Debit Fraud, Water Puppets, House Traveling Mani/Pedicurist, Work Dinners, more MMA Conditioning, and Factories – OH MY!

Debit Fraud, Water Puppets, House Traveling Mani/Pedicurist, Work Dinners, more MMA Conditioning, and Factories – OH MY!

Another week, more excitement! I’m sure you all wouldn’t expect anything less of that from my by now – LOL. Even I am still in awe that so much is packed into a week here. I’m so used to it that I can’t think of it any other way.

This past weekend was great! Friday night Pam and I went to a Tapas restaurant which was pretty decent. Although, I liked what I had to order more than Pam. I tried a mango stuffed swordfish and it was really very tasty. A jug of sangria also complimented the meal. After dinner we went to meet up with my friend Quincy. I met her in my MMA class and she’s actually from MA, she goes to Suffolk Law School and had an internship in HCMC during the summer. We went to some bar called Voodoo. Luckily, no one performed any voodoo on me!

Saturday I got to enjoy a nice and relaxing day by the pool. The weather was perfect and I was more than content lounging poolside. I had a recommendation from the Taylor-Made business manager whom I met on Friday to try a visiting mani/pedicurist. She was even nice enough to set up an appointment for me on Saturday. I was warned that Mai is known for showing up late. If my appointment was for noon, she’d be there by 12:30. Well all of a sudden its 1:30 and still no Mai. I called Karen, who set it up for me and it turns out she gave her the wrong address. There are two Somerset locations in the city…So Mai showed up with her “well loved” back pack full of nail polish, lotion, files, clippers, and all other nail paraphernalia at 5:00. Better late than never! It was totally worth the wait. The pedicure ended up costing only 50,000 dong which converts to $2.82. You can’t get someone to come to your house and give you a pedicure for $20 let alone $2.82!

Side note: it was awesome getting to learn about the Taylor-Made golf program on Friday. The footwear and apparel is actually under the Adidas Golf label. Taylor-Made is the label used for all the actual golf gear like clubs and balls. Anyway, the business is very different. It is much leaner and runs very efficiently. The main offices are in a factory called TMI. Originally I though TMI stood for Taylor Made Intl, but it’s really the name of the factory which means something else. TMI is exclusive to the Taylor-Made business; they have no other customers, which is really nice. You walk in the office and immediately feel one with the product. Karen’s office is even a “driving range” the floor is green grass with golf balls scattered around and golf nets hanging all around the walls. Pictures are up everywhere with people golfing wearing the product. You can’t help but be motivated – there is energy all around you. You don’t even feel like you are in a factory, it is so modern. I loved it!

Ok, now I am back on track…After my pedicure it was time to get ready for dinner. My manager here had invited a small group over to his families for dinner. After dinner I had planned on meeting up with a co-worker from my team. She was going to a “bar club” as she likes to call it and had invited me along. Well, when we finally left dinner it was already 2AM, I could not believe how late we all stayed.

Luckily I had planned on having another relaxing day by the pool on Sunday and got to sleep in. Nothing is better than not setting your alarm on a Sunday morning! Again, it was another gorgeous pool day and I soaked it all in!

When I had enough of the sun I was doing some odds and ends on line. I’ve been regularly checking my bank account to make sure there is no odd activity. Thank goodness I have gotten in that habit because someone hacked into my account and was aimlessly spending my money! The bank was really helpful and canceled my card instantly. They even have emergency services that my wonderful mother (thanks again!) found out about. I already got my new card! I got it in the mail last night, activated it today and am a happy camper again, it’s almost like it never happened… I can totally deal with that and I keep telling myself, it can always be worse! Just a small bump in the road but it’s all cleared up now J

That evening Pam and I finally made it to the historical and famous Vietnamese water puppet show. We tried to go last Wednesday and what an ordeal that turned out to be. We were already running late, the cab dropped us off 5 long blocks away so we began sprinting towards the theater. We had 5 minutes to get there, buy our tickets, and find seats. After building up a bit of a sweat, we made it to the theatre to find out the 8:00PM show was canceled! We weren’t meant to be see it that night (maybe we should have listened more carefully to all those signs…)!

So this time we ordered our tickets ahead to confirm there really was a show. This time when we showed up there were people outside waiting to enter, the bright neon lights were on, and the cab dropped us off in the right spot! Much better. I have to say the show itself was very interesting. I’m glad I saw it but will not be seeing another one in my lifetime. It was the most random thing I have ever seen. I was cracking up most of the 50 minute show because it was just so absurd!

As you can imagine, it’s these wooden operated puppets above water that are manipulated by people behind temple looking structure over the water. The scenes came one after another and had no flow whatsoever. There were 3 people along one side of the stage and 2 on the other screaming, singing, and playing music. Of course I had no idea what they were saying because it was all in Vietnamese. I can’t imagine being a kid watching this. I’d probably have nightmares the rest of my life. The noises were so loud and harsh. As were the movements of the puppets – they were so violent and scary!

Before I knew it the weekend was over and a new exciting week began. This week I’ve been spending the majority of the time at Esprinta. I’ve been able to work on my projects and have a more in depth training and understanding of how their factory operates. The whole experience has been eye opening as you can imagine. I’ve been seeing lots of duplicate processes that go on here and then again at our HQ back home. I’m excited to share all of my findings with the team when I head back home.

Monday at Esprinta, I spent the morning really understanding the size set process. For those of you who don’t know what it is – its right before a style goes into bulk production after the approved development stages. A full size set is made to see how the grading of that style came out. It’s also good to see if there are any major problems with the other sizes that aren’t the standard sample size. It was nice to see how detail oriented the team is at really making sure the style is as is should be with trim cards, sketches, and specs to reference. They spend about 45 minutes per garment, inspecting the measurements, fabric that was used, stitch quality, logo placement, everything. I mean we hope they do this at home so it was comforting to see that they really do!

Lingo, who is our direct contact at Esprinta, took us out to this really nice Japanese restaurant in the middle of another industrial park. I still cannot believe how many industrial parks there are, and they are so huge. I can’t help what wonder what all the other factories look like on the inside, how they operate what they make since I’ve been working so closely with the 4 factories here. Lingo explained that each industrial area has one popular restaurant to go for lunch.

Here we were in the middle of nowhere, in an industrial park, and the restaurant was so modern and upscale! Honestly, I felt like I was in a place I would have gone to when living in NY. I am still not used to people around you smoking while eating. I don’t understand how people enjoy that. So I thought it was going to be a great experience here but I felt like we were in an episode of the twilight zone.

The wait staff seemed to only pay attention to the large parties of men (who were also chain smoking at their tables). Our order took an hour to get to the table and there were only 5 of us. When they did bring orders to the table, they brought them one by one and the timing was scattered, I am talking about 10 minutes between each person. It took them 2 x to make what I ordered because they kept making it was soy sauce! But once we all got our food, it was great. Just one of those funny experiences that make the entire trip that much better.

After lunch, I got to work with Sephen (pronounced like Stephen, without the “t”). Not to be more confused Sephen is a she and she talks so quietly on top of her heavy Taiwanese accent I had to basically put my face up to hers in order to understand her. She is so petite and quite, but really nice to work with. I had 8 styles to work on with her and the rest of the afternoon fly by. I’ve really enjoyed working directly with the factories on projects. I knew I was going to like it, but it’s so much better than I had ever imagined!

Monday ended perfectly with my MMA class, it’s just so much fun. And instead of it getting easier, it’s actually getting harder. You learn a new technique and continue to add onto it, all of a sudden your punches and kicks have more power and your body reminds you that it’s working harder! Once I got home I could barely pick my arms up above my head! Oh and of course it was great to see my instructors too ;)

Tuesday was another busy day! The first half of the day I spent with Brandy (not to confuse you more, it’s a he) who is the head of the pattern room. He showed me their process of creating new patterns at the start of a new season, and how they uploaded patterns that were already sent to them from the patternmakers at HQ. All I have to say is a shout out to my girl Kendall for working with me in Gerber before I left! It was a bit of a challenge to follow Brandy on his computer that was half English/half Chinese. There was also a distraction with his fingernails that are longer than mine, even with UVA gel! Apparently it is good luck to have long nails in the Chinese religion and you shouldn’t trim them if there is not a reason….So thank you Kendall – I had an idea what he was explaining to me because of our little lessons before I left!

Lingo and I had a nice lunch at a Chinese restaurant right near the factory. She knew I had just a few dietary restrictions and ordered a great spread of food. It came out super fast and was delicious.

Again, the rest of the day FLEW by. Now that I’ve really dug into my projects here the work days fly by between working on the projects and sitting in on meetings or presentations. I still cannot believe how much I have learned in such a short period of time!

That night, I tried another MMA class offered where I go. The one I had been going to on Monday and Thursday’s is cardio conditioning. Tuesday and Wednesday they offer a technique class. Holy Moly is all I have to say! After warming up, we basically spar the entire time. Of course I was the only girl and I was sparring with these ripped guys. They were all really nice and patient with me, helping me out, telling me what to do. At first I was really timid and reserved but by the end I was having so much fun. Those punches were flying and I was fighting. Maybe I’ll be a UFC fighter by the end of this….MMMM, not really but I am having a great time with it all.

Wednesday I had a very busy day at DTVN working on more projects there. I also had to start getting my presentation ready for Monday. I get to present on my first months experience on my birthday – what a way to celebrate!

After work, I went for some laps in the pool, that’s my other new thing to do. Pam and I checked out this restaurant I had wanted to try – it’s called Garden BBQ. I am beginning to think we should start paying attention to these signs…We get in the cab, I say “xin chao” which means hello and show him the address. By now I pretty much know my way around. Well to start the driver pulled the wrong way out of our apartment complex. I thought ok, maybe he’ll just loop around. No…He was headed in the total opposite direction, toward where our Operation Center is at DTVN. So I started saying Ben Than, which is close to Garden BBQ and showed him the address AGAIN! So then he starts going the right way….We finally got there after a bit of a delay.

The place is really cute; it’s outdoors with these huge trees that have lights dangling down from them, almost like a fairy tale land. They have a convertible roof, so if it starts raining they take these poles that pull the roof over above you to shed you from the rain. It was off and on rain all night. But instead of keeping the roof closed they would open it when it stopped and then it would start up again and it would take about 5 minutes to close the roof. It was king of comical to watch.

There were so many different kinds of skewers to order. They bring them to you and then you cook them on a mini grill that is on the table. I got shrimp, fish fillet, and pineapple; shrimp and coconut; and vegetable skewers. So yummy at the time…Then we go to leave, hop in a cab and about 7 minutes later the cab is slowing down and going over to stop on the side of the road. He got pulled over by two Vietnamese cops on mopeds…Pam and I kind of looked at each other, like you have got to be kidding me! We decided it best if we snuck out. The driver noticed we were leaving and was waving for us to stay. We kept walking, found a new cab and finally made it home! By then I had to take 2 Pepto-Bismol tablets. The food that was yummy turned out to not agree so well with my tummy.

We had an interesting meeting here with all of footwear, apparel, accessories and gear for Reebok, Adidas, and Taylor-Made. They are rolling out a new “fast and lean” initiative and big changes will start to take place. It will affect footwear more than apparel right now and the biggest impact will be in China and the HQ’s in Herzo and Portland. A bit of a relief…It was all still very interesting to hear about.

I just got home from my class and feel great after it. I had a horrible headache all day but I think I sweat it out and finally feel much better.

I’m headed to Singapore this weekend to see one of my best friends Ellen. She is there for work as well. She has a whole fun weekend planed for my big birthday weekend and I cannot wait. Now that I have rambled for a bit, I will let your eyes rest! Have a great week and stay tuned for my update next week!