My friend Paul Chan called me just now. He has returned to Shanghai from his Hong Kong home and has been in quarantine for four or five days. Altogether two weeks of quarantine he has to go through.
Pre-Covid-19, there were 20-30 flights a day between the two cities. Now, only one flight a day, and of the 300 seats only about 30 people were passengers.
"It looks like the epidemic is persisting!" he compained. "Last year they said they would open up the borders, but now it looks rather distant."
I said with the US reporting 190,000 new cases a day, and India also suffering a crisis of a big scale, the epidemic will last into next year. It's going to be the norm, I said.
He has been an advisor for a vegetarine food startup for a couple of years. That TV anchorperson kept talking, drawing in the air and has not started producing anything yet, when I asked him whether that company has started selling.
"Ay! You know investors look at the founder and product sophitication as key investment criteria. I told her lots of ideas but she didn't listen." He started complaining, each time I mentioned that beautiful day-dreamer, who was once a TV talk show in San Fransisco and Taiwan.
"She is an artist and has a strong personality," I said. "I'm not surprised with how she has behaved."
Paul asked me about how I was going along with bakery. I told him Bimbo is acquiring actively globally and in China it has acquired Mankattan.
"Oh, is it? Oh yes, Bimbo is big," he said.
"I started making bread when I was 12, and I have a deep feelings for bread." he said. "My parents were in the bakery business."
Paul has some negative, actually factual observations about the hectic alternative protein industry. He sees through the bubbles and hype into some real issues. And the market is not as pretty and encouraging as portrayed by the startups. I encouraged him to be the keynote speaker in the next Veggie World due to take place early next year - It was originally planned for later this year, but the epidemic postponed it.
Just as I was starting this diary, an Israeli businessman sent me a postcard on WeChat. The jews are entering their Jewish New Year. Now is the year 5782 according to the Jewish calander.
Amazing! But I also think of how he has been trying to do some Israel-China business in the past two years. Unable to travel to China, he has held quite a few meetings on WeChat, exploring some ideas, business leads...
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