Dueling for dollars

Dueling for dollars

the young fellow on the right did not have time for a duel. 

Those of you who are faithful readers will perhaps remember that I made my first trip to China last year.  The purpose of that trip was to present my design for equipment to the decision makers of a Chinese corporation that does energy development projects globally.  The project I was vying for was in Turkmenistan.  The result of that trip was that we were awarded a huge order (yea!) and are in the final stages of completing the job now.

We got word that the President, the Vice President, and the Purchasing Mgr of this energy development company were traveling from Turkmenistan to Houston and wanted a meeting with my company.  Since I am Product Mgr., that meant I was the guy who had to prepare for them.   This meeting was a big deal and we did not know what to expect.  We were late on the delivery of the equipment so we assumed they were going to jump all over us for this.  To shield myself from the delivery issues, I had our Manufacturing Manager travel to Houston from India for the meeting too. 

There were continuous changes in their schedule and the meeting date kept being postponed.  My Manufacturing manager had been in town all week and needed to get back to his job.  Finally, we got word that the visitors were heading to Houston from Turkmenistan. 

The day of the meeting I was also participating in a charity event.  I could not pick up our guests myself, so I sent a limo to pick up the group. I raced to the office after my event  and arrived just in time to change clothes and set up my presentation. I had a real bad feeling about this.  I really wasn't prepared to discuss the details of delivery schedule.  I was more focused on the new project coming up. We have another huge quotation to this company that I really want to get.   But I was concerned that our late delivery was going to kill this next opportunity.  

We got the call from the limo driver saying that they had arrived.  So, any moment now all those big shot decision makers would gather in to our conference room.  But when we went to the front entry, only one man was there.   The lone visitor was Mr. Liu, the Vice President.  He later explained that the other executives had problems with their VISAs and could not make the trip.   

This situation reminded me of an old Bugs Bunny cartoon.  This is the one where Bugs encountered a terrifying space alien.  This giant alien was wearing a menacing space suit, but when he crawled out of it, he was actually a tiny non-threatening little pipsqueak.  When Mr. Liu showed up, he turned out to be a tiny, non-threatening fellow himself.  He seemed irritated at the beginning of the meeting, but eventually we got along well and he was a pleasure to know.

After our meeting, we went to dinner.  Mr. Liu was traveling with his adult son, who was a grad student at a U.S. university in Washington D.C.  So before we ate we went to their hotel and picked him up. Mr. Liu’s son had earned a Finance degree and was still in school since he could not find a job.  I told him he would never find a Finance job in Washington D.C. since no one in that town apparently understood money or finance.  He did not understand my meaning.

The son asked what they could do for half a day in Houston before they had to get to the airport. Since the charity event that I spent the morning at was a team pistol shooting competition I mentioned that it might be fun for him to go to a gun range and shoot a pistol.  His eyes lit up.  He said he had never fired a gun because private citizens in China are forbidden to own weapons.   So, after hearing that, I suggested  this:  rather than shoot at a gun range he and I could just have a friendly duel.  Or I said we could pretend we were filming a Hollywood movie.  He could be the villian.  I would give him an empty gun to use and he could just throw it at me while I fired away.  Upon further reflection, he decided that they really did not have any time before their flight.

So, the evening ended with new friends being made, more potential business in the future and no blood being shed.  I guess that is about as good as it gets for an evening that I had originally dreaded.  It is always gratifying for me when I can do my small part for creating global cooperation and avoid an international incident.  But I hate to let my pistol shooting skills be wasted.  Maybe some congressman in Washington D.C. would be interested in a Duel?  I wonder if they would notice that their gun was empty?