Since Thiago and I had a really bad day at our customer on Thursday, I went to talk to Lucy, our ABV coordinator (ABV is the company who is organising this assignment for IBM) and helping hand regarding any issues that might come up while we are here in China. I told her that the customer is overwhelming us with problems, interests and ideas what we could do. We were expecting one customer, but it turned out to be 4 completely different companies and all prepared work for us for at least 6 months each. Thiago was having a very bad headache for days and I did not sleep at all (because I was feeling awfully sick at night), so we were exhausted and did not have a clue how to stop this demanding horror. Lucy said, that this would not be the way they wanted us to spend this time, so she promised to talk to the client.
On Friday, Thiago and myself actually had a much better time, as we met the last company, which is the SW university of Systop, and these people were the first ones who realised that we cannot do miracles or clone ourselves to make everybody happy. They themselves cut down their expectations while we were talking, so we were really relieved and it was a nice discussion. Then we had the chance to listen to a SW programming class where the young students had to present their websites they had set up as homework. It was really nice to see them present, being proud and nervous at the same time - we were treated as very important visitors.
When we came back to the hotel, Lucy told us that she had spoken to the general manager of our Client, it was sooooo funny to listen to her saying these words in her Chinese accent: "What are you doing with our people? You are scaring them! The one is taking pills, the other one cannot sleep!" Extremely funny! She told them that they were expecting too much for the short period of time that we could spend here, and they said they would understand. Thiago and I tried to set up a schedule on Friday, but it is still a whole lot of lectures, so we are still kind of tense.
On Saturday we went out with the team to visit Qiao's Grand Gountyard and Pingyao Ancient City - it again felt like a school excursion which is a good thing; we really do get along very well together and we had lots of fun! I would add some pictures, if I only could. But unfortunately the Internet connection is so weak, that I just can not. :-(
I won't tell you details of the trip, it was very interesting - maybe another teammember wants to do that.
Today on Sunday, we went to the university of Emily, one of our translators, to do sports. We ended up playing table tennis, which was fun and not too exhausting since it was very, very hot today.
After lunch, most of us went across the street to have a massage at a kind of shabby center and were tortured more or less to get rid of our tensions and other problems. Actually I wanted to work afterwards, but I will postpone it to tomorrow. Tonight we ordered pizza, which was not Chinese at all - for me it was like heaven: CHEESE at last!
I will stop for today - talk to you soon!! - Sue
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