Nov. 28th (The fourth day)

Eunmi liked to stay in the hotel at night instead of going out to do sightseeing. She is a mother of two kids and a very successful entrepreneur. She liked to talk to her husband and kids on the phone or watch the videos of her kids and movies in the hotel room. I could see it was very painful for her to travel abroad for business away from her family. Anyway, I decided to stay in the hotel room with her as I didn't want to hang out with Kurt and John. Every morning Kurt told me he went to downtown while I was just staying in the hotel room and ate at Cheesecake factory I was dying to go to.:( But I could enjoy a burger more if I eat it with people I love.
Today was an important day to me because there was a meeting arranged with U company and dinner after that. So I was a bit tensed. While John and Kurt went for lunch, Frank told me to amend the presentation material that John made. Frank believes in my English skills and gives me all the English-related work. It is definitely flattering for me that my boss believes in my skills. But it was kind of stifling that I had to revise the material at our booth because John would feel bad when he came back and saw me do that. When Kurt and John came back from lunch, Kurt came up to me and watched what I was doing carefully (Just like he does all the time:)). Kurt said "Oh, you are making some correction on the material that John made. Hmm, John wouldn't feel good.". I knew another thing that Kurt would be thinking in his head - "Why does Frank tell her to do that instead of telling ME to do?!".
At 4pm, Frank and I went over to U company's booth and had a meeting with John, the CEO and Amol, the service manager. Mainly Frank talked and I took notes of what was discussed. I was happy I didn't have any dfficulty understanding what John and Amol said. But I also wanted to talk in response to their requests and questions. I knew I couldn't just open my mouth and say what's in my head in that situation because Frank has the power to decide and say what can be done on behalf of our company but I don't. It's always been the difficulty in my job. Anyway the meeting went well without too many serious subjects brought up.
At night, our CEO, Frank and I went to the restaurant that I booked for dinner with U company. Before our CEO came, Frank told me that it was not gonna be fun at all and he was feeling stressed as he had to interpret what our CEO would say. Poor Frank...
John, Laurent and Amol were having drinks at the bar when we got there. As we all walked into the restaurant, I left my coat with a waiter and he gave me a ticket after we all sat down at the table. I thought the ticket was for the table so I put it in the middle of the table. Later after finishing dinner, I realized it was a ticket for my coat when the waiter asked me to show the ticket. That was embarrassing.:)
I sat bewteen John and Amol. And our CEO sat between John and Frank. Frank had to pay attention to what our CEO said and interpret it in English. But for me, it was almost like casual dinner as I didn't necessarily have to talk about business so i was having a lot of fun. John and Amol are both from GE and espeically John is a former vice president of GE healthcare Asia and known as a politically very savvy person. So I could have been a bit scared of him but as I don't usually feel timid talking to high profile people like him (for some reason), I was enjoying the dinner very much. John showed me his cell phone with which he can do everything and use Blackberry, a very popular Canadian portal site. John, Amol and Laurent all had quite big cell phones where Korean phones are getting thinner and smaller. I think they do more things on cell phones than Koreans do. I asked him how many emails he gets a day. He said 100 emails.:O While talking to him, I could feel he says things that are planned and measured in advance. With Amol, I talked about more casual things. He said he likes to go to night clubs and recommended a club to me and said I should go there while I was in Chicago. For some reason, Amol reminded me of James. He wasn't muscular, though. haha Amol said my English is very fluent so I got very confident and it made me talk more and more. The food was very good unlike the junk I had been eating at the exhibition hall but I was too full to eat much. I didn't order an appetizer and dessert and couldn't even finish the main dish. What a shame. I never get to make the most of chances like this where I can eat free food as much as I want.:)
There was no forceful drinking, exaggerated actions and loudness. Of course it was a formal dinner with two CEOs present. However I couldn't help but think why work dinners at our company could be like this.
After the dinner, we came back to the hotel and our CEO told Frank to call John and Kurt and wake them up to have another drink with them. It was 10:30 pm and the next day was not even the last day of the exhibition. Frank whispered to me that he would tell our CEO that it was my turn to go to the exhibition hall early tomorrow morning so I had to go to sleep. As soon as I heard him say that, I thought these 4 men were going somewhere strange and open exculsively to men as I have heard Korean men go to strange places during their business trips. Frank said it would be tough for me to sit and drink with our CEO because I can't drink a lot. I was amazed again by Frank's considerateness.