Singapore Nights

I'll start from the beginning of the week...

My first big business trip started with an EARLY morning flight from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur on monday morning. And I finally got to use my UK passport for a change! On arrival I met up with my boss for Malaysia/Singapore, Karl, a no-enemies whatsoever type of friendly guy from Kent, England, and spent the night in a 5 star hotel (Le Meridien). I didn't get a chance to see the city since I had to have a meeting with my boss for hella long. A muslim lady did run me over with her cart at the airport and didn't say sorry. By the way Malaysia is a predominantly a nation of Islam. There are many Chinese and foreigners that drink profusely, however. Hopefully it's better next time.

Karl and I traveled to Singapore the next day and it was straight to the office from the airport. Wish I hadn't brought a huge suitcase. Learned my lesson there, instantly. I'm staying at a nice hotel about 10 minutes away but the traffic makes it a 20-30 minute journey after work.

The Diageo hub office for Southeast Asia is here in downtown Singapore and it is SICK. A hundred people, an office bar (free and open after 5:30 every Thurs/Fri), a training bar for bar staff around the country to learn about our brands and how to pour them, alcoholic advertising materials galore and a gym in the same building. That said, business is business, and the hub office is super busy. I learned quickly that even the company's operation in SEA are huge and my division (Commercial for Asia South Spirits) is just one of 20. But only 5 years ago there were half a dozen people here, so business is growing fast in the wake of economic recovery after the late 90s bust.

I've been charged with helping coordinate a new distributor for us here. I've had 100 things to learn in just a few days and 1000 more things to do. None of them really take more than 10-30 minutes but WOW my brain is fried at the end of the day just trying to keep from forgetting any one little thing. Time management, multi-tasking, flexibility, and organization are KEY in this job. I can learn finance, marketing, and commercialization as I go along but without my anal retentiveness about keeping my work efficient and neat I would be dead in the water here.

The new distributor I am working with is just a start up but there is a ton of work to do because they haven't been established. The guys in charge are really cool though and have taken me out a couple times to learn about the Singapore market (aka visiting a dozen bars in a night and building business relationships while getting tipsy). A couple bars we visited to meet the owners were really famous lady bars - it was all tourists, military, and older dudes and tons of working girls! I was hawked by a lot of them trying to be nice and see if they could hook a fish, but I (and Karl) made sure nothing sneaky happenned. At first being surrounded by prostitutes was really uncomfortable, but soon I was having fun with it (but not too much fun) and it didn't matter. A few of them were obviously ladyBOYS and I was making bets with the guys as to who was a chick and who had a #$%^. Excuse my language, hah.

Karl told me that more business in Asia is done between 9 PM and 2 AM than in the previous 12 hours combined. The downside: I was a little hungover on Thursday morning and I know that this won't be the first time. It's a bit like the entertainment industry in that much of the alcohol business centers around night activities and I'll have to entertain accordingly. Actually I'm pretty keen on this, but I'm sure it'll get tough down the road when I just want to relax after work. Already I have been exhausted trying to get up to speed this first REAL week on the job and have had to stay until 7, 7:30 most nights. I just go straight to my hotel room, hit the gym, eat, and PASS OUT. That's also why I haven't posted on this in a while - the last thing I want to do when I get home is look at a computer after I've spend all day working on excel, reading reports and marketing plans, and sending 40 emails (no joke).

Enough about work, I can worry about that on Monday. I really misjudged Singapore when I came here for 3 days by myself in August. I thought there was nothing to do but shop, and drinking wasn't so fun because it was too expensive and there weren't that many places. Yeah, I didn't know enough about this city to make that claim. Yeah there is enough shopping to give any sane man a heart attack, but there are LOTS of places to go out and hey, it isn't that expensive when you aren't paying at all! I'm having a great time overall but still getting used to the grueling hours of work in a fast paced multinational. I still feel very young and green, and many people at the office are very surprised when they find out how old I am, but I'm doing my job and no one has questioned me so far. This distributor project is a lot of work but I'm actually really glad Karl has entrusted me with handling it for the next few months. Looks like I'll be traveling here a lot too.

I finally decided on an apartment in Bangkok after looking around for 3 days before I left for KL. I'll describe it more when I come back to Bangkok next weekend. It's pretty sweet, and in an ideal location. I should be in Bangkok by the night of Feb. 4th but there's a chance I could go straight to Vietnam for a week first. Doesn't matter to me, really. I'm racking up the miles and not paying rent!

I still can't post pics since I can't put stuff like that on my work laptop. I'm looking into buying a personal laptop but it might be a few weeks! Hope I'm not putting you to sleep without any visuals. They will come in time, I promise, but don't expect a ton because you won't find me taking pictures of my office...

Until next time my friends.