China: Days 5-7
We're done. And I'm so looking forward to going home.
Thursday, we went down to the lake for lunch. We ate at Green Tea right on the lake. It was the first time I ate there but I'm quite familiar with their food. That was one place from which the administrative assistant brought lunch for us when we were here last year. The food is really good and now that I've eaten at the restaurant itself, the restaurant is awesome as well. There was a family eating next to us with a young girl. She was fascinated with me and my teammate and kept looking at us and hiding behind her mother. At one point she said "hello" to me and I responded, which got her giggling. The father came over to chat with one of our local co-workers and apparently he was a tea farmer from the Jiangxi province to the southwest of Hangzhou (the province where that plane crashed). He gave us all samples of his tea and his business card while he explained to our co-worker the difference between his tea and the teas from Hangzhou. I got a picture of his family and he got a picture of his family with me. He was pretty happy about the whole exchange though I suspect my co-worker was getting tired of hearing about the tea place. After lunch we went to a shopping street full of little stalls of crafts. My teammate picked up the two things he was looking for from there. Then we drove back to the hotel to rest before the Friday morning maintenance.
The maintenance itself went fine but felt even longer than any of the others despite being about the same as the second one. Partly that was because I at least had something to do during the first two maintenances. I helped during the first and I had my own storage stuff during the second. This third one I stepped aside so the local admins could train with my teammate on what we were doing. They turned out to not actually be interested and instead napped for most of the maintenance. The other part that made it seem long was my co-workers, when they weren't napping, were singing, yodeling or chasing each other around the data center. I finally got my iPod, put on my earphones and blasted the loudest music I had so I could tune them out. I felt much better after that. We changed hotels when we took our breakfast break and left the crappy Hangzhou hotel and went to the hotel where we usually stay. I was so happy to get back there when the maintenance was over, even if all I did was crawl into bed and sleep until 1am, wake up for a bit and then sleep again until 7am. Sure, the Internet may have been faster at the other hotel but this hotel is so much more interested in customer service and the bed isn't just an elevated floor. The other awesome news we received was that the manager who was with us was heading back to Shanghai in the morning. One fewer annoyance.
Today (Saturday), we went to a noodle place by the lake for lunch. The local admins had asked me where I wanted to eat and I suggested a noodle place that served noodles in soup as opposed to the noodles with sauce place at which we ate in Beijing. It was quite a drive but we eventually got there. It was quite popular with the locals and was completely packed. Apparently, there was no etiquette about waiting and you just camped people who looked like they were leaving and grabbed their chairs when they got up. We almost had to split up because we had two separate sets of two chairs for the four of us but we managed to convince two people to move so we could have the whole table. The food was quite good but soup, heavy items and chopsticks means I end up soaking myself with soup since I keep dropping things in it. After lunch, we drove to a wetlands preserve and took a boat tour around it. The preserve was pretty but not particularly interesting. The local admins weren't translating for us so we didn't get any of the tour information except when we pestered them about what was being said. My teammate teased that when next they came to visit the US we were going to take them on a tour someplace and refuse to translate for them. If you don't want to translate for people, don't take them somewhere that will require a lot of translation. They chose the preserve; not us.
Tonight we're just resting and fending for ourselves for dinner. That's fine with me. Tomorrow's going to be enough of a hassle without having to deal with people tonight. Tomorrow we've got THREE flights to get us home. We have to fly from Hangzhou to Beijing, back down to Hong Kong and then to LA. Yeah, really efficient. We'll be spending 25 hours traveling. Whee.
Thursday, we went down to the lake for lunch. We ate at Green Tea right on the lake. It was the first time I ate there but I'm quite familiar with their food. That was one place from which the administrative assistant brought lunch for us when we were here last year. The food is really good and now that I've eaten at the restaurant itself, the restaurant is awesome as well. There was a family eating next to us with a young girl. She was fascinated with me and my teammate and kept looking at us and hiding behind her mother. At one point she said "hello" to me and I responded, which got her giggling. The father came over to chat with one of our local co-workers and apparently he was a tea farmer from the Jiangxi province to the southwest of Hangzhou (the province where that plane crashed). He gave us all samples of his tea and his business card while he explained to our co-worker the difference between his tea and the teas from Hangzhou. I got a picture of his family and he got a picture of his family with me. He was pretty happy about the whole exchange though I suspect my co-worker was getting tired of hearing about the tea place. After lunch we went to a shopping street full of little stalls of crafts. My teammate picked up the two things he was looking for from there. Then we drove back to the hotel to rest before the Friday morning maintenance.
The maintenance itself went fine but felt even longer than any of the others despite being about the same as the second one. Partly that was because I at least had something to do during the first two maintenances. I helped during the first and I had my own storage stuff during the second. This third one I stepped aside so the local admins could train with my teammate on what we were doing. They turned out to not actually be interested and instead napped for most of the maintenance. The other part that made it seem long was my co-workers, when they weren't napping, were singing, yodeling or chasing each other around the data center. I finally got my iPod, put on my earphones and blasted the loudest music I had so I could tune them out. I felt much better after that. We changed hotels when we took our breakfast break and left the crappy Hangzhou hotel and went to the hotel where we usually stay. I was so happy to get back there when the maintenance was over, even if all I did was crawl into bed and sleep until 1am, wake up for a bit and then sleep again until 7am. Sure, the Internet may have been faster at the other hotel but this hotel is so much more interested in customer service and the bed isn't just an elevated floor. The other awesome news we received was that the manager who was with us was heading back to Shanghai in the morning. One fewer annoyance.
Today (Saturday), we went to a noodle place by the lake for lunch. The local admins had asked me where I wanted to eat and I suggested a noodle place that served noodles in soup as opposed to the noodles with sauce place at which we ate in Beijing. It was quite a drive but we eventually got there. It was quite popular with the locals and was completely packed. Apparently, there was no etiquette about waiting and you just camped people who looked like they were leaving and grabbed their chairs when they got up. We almost had to split up because we had two separate sets of two chairs for the four of us but we managed to convince two people to move so we could have the whole table. The food was quite good but soup, heavy items and chopsticks means I end up soaking myself with soup since I keep dropping things in it. After lunch, we drove to a wetlands preserve and took a boat tour around it. The preserve was pretty but not particularly interesting. The local admins weren't translating for us so we didn't get any of the tour information except when we pestered them about what was being said. My teammate teased that when next they came to visit the US we were going to take them on a tour someplace and refuse to translate for them. If you don't want to translate for people, don't take them somewhere that will require a lot of translation. They chose the preserve; not us.
Tonight we're just resting and fending for ourselves for dinner. That's fine with me. Tomorrow's going to be enough of a hassle without having to deal with people tonight. Tomorrow we've got THREE flights to get us home. We have to fly from Hangzhou to Beijing, back down to Hong Kong and then to LA. Yeah, really efficient. We'll be spending 25 hours traveling. Whee.