Work and communications are facilitated via email, conference calls and such. In this capacity, I’m meeting more people and am more outwardly social, but the biggest difference is that everyone would come to me, now I have to go to everyone.
In moving back to China, I also have more opportunity for travel. I keep my files on my laptop, so I can travel anywhere. We have many hotel projects which require that we look more, see more, and seek to connect to our travel experiences. So I am able to share both my good and bad travel experiences (to help our projects run more smoothly and successfully). My takeaway has been just how important details and service is. Everybody can create elegant or nice decorations, but the soul of a project needs culture. It has to be unique. When customers share their experience with friends, you want it to be specific to your place.
For my life, this opens my mind. I’m learning about different cultures, meeting different people, and sharing ideas and experience is inspiring. I’ve met people with very interesting backgrounds, acquired a great deal of knowledge and skills just by talking to people. These are life lessons that you can never learn from books or school.
So while I began by saying “There’s no place like home”, I’ll wrap this up by quoting Confucius: “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
~ Ningning Lu
