Ah....

I had the meeting today on the website proposal after working for two days non-stop getting things ready. The group that I met with if you are ready was:



Phew... done typing. I was surprised to see the the department name in both languages (E & C) fixed on the name card presented to me.

Anyway after six months of negotiation back and forth in writings and translations, I got involved. Only One week of real work for me really. The end result was pretty much as I expected. Based on my biz associate's briefing from before, the department was ready to doe out money and approved the website proposal. Nah.... Once this latest proposal was presented, the format, the requirements and the content were asked to be changed yet again. And now, the "ownership" (both physical and content-wise) of the eventual website is to be owned by the gov't. It will dictate and manage. In essence, it will not be an international website; but a Chxxxxx gov't website hosting International material. Right. The reason why is: you receive the funding and therefore it is the property of "you know who". I wasn't gullible. I kept wondering about the ownership structure since day 1 I got involved. The answer back then was "free rein" by us. Ummm....

Then there was the budgetary thing. I asked for 1.4M in local currency. In the budget, I placed some indicators to test the reviewers' reaction. True to form, the responses were conflicting - from the same person. On one hand, said too high; but on the other hand, suggested our wage estimate was too low. Then there was this little suggestion of paying us about 10% of the request money; the other 90%, not sure where it goes. And when there is some real issues, both reviewers switched to Shanghainese dialect; to me, that was not professional. But then again, we have been dicked around for six months.

I spent a day getting a site mocked up; when I asked the reviewers what they want to see - the website or the budget, they chose the latter; not even interested in what everyone had initially agreed on doing for this project; that is to create an eco-city web portal to provide green and eco-friendly information and align partnerships from all over the globe with a focus on this country. That was my other test.

So what is up on their sleeves?

Only been involved for about 2 weeks, elapse time. So did not lose that much time nor energy. Actually, enjoyed the little show today. Give me an idea on how gov't biz works (slightly) and practice on my Chinese comprehension.

Tomorrow, need to re-evaluate, 730am, Starbucks. Yuck, bad coffee, expensive, tasteless.