Power Down- Behind the Scenes Pt 1

I think after blogging about some day last week being a perfect storm of problems, I think it only made sense to have the weekend that I had. I have always said that my now 3 years plus of doing business here in China will make a great book when and if I go home all in one piece. But this power situation in THINK UK may just be a book all unto itself.

I thought long and hard about whether to share some of the experiences I had on this blog and I decided to because I have always been completely honest and open here regardless of how it makes me look. If you haven't read much about what happened here then take a look back at the last dozen or so blog posts to get an idea of the craziness of the whole thing and then come back and read about some of the behind the scenes stuff that I saw, created, or witnessed over the last 5 or 6 days.

3pm January 15th - the Mayor's Office

After being without power for 6 hours and receiving little or no answers to what caused the problem or how long the problem would last, I started making phone calls to see if we could force the issue. One of those calls was to the Mayor's Office.

(Most of my experiences here were greatly helped by the work of my excellent company manager, Teresa. Without her hard work a lot of the work we did to help get this problem alleviated would not have been possible. She did not have to put her self in harm's way but she did anyways. Some of these experiences are partly hers but I will tell them in first person for clarity)

I explained the growing situation that was upon us here in THINK UK. We asked for help as these apartment complex's problems led to a lot of anger and violence over the last few months and as recently as that morning. We implored the Mayor to take action before things got worst. After I stated the situation, I realized quickly that help would not be provided. Just the opposite. The Mayor's representative began accusing me of causing problems and stirring up the masses and encouraging violence. I was told to stop standing up for these things and that if I didn't back off I would be risking heavy consequences. Maybe I should have backed off, but as the next few days progressed backing off was clearly not something I do naturally.