Our Final Day at Hante

Today was the day we had been pushing towards for the last 4 weeks. Though truth be told, there had been so much that we delivered throughout the engagement that wrapping things up was really just icing on the cake (that Hante bought us later that afternoon). After some last minute scrambling of assembling our last updates, we were ready to present our final findings and recommendations.

We spent most of the morning going over things with Carosa. We gave a quick preview of the presentation, and went over the details of the documentation that we generated to support all the other consulting and workshops we did over the course of the engagement.

For our final lunch at Hante, the A-team went out for hot pot again — though this time we went to the good place so that everyone would be able to join (not to name any names). It was delicious as always. I really enjoy making my own little sauce with Sesame paste and hot sauce to dip everything in. We also settled up with “the bank” aka Katherine. Each time we’ve gone out for lunch, she has paid and we have just given her money to draw down a balance from. Katherine also brought in the iRings that I had asked her to order and she gave us each one. I think they are really pretty cool.

In the afternoon, Hante prepared to send us off with a little party. They brought in a ton of fresh fruit, a cake, beer, some wine from Jin Pai (who now we had come to know quite well), and some odd, but good apple juice milk. I also got to try durian for the first time. I’ve always heard a lot about the “stinky fruit,” but have never had a chance to try it myself. Apparently in some places they don’t even let you eat it because it smells so bad. And when they started to pull it open, I can definitely see why! It smelled horrible! Once you got past the smell, though, it actually tasted really good. Unfortunately for Matthias, he did not share my opinion and almost gagged while trying it.

About 30 minutes into the party, Karen and Elaine came over to watch our final presentation. You should have seen the look on their faces when they opened the door and smelled the durian. Priceless!

Since each of us worked on different pieces of the presentation (and both Matthias and I wanted to present, and Maria didn’t want to be the odd person out), we decided it would be best for all three of us to present our pieces. I did feel a bit bad because we didn’t have time to go over all of it ahead of time with the girls, but since we had already talked about most of it previously, it still worked out.

It was also a very casual atmosphere that Matthias and I had been presenting in for the last 3 weeks, so it was almost like any other day, just with different content. This also served as a dry run for what we needed to cover in the closing ceremony, which was good to be able to do. One thing we immediately noticed was that it went too long, but at least it went well. After we finished the formal presentation, we all sat back down around the food and were going to answer some questions for the team. However, Carosa thought that the staff might not ask their questions with the Pyxera there, so they ended up leaving at that point.

We didn’t stay too long afterwards because we had a meeting with the CSR leadership team. However, before we left, Hante showered us with thanks and presents, including some really nice glass awards and some jasmine tea. When we got back to the hotel, we found out that the David and Jasmine’s flights were delayed so that wouldn’t make the meeting anyways, but the 12 of us still got together to go over last minute logistics for the closing ceremony.

After that, Matthias and I took off to go shopping a bit with the plans to eventually go swimming at the bathing beach #3. Since we have pretty well shopped all the white shops pretty well at this point, so we just wandered down the boardwalk to peruse the informal shops (essentially a bunch of random trinkets spread out on the boardwalk). However, it was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to get one of the bracelets similar to what Mr. Ma had that he used for a head massage. And you couldn’t beat the price. Where one of the guys at the shops offered one for 350 (I still think he was smoking something), the lady on the boardwalk offered them for 10 yuan. Most of the formal shops wanted at least 40. I felt so bad about the price, I didn’t even haggle!

Matthias and I got down to the beach and pulled off our shoes and started wading a bit in the ocean.

A few minutes later, Maria showed up and surprised us — which was good because that meant that we could take turns actually going into the water when the other one watched the stuff. The water felt great, and you could certainly see why there were so many other people swimming in the shallow water. The three of us all walked back to the hotel, and it had already gotten pretty late so the A-team parted ways since we had a busy day with the closing ceremony and last full day tomorrow.