61 Days - Exploring

Today was my day off and I had decided that I wanted to go to the camera market and then possibly to the PC mall.

I looked up the camera market online and found out where it was. It looks like its close to where we get off the subway for work. Except I transfer at that stop and then ride the other line 1 stop. It was interesting that the loop line (4) the cars are much wider. I popped out of the subway station and started walking down the street according to the instructions. There are websites that mention how many meters destinations are from the subway. I found the store and started my usual routine which is to walk the perimeter then go up to the next level. This place was the same kind of thing as the computer stores, many smaller stores with the same stuff in them. As I got higher in the building there was more used stuff. I didnt think the prices were good. I found a ripoff remote trigger for my camera for 50 dollars compared to 150 for the real canon remote. I may go back and get it, and haggle them down a bit. After being disappointed I walked back to the subway station. Dont get me wrong, its a great place to get camera stuff, just nothing was interesting to me. I rode back on the subway to the hotel. I was hungry so I needed to eat something. I got a caesar chicken wrap from the starbucks at our hotel. They are really good.

While I was eating I searched the web for computer stores. I found the one that was good, but then i found two more close to each other. I changed up my plans and headed out to Metro City mall and Pacific Digital plaza. Metro city was easy for me to spot, since it has a huge glass sphere as the front of the building. I walked around in there a bit. It was confusing. The front of the mall, where the sphere was, contained regular mall type stores, but in the back there were several levels of little shops. I did the rounds, then went outside looking for the pacific plaza. I couldnt find it. I noticed there was a Best Buy in the area so I looked around in there. Nothing interesting. I still couldnt find the pacific plaza. Finally I asked someone at best buy and they pointed me in the direction. This place was a little bit better. They had motherboards, and hard drives, but not that much in DIY parts. Granted, it was the best that I have found so far in Shanghai. So I was un-inspired, and didnt buy anything. I should have gotten a mouse for Nate, he is looking for one.

Thats it for today. I think I am going to have Papa Johns for dinner!

62 Days - James last day..

So today is James' last day. Im sure Mclane will miss his help. I wont forget our first days onsite and him trying to learn chinese. It was interesting. It sounds like he has a bunch of things to do and travel when he gets back. We are taking him out to dinner to the Blue Frog. We used to go to this place in Macau in the Venetian. It is a western food chain that only exists in Asia. Watanabe-son and Odawara-son were also there to say goodbye. We had lots of food and drinks. It was pretty empty there, but everyone had a good time.

I am looking forward to my day off and trying to rest. It will be great to sleep in. My plans are to go to the camera market and to the computer market. The cybermall was ok, just sold lots of cameras and laptops. Not what I was looking for.

Top pic, James outside Blue Frog, lower pic, Odawara-son, Watanabe-son, James inside blue frog.

63 Days - Impressed Owners again..

Today me and Nate are still working on figuring out what the bugs are in the system. We have this problem where occasionally a ball or two stops running. Sometimes a whole group of them do this. Its a pretty big deal and we need to figure out what is causing it. We are also working on the user screens for the touch screen control, where the operator will initiate the show. We are doing some very fancy graphics that no one has tried before. It really looks like a world of difference. I am spending most of my time creating nice glass buttons or LEDs to be used for indicators. Its pretty much fun. Then later in the day we played the content that I made to a lot of the higher people to prove that the system can do better with the right content. I think everyone was impressed. Some of it was boring, but a couple of pieces were very cool.

We are going out to dinner tomorrow night to thank James for his hard work. I think he is leaving Tuesday. I think everyone will miss him.

Not much else going on here. It was a colder day and was raining a little bit. The site is getting muddy now, since the road we took to walk in has now been demolished. Sunday I have off and I will be heading to the PC mall, and the camera store, both multi story. I need to get a new butane soldering iron, which Nate broke onsite, so I get to expense a new one.

Thats it.

64 Days - Rainy and Warm

So I didnt get much sleep last night Im not quite sure, it may have been from the tea I didnt like at the sushi place. I attached two photos of what we ate. It was kinda cool to learn from Yagura. This meeting was so insane. There were about 20-25 people all sitting around a big table, and they were all speaking Japanese or Chinese. Translators were also translating real time to the bosses so it was even more confusing. Yagura would wait until something was said in Japanese and she would translate it for me. It was hard to hear her because the Chinese yell a lot when they are talking compared to the Japanese. I think between everyone there were only 3 or 4 people that didnt smoke. It was really smoky in there. Most people had 4-5 cigs during the meeting. One last thing, the secretaries gave out water and coffee to everyone and I was thirsty so I got water. I was extremely surprised when I got my cup and the water was warm to almost hot. Yagura said its a Chinese custom to drink water like this.

Today was a little bit productive. We are still working on some issues with losing motors communication. Its a little devil to find out what causes these problems because of our tricky control system. We are on track to narrowing the problem down. I ran a piece of my content today that I had been working on, and its really impressive. It really pushes the system in terms of speed. I hope to run it tomorrow so I can video it. We will probably never play it again, unless someone hands me a large bag of cash, preferably a duffel bag filled with cash and no coins, nothing other than US cash. The owners of the place are spending around 2-3 million on the lighting,video, audio design of the pavilion in and out. Also one of the main owners came by and saw the system run. He is the highest up and most treat him like an emperor. He was nice and we shook hands. Me and Nate are working on the touch screen design. Its going to be groundbreaking. All previous user screens are boring and industrial. No depth, nothing interesting about them. We are using some pretty slick graphics. I will post a picture of them when they are done.

I think Yag is taking us out to dinner on Friday to celebrate James helping us out. He is leaving we think this coming monday or tuesday. Its not gonna be the same with him gone. I categorize his attitude as "happy go lucky". Him and Mclane went to college together. Im not sure yet where we are going but I can guarantee that it wont be Korean BBQ.

Ill post a video of James learning to count in chinese soon.

Fisher is issuing company credit cards to all its traveling installers, in memory of the screw ups Nate has had to suffer through. They are going to put his picture on the front of all them. It is the b+w photo that I posted. This photo was supposed to be for his site badge, but it got rejected. We dont know why. So they are going to put it on the front of the company credit cards we get.

Can I ask a favor, If you are reading these blogs, please post a message with your first name or something so I can tell whos reading them. Also put if you think they are interesting.

65 Days - Meetings..

Not much time to write today. We had a meeting with all the clients today. It started at 530 and went to 915. It was just me and Yagura and a bunch of the clients and designers. They are still designing the other aspects of this pavilion!.. Its crazy. They have 1 and a half months left. Me and Yag were hungry and she apologized profusely not knowing how long this meeting would go. The first three quarters they argued about the other aspects. The last quarter they spent on the ball grid. Basic gist is, we made the tv and they are complaining to us that the content on the tv is black and white and its bad. So they need to get the tv station to give them the content they want and stop blaming us. Its party because I was able to create some content that knocked their socks off. So they are a little confused.

Yag took me out to sushi for dinner. I got a little sampler plate and she got this "make it yourself" hand roll setup. She showed me how to make them. They were ok, I didnt like the wrapper so much, it sticks to your lips a little. It all looked good. I will post photos tomorrow. Its just too late to do all this now.

66 Days - Electronics store was amazing..

So me and Nate had planned on going to the electronics store to grab some parts that we needed. I had no idea what to expect other than we knew it was a couple of stories high. We got there about 9am. We walked in and my jaw dropped. Everything you would ever need in the electronics world was here. Most of it was automation equipment but you could get terminals, wire, cables, connectors, bare LEDs, resistors, chips, SCRs, power supplies, switches, heat shrink, motors, test gear, LCDs, and fans. There were stores devoted to fans of all sizes and shapes. It was crazy. We needed some cables, and we walked into this store that had walls full of cubbies filled with cables, usb, firewire, HDMI, DVI, network. Even stuff like pink and purple cables. And they were dirt cheap. We bought 4 serial cables and 4 network cables for like 4 dollars. Normally a serial cable at Fry's would be 10-15 dollars each. The one thing that I did notice was there wasnt much computer hardware. No motherboards, hard drives, and stuff like that to build you own computer. I have a good feeling that a store like that exists elsewhere in Shanghai. Did I mention the store was 5 stories and was huge on each floor? The upper floors had little stores inside that were like 10x10 or 10x15 cubes and a shopkeeper in each one. The tricky part is that some of them sell the same thing so when your looking for things you can find them again somewhere else. We got what we needed and got back to the site.

It was warm today. I was able to wear short sleeve shirt outside, but inside the building it was still cold. It really feels like the AC is on but its not. The site is extremely noisy with continual surprising sounds like anvils falling from the sky and saws cutting sheet metal, along with hammer drills going into concrete. Not very pleasant.

I got back to the hotel and I decided to venture out. I had something on my mind that I needed to get. I am trying to get a birthday card for my lovely wife. I am having a really hard time finding anything at all, even something in Chinese. There was an arts and crafts store I noticed, but it was on a higher floor of a building and I couldnt find it. All the info was in chines except "Arts & Crafts" on the outside of the building. I also went down to the new world shopping mall. I was tired walking around trying to find a card. I guess I will have to do something else.

I went up to the arcade in the mall and tried a few games and got bored quick. I had to get a players card which was 100 yuan (15 dollars US).

Thats pretty much it for today. I am posting a picture of how the Chinese move a concrete slab, in ancient pyramid fashion using conduit. As most of you dont know conduit isnt rated for any loads, its only to be used for protecting wire in a building, not roll concrete with or using as a pry bar.

Also just as a note, you can enlarge any picture I post by clicking on it.

67 Days - A good warm day - Tiramisu

So today we spent most of the day just running cycles on the rig. We were just running it up and down for hours to break in all the mechanics. We only have about 1-3 having issues each 30 minutes which is not bad at all. I was excited today since I finally got back my black pepper fried rice. It was as good as I remembered it. Everyone was on chinese new year so we couldnt get our normal lunch.

The subways are packed again. I needed more oatmeal for breakfast so I decided to go to Temple supermarket before going home to hotel. That was a mistake. Nate wanted to come with and once we got down to the subway platform he left. It was so packed with people. I waited for the next subway and when the doors opened I crammed myself in. People here dont move and they get mad when you push them. They have space in front of them and they just dont get it. I went shopping, got my oatmeal, sushi, ketchup (for Nate), biscuits, laundry fabric softener, soap and finally, beard papas!. Yes, this time I got a tiramisu flavor and a chocolate covered one. On the way back to the hotel the subway was even more packed than last time. I crammed myself in with my bag of groceries. Worse than that, is when you get off the train. As your trying to get out of the train people are trying to get in. So lots of people get knocked over and are pissed off. After you get through that confusion there is a long line to get up the escalator. They are narrow escalators enough for barely two people standing side by side. They are not as fast as the ones in Hong Kong, though I wish they were. So all these hundreds of people are merging into this one escalator. There are no stairs at that exit. So everyones pushing and its stinky. I finally got back to the hotel and dropped of Nate's ketchup.

I got home at ate the sushi which was good and ate the tiramisu creme puff. It was excellent. It was a chocolate flavored puff pastry with this crumbly topping baked on top. They filled it with their signature custard. They are so good. Pic attached.

68 Days - Its warm

Today was my day off of the week. I didnt have much planned except to try and go to that electronics store that was closed when we found it. I slept in and watched a few of the office bbc episodes that I had. I looked outside and it was mostly sunny and looked warm. I looked it up on the computer and it said it was around 60 degrees. I did some laundry and decided to try that electronics store and to find the Bund. The Bund, I thought was a park-like area that is right on the water that had all kinds of bars and restaurants and had a great view of Pudong, which has the pearl tv tower and the world financial center. As I walked all the way down there I realized I had to cross the major street to get to this "Bund". I saw a tunnel that went under and I went in. At the end of the tunnel there was a T. So i had to go either left or right. Left was some stairs going down to the Bund tunnel ride that James took. It goes to Pudong. The other way right, didnt have any signs, but I saw light coming from the top of the stairs. I went right and up the stairs only to find out that I was on the other side of the street with a large construction wall blocking where I thought the Bund was. I went back down and tried the other way. I got down to the ticket and ride entrance but there was nothing else. The lines were long, but I figured I would go back and check it out sometime. It was pretty warm walking around, and I can tell it will be just like Macau in the summer. I took my big camera and got a few shots of things on the way back, but I forgot to get a good shot of Pudong with the tv tower and huge world financial center building.

I then walked my way to the store that I wanted to see if it was open. It was not. I headed back to the Nanjing rd mall and went into the No. 1 Mall at the corner which I hadnt been in. Its the same as all the other malls. Multiple floors divided up into sections on each floor.

Onto the toilets. We got a company wide email from our operations dept saying that toilet seat covers were finally ordered. We all read this email and chuckled. Reason being, is that we dont have toilets onsite. Im pretty sure the mens room is the same as the womens room. This is the construction bathrooms, which are better and more permanent than the overfilling porta-johns scattered about. I have not been in or plan to ever go into one of those deathtraps. Anyways, the arrangement of the bathroom is simple. Build a tile floor with a trough that runs along the wall. Put up some 3 foot high dividers and you have your bathroom. So yea, poop and all in the trough. Its really disgusting. There is no toilet paper, so I dont know what they do. I hopefully will never have to do a #2 at work. Attached is a pic. So I sent back the pic of the day back to fisher explaining that we all laughed when we got the email about the toilet seat covers since we dont have any toilets here.

Hopefully we will have a little bit more time to check things out.

Notes about the pics. The top pic you can see the Radisson with round pod on top, which is where we spent chinese new years. The middle pic, I think Dave would get a kick out of. I found this 4 story store that had nothing but extremely high end speakers. I didnt see B+W but they had all kinds of really fancy speakers. I saw a store that had Wharfdale, which I know my Dad had a set.

69 Days - Day off tomorrow..

So we are getting under way and starting to actually operate the ball grid. He have several motors that usually poop out after a certain amount of time and we hope to get that fixed. We just need to keep cycling the system, running the balls up and down a lot. Occasionally one will drop to the ground. These test wooded balls are hollow so they make a racket when they hit the cement floor.

Today for lunch I had another noodle bowl but this one was spicy. Nate recommended it. Its the "red" bowl with flames on it. It had three different flavor packets. One dry and the other two were a paste. I added them all and added the hot water and let it, absorb. I dont think its really cooking at all. It was pretty good. It made my nose run. I had a C.C. lemon drink with it. Its some lightly carbonated lemon drink with extra vitamin c.

We had plans with Odawara-son for dinner. I think Nate was going to come but Mclane talked him into going with him. So it was just me, Yag, and Odawara. He is the technical lead for murayama, which is the middle client between us and the chinese client. Its all tricky. Anyway we went to sushi.

Terrie, if you look at the picture with the skewers, one of them has fried chicken skin (the one above the nuts). I thought you might find that interesting. We got a nice assortment of sushi and sashimi. I had a piece of red snapper that had a bone. Not very fun. But the rest of it was pretty good. Odawaras father was a fisherman so he knew his fish and what was good. He didnt eat much. Japanese culture is not to eat so much if you are drinking and vice versa.

We had a pretty good time at dinner. Odawara-son mentioned that he mostly does lighting. He also mentioned a lighting designer that I have worked with before many times. He was the designer for the beatles revolution lounge and a couple of other projects I worked on. Small world, eh.

Well thats it for today. I plan on sleeping in tomorrow and maybe making french toast. We will see. I think I have everything I need, although some cinnamon would be great.

Ill write about the bathrooms on site tomorrow. That cant be mixed with food-talk.

70 Days - Testing Ball grid..

Today after Mclane finished aligning the cassettes (winches) on the ball grid we started running cycles on it. We never had time in the shop to run the system repetitively to see where the problem children are. Mr. Wu and "Domino" were there even though we only asked for two workers. I guess the two laborers needed two bosses to work. We ate ramen for lunch, and truthfully I am getting tired of them. Today I had brown/orange flavor. It was a little spicy. It was the bowl I took a pic and posted a couple of days ago, some seaweed flavor. I didnt add the seaweed. Each bowl comes with the noodles, a dry flavor packet, a paste flavor packet, some freeze dried something packet, and a fork. Not bad for 75 cents.

Me and Nate went to Big Bamboo again for dinner. We were looking for a new place to try and ended up there. It was crowded and they were playing the olympics from a Canadian cable channel. I got a burger since I havent had one in a while. It was good, but had that slight meatloaf taste. I also had a Guinness.

We are working tomorrow, but off Sunday. It looks like the weather may finally warm up. Supposed to be around 60 on Tuesday. We sware that the building we are in is designed to not hold heat, so its always 10-20 degrees colder inside.

I took a panorama today outside the site right in front of the telecommunications pavilion. I also posted a picture of the expo 2010 mascot, Haibo. If you click on the panorama it will show it to you in an enlarged window. Our building is the one left center.

71 Days - No Sleep

Anyone know what happens on the beginning of the fifth day of the Chinese new year? All hell breaks loose. Ok so the deal is that the chinese want to attract this ancient prophets attention. And to do that they light off firecrackers. All week since the new year this happens pretty regularly. Well at midnight, I have never heard such a racket. I am on the 30th floor of a 60 story building and it was so loud I couldnt even think of falling asleep. It didnt really subside until about 230 am. I took some long exposure pictures of some of the fireworks. It was going on all over, including the street right in front of the hotel.

Today Nate decided to wrap our programming tables in a drop cloth and keep the heat inside with the heaters running. It worked great. I was toasty all day. The only problem is when you have to exit the "tent", you instantly become cold. Mclane got busy checking alignment on the rows of winches. He got halfway done.

We ate our noodle bowls for lunch. I had the "brown" flavor today. There is orange, red, brown, pink and a few others. I think they are like gatorade. You pick a color since they all taste almost the same. I almost went out tonight and had dinner with a friend from the Bubble project. Maybe this weekend.

72 Days - Little Heaters Dont Do Much...

So today we spent the time to setup both heaters and have them work full power. Most of the time we couldnt even tell if they were on or not. I took a pic of yag and nate freezing. Mclane and James we both out sick. So it was just me, nate and Yag.

We all left early since we were done with what we needed to do. Nate and I went to a bar that we knew had wireless and like geeks, setup and did some research and work. We got back to the hotel a few hours later and I remembered I promised Yag I would take her out to dinner. We found a really good sushi restaurant that she liked and the sushi chefs spoke Japanese, so she trusted it. I wish I had taken a picture, the menu was large and had great pictures. I found a nice assortment that I liked and they delivered it to the table very quickly. It looked exactly like the picture. It was really good. We will be going back there.

There are tons of fireworks going on tonight. I dont know why there are more tonight than the previous nights, but its crazy outside. I am going to try to take some photos leaving the shutter open for a while.

I attached two pics I sent out to the company of Yag and Nate.

73 Days - Tooltown got better..

Today Mclane was sick. He got some sortof cold. I gave him some of my dayquil/nyquil that I brought. Its hard to find drugs that you are used to finding here. Without him onsite we worked on more problem winches. Today was the first time we actually ran the system for more than 10 minutes. We had another 15 or so show problems. We still think this is much better than at the shop. 15 out of 1008 is a pretty low percentage.

It was really cold again, so we left early. My lunch today was one of the noodle bowls that you add hot water to. They are pretty good, but not very filling. Yagura bought heaters last night and they didnt really work too well. The power onsite is so flaky.

Me and Nate decided we needed to go shopping for some parts so we went back to the hotel, dropped our stuff and went down to the cybermart. Its a really interesting place since most of the stalls have a lot of the same stuff. Since chinese new years is sill happening a lot of the stalls that we needed to buy stuff from were closed. We couldnt find anything we were looking for. We went back to the hotel hoping to look online for more parts stores. Nate called me up in a little while and said he found it. We decided to take a ride over there to see where it was and we were hoping it was open. The cab took us to Beijing Rd. which is the main drag in tooltown. I couldnt believe it. There was a dual 4 story mall across from my favorite tool store that I didnt even know about. Problem, it was closed. We peered in and realized what a great place it was. I tried reading the sign on the front and it looks like it opens either the 21st or 22nd. That makes sense. Most businesses that are closed for the longest time will reopen monday. I guess I will have to wait until then.

After we got back I decided to go to the supermarket at the temple station and pick up dinner and some things for lunch. I got two more noodle bowls, not realizing that one of them was some type of spicy seaweed variety. Inside these bowls is the noodles, a packet of dry seasoning, a packet of some liquid seasoning, a fork and some freeze dried specks of veggies/meat. So you can add what you want. James tries all the "condiments" before he adds them. I usually only add the dry powder, which I am guessing is mostly salt. I also bought a nice box of sushi. Their sushi is so good there. I was almost tempted to get some sashimi, but I was happy with the sushi box.

I thought about getting beard papas on the way out but the line was tremendous. Also the subways were jammed today. I guess the holiday is just about over.

74 Days- Coldest yet..

Ok its so cold in the building that you can see your own breath. Its pretty bad. We left early it was that bad. Good news is we ran the spheres and a lot of it is working well. Much better than in the shop.

Me and nate went back to Bamboo Bar, and I got a caesar chicken wrap, and it was excellent. A good place. Lots of expats there.

Not much to write. Im running low on time tonight.

75 Days - Chinese New Year....

So after the Korean BBQ place we trekked onto the Radison Hotel, which has this pod looking structure on top of the hotel. In this pod is a large bar/lounge, and on another floor of it a rotating restuarant. We figured we would go to the lounge and check out the fireworks from there. Its a high vantage point and it has 360 degree views. There was a band playing with some singers. I didnt get any drinks since I was already sloshed from the sake at the korean BBQ. We met one of Mclanes friends from the Bubble project there. It was pretty much fun. Nate starting asking all these random girls to dance, especially the ones that Mclane said he liked. I just sat there and took it all in. I actually cant remember much. We stayed till new years and they sang Auld Lang Syne. Fireworks were going off all over the place, nothing planned just a bunch of random people shooting stuff off all over the place.

Here are some videos and pics of the bar and on the street.

Happy Valentines Day Terrie!

76 Days - Grid is alive

So today we spent the day getting ready to run the system as it was intended. I wired up the show stop buttons and got ethernet runs ready for Nate and myself. Nate ran the homing routine a couple of times and we noticed that the addressing of the winches wasnt right. Not a big deal, we just have to spend some time sorting it out.

Today is new years eve for Chinese new year. The subways were quiet as well as the streets. We have reservations tonight for Korean BBQ. This is the same place we went to last time. Its all you can eat and drink. I am sure we will have a good time.

Here are some pics from the dinner festivities. The two guys pic is Nate and Mclane (Nate on left). The other pic is of Yagura, our project manager from Osaka (FTSI Asia office).

PICS

These pics were taken around the town tonight in search of fireworks. None found, but plenty heard.

77 Days - Frigid

So today its freezing outside. Very very cold. My teeth were chattering and my nose was running, dripping all over the keyboard. I was in the control room which was probably 5 degrees warmer. Good news times two today. We got the entire array to run its home sequence. The other piece of good news is that my mac tower finally got released from customs and its delivered in my room. It took 3 days to get it over to china and 2 weeks once it was here plus 1500 dollars US to get it cleared. There was some ceremony that Mclane attended and got his pic taken with the group and drank some milk or something. Very strange. There is a lot more fireworks going off in the streets and tomorrow its supposed to be insane. They gave us these cartons of yogurt plus this big bag of new years treats, which consisted of many types of dried mushrooms and some nuts. All very weird stuff. I didnt like either gifts, but james took them and is going to try all. We left early at about 3pm. I was very cold. Yagura brought us burger king. Me and Mclane like burger king so we knew exactly what we wanted. Mclane wanted the chicken tenders and I wanted my plain whopper. What I got and what I asked for were not really the same. I have seen these spicy whoppers on the menu before but I just dont want to ruin a good thing. I ended up with a spicy whopper with just about everything on it. I scraped off all the useless veggies and nasty condiments (mayo and mustard). I usually do put ketchup on it just nothing else. So it had this sauce that looked like thin barbeque sauce. It was the spicy sauce. I actually have to say it wasnt that bad. But it really did cover up the flavor of the meat that I like so much.

I will try to get some video of the fireworks going on here. Its really amazing that they just light them off anywhere. Even between the skyscrapers, middle of traffic, wherever. Chinese new years will be interesting tomorrow.

78 Days - I lost my hat.

We decided to take a cab today from the site to the hotel since it was so cold outside. I think it was 4 outside. I sat in the front since I am the guy that has all the cards and notes with all the destinations in chinese. When I paid and got out, I left my black wool cap inside. I was angry because its the one thing that keeps me really warm. Anyways I went out right after looking for a new cap. I know that the peoples square subway station has various stands but I didnt see any, and most were too fashionable for me. I need to be able to wear it under my hardhat. I continued on my way to the New World mall. There are pics of this place on the blog a couple of weeks ago. I went up to the mens section, which was mostly suits. Then they had an outdoorwear floor, and I couldnt find anything there. Then I went up to the next floor which had ski wear. There was lots of little booths, like North Face, and Nike. I finally found a shop that had a black and gray striped hat that looked like it would work. I grabbed it. They make you pay at another counter and you take your reciept back to the store and they bag up your merchandise. Weird.

I then decided to take the subway to the Temple station and get some sushi. Nate had it the other night and said it was really good. I grabbed some other things I needed like oatmeal, throat lozenges, gum, ramen and finally maple syrup. Yes, I am a lover of pancakes and I got some mix at the expensive western store, but I couldnt find maple syrup. I found it here at the temple station store. BTW, this place is where the beard papas is. I smelled it a mile away. So I found a sushi box that I liked, then I saw the sashimi. I have said this many times at the sushi bar, I would eat the whole slab of tuna or salmon. Well, they have them here. For pretty cheap too. The box I got had salmon sushi and I tuna rolls. It was really good.

I also posted some pics of snacks we had at work today. Taro pillows, red bean snacks, and my favorite, the Tokyo Banana. Yagura brought these back from Osaka when she went back to get her visa corrected. They are like little twinkies but banana flavored, and I heard they arent very bad for you.

Yes, I write about food a lot. Sorry.

Fireworks are sporadically heard every evening and we heard that this saturday its gonna be crazy with fireworks for the chinese new year.

79 Days - Cold Again.

So I checked the weather this morning and its turning cold again. It was expected to be 42 again or 5c. I was just hoping it wasnt windy. It was windy. It also rained pretty hard during the afternoon. The place that makes the black pepper fried rice is on chinese new year. We instead got a bowl of chicken and shrimp fried rice. There was also half a tea egg in there. I immediately removed that foul thing. The rest was ok, the shrimp didnt taste too good so I didnt eat them. I think tomorrow we will try to get pizza. Things are starting to quiet down onsite since more and more people are starting their vacation. Most people take off an entire week to celebrate the newyear and christmas here.

We are having problems with the network cabling onsite that they installed for us. We are doing the terminations and I was lucky enough to convince fisher to buy us a 7,000 tester that certifies the cabling. Well, it was failing the test all day today. The cable they installed is not a brand name, and has no specifications. I have been reading manuals and trying to figure out what to do. We are using a technology called EtherCat that relies on a fast network connection and this tool was supposed to give us the warm and fuzzies on the cable and if it passed, we should be ok. Well I couldnt get it to pass on any test setting. I will continue troubleshooting tomorrow and if it comes down to it, we will re-pull the network wiring. I just hope we can get some brand name stuff here in China.

No pics today, we are getting pretty busy, but not much change onsite. I was working on terminating all these network connections, and then we went on to testing. The cell modem we got works good in the control room. So I will try to setup wireless sharing of the internet.

Thats it for now.

80 Days - New Pub Found..

Ok today was a non exciting day. It was the second day in a row that lunch was horrible. In the chinese/japanese office is where they place our lunch order, but sometimes because of the language differences they get it wrong. Today we got these bento boxes that had very strange looking ribs, whole shrimp, a tea egg, and veggies along with a styrofoam container of plain white rice. Me and Mclane only ate the rice. Sorry, but we are picky. Nate, only ate the first tea egg, because Mclane was gagging at the sight of it. A tea egg is a hard boiled egg that was soaked in tea. Nate proceeded to eat Mclanes and then my tea egg. He liked them. Tomorrow, we had better get our black pepper fried rice that we have been promising to Nate that is our favorite.

Me and Nate left the site early to go shopping for some ethernet connectors and for a cellular modem for internet access onsite. We took a cab to the cybermart. We found what we needed and Mclane asked us to get him a tripod for his rotating laser. We went to the store where he saw it, except it was much more than he thought. He figured it was about 100 usd, but it turned out to be 600 dollars for the Hilti tripod. As me and Nate were walking back to the hotel, we were in tooltown, we found another shop that sold survey equipment and fluke meters. They had a nice tripod for survey use. We found out it was 160yan, about 30 bucks. Not bad compared to 600us. I called Mclane and he said to get it. We had a long walk back to the hotel, and Nate was carrying this tripod with sharp pointy feet.

After we got back to the hotel Nate rang the doorbell and we were off to Bamboo expat bar. We got there by cab, and the menu was 99 percent western. They had stuff like chicken caesar wraps, nachos, burgers, schnitzels. All looked great. I ordered a bamboo burger, it was good but the meat tasted a little like meatloaf. I think meat just tastes a little different here. I had two pints of Guinness and a shot of tequila. I dont normally drink hard liquor but it was a special situation. I think this might be a good hangout for us.

Sorry no pictures tonight. I tried getting some of the Bamboo Bar, but they didnt turn out.

81 Days - Nate's Here

Today was a very productive day at work. Nate is here to help with the electrical/software side of things. They screwed up lunch for us today. We didnt get the rice that I like, instead they got us KFC. It was ok, but not what I wanted to eat with my dirty hands. I didnt eat much. They had little corn on the cob on a stick like a chilis. That was pretty good. We got our site badges today, so tomorrow we will be able to get in easily without waiting.

We (me, mclane and nate) decided to go the Kabb restaurant since they have margarita mondays there. We ordered a pitcher of margaritas and we filled up our glasses. We were shocked that there wasnt much left after. They ordered another round, I was ok with the one. Mclane got pretty tipsy. I ordered lasagna and so did nate. The waitress came back and said there was only one left. So I got a chicken quesadilla. It had beans in it, so I picked it apart.

Mclane wanted cold stone. He was shocked when he realized that they had no chocolate. The girl behind the counter explained to him that there was a problem getting it from the US to Shanghai. He got something else instead and they gave him a free waffle cup. He was pretty irate (drunk). I ordered a small cup of cake batter and chocolate chips. They didnt have a list of signature blends like they do in the US. They offered me a waffle cup for free also, which I liked.

Thats it for today. Oh the the one pic is the sanitary placard in the Kabb restaurant, and the other pic is on the way to that restaurant and shopping district. Its a 10 minute walk from our hotel.

82 Days - Beard Papa's or Papa Beards?

So today I showed Nate around the various supermarkets that I knew of. We first went to the western market which is 2 subway stops away at the temple station. On the way up to the street I remembered that big market that is in that station. We went down to the western market and I got some breakfast things like poptarts and oatmeal. We then got lunch at the place called the "Long Bar". Me and Nate thought that the bar wasnt very long. After that we went back to the subway station and stopped in that big supermarket. It was pretty crazy. They have lots of good stuff in there. Japanese candy, waygu meat, and even stuff like prawn chips. Nate bought a couple of things, but my nose was telling me something else. I remembered this smell of cream puffs. And yes, there is a papa beards there, although they call it beard papa's as compared to Hong Kong. Must have been a translation issue. I went ahead and bought 2. They are exactly like the ones in Hong Kong that I remember. They are deadly good. They fill them as you order them, so they are very fresh and not soggy. I got two. One chocolate covered and the other plain. They have more flavors like tiramisu and green tea I think. They all look good.

I got back to the hotel and devoured the plain one. It was really good. I threw the other in the fridge for tomorrow.

Tonight I am hoping that Nate is awake enough to get dinner so we can discuss some work issues. I am going to watch a movie and relax. It was a lot of walking around.

82.5 Days - The Maglev..

A special post. I went to the airport to pick up Nate, and I got to ride the maglev. Its pretty awesome. It accelerates to 300km/h or 185mph. In each cabin it shows the current speed. Even more impressive is when it first starts off. The entire train rises about an inch, to levitate off the track. Here are some pics and video.

83 Days - Day off, Cold and Rainy

So today was a shopping day. There were a couple of things that we needed to find for the project. We went down to the tooltown area and I started to realize that many of the shops carry the same mediocre hardware and tools. There are a couple of bigger shops that have better brands, but you have to do your research and make sure you are getting a better price. I ended up buying a tool that is intended of holding a dial indicator on machinework. Its a machinists tool. It has a magnetic base that you can turn on and off, and a lockable articulating arm. I plan on using it to hold my smaller camera and then you can stick it to some steel and point it where you want. I was orignally 160RMB and I talked him down to 100. Its about 14 dollars. I also found the triple A batteries I need for my flashlight.

We walked around for some more and we got tired of looking at stuff. Me and Mclane took a cab back to the hotel and was curious about going to the cybermart.

I got back to the hotel and researched where it was and went down to the front desk. I asked the concierge to write down in chinese the place I wanted to go to, so we can go back whenever we need to. I was in search of a network wall plate. When I got there it was just like I imagined. Little stalls and wanting you to come over and buy stuff. They always say hello, you want to buy camera? And I say "no thank you" and of course they keep on trying to sell you stuff. I bought a 100mw green laser, not sure if I will keep it or sell it to Mclane. I went across the street and looked in the 4 story version of the cybermart. They had the same stuff. I walked back home since I couldnt spot a cab. It was raining, lightly.

I was hungry so I decided to try McDonalds here in Shanghai. I got my usual chicken nuggets. It tasted the same. Also, Terrie, they have it. They have the purple pies that we both didnt get to try in Macau. They went out of season when we wanted to try them. Heres the scoop. They are filled with pineapple and taro. Here is a clip from wikipedia

"Taro (called yùtou, 芋头 or yùnǎi, 芋艿 in China; 芋頭, wuh táu^? in Hong Kong) is commonly used within Chinese cuisine in a variety of styles, mainly as a flavor enhancing ingredient. It is commonly braised with pork or beef. It is used in the dim sum cuisine of southern China to make a small plated dish called taro dumpling, as well as a pan-fried dish called taro cake. It is also woven to form a seafood birdsnest. The taro cake is also a delicacy traditionally eaten during theChinese New Year. In desserts it is used in tong sui, bubble tea, as a flavoring in ice cream and other desserts in the China(f. ex. Sweet Taro Pie). McDonald's sells Taro flavored pies at their stores in China.

"

It looks like a purple blue color filled apple pie. Very strange. Tonight I go to pick up Nate from the airport. We might go to the arcade. The cool part is I will ride the maglev to the airport. I will try to get some pics and possible video. It will be at night, so not sure how well it will work.

The pic is a couple of the stores in tooltown that were selling various pipe and copper bar stock.