My Dad :D

Intensecure caught this post during the 30 second duration that it was published, then taken offline almost immediately. Amazing.

I guess I have to publish it anyways and I don't know why I obsess over things concerning numbers, as described below:

I was going to post this right after writing about the iPod case, but I wanted to cap the posts at exactly 40 in the first month of writing for this blog, which would be April, the fourth month of the year. Besides, I didn't have a picture to go with it at the time anyways. [I want to have all my posts go with a picture, but I don't really feel like turning on my desktop just to get a photo of my dad then turning it off. Here's a temporary one that I have on my camera, even though I thought I deleted almost all of them.]


What a funny picture of him yawning while driving. In fact, now that it's been uploaded and doesn't look as awful as I thought it would, I might even keep it. In case you're wondering, I believe we were driving our Toyota Corolla and not the Camry, as I had thought originally. I can't remember where we were going or why I took it either. Well, I took it because I was probably bored and laughing maniacally while keeping myself entertained. They don't mind having their pictures taken as much as I do, so it's all in good fun. That's our garage door opener clipped to the mirror on the top.

My dad went on a business trip last week, where he bought me the iPod case. My mom has been worrying about this trip since January and she's been on his case to shorten it every single day. These trips usually last about three weeks, but he ended up having to strategically shorten it to seven days, one week including plane flights, to HK exclusively. I don't think it's very fair, because that's what he was essentially hired to do - accompany his boss on business trips, namely to Asia. On his business card under his name, is written New Buisness Delvelopment. Yes, both Business and Development are spelled incorrectly. My dad has had maybe over several thousand business cards made very recently, because he never brings enough with him to foreign countries, where he always seems to get caught working on business affairs. Typical of my workaholic father. I checked his other ones and they were copied from the original so they're all incorrect.

To be more specific, he is a buyer or a product manager, as described at his previous company. He picks items that he thinks will sell well, but instead of choosing them for a mail order catalog targeting senior customers, he is selecting them for infomercials to be shown on television and, more recently, online. I am so glad they updated their sites for the company and for online shopping. They also sell the "As Seen On TV" products in stores, such as Walmart, for people who don't like calling in and giving their name, credit card number, expiry date and address over the phone. I wouldn't. I've worked at a customer service call centre and I know how easily that information could be abused. Before my dad joined the team, they were a distributer, sourcing from another distributer in the US. Why pay another distributer when you can buy directly from The Source - China, where everything is or can made. I'm told that they don't like the label "Made in China" anymore and they're trying to change it to "Made by China". China as its own proper entity, as if it were a specific person. Strange thinking.

Let's say my dad picked out an item in HK or saw a unique but interesting one here in Canada that Northern Response (International) Ltd. wants to sell on television as a revolutionary, state-of-the-art product. First of all, it has to undergo a long process that now seems very similar to a bill becoming law in Parliament: My dad will present it to his boss and some other people, who will either pick it up or reject it immediately. The other option is that they will laugh, make fun of it, mess around with it at the office, reconsider and...probably reject it again later. If it does go through, he will go and contact either the original supplier or find his own sources to compare for the best price. Sometimes his sources actually look for other suppliers for him or they find factories to make it for themselves if it's very unique or they think they can sell it elsewhere and they send samples, wherever they get it from, so he can present it again. Then the sales people (the guys sitting next to him at the office) make a sales pitch to companies like Walmart or Showcase, which sells all the "As Seen On TV" products in-store, regardless of it supposedly being "not available in stores". If all goes well, my dad places an order and agrees upon the method of payment with the supplier. I forgot how they do it exactly, but it's a clever, conservative way to ensure that they don't buy thousands of pieces and end up over-stocking, which was a common problem at the other company. Eventually, they might hire some celebrity or a bunch of attractive models, who did not get that way through their product but actually started out that way to get the job to advertise it in stores. My dad looks out for other items in stores or at product shows (hardware shows, toy shows, etc), like he did in HK, but this time the focus was more on visiting the factories and suppliers, because they were so pressed for time. Here, the sales people also attend product shows, where they demonstrate the product and try to convince other stores or companies to source the product through them, just like they used to do before.

A large portion of this work used to be part of the sales department, but it is now part of product development, which is mainly composed of my dad and so he answers directly to the president/founder of the company. Big assets that put my dad above a lot of people were his experience and language abilities. No, not English. The "tremendous experience", as his boss tells all of his acquaintances he has and met with overseas, is mostly referring to the 28 years he has worked with factories and suppliers in Asia. Another important component was, at the moment when a former colleague recommended him, his boss was looking to hire someone to solve the problem with the middle-man and source directly from China. He was really quite desperate to find a travel guide/translator to take him to Asia, because he's gone a few times before in the past but came back with nothing, as he couldn't communicate and didn't know where to even begin.

A lot of people thought he would never be able to find a job at his age when he lost his old one when the other company went bankrupt. Age and experience really does come in handy, even if it looks unappealing on a resumé, because he only had a few jobs on it and his BA in Commerce, as they came to call it, was completed in one of the top universities in Taiwan, but they don't know that. All they see is a foreign one, an old guy with 'not a lot of job experience', probably with poor language skills - more specifically, English. I wrote those cover letters and put together his resumé for him, so there's no reason for the prejudice.

As you can probably see, I'm very proud of my dad. And as you would probably guess, my dad's the best and it's not even Father's Day, haha XD