Confessions from a Shanghai limo

By Yeoh Siew Hoon

The day I flew into Shanghai, the skies were so dark I thought the city had finally blew it – that it had become so polluted that the smog had reached the heavens.

Then the plane started rocking and rolling and I realised it was a storm brewing. Not just any storm but a real tropical thunder-and-lightning kind of affair where you would rather be anywhere except in the air – or on the roads in Shanghai.

Altogether, it took Bob Gilbert, the boss of HSMAI, and I two hours to get from Pudong airport to our hotel, the Hua Ting Hotel & Towers.
It was Bob’s first visit to China. Worried that it might give Bob the right impression, I found myself explaining – yes, you can take the girl out of China but you can’t take the China out of the girl.

It’s rush hour. It’s the storm. It’s the driver. It’s the car. After a while, I ran out of excuses and said, “Well, it’s the fastest growing city in the fastest growing country in the world.”

Have you ever wondered why traffic in fast growing cities is always so slow? Dubai, London, Beijing, Bangkok … it seems the faster we grow, the more we go nowhere.

Anyway, the two hours passed by very pleasantly as Bob and I took the chance to get to know each other. And here’s the thing

I figured out – when time is forced upon you, you realise what a pleasure it is really to take the time to get to know someone.

See, in the course of our everyday lives and living in the age that we are, we don’t know how to live with time.

We talk constantly about the long hours we work. A recent survey of bankers found that Singapore had the highest percentage of executives who work over 55 hours a week. Hong Kong was next, followed by London.

I wonder what a similar survey of hoteliers would reveal.
Hong Kong hotelier: “55 hours a week? That’s nothing. I work 80 hours.”

Shanghai hotelier: “80 hours? That’s nothing. I work 90 and that’s not including the weekends – that’s when my owners visit the hotel. See, he works 100 hours Mondays-Fridays alone.”

Singapore hotelier: “90. Bah! We work 120 hours now. Business is so good these days and we don’t have enough staff. Why, last week, I lost 100 staff to The Venetian who came to town and hired 1,000 people from Singapore. Hmm, maybe I will move to Macau too. They must do longer hours there with their 24-hour casinos.”

We talk about the hundreds of emails we get a day.

“I went away for two days and found 250 emails.”

“That’s nothing. I get 500.”

“Wow, you must be a very important man.”

In between appointments, we whip out our personal gadgets to check for messages. We no longer just sit and wait, now we sit and text.

Well, Bob and I just sat and talked about everything under the storm. By the time we got to the hotel, the storm had passed.

“Look, the skies have cleared,” I told my new-found friend as he and I looked up to the early evening sky.

“This? This is clear?” Bob who lives in a town in Washington DC asked.

Yes, Bob. It’s as clear as it gets. Don’t you know, fast growing cities also rarely have clear skies. It seems the faster we grow, the less we see.

Catch Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Café – www.thetransitcafe.com