Internship Update

As pointed out by a few loyal followers of my blog, I have not been providing much information about my internship, and that's really the reason I'm here is to gain an experience in a foreign work environment. So here it is...

Lately, I've been working mostly with the brewery, Closed Door, and 3 Dumplings. I'll start with 3 Dumplings, because I haven't even told anyone about it yet, it's new, so let me explain. Kelley and her two friends (Cathy and Pauline) recently began a website that offers tours of the city of Shanghai. It's mostly directed towards food-related tours, so they provide customers with an opportunity to see Shanghai through its incredible cuisine varieties. You can do market (shopping) tours, restaurant tours, nightlife tours, and also take cooking classes. Check it out at 3Dumplings.com...

Currently, I'm working on some SEO (search engine optimization) and online advertising, so that people will be able to easily find 3Dumplings.com and will hopefully use it to tour Shanghai! It's a good thing I took that Google AdWords class at Albion this past semester, or I'd be wondering aimlessly around the web trying to figure this stuff out. It's great to enter a real-life situation with knowledge that you've obtained from school, being able to utilize things that you learn in class is really a great feeling. It's nice when your boss says 'research how to do this' and you don't have to because you already know. With this project, I've been educating Kelley just as much as she's been educating me...it's been interesting. It'll be fun to see where the website goes from here.

As for the brewery, I'm continuing to plan for our 4th of July party coming up. I've been assigned to the task of organizing a Boat Race 'Chug for Charity' Beer Drinking Competition (teams of 5 compete in a bracket-style knock out tournament of drinking mayhem), as well as a Pie Eating Contest (blueberry pies, no hands...it'll be incredibly messy and funny). Here are the registration forms that I came up with for these two events:

I'm also helping to make the transition from the original BCB location (which closed down when the current location went up a year ago, but is now used as a 'warehouse' to brew the beer), to the new location which will open on September 1st of this year. We've been taking a lot of inventory and sitting with design teams to build the layout of the new place. It's been very interesting to see what all goes into opening a new restaurant. It's a lot of work, that's for sure. I imagine I'll be helping move things and set things up once the new location is ready to be furnished! Oh boy :-)

As for Closed Door, it's being shut down. The whole 'private social club/restaurant membership' deal was not working for people, and it's impossible to change the license of the building over so that it can be used as a working restaurant, so it just has to be shut down. I guess some things have to end so that new things can begin. All of the staff from Closed Door will be moved to the brewery and be used there, so it's not a total loss for everyone involved.

I haven't gotten involved in much regarding the Molecular Martini Bar lately, which is kind of a bummer, but I'm hoping to dip into that some more very soon. Kelley and her business partner (Eduardo Vargas) recently had a meeting with some investors for the big project, so I'm hoping things will start progressing here in the near future and hopefully I can get involved with a lot.

More to come soon. I lost my cell phone, it just disappeared on me last night. So I have to go out and buy a new one! I'm also going to hopefully get a haircut today, we'll see.

USA plays Ghana on Saturday at 2:30pm EST (2:30am on Sunday, my time)...it should be a fun game to watch!! Wednesday's game was craaaaazy, everyone was going nuts around here, it was a great moment for American Sports history =) I've got my own soccer happening tomorrow as well, another 7 v 7 game with the Shanghai Puxi Lions. Should be fun!

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PMM