the journey of a million miles begins in the year of tha bore

After spending a working week, "wishing that my life could be as strange as a conspiracy" suddenly an unexpected boon arrived - a stand in appearance at a meeting in the posh first world. Aisle seat booked, accommodation confirmed and because tomorrow's a sunny day and I'm saving myself (for the right person), I shall arrange transfers to and from the venue which looks rather plush, when it dually arrives.

I shall have to bring my a-game to the meeting because one of the items on the agenda is 'Sourcing in Asia' which interests me, geographically, politically, socially and because I grew up watching bad martial arts movies.

It's also one my crouching tiger, hidden agenda, items to achieve in 2007, which is to try and position myself for a corporate visit. I shall be googling it all in the next couple of days, hopefully remembering charming catch phrases to spew out at the most opportune moments whilst angling my head ever so slightly for pretentious effect.

So what are we trying achieve by doing business in one of the world's great markets? Much to my surprise we've aptly got a five point plan:

1. Savings and lots of it and urhm yes - what else? Urhm? Yeah, uurh? Right -

...
2. Building credibility within our business and the local supplier market;
3. Establishing and consolidating a medium term presence;
4. Storyboarding learnings for other regions such as India;
5. And aligning the regions production capabilities with our strategic outlook.

And if doesn't work, we'll opium the region by moving the factors of production, I guess, some suggest, who knows.

As I said this greatly interests me even if Shanghai is still a somewhat distant reality. There are some positive indicators though, it's the year of the boar, I'm a bore, I spent my new year's eve in an authentic Chinese restaurant, (the menu was press-sticked to the wall) and it's 007 and I am a 7/11 baby (that's an American seven-eleven) so if my luck holds I could be sourcing, blogging and sampling it all.

But that's for another day lets just say that today that journey of a million miles has begun with that difficult first step.

Footnote:

"I just wish my life was as strange as a conspiracy, I hope, hold out but there's no way, I am just me I can't deny…" the Primitive Painters, Felt.