China - Shanghai - 3/18/2005

Last official day of the trip.
Today we woke up early to go to visit the Dell offices in Shanghai and sit in on another team's final presentation for their project. Sadly enough after trying many different types of medicines I find myself still sick and coughing most of the time, but during the presentation I was able to keep myself from being too loud.
The presentation was very interesting, starting with a very good set up given by one of the directors in the office, about Dell's China operations. He painted a very optimistic outlook for the company going forward, while letting us know that all this still depended on his team being able to continue delivering results. After his presentation we got to listen in to one of our fellow team's project results that were in line with some of the findings in our project, and we may be able to reference some of those in our presentation when we get back to Austin. Since our project coordinator was not available this day we decided with her to present in Austin instead. The director listening to this teams presentation was very good at focusing his attention on specific issues of the presentation, and asking questions geared to find out more exact information from the presenting teams, this reminded me a lot of the behavior of many other Dell directors I have met.
After the other teams presentation we went to the office's cafeteria to listen to the HR team talk about working for Dell. For Richa, Carolyn and me this was an opportunity to meet some of the local HR managers and introduce ourselves to them, since we never know when and how we may want to come back. We also asked many questions geared to find out how to obtain an international assignment. The main answer was that, while getting an international assignment was simple, getting one on US based salaries would be a bit tougher.
After a pizza lunch we headed back to the hotel where I got another opportunity to use my Chinese phrase book, when Diego and I headed in search of a pharmacy (turns out there was one a block away from the hotel... if i had only asked earlier!!). In the pharmacy, using my book, a book the pharmacy had with the names of all the prescription drugs in Chinese and English, and Diego's knowledge of what we needed, we managed to come out carrying antibiotics for my cough, robitusin, and some throat lozenges... All without a prescription and for less than 15 US Dollars :), Luckily Diego's wife is a doctor, and thus he knew exactly what to look for. After taking my first dose of antibiotic, I was still tired from all that was going on that I started packing, and then fell asleep for an hour before having to head out to our closing dinner.
Our closing dinner with the Jiaotong students, was pretty good in their faculty club. The menu was very similar to the usual stuff we're used to by now. While we got a chance to interact with our counterparts for one last time face to face.
We got a gift from them during the dinner, and since I couldn't drink any alcohol (because of the antibiotics), and I was still a bit tired I couldn't go out with them to the final outing to party in Shanghai.
In the end, I found myself unable to live any part of the Shanghai nightlife, but I heard it was much better than anywhere else in the trip.