Blurker Gone Bad

Clear differences between Seoul and Gumi:

1. The view from the hotel room - photos coming soon


2. Gumi isn't found on weather.com


3. No Armed Forces Network on the TV


4. Fire escape "kit" includes a rolled up ladder to throw out the window (although the window does not open!)

Similarities:

1. There is chili paste in everything we eat. :)


2. The AC control in the room is a placebo (woke up this morning to 81F - apparently they do not want us to be cold) :p


3. The mountains in the distance are covered in fall colors

Full disclosure -- Gumi is one of the main manufacturing and technology centers in S. Korea, so I guess I should be comparing it to Pittsburgh or Detroit rather than Seoul.

Amusing note: We used to joke that my friend Brian looked Asian, although he had no Asian blood as far as he knew. Apparently he looks Korean. The Korean HP rep that we are working with here looks so much like him she could be his sister.

My flight from Hong Kong got pushed out this afternoon, so I have a little extra time here in the hotel before I leave for the airport. It looks like Ike will close down IAH for a few days, so I have made reservations in Chicago for Friday and Saturday night. I am maximally stressed over not being home to help drangelo hunker down, but there's nothing much I can do at this point. Amazingly, I may have company on Saturday, as follybard and arenson9 have offered to take a 3 hour drive to hang with me. It is not to be believed.

Stay safe you guys, and spit in Ike's eye for me!

I am off to Las Vegas today for a technical conference.  Most of my time will be spent at Specification committee meetings (including all day Sat and Sun!), as well as a few additional consortia face to face meetings.  Hopefully, there will be free wireless at the convention center so that I can keep connected during the day. 

Being in Vegas does not attract me in the least.  I don't gamble, I rarely drink, and I no longer eat to excess.  I'll be trying to do some networking with my colleagues from other companies (as well as folks from other sites in my own company), but that's about the extent of the "fun" I expect to have.

So many things have been pissing me off this week.  I hope a change of scenery will help lighten my mood.  But for now...still grumpy.

Shopping success! I was able to find pretty much everything that I was looking for on this trip. I wanted to get more Pashmina and Pumas, and I was looking for some other things as xmas gifts. I'm starting to enjoy the bargaining process. Some of the salespeople are so much fun to bargain with, especially at the end, when everyone is best friends together and they make sure you'll come back and bring everyone you know. :)

I also found some fruit in the expat market that I brought back for Sunday breakfast. I have a couple of wax apples here, and a few of the "hairy Chinese strawberries" that we were introduced to in Hawaii. It turns out that they're really called rambutan. Yum.

Made it.

Suitcase with most of my clothing (including all of my business clothes)...not so much. Hopefully it will get here by Sunday night.


Better update when I'm not so grumpy.

Made it!

Here I am, back on the 73rd floor of the Grand Hyatt in Shanghai. There's another building going up next to us, and I have a great view of the construction. It's BIG.

The weirdness is associated with my internet connection. I mentioned a while ago about the censoring of television here. (I can't find the entry, but there was a situation where Bush was being protested by a Chinese national, and CNN was running the video, but every time it came to the point where you could hear what was said, in Chinese, the cable went out. It took me a few tries until I realized it was being purposely blocked.) Well, for some reason, I can't reach my usual journaling sites through the hotel internet. It was annoying as hell until I found that I could do so by using my company's VPN to tunnel there via the US networks. So there, you censoring meanies! ;)

So, yes, you lucky people will have me posting from China once again. I know you're just pining for messages from me while I'm away.

This trip is only scheduled to last a week. I'm not doing the typical training/auditing this time. What I'm doing this week is working on a a specific issue with one of our suppliers. We are looking at the effect of higher pollution/dust levels in India on the failure rates of our products there. Why am I in China then? The units are being sent from India to the supplier, who happens to be here in China, where we will do the in-depth failure analysis. The program will run for 90 days, but I will be here for the first week to help train the engineers in how to inspect for contamination and corrosion. I'm looking forward to getting some good data over the course of the study, and hopefully getting a publication out of it.

It's raining here. My hotel room is high enough that I'm right in the middle of the cloud bank. It's both cool and eerie to watch the clouds blow by when you're at their level. It feels as though I'm at sea, like the hotel is sailing through the mist. You should see what it's done to the traffic down below. ;)

I fly out tomorrow. I can't wait to get home.

You never forget the horrible traffic in Shanghai. However, I had forgotten about the constant horn honking that these guys think they need to do. Yesterday it took us 2.5 hours to get to the plant, and 2 hours to get back. (It's usually a 1 hour drive.)

There was one moment of Zen, however. On the way back to the hotel last night, during one particularly long stretch of not moving, the drivers (there were two) treated me to a real live Chinese Fire Drill. Yes, they both got out of the car, ran around to the opposite side in that stereotypical stiff-legged, straight-armed way, and got back into the car. I'm sure they have no idea how amusing it was.

Well, hello there! It's me again, back east. No, way back east. Further...further...yep, that's it. China. Again.

Right now I'm in Suzhou, but I'll be off to Shanghai in a couple of days to spend the remaining glorious 2.5 weeks training and auditing suppliers. Woo hoo! Fun? You betchya! Aunt Polly doesn't let just anyone fly to China to train and audit suppliers, you know! (And, btw, we are hiring, in case anyone wants to take Aunt Polly up on that idea.)

The flight was uneventful (yay!), and I'm still trying to fight through the jet lag (boo!), but all in all it's the same China that it was back in April.

So, you guys should write me email, or reply to my LJ, or IM me or something so I don't forget who I am while I'm over here. :)

The trip has been approved.  I will be going back to Shanghai (and the surrounding areas) for three weeks starting three weeks from now.  The good part is, now that I am a Preferred Flyer on United, I qualify for better seats.  Yay!

The bad part is, this time I'm going by myself.  Boo!  It's actually physically exhausting to have to be "on" all of the time for training and auditing suppliers.  It makes me want to crawl into a hole and not talk to anyone for a week after I get back.  Luckily, I get back right before Thanksgiving, so I should have some time off to veg out and be snarky if I feel like it.

Not that I would ever feel like being snarky.  ;)