Offsites

In theory I should look forward to work offsites. It’s not what you think. We stay at great hotels. This being China, we travel to historical and interesting places I likely would not otherwise visit. It’s a chance to see work from another perspective and connect with colleagues and having been on the team since 2005, I know many and are fond of many. The food is amazing. There is plenty of time for sightseeing. There is alcohol during and after dinner. But in fact I can’t stand it. I should not be writing that on a public forum since I guess coworkers can read it but given my average article read rate is less than 10, I’ll take that chance.

We have two travel-to offsites per year. The everyone goes one in the fall and the leadership one in early summer. We just completed the leadership one which I will describe in part here.

It starts with meeting 16 coworkers getting ready to board the flight west Yinchuan (think New York to Chicago). I like to travel like I eat, anonymously, and free of small talk. We land in Yinchuan and are bused to dinner where the other coworkers on earlier flights have already started eating. Lamb is the specialty and it is good (we’d also have lamb as the main course for the next two dinners and two lunches). Yinchuan is full of history. The Hui people had an empire there that Genghis Khan overthrew. Later, Genghis died there and his sons slaughtered the Hui people. Out sightseeing day consisted of three parts. The first part was a historical dig which we visited using all kinds of transportation. Camels, two kinds of boats, a sand buggy, two kinds of small buses. The camel ride was not optional. The second place was a rock art museum which covered the history of stone engravings with examples. The third was where movies were made from the 80s to the 00s. The day started at 8am and we arrived back to the hotel at 9:30pm. Hard working sightseeing. The nice part is everything is taken care of. The hard part is everything is arranged.

The work part of the offsite, well it’s all work, but the meeting part is a general update followed by take you out of the comfort zone team building. It’s find for what it is and you get out of it what you put into it.

There’s lots of opportunity for small talk. For people I don’t know that well we ask each other what team they are on. Then they will ask me how long I’ve been in China, how good my Chinese is, what percentage of a side conversation I can understand, and if my children are learning Chinese. It’s all pleasant. Over and over.

When the plane lands back in Beijing I’m walking fast to the subway without looking back. I’m on a mission to be home. When home, Kobe races to see me and Sabrina has dumplings (ordered) ready for lunch. I then take a three hour nap.