Chapter 8
Apart from the chemical business, I also need to support job requests from Alexie’s wife Ana, such as searching for ayis and drivers. Ana has strict requirements. I remember that once I changed over 15 ayis within two weeks. She was quite particular. It’s for sure that our ayis were usually not well-trained.
Soon, I received a new request to find a Philippine ayi for her. However, we need to hire this ayi under my company as it was not permitted by immigration to hire a Philippine ayi otherwise.
I didn’t know how to handle it. Then I went to Loushan Guan Road, Shanghai Business Committee for the visa notice and to the immigration office to ask one by one. Different officers gave different answers. Luckily, I met an immigration officer who was very patient in explaining what the red line was and what I could do. Finally, I made it happen and have regarded it as a business skill until now, etc.
More jobs were on the way. Sometimes roof cracks occurred and it was necessary to discuss with the constructor and find the best solution without causing pollution and incurring high costs. Sometimes the sink broke and I needed to follow up to measure the size and choose the tailor-made furniture supplier together with Ana. Sometimes I needed to explain the job description of Ayi in front of Ana.
Alexie appreciated my side job and he took me to meet his boss JK from Ireland. Alexie informed me that they were in control of a chemical factory. And they have two other partners. One is Constan from Germany and Billy from Belgium.
When they came to Shanghai, I needed to prepare golf games for them in different clubs and purchase golf equipment for them. Also, both JK and Constan like the golden coins of Panda from different years. So, I needed to search for the real shops and take them there for shopping.
As an assistant, they quite like me. One time, after dinner, Alexie and JK took me to Tong Ren Road to play pulling games with different local girls. JK’s Irish accent is very strong. I have no idea what they are happy about. Then they changed to another bar on the side for whisky.
It’s a dancing bar with steel on the two sides of the bar table. I was shocked for the first time in my life. The club girls aren’t Chinese. Even one girl just smiled at me by twinkling her eyes. I was shocked and told Alexie what happened. He laughed at me, saying that if I could be sure it was that girl boy. Oh, my dear. Maybe he’s right. That’s a crazy world.
Alexie asked me to relax and do self-training of mental control under the bar. Don’t talk or look at strangers. And he began to teach me about whisky on the rocks, cigars and wines. I’m happy to learn about soda water because I’m not good at drinking at all. So we changed bars every 2 hours until 4 am.
When we walked out of the last bar we visited on the Bund, several beautiful Chinese girls came close to us but they didn’t even glance at me for a second. They spoke fluent English, saying, “Sir, do you want me to go home together?” It blew my mind again. Wow! Where are we?Drunk?
Soon, a new Chemical policy has blocked our 286 tons of raw material rosin at GZ customs. Every day, we have to pay the storage fee and container renting cost. The company is bleeding every day and we are almost stopping the production due to the shortage of raw materials. Our sales team in Tian Jing, Ms. Zheng and Tina, who graduated from Qing Hua, failed to establish any connections in Beijing. Even the CFO Saza of the GZ factory couldn’t make anything happen.
I heard about this situation at a dinner with Alexie over the weekend. So, I suddenly recalled that I have soccer friends who are from the North. I called my friend immediately and he said he could try to look for connections for me at the Chinese Science Management Office regarding dangerous chemical management.
I updated Alexie and he kindly agreed that I could take over this case for a try.