Tania in China

Mon-Fri, Dec 4-8: Nothing but Work

Things had moved so smoothly last week that I thought this week should be easy. How wrong I was! I thought we had run one of the really long processes over the weekend, but found that what I thought would be a quick process Monday morning instead took almost 12 hours to complete! We are also having issues with the network between the servers and clients - causing something that should take 15 seconds to take 15 minutes instead. I work running flat out both Monday and Tuesday to get a system into condition to allow testing to begin Wednesday morning. I also have to prepare for the 3 days of class we will be holding Wed-Fri for the adminstrators from the remote sites about what exactly is this new software and how do they install and adminster it.

After some really long hours I finally get a system put together for testing Wednesday morning, and we begin our class. We really don't have 2 1/2 days worth of material, so we are stretching. The first day I am doing a session about "what is this software? How does it work" that is supposed to take 3 hours, but I end up just being able to fill 2. All along I am running back and forth to the testers to make sure everything is going smoothly. I also find out that I don't have a projector for my installation demonstration Thursday morning, so we quickly shuffle things around and throw it in Wednesday afternoon - the only time a projector is available. Now we have nothing to fill Thursday morning, so I end up taking the students in small groups to try the install on their own. We are really scrambling to throw all this stuff together!

I don't have any sessions Thursday afternoon, so I am finally able to start to get caught up on all the stuff I let slide during the class, although I also have to finish the slides for my "What to do when things go wrong" session on Friday.

Thursday night I finally break down and go to the buffet for dinner for the first time during this trip. I haven't gone before since it is over double the price as lunch, so that makes any of the surrounding restaurants a lot cheaper. But today I decide is the day, and I sample the expanded selection. They have raw steaks and seafood on display, and I select a filet to be cooked medium. You even get a choice of seasonings. Most of the other hot dishes are seafood, so I just make a salad to eat while waiting for my steak. The steak arrives faster than expected, and before I know it a waitress has sneaked in and taken my half-eaten salad! You really have to watch these girls - they will run up and take the plate as you are lifting the last forkful of food to your mouth! I had also decided to have a beer, but I didn't know that it came in half-litre bottles! If I were to finish it I would be truely toasted. The dessert selection is much expanded, and I really liked the coffee custard and the strawberry torte. My only disappointment was that one of the nights I had eaten from the menu in the dining room I had seen creme brulee - no creme brulee this time. Darn. All and all I am glad I did it once, but it was not worth the almost $25 it cost me to eat there. This will be my only dinner buffet of the trip.

Every night this week we have had a phone status meeting with the US at 9pm, so that had really messed up my sleeping schedule. I find that when I get back from the meeting it is impossible for me to go right to sleep, so I have been up far too late.

Friday I teach my last session, although I am not able to fill all of the 2 hours I was supposed to, so I end the session showing my pictures I took in Suzhou. The class ends with us all going to lunch at the dumpling restaurant across the street, then the out-of-town students head for home, and all of the local employees head off to the office Christmas party. The company has rented some facility where you can play basketball and badmiton and Mah Jongg and sit in a jacuzzi and other activities for the afternoon, so the busses take off at 1pm.

I have opted not to go, so I am left in the office with Harshad - my coworker from the US who is here to complete the testing. We work on testing the system after some networking changes had been made by the US the night before, and although things are much better, they are still not perfect. We get done with testing around 4, and decide to eat dinner together tonight before our phone meeting. We go back to the little French restaurant, and it is not as good as it was the last time. It is still a nice change, but not exceptional. On the way back to the office we hit a different DVD store, and I pick up some more movies for my collection.

I only found out on Wednesday that I can ask to have a DVD player put in my room! That sure would have been nice to know about 8 weeks ago - it is so much better to watch movies on the TV instead of my laptop. I ask for a DVD player for the weekend, and it is dropped off Friday. When I say dropped off, that is what I mean - I had to figure out how to connect it. First I try with the TV in the bedroom which has the access ports for the cables right on the front of the box, but after a lot of searching I find that I cannot plug it in there because it has an American-style plug that won't fit the recepticle in the bedroom. Then I find the TV in the drybar in the livingroom has an American-style recepticle in the back wall of the cabinet, so I have to haul the TV out to reach the plug, and try to figure out exactly what to hook up to where since this TV doesn't have the nice red/yellow/white ports to let you know where to plug what. Finally everything is connected and I am actually able to watch a real TV. I make myself a little bed on the couch and settle down to do some real DVD viewing. This is going to make for a nice weekend!

posted by Tania @ 2:21 PM