Home again

I'm back! Yep, made it home from China in one piece. What a trip - I'm very glad to be home.

The job was a bit of a mess. I spent most of my time in the office, unfortunately, up to 11 hours a day for 6 days of the week. I got my part of the work done, and managed to help out slightly on some other parts but its still a mess. And I'm glad to be back out of there.

I couldn't access blogger while in China - or rather, I couldn't view my blog, or any blog with the words blogspot or wordpress in the address. Oh well, I guess I didn't miss too much there, but the Great Firewall of China exists, and it doesn't like me.

Shanghai is an impressive city. Dirty, though. I couldn't believe how polluted the air is. While I was there, there were quite a few days that weren't cloudy. But even on the clearest of days with the sun shining the sky wasn't blue. All I could see was grey skies, with a faint blue tinge directly overhead. All around the horizon was grey and hazy. The buildings just faded away into the haze, and visibility was very bad. The day I went up to the viewing deck of the Oriental Pearl TV tower I could barely see across the river to the Bund. Anything beyond the Bund was invisible in the haze. Very disappointing. It does make me wonder how the olympics will go in Beijing next year, though.

The other thing I really didn't like was the aggressive approach taken by street selles. Wandering along Nanjing Road I just couldn't get away from people trying to sell me watches, dvds, t-shirts, shoes, belts, bags or in some cases, girls. As soon as I got rid of one seller, another would appear beside me and follow me down the road. If I got rid of him, then there would be another by my side in a matter of seconds. It really took all the fun out of just wandering around the city. I was always having to fend off their approaches. That happened pretty much everywhere I went in shanghai by myself - Nanjing Road, the Old Town, the French Concession, anywhere with shops and tourists.

The city does have an amazing history, though. I'd have liked to see a bit more of it, but didn't have a chance on this trip. Too much work going on for me to play the tourist. The shopping was good, but not as cheap as other parts of Asia. I did buy a few dodgy DVDs, which I haven't actually tried out yet. They work fine in the computer but whether they play on the dvd player I don't know yet. I bought a couple of items at BlueShanghaiWhite, which does a modern take on traditional Chinese pottery. I bought a vase and a couple of coffee cups that I thought were quite attractive. They had some lovely candle holders too, which I should have bought. Ah well - unfortunately it doesn't look like you can order them over the internet. But apart from that I didn't do much shopping because the aggressive approach of the sellers on the street just turned me right off. In some cases, in the Old Market area (YuYuan markets) they'd even come out of the shops and try and drag me in. I just wanted to browse and see what I could find but they kept throwing things in my face and dragging me here and there - I don't like that approach at all and so just didn't buy anything from them.

Still, I'd like to go back and take a longer look at the place. As far as Asian cities go its one of the better ones to end up in, I think.

Continued around the bend...

China China China

Well, I'm in Shanghai, although all I've seen of it so far is the hotel and the office. The hotel is fine, but nothing special. It's the Rainbow Hotel, out in Hongqiao. But it is just a hotel - the only advantage is that it's only 5 minutes walk to the office.

I'm still not thrilled about being here for work. I'd love to come here and explore on a holiday, but getting thrown into the project like this at the last minute is not something I wanted. Ah well... it's a new city, new job. I'll get out and explore a bit over the weekend.

As for this blog - I can log in and add posts. But I can't actually just view it as a web page. Or any blog, for that matter. Any website that has blogspot or wordpress in the address doesn't work from here. I guess that's the Great Firewall in action. There's probably a way around it but I'll just live with it for now. Got to love that firewall!

Continued around the bend...

What a crazy week

Well, it's been a bit of a crazy week around here. Sometimes work just sucks, you know?


It began on Monday, when one of our company managers rang and asked me (again) to go to China. Normally I would jump at a chance like that - company sponsored travel to somewhere I haven't been before is always a nice perk. But I'd been trying to avoid this job, because of the chaos that seems to be happening over there at the moment. I'd been asked before to look at some of this project work, and had decided I really didn't want to get involved. They're at a point in the project where they are presenting the results to our customer, and basically it doesn't work. Or so I've heard. So - results? One unhappy customer, some very stressed project staff, no time to sort it out. And that's when they ask me to go there - just in time to present it to the customer again without any real information or preparation. How fair is that? I wanted to stay as far away from this sort of mess as possible.

If they'd actually asked me a couple of months ago, when I could have made a difference by getting in early and working on it, then it would all have been ok. I could have prepared, maybe even helped them avoid some problems. Who knows? But its all a bit late now... anyway...

So I'm off to China on Wednesday. I guess I am excited about it - I do love travelling when I get the chance. I rushed into Brisbane on Thursday and applied for the visa. Fortunately they can do it overnight, instead of the normal four working days. I picked it back up on Friday morning. There were fairly long queues each day, which I wasn't expecting. Apparently China is quite the destination at the moment. But they were fast, and pretty efficient. Only complaint - they wouldn't accept my company AMEX card as payment. Just a minor pain, when it comes to reporting the expenses for the trip.

On top of all that excitement, I've been rushing around putting the finishing touches on my current project, trying to do some troubleshooting for a site in New Zealand and dealing with another strange request from a local customer. They always want to do things that are just not part of the standard system. Which is fine, because we get to charge them lots of money for making it work the way they want. Its just the timing that sucks.

So I'll be away for a few weeks. Good fun :)

Continued around the bend...

Turn off the phones!

It's been a really busy week, in all sorts of ways.

I've been snowed under at work this week, and so I'm very glad its now Saturday morning. Still, weeks like this are the fun ones - keeps me from getting bored at work, which is an increasing problem lately.


On the downside, weeks like this at work mean that I get almost nothing done outside of work. Try getting to the bank when you're working 10+ hours a day! It just doesn't happen. I have to say that bank hours are awful, and they need to make more of an effort to be available and open when people can actually get there. Bank business hours of 9am to 4pm are just incredibly inconvenient for anyone with an actual job to do...

Still, I guess they have no motivation to change, do they? They're making huge profits and there's not a whole lot of competition. And it's so inconvenient trying to change banks, moving accounts, loans, credit cards... once they've got you sucked in you're pretty much trapped and just have to put up with the crappy service.

Ok - that rant is over now...

This week also saw the beginning of the election campaign. Finally! The J-Ho finally called it, for November 24th. All that means is we've got six weeks (five, now) of electioneering, dirty politics, awful ads, and generally getting harrassed by our so-called leaders. Up until this week I was actually interested in the election - I want John Howard gone, and was getting really frustrated that he hadn't called it. Now I've lost interest - I just want to get to polling day, cast my vote, and hopefully get to watch John Howard concede defeat. Go Kevin! There are so many reasons to want the Liberals gone - just the fact that they're not really liberal in anyway is enough, though... I'll probably write a bit more about that later.

I'm just hanging on now for the election to be over. I just don't want to watch, becauswe it'd be too painful watching Kevin Rudd self-destruct. I really really really hope that doesn't happen, though. So I'll stick my head in the sand for the next few weeks, and hold my breath. It'll all be over soon, but I'm not sure I can face another three years of Howard and Friends. I'm just scared that he'll find some dirty little rabbit in a hat somewhere and pull off another win. That's a scary thought...

Anyway, back to my relaxing recovery weekend. I'm off for lunch with friends in the city today, then the movies tonight, and tomorrow - well, we'll see. If its a nice day it might be another trip to the beach for me!

Can't wait...

Continued around the bend...