Final Thoughts

Prepare yourself. I am about to tell you a long winded introduction to the topic of globalization. In 2003, at the age of 23, I hopped on an international flight out of San Francisco airport, and thirteen hours later I found myself in Hong Kong. When I arrived and passed through customs, I looked around but did not see a sign with my last name. I waited some more, but nobody came to pick me up as expected.

It was my first international business trip, and I was traveling alone. I quickly felt stranded. Every number I called, both to the United States and to China, went unanswered. The only bit of hope I had was a business card I was carrying in my wallet of our Chinese manufacturing partner. It was a two sided business card with English on one side and Chinese on the other. I handed it to an information booth person and after a few phone calls I was patched through to our partner.

Perhaps I panicked too quickly. After several apologies, and a little more waiting in the terminal, a driver arrived to take me to the meeting where we would discuss the final modifications to the first generation of the Q-Loader paintball loading system I had been developing during the previous two years.

Hong Kong was clearly beautiful. It has lush green rolling hills that rise abruptly out of the ocean. The freeways wrap the hill sides and leap off across bays along modern asymmetric suspension bridges. I noticed that the cars were much smaller. I could lay length wise and touch each end of the van I was riding in. The driver was actually the son of the man who owned the manufacturing company, who also happened to be traveling along in the passenger seat.

It was nice to finally see the faces of the voices I had been talking with during the previous six months. After about half an hour, I could tell these men were very formal and proud of their work, and were anxious to ask me questions regarding the project.

We began discussing several details of the project, as the owner looked over the new drawing package I had put together. Then, I was suddenly taken back by a question that sent a shockwave through my body. I was asked where I had planned on staying during the three months or more that it would take to start the project. At that moment, I realized that the people driving the car had no idea who I was or what project I was working on. Long story short, I was given the wrong business card and found myself back at the airport about two hours later.

That was not the only startling discovery I made during my travels abroad. When I finally met up with the correct partners, I gained many positive insights regarding globalization. I learned that in order to move beyond globalization’s “love it or leave it” stigma, you really do need to ask the people on the other side how they feel about doing business. I learned that the machinists who were making our injections molds are respected in China the equivalent of a doctor in the United States. I learned that if part of the binary is fiction, then more might be fiction as well.

So in closing, if we learned anything from our readings this semester that will help us inhabit the floating world it would be this: Bessie Head – bloom where you are planted, Salman Rushdie – be careful who you piss off, Bharati Mukherjee – be free, Kazuo Ishiguro – forgive yourself, and Jared Hamilton –check your references.