the only apt metaphor i can think of: imagine if during the opening ceremony for the olympics if jin xiping's speech had been 10 hours long

Ten hours. Ten whole hours was how long our hastily-called Sunday staff meeting was. It began at 9:30am and ended at 7:30pm and we didn't move from our chairs the entire time, except to individually step out for a minute or so for whatever reason. TV dinner-style cafeteria food and newpapers-for-placemats were even brought to us as we all sat and tried to figure out just why the hell this meeting was called in the first place. It had been advertised by our English-less boss (have I mentioned his previous job was directing propaganda films for the government?) as some kind opportunity, meeting, something that would change the current state of ship-at-sea-without-anyone-at-the-rudder the mag is painfully going through.

I'm sure to write more about it later, but long story short:

We each passionately spoke at length and openly about necessary changes that we each felt needed to be made to give the mag's design a greater focus, how to provide a clearer vision for its business plan and an overall strategy for reaching our target audience.

In ten hours, no concrete decisions were achieved regarding:
- What necessary changes need to be made
- How to give the mag's design a greater focus
- How to give its business plan a clearer vision
- Our overall strategy for reaching our target audience is
- Who our target audience is

The job becomes more and more a tragi-comedy every day I manage to muster enough energy to slug myself down to the office.

The funny thing is, the ten hours went by pretty quickly... and what we were going through was by no means "fun" in any sense of the word. I guess the mind is easily transfixed by something that refuses to be understood, but more on that later.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.