Crouching Tiger - Ambling Sheep

Live in China Forever?

2007-07-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

I have been asked on many occasions "So, are you going to live in China forever or are you going to come back to the UK?"

I don't believe it's an either or, but there certainly is an answer which is "I'm not going to live in China forever"

"Why?", I can hear both of my loyal readers ask. Well, it's not the people, the politics, the traffic, the noise, the spitting, the lack of queuing, etc., etc.

It's this.

Curse of the Spam Filter?

2007-07-20T15:57:00.000-07:00

So, is it me, or is it Spam Filtering?

Being a decent (ahem) individual, I came across three instances recently where I saw that people had issues with their websites and contacted them:

www.marine-audio.com - they had a sponsored link on a Google page for a product I was interested in, but the link didn't actually work. I emailed them out of kindness (oh alright and a 'completer finisher' personality trait) and they fixed the link.

www.scribble.co.uk - hand written greeting card company. My complaint was that whilst in China I got a message from their card processor Netbanx saying that I couldn't pay because of the country I was located in. Trying from Singapore met the same result so I emailed them to suggest that expats might actually find that their service was quite useful so they might want to change card processors. Currently their site says they're 'undergoing site maintenance for several weeks' so they may have bigger fish to try.

www.vault.com - This is a service that I actually pay to subscribe to - every time I go in, it popped up a 'Go to Vault China' link which didn't work. I emailed them. They fixed it.

So, it is me? Is it spam filtering? Is it the death of common courtesy? In all three cases there was a business benefit to them following up on my email (and in one case I am a real, live paying customer) and yet no-one thought to flash me a 'Thanks for your email'. For shame.

It's Getting Warm

2007-07-18T04:03:00.000-07:00

Ah, Hangzhou in the summer. These lazy, hazy summer days.

They certainly can be hazy but you need to understand they're not lazy because you're not doing anything, just that you'd have a heart attack and die if you tried to move at a faster pace.

The car, admittedly parked in the full sun, estimated the outside temperature to be 45 degrees Celcius this afternoon (113 F to save, er, older English people from looking it up) although I'm certain the driver's seat was hotter than that.

Right now Weather.com reckons it's 34 (feels like 39) whereas tomorrow is going to be an even sunnier 37 (feels like 43 - gotta love that humidity).

Don't you wish you were in Hangzhou right now?

DIY Diary

2007-07-14T00:55:00.000-07:00

I used to own a Page-a-day diary which came preprinted with a whole year's worth of pages already for filling in appointments and stuff. It was a bit bulky but did the job of keeping track of future appointments and allowing me to plan.

One thing I've noticed in China is that a lot of people use books that look like diaries but, in practice, only have a space at the top for you to write the date in.

On the current day, that's easy enough. I could simply write '2007/07/14' at the top and away I go. But what would I do with a request for a meeting in a month's time. Choices are obviously, 1) Fill in all the dates for the next month in advance or 2) Not record the meeting in the diary at all.

If it was me, I'd go with option 1) (actually I'd go with option '0' which is to buy a preprinted diary) but I'd want to make sure that I didn't forget my important appointment but my guess is that many government officials go with option 2).

One of the joys of Chinese Business Life is that of emergency appointments. My explanation for this is that, thanks to these diaries, appointments simply don't exist until they're written into the diary but, as people only work on the current and the following day, that appointments only come into being a maximum of 24 hours before they take place.

Recently the new head of our local government zone requested a meeting with us, specifically at 2pm on the following day, and would like, after his reception, a presentation - in Chinese - of our company. We don't actually have that as all our clients happen to be overseas so a full day's productivity is magically lost from a variety of management and admin staff preparing for this.

And now, just as I'm writing about American Cowboys I get a message saying could I please attend a meeting on Monday with some visitors from overseas who are coming to the our local government zone. A reply of 'I'm actually quite busy, can you please tell me who the visitors are so I can decide' was met with 'actually we don't know who they are'. My guess is this would have been written down some time ago if only it wasn't for the DIY diaries. Sigh.

Cowboys

2007-07-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

So, you want to send a small amount of money to someone in the Philippines who needs the cash immediately and has no bank account. What do you do? Your mind may turn to Western Union - self-advertised as "a fast, reliable and convenient money transfer".

You determine that the recipient has a convenient Western Union location to receive the money and go online to www.westerunion.co.uk (because the UK is where your credit card was issued) - reassured by the statement of that you can "send money overseas in minutes*".

You are offered a choice of currencies so enter 3000 PHP (about 30 GBP) and are told "Maximum amount is 500 GBP" - some fine coding there. Enter 30 GBP. The first attempt gets rejected with a message stating "There is a problem".
You try again with another card and get "In order to provide final approval for your transaction, we need additional information". You're curoius now - it's 30 GBP so can't have fallen foul of any "money laundering" processes (the transaction fee is 12 GBP so it's unlikely any money launderers would break their payments up into such small payments unless they own a lot of Western Union shares). There's a hotline number but it's in Ireland and it's closed! The person in the Philippines is already waiting to collect the money so what do you do.

You search for another number of the site and find the US 24 hour hotline. Success. You ring and listen to a long message telling you that despite it being an 800 number it's not free (wondering all that time if you're already paying to listen to the message) before you arrive in Automated Response Hell.

Press 1 to do something unrelated
Press 2 to do something unrelated

Down to option 7 by which point you can't remember which option was most appropriate and there was no "or hold the line to speak to a representative"

You start again and pick one that offers you a choice of "Send a new transfer or check fees". You try this but only get a submenu which offers a choice of "check domestic fees" or "check international fees" - no send a new transfer, damn, you can't get through to a person! You hang up and start again. This time cursing the "it's not free" message and simply mashing the keypad with your palm until you hear a human on the line.

You explain, carefully, that you have commenced an online transfer but have received a message asking for more information.

The highly-trained, American, customer services representative leaps into action. Tired of poor customer service in China you know that the Americans have this part down to an art:

"OK sir, so you want to create a new transfer to send money overseas".

You re-explain, carefully, everything you've already said.

"Ah! You want to know the fees for sending money overseas!"

You bite your tongue and explain, using the shortest possible words and speaking slowly in case Chad can't comprehend English the way it's supposed to be spoken.

"Ah! I can't help you with that. I'll put you through to the credit card department"

This sounds like a minor success and you are momentarily pleased. You're paying by credit. The credit card department sounds like they might be the right people. You wait expectantly.

"Good evening Tammy speaking. How may I help you".

You explain, for the fourth time, in monosyllables and get the reply you're half expecting...

"Sorry sir, I can't help you with that. I can put you through to the international department."

Customer Services drone 3 comes on the line. You begin to wonder if this call from China to the USA has already cost you more than the 30 GBP you were trying to send in the first place. You explain. Again.

"Sorry sir, I can't help you with that. Can I take your transfer number and I can pass the details over to someone else who can help you.".

This sounds promising so you comply. And wait.

"Good evening Western Union. This is Charlene. How may I help you?"

You grimace and explain the whole story again only for her to say "Is that Mr.B?". You assume that she did, in fact, get all of the details from drone 3 but was just prolonging your "customer service experience". You confirm it is, assuming that you're finally getting somewhere. Alas.

"Sorry Sir, I can't help you with that. I'll put you through to someone who can help" your cry of "But..." drifts away on the wind.

Drone 5 comes online. You begin to notice that each time they transfer you the call gets quieter. You aren't surprised when you discover that drone 5 neither received any details from Charlene, nor is she able to assist so on to drone 6.

Drone 6 is barely audible. You ask him to speak up. He doesn't. You ask, very loudly (in case you're equally quiet) for him to speak up. He doesn't. Then he hangs up.

Once you've retrieved your phone from where it landed and reassembled it you wonder what to do next. The bank! You ring your bank (who have a charming, helpful, 24 hour customer service (God bless you HSBC Premier Team) who not only confirm that the transaction has cleared but they look up a UK 24-hour telephone number for Western Union for you.

You ring and explain that you've been trying to "send money overseas in minutes*" for over an hour now. You are, however, told:

"Oh, that's an online transaction. You need to ring this number. It's open 7am-11pm UK time"

You patiently explain that you're in China and it's in the middle of the day here and, after all, it's only 30 quid! Hang on, you remember that when you rang this number it said you could send money over the phone, so you ask "So, can I do a new transaction over the phone and forget the online transaction".

"Yes sir, you can. But you've just told me you're in China and you can only do it from the UK so sorry, sir, I can't help you".

Thwarted at every turn you give up, dejected, and conclude you're going to have to wait 4 hours until 7am UK time.

The appointed hour arrives and you ring. By now, you're in the office so you can use the phone system to route your call to a UK office and then on to their hotline, hoping the call looks like it originates in the UK.

"Hello..... Western.. Union" - clearly the online team have just come out of hibernation. You explain. Finally you're talking to the team of experts. They'll be able to fix this in a jiffy.

"What?"

Nervously you explain again. Surely to God these people can help. He asks the question you were expecting.

"Where are you calling from?"

"Liverpool. I'm calling from my office in Liverpool. I'm Scouse me. Eh, eh!" (quickly muting the call you start to cough from your performance).

"Hold the line"

Minutes pass and he returns explaining that your transaction looks suspicious.

"You tried three times to do this transaction using two different credit cards".

You explain, trying oh, so hard, to avoid sarcasm, that it was only 30 GBP and that the messages were so vague that you had no idea what was going on.

More minutes pass and success. Your transaction goes through!

Only 5 hours after you started to "Send money overseas in minutes*". So, apparently the '*' is to cover up the fact that it's really "Send money overseas in 300 minutes".

Transfer amount: 30 GBP
Their fee: 12 GBP
Many, varied, lengthy international phone calls: God knows but no doubt more than 42 GBP
The catharsis from being able to blog about it and share your customer service experience with the world: Priceless

(with apologies to Mastercard for using their strapline - your part in this went OK!).

A fast, reliable and convenient way to send money abroad.

Indeed.

Frankie Update

2007-07-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

Frankie Magazine Cover, originally uploaded by Ambling Sheep.

So, it's been a while since I wrote about little Frankie... Hard to believe that she's getting on for 8 months now...

The photos we had done at 4 months are everywhere - as you can see - apparently there's even a wall full of then in the HangzhouDasha department store. Frankie's even been on TV several times (something everyone appears to have seen here) after YY rang the local government hotline over our plight in trying to get Frankie registered here (that's been ongoing for months - more about this if/when it's ever resolved).

She is very rapidly moving out of the phase where I guess a lot of guys would describe as "Very nice... but what does it do?" to being a little person. Within the last two weeks she has learned to clap, can finally wave 'bye-bye' and, if you hold her up, dance to music.

I fear the guilt-o-meter has just been turned up another notch - particularly as I'm going overseas for 6 weeks in a couple of weeks...

Frankie Boss-eyed, originally uploaded by Ambling Sheep.

They've Got Me

2007-07-08T05:58:00.000-07:00

After modest pressure from Chickie and Pete I've decided that I am, in all probability, capable of running a half marathon.

I did a couple of 12k runs recently, one near my new apartment along the banks of the Qiantang River which was nice as it's completely flat, and another run to the office (also 12k but certainly not flat) and I'm convinced 21k isn't that much further to be a huge problem (obviously a full marathon is a different prospect!).

I am going to be (hopefully) signed up for the Singapore Half Marathon shortly and am currently waiting to find out the date of the Hangzhou Half Marathon (as I can't run if it clashes with an MBA weekend). Unfortunately no sooner do I make the decision to train for a half marathon than I fall sick with two colds one immediately after the other.

It's worth a quick plug for my (on my last three runs anyway) new running companion, Podrunner. Whilst Dance music isn't naturally my thing (my previously oft-used running music was Linkin Park), running to a constant beat stops me from keep changing my pace when the music changes pace. Just need them to be a bit longer (like 2.5 hours) to get a half marathon done without having to fiddle with the iPod.

At this rate I'll be joining the newly formed Hangzhou Hash House Harriers before you know it.

What the...?

2007-06-30T08:44:00.001-07:00

Untversal Talk Jig, originally uploaded by Ambling Sheep.

OK, sorry - this is a cheap gag because I haven't had time to post anything meaningful in ages but... what the hell is this? Answers on a comment please.

I actually bought it (just so that I could photograph it) for 6 RMB but I can't imagine what it's actually supposed to do.

Knowing that it can 'jig' up to 10kg of 'tood' a total distance of 360mm really doesn't help...

Untversal Talk Jig, originally uploaded by Ambling Sheep.

Updated 2007/07/07

Well, Megan might be right but you'd need fingers of steel to hold 10kg of tood up with this thing, otherwise you'd just be nursing your bloody stumps.

Tufty Club for Grown-Ups

2007-06-23T02:20:00.002-07:00

OK, you probably have to be 'of a certain' age, and British, to know the Tufty Club but it's from an age when the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (no, really!) decided that small children needed to know more about road safety and that, obviously, a small animated squirrel and his weaselly mate were the best way forward.

Clearly we're not the only foreign company in China to have fallen foul of the less than perfect situation that exists on China's roads as the EU Chamber of Commerce (thanks to Danwei) have hit upon the true consequence of Tufty's non-existence in this market. They are organising road safety seminars because "Road accidents represent not only a human drama, but also a very important economic cost for the company, as the majority of victims of car accidents are between 25 to 55 years old. For a company, traffic accidents represent a significant part of their statistics for industrial accidents, and can affect their overall economic performance".

And here was I thinking that the main reason you wouldn't want your employees to be killed is because of a desire to preserve human life. Apparently not. Then again, that's clearly not the primary concern of a lot of road users (truck, bus, car, taxi, bike or foot) either in China.

舍不得

2007-06-10T04:33:00.000-07:00

This story will probably resonate with most foreigners who have a Chinese spouse.

The phenomenon is "舍不得" (shě bu de), literally "to hate to part with". The fact that there's such a snappy phrase should be a clue to its popularity. It may be a small thing (such as I bought a 3RMB vacuum flask which was awful and I've never used, we still have it though) or a large thing (I narrowly avoided having to move my awful 55inch RPTV to my new flat despite the fact that we had already purchased a (lovely) 52 inch Sony Bravia X Series full-HD LCD TV, but only because we managed to cram it into my sister-in-law's apartment).

We have just, thanks to the limited wardrobe space in my new place been faced with a storage crisis. This is compounded by the fact that I have more clothes now than I have ever had at any point in my life, partly due to 'panic buying' (they just don't sell clothes my size here - well, they didn't...) and partly due to having dropped 12 inches off my waist, 8 off my chest, 2 off my collar size and having gone from XXL thru XL and L before arriving at (mostly) M.

Twice now I've sorted out the clothes I simply can't wear only to find them hidden somewhere. When I say that I can't wear them it's because they're quite large, witness my winter coat - like I'm going to wear that (on my own...):

So, with much reluctance, YY has finally conceded that our 衣服山 has to go. Impressive, isn't it. I'm not quite sure where it's going to go, mind. The whole 'Charity Shop' concept seemed a bit confusing and exactly where they're going to find too many Chinese folks who need a jacket with a 48 inch chest or shirts with a 17.5 inch collar I'm not sure.

Great Firewall Fiddle Faddle

2007-06-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

Akin to some of the other things I've mentioned, the Great Firewall seems to serve only one purpose and that is to denigrate China itself.

Expats rail about the fact that sites displeasing to someone (assumed to be one of the reported 10s if not 100s of thousands of young adults hired to 'protect' the other inhabitants of China) cause them to be blocked but it seems odd that no-one in the other echelons might have this thought...

"You know, I can cope with the fact that we permanently block access to loads of sites because they've displeased us (BBC news is permanently blocked although more newspapers and other news sites from the UK are permanently open), but this inconsistent blocking and unblocking of other sites (blogspot, typepad, wordpress, wikipedia, google, flickr (why Flickr?)) has no rhyme or reason to it. Perhaps we should just block them permanently or stop blocking them at all as the start/stop nature of the blocking makes us look like incompetent idiots."

The blocking is, quite frankly, pointless anyway as there can't be anyone out there that doesn't know ways to get over, round or through the blocks therefore the only result of the blocking is to irritate people. It doesn't prevent anyone access anything that they 'shouldn't' and the act of the blocking serves to make internet access of international sites as slow as they were in 56k dial-up days.

I'm sure they could undo the firewall in the time it takes to say 'death bus' and the internet wouldn't be all slow and crappy. Oh, and the international media wouldn't lambast China for its lack of freedom to information which, given that anyone can freely access any information that's on the internet anyway, would seem to be a good thing.

It's Happened Again!

2007-05-31T06:35:00.001-07:00

It's Happened Again!, originally uploaded by Ambling Sheep.

No sooner has her granny gone back to England than the clippers come out again. Not a bad thing for the summer but unfortunately it makes poor little Francesca look like a little boy again...

Foreigner Police Registration Madness

2007-05-21T03:18:00.000-07:00

I've just been informed of a new and exciting government regulation.

Apparently all foreigners, even long term residents with a residents permit and a work permit, will have to register with at their local police station within 24 hours of entering China having been abroad.

Every time.

During office hours.

I plan to go overseas 20 times this year. That will mean 20 half-days lost to mad bureaucracy. This seems crazy given the fact that the local police station won't ever know that I've been out of the country and the fact that the immigration bureau has computer records of all of this information that they could share.

I really, really hope this is just one mad policeman that thinks this as, we're told the fine for not doing so is 50 RMB per day that you're not registered.

Moving Soon

2007-05-21T00:35:00.000-07:00

I'm finally moving to my new apartment at the weekend. As a recap, this is the apartment that I bought in 2004, received ownership in 2006 and have been fitting it out, slowly, since October last year. Yes, it's all the same apartment.

We've been through a number of tribulations.

1) The gas fitter would only connect up two parts of the three part hob, saying it would be dangerous. The kitchen company came back and connected up all three parts but now the top drawer underneath won't open.

2) The bath was beautifully installed and tiled round, but it was back-to-front so it all had to be ripped out again.

3) The installers were told to leave sufficient space to grout round the ceramic floor tiles (not standard Chinese practice). They were shown what to do and they wrote it into the contract. On visiting the apartment after the installation I was told 'You don't grout round floor tiles, so we did it like this'. Up they came and were put down properly.

4) They nicely tiled the balcony with black tiles then tiled round the edges with the cream tiles left over from the bathroom because they'd run out of the black ones.

5) They measured up my hifi units, speakers, speaker stands, plotted the floorplan on a chart and installed the (not cheap) speaker cable in the floor, returning 20 metres spare cable to me, before cementing over it and installing the real wood flooring. The wires are all 10cm too short to connect to the hifi.

6) The light switches are all randomly assigned and connected to a computer control system so the same switch does different things at different times for no apparent reason.

7) The electrically operated blind on my study window was installed 20cm too short. The proposed solution? Install a 20cm-wide blind in the gap.

I think I've only discovered one last biggy (I'm sure others will surface):

8) The oven doesn't work (yes, an oven, in China!). The reason is, apparently, that they installed a gas oven (even though I specified electric) and that there's no gas to connect it to (although there is an electric point). But... the fitters didn't tell anyone so it was left up to me trialling the appliances to discover it.

Don't be surprised if the apartment burns down (or the entire building) before too long!

True Love

2007-05-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

Chinese traditions and family pressures lead to all sorts of odd marital situations, people disappearing back to their home town to get married to someone they've never met (always distressing when it's my employees that are resigning because their parents have pressured them to come home...), but this article in Ananova is particularly weird.

Ah, it's that age old romantic tale:

Boy meets girl
Boy marries girl
Girl dies horrible death
Boys parents meet new girl and pressure boy to marry new girl
Boy agrees because new girl slightly resembles original girl
Boy asks new girl to undergo plastic surgery so that she fully resembles old girl
New girl bizarrely accedes to boy's request
And they all live happily ever after

It's not so much a match made in heaven as a match made in the Twilight Zone.

Maotai gets worse!

2007-05-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

Unbelievably the evil fire-water beloved of politicians of all levels is under threat from pollution in its water source. The source of the pollution, 39 drinks factories that have 'appeared' upstream from the Maotai plant on the Chishui River in Guizhou province. Presumably many of those factories will have appeared on the tacit approval of local officals and celebrated with banquets and the odd glass of Maotai.

Accept for the moment that I'm not much of a spirit drinker and that Baijiu of any form is, in my mind, listed at the number 2 vilest alcoholic beverage (the Scotch Whisky Lagavulin making it to number 1 - tastes of peat? Apparently peat tastes pretty damned foul) but it's hard for me to imagine that anything could harm Maotai and make it less palatable.

I always assumed that Maotai drinkers survived largely because it killed any micro-organisms in the drinkers body, kind-of an antidote to the food served at some banquets, so whatever they're afraid of in the river water it must be pretty bad...

Mexican Excitement

2007-05-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

At last! Apparently Hangzhou is now home to it's first ever Mexican restaurant. Also apparently owned and run by Mexicans.

Pancho's
441 Xixi road
西溪路441号

Even better, it's open at lunchtimes and it's easy walking distance from the office!

A review will definitely be taking place shortly!

To the UK and Back

2007-05-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

A fleeting trip to the UK and I'm back already, filled of course with guilt at the coursework I've not been doing, daughter I've not seen, etc.

I've mentioned before that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book 'Watching the English' by Kate Fox. Whilst I'm still fairly hopeless at social interactions, I now understand myself a lot more and that does give you an element of control, if you want it.

One conversation I had on the plane with a fellow brit went like this. I sat down at the bar (yes, OK, it was Virgin Atlantic's superb Upper Class service - once you've had your first Deep Vein Thrombosis you won't want to fly any other way) next to two guys who were clearly colleagues and were talking openly about their company, a certain car manufacturer. After a while, the guy furthest from me returned to his seat leaving me sitting next to the other guy.

As you might expect (if you're British) a period of silence ensued. Running through obvious topic lists (we're on a plane - there is no weather) drew a blank. Talking about the motor industry would appear rude as it would be obvious I'd been listening to their conversation - although the fact that we were the only three passengers at the bar which only seats three people would seem to make it fairly obvious that I couldn't have avoided hearing but, even so, it took the intervention of a member of cabin crew to open the door to conversation.

The interaction that followed was indeed to the letter of the book. He explained that he worked for "A car company" despite the fact that I already knew which one from the earlier conversation and, 20 minutes later when turbulence ended the conversation, the name of said company had only just been revealed to me. After 20 minutes of conversation, I knew his employer and he knew I lived in Hangzhou and worked in IT. I'm pretty sure that was it. As the book says, it is actually fairly common to assume that exchanging names is far too personal for a first conversation like this. I certainly wasn't ready for it.

No wonder Americans think Brits are standoffish and Brits think Americans are (I can't narrow it down to a single adjective). I've been in the States and in many a social setting been faced with this sort of interraction:

Stranger: Hi, I'm Bob!
Me: Er, hello

I don't know who the hell Bob is, and I certainly don't want someone like that stalking me so my natural reaction is to recoil and adopt a defensive position.

No wonder I find it so hard to give presentations. Simply standing up in front of people is like giving away part of your soul.

Lard

2007-05-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

According to the Economist Shanghai is now home to China's fattest children. A recent survey revealed that of Shanghai’s 8m+ schoolchildren, 15% of the boys and 9.2% of the girls are obese. Both figures were about four percentage points higher than the national averages.

Presumably the combination of a rapidly increasing Fast Food Culture combined with Little Emperor Syndrome
is going to conspire to create a nation of incapable and unhealthy adults.

Yes, but Why?

2007-05-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

Drat. It seemed so simple. Go back to the UK, meet up with family and friends and show them a few photos. And then, when we were looking at pictures of some Chinese buildings, the question.

"Just why do Chinese buildings have curved roofs?"

Seems simple doesn't it. Some research on the web confirms (!) that they do indeed have curved roofs (e.g. "The roof of a typical Chinese building is curved") but no-one seems fit to put forward a theory as to why that actually would be.

It's annoying because it's a simple question and apart from a vague attempt at "something to ward off evil spirits" I had to admit defeat.

Any ideas out there?

Phones on Planes

2007-05-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

When will airlines face the facts that this stuff about mobile phones interfering with aircraft navigation systems is a load of old toot?

Think about it. On the average flight there is almost certainly someone who forgets to switch off their phone or Blackberry. On the average flight in China that number almost certainly increases as the number of people who follow the announced instructions is distinctly lower than elsewhere.

So, if we assume that every commercial flight that has, say, one active mobile phone on it and there are, let's guess, 100,000 flights per day worldwide (extrapolating from this article that says there are about 29,000 flights per day in the USA alone), and that we'll just focus on the time period since 2000 as mobile phones were commonplace and Blackberry's coming into regular usage. That would mean that 7*365*100,000 or 292,000,000 commercial flights.

To my knowledge, there have been no crashes attributed to mobile phone usage and 0 out of 292,000,000 would seem to imply a fairly low risk. Other opinions seem to be divided (here, here and here).

So, it looks like phones are pretty safe and they have transmitters built into them. This would seem to me to indicate that the insistence on making me stop using my iPod 20 minutes before we land (I've wiped it and resynced it so I have more music now) would seem to be completely unnecessary.

iPod Woes

2007-04-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

My iPod suffered badly during its last syncronisation and seems to have deleted loads of tracks which it can no longer play. Oddly it seems to have done this by artist so (as I've collected lots of music over the years) I'm left with a very strange 'Shuffle' playlist consisting only of:

Cindy Lauper
Killswitch Engage
Spineshank
Cher
Aerosmith
Rush
Rammstein
Abba
Slipknot
Silverchair
REM
Stabbing Westward
Sum41
Depeche Mode

It's quite weird to listen to it going from one to the other as you imagine. And 'Cher', what was I thinking?

Hmm

2007-04-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

You know, I've got this sneaking feeling that my recently acquired copy of Battlestar Galactica just might not be genuine...

Outward Ho!

2007-04-23T15:54:00.000-07:00

So our recent "Outward Bound" weekend was a success in terms of the goals I was trying to hit, although there were some interesting facets doing it in China compared to the UK.

The trip there - I had elected to drive but the majority went by bus. Where the place is (青山湖) there is a pristine highway linking it to Hangzhou that was only recently completed. Underneath the highway is the old 'road', except that it's now mostly sand and gravel after the construction of the massive elevated road. The training company elected to make the bus drive along the windy, bumpy, single-track old road with a cry of 'but it would have cost 100RMB (6 GBP) to use the new road!'.

The training company is based in the grounds of a three-star hotel but quite clearly it had seen better days. The meals sucked big-style and the staff weren't particularly helpful.

Me: I'd like a beer please
Waitress: No
Me: What?
Waitress: You can't have beer
Me: Why? There's beer in that fridge. Cold beer. I have money.
Waitress: You're not allowed
Me: Says who?
Waitress: The training company

Aha. A representative arrived and negotiations ensued. An allowance of 2 bottles of beer (And 2.1% proof beer to boot!) was offered which eventually turned into 5. I understand that they don't want people partying all night but this did seem to me to be a fundamental difference in approach as to how to break down some barriers and get people talking. Last Outward Bound I did in the UK, people got to actually know each other far more in the bar (at least that hotel had a bar, unlike this one) at the end of the day then they did while we were abseiling or potholing.

Breakfast was by far the worst meal of the day because even the things I might have eaten (pork buns, for example), were horrible. I don't believe anyone would come up with the catchphrase "Go to work on a 满头" but that was pretty much the only edible food, largely because they (that's steamed buns by the way) don't really taste of anything.

Asking for a coffee, I was told "There's hot soy milk" - and that was that. No alternative.

What made me sag slightly was when I realised that on the wall was a huge colour picture of a country cottage kitchen table and upon said table were plates and cups with scrambled eggs, bacon, some lightly buttered toast, croissant, orange juice and coffee. Posterlicious. Sadly, not one of those things were available in the hotel.

Breakfast, and indeed most of the meals, had a habit of reappearing (no, not like that) - lunch, for example, contained several types of "vegetable with pieces of fried breakfast products". Yum.

The training was actually pretty good and most of the negatives surrounding it are really directed at the hotel. Note if I ever do this again is simply to bring enough food and drink that I'm completely self-sufficient.

One of our first exercises was to be divided into teams and go through an exercise, part of which was to create a team song with the advice that taking an existing tune and changing the words to the song would be ok, except the Chinese National Anthem which would have been illegal. It sounded pretty serious as it was repeated a number of times.

The exercises themselves were interesting mix of physical and mental activities and worked fairly well at getting people mixing and communicating.

This one, which I call "falling onto a group of people who are significantly smaller than me" was a bit of a worry. Before anyone writes any witty suggestions, the trainer on the platform with me was simply making sure people fell in a straight line... The saving grace was that I was one of three Laowai in my group so we could at least take turns in the key (posterior catching) position. On the flip side, I imagine from the point of view of "having someone significantly larger than I am fall on me" probably wasn't much fun either.

All-in-all, I don't think some of the exercises would be possible in the UK and certainly not the US from a Health-and-safety point of view (getting everyone over a 4-meter high wall certainly had its moments) but no-one died, good fun was had and, a bunch of my staff now have a nice shared-experience.

There are more photos of people undergoing derring dos training company's website.

And on the way back, we even managed to persuade the training company to send the bus on the new, fast, smooth road so, improved communication skills at work!

On Guilt

2007-04-04T04:23:00.000-07:00

The current combination of incredibly hectic job (oh that I could safely blog about the goings-on at the moment), EMBA, family and ongoing house fit-out (I'm beginning to understand what Petrocelli used to go through) means that I'm constantly wracked with guilt.

Whatever it is I'm doing (such as writing this blog entry, eating, or playing the odd game of Desktop Tower Defence (many thanks to John Biesnecker for that little time-eater) or taking Frankie (NB - new photos on Flickr) to Gymboree) I'm wracked with guilt that I should be doing one of the other things. If I change to doing the thing I'm feeling guilty about, the guilt just shifts to one of the other things.

My mother arrives tomorrow, I have 2 essays to write, was just presented with 1500 pages of new material for the next course module in 15 days time, I have over 50 people to recruit at work, I have to spend more time with YY and Frankie and I must get back down the gym (failed miserably to run 5km without stopping for breathers yesterday and I'm 3kg heavier than the start of the year).

I can safely say that I also feel guilty about reading virtually nothing except my course materials (which isn't very good value for money with the books I have and subscriptions to the Economist, ft.com and HBR) and about not having the time to do the follow-up reading after the courses are complete...

I'm glad I'm not religious.