May travels- the first leg (updated)

The long travel started when the taxi arrived at 3.30pm to send me to KLIA. Flight will take off at 5.55pm. Because of my 3 visits to California last year on Cathay Pacific, Cathay had upgraded my Airmiles frequent Flyer card to Cathay's Marco Polo CLub (by invitation only). As a result, I was accorded almost all the Business Class perks, like access to the Cathay business class lounge, checkin in the business queue and having my baggage tagged as business class priority, thereby ensuring that they popped out of the baggage carousel faster. This sure made my travel a little more comfortable and enjoyable. No looking around the airport for places to sit and relax. Now I have access to refreshments, TV and a big open space to link on wirelessly.

More than 20 years ago, I made my first visit to Philadelphia. Then, I had to go there for a mgmt review with my manager from Singapore (although I was only a support engineer then). The flight then went from Singapore to Seoul to Los Angeles, through Chicago Ohare airport to Philadelphia. The fligh encountered delays, especially at Chicago Ohare where we were stacked almost 7 layers, waiting more than 1 hour before we could land. Taking off saw along queue of planes, thereby enduring another delay of more than an hour. I remember that one of the pilots gave up waiting in queue and just walkied off the plane, leaving it in queue without a pilot!!

This time, the flight for me went from KLIA to

Hong Kong and landed in Los Angeles to clear immigration. Once cleared, took a connection from LA to Chicago and onwards to my final destination - Philadelphia. I think I must have seen too much of the insides of airports. The only thing that caught my attention was this joint outlet between Burger King and Starbucks in the Los Angeles airport. KLIA still lags behind most of the international airports in term so of outlets. Most of KLIA shopping outlets are located in the satellite terminal. KLIA seems to be going for brand image, having Harrods, Montblanc, Dunhill, etc. They even have chains like Mango, though I wonder who would be buying from the airport Mango when they can get more choices of Mango, Zara and similar in shopping complexes.

The hotel that I stayed in was quite comfortable. At the very least, it was much better than that pathetic excuse of a hotel that I stayed in in Beijing. As I arrived early (checkin was suppose to be at 3am and I was there at 10am), I was upgraded to an available suite with 2 rooms, a kitchen (fully functional) and a hall. The rooms were on a split level, i.e. the second room was on a second level. Kitchen came with Fridge, dish washer, all the utensils for cooking, including pans, plates, cups, knives, etc. And of course as in all American hotels - a coffee maker.

Someone read this and fedback that there was not enought photos. So I am updating this with additional photos and writeups :) .Here is the unit that I was staying in. Each block has 4 units and I have the top right hand unit which is a duplex.

With all the built-in facilities for cooking, the hotel had also thought of providing convenience to it's tenants. They have microwavable meals available in what they term as the Market. Sure is convenient if one needs a quick bite. For many longer term tenants, they could also pop into the mall which was just a bout 1.5 km from the hotel. There are food outlets and supermarkets everywhere.

Last but not least, the reason for the trip to Delaware - project Pongo. Here is the Pongo team - CE Assist managers from the 3 regions WW, the product support managers from the factory (Little Falls, Santa Clara and Waldbron), LFS Quality manager and a Six Sigma Black Belt consultant, along with a representative from Finance and the WW Customer Support Manager.

Well, I start to go back on 10th May afternoon (US time) and arrive in Shanghai on 12th May afternoon.Will look forward to that as I have only been sleeping 3 hours the first and second day. The third day was better with 6 hours sleep.

Akan datang.... the second leg!!

The days before a loooonnngggg travel

Tomorrow, the 4th of May will be my last working day.........in KL.............for the month of May. Okay, so this joke is a little overused and abuse. But it is grammatically and factually true. Just that the level of English comprehension amongst many readers are so much lower now that some are still get taken in becoz they do not read the details.

5th May, I begin a long journey from KL to HK to Los Angeles to Chicago to Philadelphia. I will arrive at my destination - Delaware on 6th May (US time) after more than 30 hours of making airports my temporary home. This time, I shall take photos of the airports for blogging. And all that for what, you may ask? Just to get cooped up in a room for 3 1/2 days of meetings in Little Falls (mushroom country). Can't be helped. Have been having teleconferences every Wednesday from 10pm to midnite for the past 3 weeks and it is about time that the project team met face to face to nail down the details of the project and implementables.

I leave Philadelphia on 10th May and backtrack my trip to HK. Thereafter, I shall be routing up to Shanghai for a week. More meetings in Pudong, Shanghai before going home on 18th evening. Do I get to rest? Sure.... 19th is a rest day before I go up to Penang on 20th for a week of Six Sigma Green Belt training.

Depart Penang on 25th evening for home. But... on 26th evening, I have to see the insides of KLIA again. This time the destination is Fukuoka, via Singapore. 4 days of meeting with one of my specialist sub teams before moving on to Hachioji to see the rest of my Japan based specialists and others in Hachioji. And when I come back to KL on 5th June, that would be exactly 31 days of travel almost non stop - with 2 complete days at home for the month. PHEW!!

Ah... but June would have only just started and I already have Singapore lined up for 13th to 15th June.

I think it is time to think of a change of jobs.

Beijing - adulteration of a language

Last Sunday, the Star paper (http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/4/22/focus/17516325&sec=focus) had an article that related how a term used in Beijing had a rather negative connotation. It was " er bai wu" or two hundred and fifty. It seems that in days gone by, the Emperor of Qi offered a reward of 1000 gold pieces to the person who had killed his ambassador, on the pretext that the killer would be considered as a friend of Qi.

4 greedy guys came forward to claim the prize. As there were 4 of them, they suggested that they divided the prize equally. The Emperor then decreed that the punishment be equally given to them and told his guards to take the four er bai wu to have their heads chopped off!! Thus, the term er bai wu was used to mean an idiot, an imbecile.

Shanghainese uses a term that is more familiar to the Cantonese, i.e. Ser San Dian or Sap Sam Dim (i.e. thirteen o'clock) to mean the same thing.

This time in Beijing, I also noticed a perceptible influx of English words creeping into their daily usage. At a restaurant, the Taiwanese engineer was asking for a Cola (Coke that is) and he was asked " Ni yau ee tin mah?" What in the hell is ee tin, the Taiwanese asked? After a lot of hand gestures and sizing with the palms, it transpired that the waiter was asking if he wanted a CAN of cola. They were using the English word TIN for a CAN and not the Chinese/ Mandarin word "guan". China can claim that Taiwan is a province of China, but many words used and spoken today in Taiwan are very different from that used in mainland China. My Taiwanese guest apparently has problems in understanding many of the signs in China. And I was told I am "Wen Mang" as I can only speak the language and not read or write it. The Taiwanese are probably partially "Wen Mang" as well, especially when they are in the mainland

Other words in current usage
- COOL. Used exactly as in the English context.
- IN. to indicate something that is hip and current. If it is not, it is
- OUT.

With Olympics around the corner, maybe it is not a bad thing to have some English words in the language of communications.

Beijing - Apr 2007 part 2

This trip to Beijing, I tried something which I had never tried before - ACUPUNCTURE. Why? Because I just wanted to see if it was really painful and for the experience. I have been having a nagging soreness on my left Achilles tendon. The doctor says it was Achilles tendonitis, but I couldn't for the life of me see any noticable swelling. It has been affecting me for the past 6 months. As my friend's husband operated a TCM center in Beijing, I paid a visit to him and he gave me a free treatment for 30 minutes.

When the needles went in - there was very little pain - even less than a mosquito bite. BUT the length of the needles going in was something else. At least 2 inches went inside me! My friend says that was because I had a thick layer of fat, so a deeper penetration was required. Well.. if you remember from the previous post about the trip up the great wall - I had the Acupuncture treatment prior to that - maybe that's why it felt easier going up the Great Wall the next day.

Agilent Technologies in Beijing have moved into their new office and the official opening is on 20th April (this Friday). The facade of the building is misleading. It looks like 12 storeys high. But it is only 5 storeys insisde plus another 2 levels for the basement. It is very spacious and have high ceilings. And on a clear morning (around 5am), I managed to get this shot of the Moon over Beijing. Beautiful! For anyone who plans to visit Beijing between now and August 2008, the whole city is going all out to let the world know about Beijing 2008 Olympics. Licensed stores are already selling Olympic merchandise adorned with the Friendlies - 5 of them representing the 5 rings of the Olympic movement. I bought a bunch of the lanyards kits for the people who do not have a chance to travel. Those who do have the chance to travel - you'll have to get your own! The stadium is near completion - known locally as the bird's nest. Does look messy in photos, but when you come up to it face to face - it looks beautiful! Unfortunately, the taxi I was in could not stop for me to get a good shot. Oh.... there is still a next time. I have to be in Beijing again in August this year.

Beijing - Apr 2007

4 days before the end of March, I had to make a quick decision on how to get up to 17 new engineers trained up to support the customers in China, Taiwan and Australia. With no trainings, they were not certified for a lot of things and effectively unproductive. On Tuesday, I made the decision to host and deliver a training in Beijing together with one of my Japanese specialist. Training was to start on 2nd April - less than a week away. I was worried that the Australian and Taiwan engineers could not make it in time due to issues in getting the China visa, but in the end, they managed to show up on the first day. 2 trainers and 16 students - that was still a handful to manage for trainings.

I am not going to bore everyone with training, but I shall elaborate more on my side trips to the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, Wang Fujing, Tiananmen and Forbidden City. I had an Australian and a Taiwanese in my class and both had not been to any of the tourist spots before. This was also the first time in Beijing for the Australian, Frank. So I ended up being an unofficial tour guide for the weekend. This would have been my 4th trip up the Great Wall in Badaling and I swear that this time, it seems that we made it up to the top faster, less tired and less sweat. Can't understand this. The first time I was up there was when Beijing was having a heat wave and it was the hottest day in Beijing in 50 years! My legs cramped up and I was sweating like a hog. This time, I panted at some sections (especially the steep slopes and high steps), but other than that, it seemed almost easier. The day was a blustery 2o deg C or so. It still boggles my mind why the Mongol hordes would even consider invading Beijing through the mountainous wilderness. I am even more amazed by the will of the people of days gone by to have put up this wall in the middle of nowhere, with no modern tools. On the way up, there were rubbish bins with some hilarious ENGLISH on the sides.

Next stop after the great wall was the Ming Tombs and like most obedient tourists, we ended up in Ding Ling, one of the biggest tombs. With the coffins of the emperor and emperess about 6 stories down, think of the manpower required to dig down and prepare the burial tombs. And the coffins!!! - must have taken many people just to lift them and move it into place. To top it all off - 13 tombs are spread out all over the beautiful piece of real estate. WOW!!

When HK was handed back to China, they promised that nothing will change for "50 years". Well, I have been visiting China since 1990 and I can safely say that Tiananmen will not change for at least 50 years. The same photo of Chairman Mao is still in the same place and the walls of the first gate "Tiananmen" are looking the same as when I first laid eyes on them more than a decade ago. The only thing that I really missed was that the Mao mausoleum was closed for renovation. I had so wanted Frank and Chester to see Mao's corpse still lying in state all these years.

No writeup of China is complete without a review of food encountered. There is a lot of ducks going around China without a quack. One of the regular appetizers served to diners are duck tongues (and spare parts of duck, cow, pig and every other animal that is eaten in China!). This is an acquired taste!. Certainly not one of my favourites. Then in another restaurant, I came across this fugly seafood - still wiggling and wriggling all over the aquarium. Yucks!! It looks like what remained after the palace make staff had been Eunuchnized, i.e after their little brothers were cutoff - they served them to..........

One of my favourite was the famous Beijing Duck (Kao Ya) served at Quan Jude. We tried the one at Wang Fujing and believe it or not, there was already a queue at about 4pm (for dinner!!).The ducks served at Quan Jude evencomes with a certificate that authenticates the number of ducks they have served since 1864!!

Last but not least - there was this restuarant in Wang Jing (5th ring road) which had an opened area showing how they prepared longetivity noodles. The noodle is made as one lonnnnngggg strand. If you can find the end of it in your bowl, try to slurp it in in one big slurp.

Well 2 weeks went by in a blink of an eye and I was back home mid Apr. Next round of travel is a series of punishing week in Delaware, USA (week of 7th May), Shanghai (week of 14th May), Penang (week of 21st May) and Fukuoka, Japan (week of 28th May). I think I will need at least 2 weeks leave after that to recover.