Charlotte 2008 Olympic Trip Journey: Which country are you from??

Day 3 -- Aug. 6, 2008

As usual, I go to get a traditional Chinese breakfast before I head to Hilton. This morning routine makes me wondering around the road and looking around what local people do. Since it is not within walking distance from my aunt's place to Hilton, I take taxi to Hilton every morning.

This morning, I pretty much met all USOC CEO, CFO, COO and all board members. Couple days ago, I have read through all their profiles and impressed with their career path and their commitment to communities. It is true that whoever I work with is also a normal person, I truly think that it all depends on how you want to live you life, not by status, money and other criteria, but by what you can bring to the society and what impact you have through your life here. Working with them, I see the individual personalities. One specific person, Charles Lee, the USOC Chief De Mission, is such a decent man, who spend time to talk with individual and remember everyone name, not just saying hi passing by. I got chance to work with a French USOC staff Sabrina on the USA House Invitation letter. The designer did marvelous job to put Chinese elements into the letter.

busy working crew!

Soon, the Director of Development Jean in USOC asked me to help her out. She had spend almost yesterday to figure out how to send out those 10 Horse related Games(sequestion??) to Hongkong. Due to the ristrict Olympic time, mailing service does not ship any tickets, no matter DHL, UPS or EMS. Those tickets are for Old Navy CEO and his family on Aug.9th Games, goodness! She asked me to see if I can communicate with Hilton business center in Chinese to resolve this issue. Hilton business center said they will not handle the tickets and no mailing service will work. It is back and forth too many times. She asked if I could help. I do not know what I could do, but think that DHL and UPS have to follow the Chinese rules. EMS is owned by Chinese government, which should be the place I communicate first. It turns out that all mail services afraid of loosing tickets, potencially promoting black market selling tickets and most of all, no one dare to damage its business reputation in this special event time. I spent around an hour with EMS, explaining the situation and let them know only opening and closing ceremonies require names typed on the tickets. But EMS does not gurantee the delivery date due to custom check(Hong Kong is considered as internationion zone for inland mailing). I talked to the directo to have her write a nice long official letter and I translate it into Chinese. Needless to say, the task was done, not only EMS agrees to mail the tickets, but also Hilton business center agrees to handle the rest process. Suddenly USOC staff grapped me for their rough tasks. The most rediculous part was, when I call DHL line which redirect me to another phone number. But when I call that number, it is hotline English speaking for sexuality. Auch!! What other odd thing could I find out??

After working at Hilton, I went to USA House for Lunch and met with some teammembers chatting a little bit. Guess what? I met Peter Vanderkaay, a U.S. swimming team. All of us agree that he looks way better than his picture Soon Cosport contacted us to pick up the game tickets at Beijing SOHO area. (talking about Beijing SOHO, if you are interesting with some new city development, this is definitely one of them.)

We were told that Bush Senior will be here tomorrow evening. He is very well-known in Beijing since he was an embassodor here. Since USA House is not open for public and multiple secured layer through every possible spots. Unlike other countries house, this evening Carlotta("Charlotte" in Italian language), Jenna and I went to the House of Switerland. Carlotta is from Italy, who is so much fun and almost know everyone. Since she met the manager there before, we basically had a great tour and special VIP service, wine, goose liver, switerland food, Lindt's fresh made Chocalate and Switerland ice cream. He gave us so much stuff, hats, pins... We have to tell him that USA House is not open to public and we can not get anything free for him. What a difference! Later we met an Austrilian girl Louisa at the Swiss shop, who wants to join out House Hunting trip :) I had a good conversation with the Manager, who asked me to invite more friends coming over. He mentioned that he will be in ShangHai 2010 World Expro, which we made a deal to meet again in two years in China.

Jenna, Charlotte, Calotta and Manual

I wear the USA Olympic shirt, having switzerland hat with my Asian looking. People kept asking me what county I am from. For some reasons, for the past several weeks since I was back China, a lot of people think I am from Japan, how can that be??