Another surprising day

When all previous CSC participants told me the most important skill to have when you go on the Assignment is flexibility I did not really understand why they highlighted it so much.
After my 2nd day with clients I know why ;)
Today I was supposed to meet with Johns client, a Primary school, after my client did postpone my Assignment for 2 weeks. After waiting for 2 hours in the hotel and talking to our translators with 10 calls to the Principal of the school without any answer we finally found out that the customer will pull out. So there we were - no client for John and mine is postponed.
But we have Thu Trang in our Team of 10 which had a very demanding client and we decided to (after listening to her yesterday) search for material for her and showed the translaters how to blog etc. The Thu Trang spoke with her client to tell him that we would be 3 people to help him and he was delighted as he has so many ideas he would like to discuss with us.
So the Director from this company invited us spontaneously to a Tennis match tonight, even when we did not meet him beforehand. That says something about how to do Business in Vietnam :)
So we had an impressive experience tonight on the court with a lot of Vietnamese bank directors and our client.
But the best thing happened over dinner afterward. When we all cheered with our glasses the woman had to sit down and the director and John (from our team) had to cheer again and empty the glass in one go. That happened a few times this evening and showed how important the ranking/hierarchy in Vietnam still is. ONLY men were allowed to do that on the table ;)
Oh I actually forgot to mention how the day started:
John, Jan & myself met at 6.30am and had a nice run on the seafront. It was already very humid and warm, but it was so great to exercise a bit. Afterwards we had a swim in the pool and then were ready for breakfast and to meet the clients. Can life be better?
Picture: John & our client at the tennis match