Venting about work

I think it's about time I started venting about frustrations at work. According to the latest issue of Wired I received here Microsoft employees blog about problems at their company and people actually listen. I think the chances that anyone relavent will read this are very small, but I'm going to vent for your reading pleasure (or boredom).

The past couple of days have been especially trying. I have two engineers working for me now. They're good guys. Outside of my department is a different story. There's a serious cultural difference here that I'm going up against. Basically it is being someone’s friend at the office is really important. Instead of analyzing this for you I'll just tell you this story and vent if you don't mind. I have a couple of foreign clients now in addition to my domestic market work. I'm helping with some quality issues and require a production fixture to be built. There is another "product development" department complete with a manager, Mr. Zong, who's been here a long time, but can't use CAD and I doubt even has a degree. Very old style, though only a little older than me. I see people in his department playing games on the computer all day, and when working generally using the most primitive and inefficient methods possible. I know they're busy so we designed the production fixture ourselves that would dramatically reduce the time needed to build the parts and provide the quality required by the client. So 10 days ago I give them the drawings who Mr. Zong simply needs to pass on to the the shop guys to build. It's a simple fixture that I could build myself but I don't have the tools and it makes more since to have the guys who earn 20% of what I earn make the part. They said they'll have it done three days later. So three days later I ask him how the part's going. He says he's not sure and for me to ask the shop guys myself. I ask, they haven't even seen it. I explain it to them, they hardly even speak Mandarin so I use one of my engineers to be sure the design is clear. They want one part modified, I promptly do it and say they'll start it when Mr. Zong says so. He finally rubber stamps it and they say they'll give it to me 4 days later. The 2nd day they inform me that my design is wrong, I explain that it isn't and they just need to build it, quickly. The evening of the 3rd day, I'm out of the office, they call again about the same thing and say that it's wrong and if they don't change it I will pay for it myself. I told them to forget it and follow the drawing. So on the 4th day I get the part and it's totally wrong. They've built something that only resembles the drawing. The previous week the GM, a couple other managers including Mr. Zong and I have a meeting in which the GM states that it is the company's goal to finish this client's projects within the week. A yelling match ensues between the Mr. Zong and the GM, all in the local dialect and I never am quite sure what was said. So I try to discuss the problem with the shop guys on the 4th day and get blown off (they NEVER are of any help). So I go to my boss the GM. We immediately have a meeting and another yelling match ensues between the two which I thought would literally come to blows on a couple of occasions. It's all in the local dialect so I'm sitting there with these guys leaning over the table, just staring out the window wondering what the heck is going on. The export manager is there and later tells me a little but basically Mr. Zong says he's too busy and the GM says should've handled the whole thing in the first place (I doubt that's a complete summary of 20min of high speed debate). The shop guys then comes up with the parts and it now takes the GM and three managers to fix a part that should've taken 4 hours for the shop guy to build right. That evening I had dinner with a coworker who speaks Japanese and spent time overseas so understands my plight. He explains that the manager forgets all the time and you need to bug once a day about his projects, though not making too much of a pain out of yourself because then he'll dislike you and just try to stop you. So I need to "make friends" with Mr. Zong so my projects will go more smoothly. I can hardly stand karaoke here and taking Mr. Zong to karaoke so he will do his job just may be lower than I can stoop.

The western business practice of doing business first and secondly being friends is replaced by, "if we aren't friends then I don't understand it, therefore I'm not going to do it, even if the GM says so". The problem is it's difficult for me to explain everything I do only to have it questioned by some shop guy who can hardly even speak Mandarin. It's been especially tough since sharing my frustration with friends etc is only in Chinese. Work here is like this here, especially as a manager who has to depend on other managers, not just those above and below me to get things done. I have really good days, and days when I want to walk out. I still prefer the challenge to my constant ceiling working in the U.S. and I know that once I figure out this stuff it'll really be a huge advantage, but sometimes it's just hard.

Cycling in Si Ming Shan

North of Fenghua is a famous tourist area called Xikou. Among other things it is famous to be a former home of Mao's nemesis Chiang Kai Shek. I posted about it last fall when I went with two coworkers.

Biking in China is very convenient. If you aren't chain smoking you can usually make it around the city faster than the buses and cars. I can make it to Ningbo in about the time and while the drivers in this area are the worst I've ever seen (ever ever), in many ways I feel safer on my bike here than in the U.S. For one the drivers give you some elbow room. I've had drivers come by me at 60 mi/hr a foot from my elbow so many times. Here they cut you off, merge into you and cause what could be serious accidents but if you're defensive are avoidable. A problem I have here is when I bike to Ningbo, the pollution really bothers me sometimes. I get a cough, or need to clear my throat kinda feeling. It's a point A to B thing.

Enter Si Ming Shan (four bright mountains) and another area south west of Fenghua I've recently "discovered". The roads are all relatively new, smooth concrete, quite narrow and serving many very small, very old towns that previously had little more than cart paths. I was out on a holiday and saw one or two cars per hour and half of them were almost annoyingly friendly yelling invitations for "dinner ahead with us" etc. It's also nice to see the old town perched on the mountain sides. The mountains aren't particularly tall, topping out around 4k feet, with valleys around sea level, but if the roads aren't cut through it can be plenty of vertical fun. I've never ridden so many switchbacks in my life. If anyone in Arkansas is reading this, I'll compare these roads to the road ascending south from Ponca towards Steel Creek or Mount Nebo, only with no cars, lots of shading cane, no gas stations and no end.

Another positive note, in 140km, I had one aggressive dog come out. Unfortunately for the cute thing it didn't know to avoid my stiff-soled shoe either. A couple others barked, but were quickly subdued by their owners. I think I heard them yell "time to eat the dog!".... just kidding.

As far as I and my cycling friends know, there are no good maps of the areas so I brought along my GPS in hopes that I could piece together the data one day. It's only purpose was collecting data, though it often shorted the switchbacks. The weak signal in the narrow valleys, switch backs that are all but on top of each other and of course my incredibly high speeds magnified any error. Can anyone recommend an affordable mapping program?

I'm glad the vertical profile doesn't show my speed, despite my blazing speed (sarcasm). Stopping to try to ask "how to get to (insert town name on the map, but not on the signs)" using my best attempt at the local dialect, turning around when the half a dozen switchbacks I've been descending suddenly dead ended, taking stone paved paths over passes, and taking photos meant that I was on my bike for a very long time that day. Both my GPS and bike computer had errors at different stages, so I'm still not sure what it was. I just know I got back to my house about 9 hours after I left the house. I'm calling in 100mi.

Another interesting note is the bamboo is starting to shoot (connotation of speed intended) up. In about three days these grasses reach full height sending up their black spears from a root that has been maturing for a few years. I need to get the wikipedia article on this. They're also delicious to eat. See the photo gallery.

I posted a few photos on Flickr

Fun in Beijing

I'm in Beijing for a mostly pleasure trip, though tomorrow I'm going to be networking with a big design group that offered me a job before I moved to Fenghua. I really just want to see how the company works, I haven't met any established Chinese Industrial Designers here before. The company is also quite prestigious and I'm curious how their different international design groups work together and for the company as a whole. Flextronics.

I had the scariest flight of my life yesterday from Ningbo to Beijing. There was something very much wrong with the plane. As soon as we accelerated down the runway the plane started this strong lateral, fish tailing motion, and when we took off it was the most sudden and abrupt I've ever felt. The whole flight felt like we were in the worst storm, but the skies were clear. I wasn't the only passenger to have my coffee spilled badly. We didn't start getting really concerned until we started circling Beijing for a while. And the circling was really steep with alternate banking on either side, with the huge drops, ascents, and fish tailing. I was in the last row next to an older pair of business travellers from Finland. I started sweating when the older guy said "there is something wrong with the plane, I've never felt anything like this before", confirming my suspicions. When we finally did our bouncing landing when we got views out of alternating sides of the plane of the runway everyone sighed and some clapped. It got really quiet for the last 20 minutes for so of the flight, except for a few people getting sick. Fun fun. It was an Airbus A380 (I think - 6 seats wide). I was even trying to figure out how the best place to write a note that would survive the crash. While we were flying around Beijing it was difficult to understand a plane behaving so erratically could land safely.

Beijing is fun. I met up with Laurie with whom we share a mutual friend in Arkansas. She speaks pretty good Chinese with the pirate-sounding Beijing accent. She recommended a cool hostel in the hutongs north of the Forbidden City. As we came up to it on one of the hundreds of narrow streets, from a direction I've never come from it occurred to me that is was the same hostel I'd stayed in September 2004. The old hutongs being destroyed everywhere are really cool looking. I'm going to post some photos. Like me in Shanghai she's seen most of the tourist spots a few times, and I've seen a few already myself so we went to the old bunker tunnel system that was built in the 1960's during fear of an atomic war with the USSR after China's war with them in the mid 60's. I knew there had been tension between them, but I didn't know there had actually been a war. The bunkers were extensive, dank and scary. Quite a not-well put together tourist spot, but in its own scary way quite interesting. We were told that every city in China (I saw Fenghua's) had them built during this period.

Afterwards I set out to find another hostel I'd read about. It's way back off the main road so I must have walked 6 or 7 miles looking for it. I had to get a cab finally who helped me find it. In hindsight I should have taken a three-wheel pedicab just because they know the area. It's really nice that everyone speaks Mandarin here as opposed to switching to the local dialect.

I handed the uneaten half of my watermelon with a table of other travellers only to find out there were all Industrial Design students from Norway finishing up a study abroad type trip here in China. I'm enjoying the western company for a few days.

This is where I'm staying (since I can't post photos from this computer).
www.fareastyh.com. I recommed it. 45RMB/night.