back trying the apologetic line "excuse me, but the line disconnected for some reason" they don't even flinch and gladly put you on hold for a long while before they tell you that the person don't want to talk to you.

However, rejoice! You actually managed to navigate through the receptionist and reached someone through pure luck or a receptionist that on that particular day couldn't be bothered to torment you (rare occassions though) then the next challenge awaits...

Some people react with the same friendliness as if they had caught redhanded while you are skinning their children with the intent of making an apron or something of the same degree... Here reactions can come from the old classic "hang up while you are talking" to the more non-descript and general scolding for disturbing them when they are so extremely busy (the obvious question; so why the hell then did you take the phone in the first place never seem to get answered).

And we are not even trying to sell people things... Think of this the next time you enjoy the elegance of calligraphy or ikebana, will you?