Saturday was a rainy day, any desire for sightseeing was literally washed away by the rain – so big part of the team ended up in Wuhan’s effective, but  nearly incomprehensible bus network to head for a local fashion mall.

The mall turned out a to be a stuffed, cramped nine-story building full of little shops selling cheap clothes often of questionable quality; most of us therefore headed back to the hotel after this interesting experience, this time walking (aka Björn’s guided tour through the clothing wholesale district).

The evening found us heading out for a club we already had gotten to on our first weekend in Wuhan. Already back then we had a funny feeling about the place – though as we really enjoyed the show and the dancing, we took the decision to head back to celebrate into Lya’s birthday.

We had once more loads of fun, even got special attention from the club’s manager, who took special care of us. Once more there were loads of show elements thrown in during the evening – and as we had Lesley call ahead, we even ended up with a VIP table with good views and close to the dance floor; only the music selection was a bit inconsistent.We also got close to a final conclusion on the funny feeling we had at the first time. In any case I am pretty sure, that this has been a worthy start into Lya’s 26th year 😉 – and a good night to remember for the rest, that joined in.

All in all – I have to say the CSC China 15 team is an amazing group of people; Saturday night was yet more evidence that we are indeed a united and loyal team with full ability of cultural adaption.

My team had a busy day yesterday and today; our next presentation is next Monday afternoon, with the translation work in between our deadline for the English presentation was basically late afternoon today, to give Elaine and Theresa enough time for their part.

We resulted spending most of yesterday in our Western Bubble to put the slide deck together and create/ adjust the content per the SoW with our client – we only left our Starbucks confinement for lunch and the one or other visit to the bathroom (means smelly squat toilets). We only left the place around 20:00 with the first version of our slide deck.

Today we – after having done some furniture rearrangement at Starbucks – continued fine-tuning the presentation – and finally could pass the first final version of the presentation over to the girls for translation in the later afternoon.

With our milestone for the day reached; Clare and myself finished early (at least compared to yesterday) and made it back to the streetfood street in Wuchang for some of the local specialties.

The Western Bubble of Wuhan is just across the street from the hotel … the local Starbucks store. Stepping into it feels a bit like stepping back into Western culture, suddenly the cacophony of sounds is changing to relative calm with only subtle music in the background. The outside hustle and bustle changes to a relaxed atmosphere, food is Western, desserts are sweet and sugary – and eaten with forks rather than chopsticks.

Entering and leaving the place has somewhat the feeling of crossing an invisible and sudden (cultural) border … from China into the West and vice versa.

For me this Western Bubble feels a bit like a double-edged sword … on the one hand we are here to experience Chinese culture, so spending too much time at Starbucks will not support that experience … on the other hand, it is nice to know there is place nearby, one can go to when one needs a break from China or just some proper afternoon cake.

In any case – we (i.e. the manufacturing sub-team) crossed that border today once more and made it into Starbucks country to discuss how to proceed with our other customers (after the first final presentation yesterday) – and to dig into some good cheese cake.

A busy working week is close to an end … we have worked hard this week, most days only leaving the hotel for food – or to continue work with slightly more bandwidth and better supply of hot (and cold) coffee or tea based beverages at Starbucks.

Today we have finalized the first presentation for one client and handed it over to the interns for translation. Tomorrow – Friday – will be a short day; I plan a couple of hours in the morning to review and prepare for my part of the presentation – the final presentation meeting with that client is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Around midday we then plan to leave for Yichang – and the Yangtze river … and a weekend on a cruise boat. I had done that before – more than six years back, before the dam had been finished, I am really curious to see how the scenery changed.

See my photos from six years back – dam (under construction) and the big and little three gorges. Current photos will follow on Sunday or Monday.

Getting there … job-wise

Today was a busy day; in the morning we continued with the work on our individual bits of the presentation for one of our clients. We then spent (once more) most of the afternoon at Starbucks to start reviewing slides and putting the overall slide deck together.

We also involved the interpreters into that effort to ensure we convey the correct message and meaning, when the slides are finally translated to Chinese.

Getting there … weekend-plan

Today was also a milestone in the planning for the upcoming weekend (in PM talk one could call today ‘Plan Exit’) … we signed the contract with the travel agent and will leave Wuhan on Friday to go for a Yangtze cruise over the weekend.

Getting there indeed was a milestone … the steps to come to an agreement over the final contract included extensive discussions within our team, numerous visits to the travel agent, review of several options, detailed study of the proposed itinerary and proposed contract – including a final discussion down to footnote level.

Given my travel arranger role (that I somehow got assigned in the first couple of days), I found myself at one stage today with an amount of cash (11.4 K Yuan) that I would consider huge even from a European standpoint …

Overall we are getting there … our first presentation should be ready for translation tomorrow – and the weekend will be there to celebrate and relax on the Yangtze 😉

Today we had one of those typical working days; spending most of the morning working on research and creating presentation with a level-set meeting in between.

In the afternoon my sub-team headed for the office of the local IBM branch – mainly for connectivity reasons (the bandwidth in the hotel is shared … so during the weekend it was acceptable, while now it is not reliable at all). On top of that most things outside the Great Firewall come in slowly (independent on where one connects … hotel, office or Starbucks) with unpredictable blocking occurring (e.g. yesterday I could not access ibm.com from the hotel; facebook remains a 50:50 joker, some also have issues with wikipedia and google).

So we decided to use our connections (or guānxì / 关系 as the locals say) to get into the IBM office to at least do our research without excessive waiting times … we were still behind the Firewall though …

In the late afternoon we had a meeting with the local IBM management to get an introduction to IBM [Central] China and the situation of the region.

After the meeting we had dinner before heading back to the hotel.