Dragon fruit shake

I attended Greater China's and Asia South's sales fiscal year kick-off and annual partners summit for 3 days. After such deep submersion, I now have a deeper appreciation on field organizations. We engineers sit in the air-conditioned rooms and click on our keyboards; the field must convince someone to part with their money for things we made. Every salesperson long for a product like iPhone that flies off the shelf. Sun's wares are complicated and our corporate strategy carefully designed. Events like this aligned the the entire chain of command with honest dialogs. Foods, lubricants to these dialogs, here are at least exotic and always delicious. One restaurant nearby prominently promotes
Dragon fruit shake, congee with preserved duck eggs, and bamboo pits stuffed with shrimps for dinner. “Yummy.” You said?

In addition to good foods, Thailand display the power of religion. I disbelieved Frank Herbert that it can conquer half the known universe when I read Dune. Clearly, he understood Thailand.

Bangkok's every street corners seems to harbor a Buddhist temple or shrine. All appear active: displaying fresh flowers, fruits, and burning incenses. First time, I visited a country that is religiously homogeneous — over 95% of Thai are Buddhists. The demonstrate their faith at the Royal Grand Palace. Together with coercion, religion is probably the only other method capable of mobilizing and organizing such wealth and efforts. Frank Herbert is right after all.

This city is also famous for its drag shows. With 1000 Baht (about US$35), Calypso puts out the performance of over 50 Katoey (cross-dressed or trans-sexual performer) all so beautiful and sexy to the point of disbelief. The program was repetitive to appease the assumed multi-cultured audience.

Of course, globalization has turned every major cities boring. Starbucks offers its world-standardized decor and products. Air-conditioned malls and shopping centers display the same Burbery, Versace, and Louis-Vuitton. We finally found Thailand, shopping-wise, at the Chatuchak weekend market. This huge market has everything for tourists and locals alike. It was fun to submerge into the alleys and surface up for cold drinks and air-conditioning after few hours.

Sun Microsystems' own Rampa Manoosin celebrated the promotion to country general manager during our stay. It is pretty cool opening the newspaper to see someone who has been attending the same meetings with you.

Excited with ideas, I prepared myself for another jetlag session in California. Sigh…