Chapter 40 Version 4
1988
John exited the car and walked out to the waterfront in
front of the Bund in Shanghai. The Whangpoo River, where Stanley’s ship led the
Allied fleet into Shanghai in 1945, was the traditional heart of Shanghai. He
looked out upon the moorings in the river and felt a faint familiarity with the
place. He went inside. The banquet hall on the second floor was old but well
kept. The celebration was for the progress made in constructing the feasibility
study or the “FS” that would determine whether the joint venture that was
already seven years in negotiation would be financially viable.
For the task of constructing the FS, John had brought to
China a state of the art Grid 386 chip based laptop computer. The US State
Department was consulted to see if the laptop could be brought into Red China
in July of 1988. The two color screen was halloween orange plasma on a black
background. There were no financial templates available for the Lotus 1-2-3
spreadsheet program so in the six working days they were in Shanghai, John had
produced a P&L, balance sheet , cash flow and capital spending model for
the joint venture going out 10 years. Sales were adjusted to make the numbers
work out to an acceptable level. John worked on the model as numbers were
defined by members of the negotiating team during the day and he worked into
the nights in his room on the 17th floor of the new Shanghai Hilton
overlooking the city of an estimated fifteen million people housed in buildings
three and four stories high stretching in all directions. The high-rise
developments were islands of new construction in a sea of older urban sprawl. Fifteen
percent of all the high-rise construction cranes in the world were currently in
Shanghai.

With the FS well on its way to done, a banquet was held the
night before they were to leave for Seoul South Korea by way of Japan. There
were no direct flights from China to South Korea as technically, Red China and
South Korea were still at war from the 1950’s. At the banquet at the Bund, a
number of delicacies were served. John ate a number of frog’s legs that were
very tasty. His Chinese hosts watched John intently as John tasted a gelatinous
blob. He decided it had the texture of a Polish dish that his mother Jane made
for the holidays called studzienina that was jellied pigs feet. With
studzienina as a reference, he downed the rest of the Chinese delicacy. The
Chinese told John that he had just eaten sea slug. John declined a second
helping. Other Chinese food tried during John stay was grilled eel, tastes like
trout, and goose liver pate which though quite good stained his tongue brown.
Had he known that his uncle Stanley was on the first ship
into Shanghai after the Japanese were defeated in World War II, the banquet at
the Bund would have been a good time to offer up this interesting family story.
Unfortunately, John did not discover this story until well after his uncle
Stanley’s death in the mid-1990’s.

Wife Mary and children Brookye and Sandy took John’s absence
to travel home to Louisville for a few weeks. Mary had taught first grade in
Cairo West Virginia for two years while John finished up his MBA at Ohio
University in Athens Ohio in the late 1970’s. She had finished up her
bachelor’s degree at Marietta College in 1976 after attending the University of
Louisville before she married John in 1974.
With all of her credits in art from her associate degree from Green Mountain
College and her education classes from U of L, Mary had a double major from
Marietta and dual certification in elementary education 1-8 grades and art
K-12. She taught art in Worcester City Schools in the late 1980’s. For a while
she had her own art studio on Main Street in Holden when schools cut back on
art and music programs to save money in the early 1990’s. Mary supported her
daughter’s high school interests in art, music and theater including when she
led a group of students to construct and paint a giant castle set for their
annual madrigal dinner complete with a large painted rose window. She taught first grade in a private school in
North Brookfield for a few years in the late 1990’s before getting a job
teaching art at Notre Dame Academy, a private Catholic girls high school in
Worcester.
“How many people live in Taegu?” John asked the leader of
the company delegation as the aircraft prepared to land in south central South
Korea. They had a meeting with some
lawyers in Seoul before heading to Taegu.
“Taegu is about the same size as Worcester” was the
response. That would be about 160,000 thought John. The city below seemed much
larger than Worcester.

“Let’s go to dinner to my favorite restaurant. I have not
had Chinese food in a while” said the company president.
Korean Chinese food turned out to be garlic with Chinese
food added. The real Korean food was much more interesting with John trying
grilled octopus, kimchi and grilled garlic later in the trip.
Going over to Asia, there was no perceived jet lag for John.
Coming back, John was OK until the next morning when he could not stand and
walk across the room without falling to one side. He was worn down going into
the financial closing for the quarter and yearly budget process. He also needed
to finish up the FS. He was on overload working from 7am to 7pm as a normal day
and added hours during “crunch time’. He made some inquiries and arranged a
transfer back to the operational side of the business from corporate. He had
only planned to work in finance for a few years starting in 1981 because that
was the weakest area of knowledge getting his only B in his MBA in the
Accounting and Finance class. He stayed in finance as his personality suited
the job of analyst but the schedule wore him out.


“We will have to check on that.”