Giants Cheer

If the Giants won a World Series and no one applauded, would they have really won. Maybe not in China.

Game four of the World Series was largely played during my flight from Beijing to Xiamen. When we landed in Xiamen, like everyone else I ignored the instructions to keep my cell phone powered off. Unlike everyone else, my main purpose was to check the Giants score. 4/3, F10 it read. The Giants were World Series Champs.

I travelled to Xiamen for a five day work offsite. It is a mostly morale event type of thing that all companies here are expected to do for their employees. The bigger and more successful the company, the better the offsite location. In previous years I’ve gone to Huangshan, Hainan, Hong Kong (twice), and Shanghai. All in the name of morale. For me, not in the name of positive morale.

The day after the Giants winning World Series, I woke up at 5:30am and snuck out for a run. I had to sneak out because in the double bed next to mine was a co-worker. And the co-worker’s girlfriend. After my run, I showered and to honor the Giants put on my Giants shirt and headed downstairs for breakfast.

To say no one noticed my team affiliation would be a misinterpretation. I’m sure many folks thoughts Giants was a clothing brand.

The day proceeded with the formal fiscal year kickoff, sightseeing, and then the all important gala dinner. 95% of the proceedings were in Chinese which was up from maybe 60% in previous years. For me and other foreigners that has an isolating effect which causes some to complain, some to immerse, and some to disengage. I am the disengaging type. I counted the number of group meals left on the trip. I started to count the days away from home over the past few weeks and found that I’d only been home three of 22 days. And of those three days, I’d been pretty jet lagged and not so available to the kids and Yang. Or maybe that is the typical. In any case, I knew I missed them like hell. And I sure as heck missed my routines. My exercises. My food. My writing. My just relaxing alone.

Wednesday passed with an all day team building event which had as dancing to Gangdam style, building structures from rings, doing a group hulu hoop, and looking for purposely lost things. Thursday brought us to a world heritage site, which I must admit was very cool. Not quite so cool was the four hour – each direction – bus ride to get their.  Thursday night I was lucky enough to have my own room – seems someone wanted some privacy – and basically just crashed. Friday was the only unstructured time of the whole trip and when I learned that I could move my flight from 7pm to 1pm, I jumped all over it.

Then I was home. With the kids when they got home from school. Then with a friend for the best happy hour within a five minute walk our apartment. And the finally with Yang.

Still no cheers for the Giants nor the mighty Casey.

Spring training is 100 days away.