Monat: April 2015

Happy Valley

Today was a day free of work, because tomorrow is the first of May and many employees do no need to come to the office. Only the more important ones do. We picked this day to be the day we go to the amusement park located in Beijing called Happy Valley. We anticipated, that today the park would be less crowded. We were right only to a certain extend.
Happy Valley is located south-east of Beijing. Our Chinese version of google maps called Baidu Maps predicted, that a trip to Happy Valley by public transportation would take 1 1/2h, because of an uncompleted subway traffic network. The right choice was to take a taxi and that we did. 6€ and 20min later we arrived at the place of fun and adrenaline.

IMG_2453
The park covers an area of over 560,000 square meters and has „Happy Valley“ weiterlesen

Tesla P85D

0-100 km/h in 3,3 seconds, f*ck yeah!

But first things first. After our usual breakfast we took our usual bus and were again lucky, the traffic was not too bad. We arrived perfectly on time at work where Kenny had some interesting building plans for us, about a construction site we would visit in the afternoon. Soon after lunch (delicious as usual) Lili took us to the south-west of Bejing, which took about one hour. We met her son who arranged a test drive of the newest Tesla car, the Tesla P85D.

It is a fully electrical four-wheel drive car with 690 horsepower generated by two motors, one in the back and one in the front. Nearly everything in the car is controllable using a giant 17″ touchscreen. There are no „normal“ buttons for controlling for example the temperature or the sunroof. You can choose how high or low the suspension may be, how far the sunroof may be open and so on. Here are some pictures:

„Tesla P85D“ weiterlesen

Cheesy & Furious 7

Our daily morning routine was interrupted by the locked door of our dormitory. Normally these are only closed during the night, but sometimes, the older ladies at the counter lock them, when they take a break or whatever. We wanted to catch our bus, but we couldn’t. We spent a few minutes trying to find someone, but in the end we managed to find the door opener, pressing the button through a window of the office.
We caught our bus and it was a surprisingly fast trip due to unusual low traffic. The sleeping overweight snoring Chinese business man next to me obviously felt sad, that he could not cuddle with me for a longer period of time.

In the office we got to work while drinking a freshly brewed coffee. Soon after we were allowed to attend a staff meeting. We did not understand a word they said, but everyone was cheerful with a big laugh now and then. For lunch we had a tasty duck leg with a lot of side dishes.

After a few additional hours of work Kenny, Johnny and Lili drove us to see the new „Cheesy & Furious 7“ weiterlesen

Work and a (violin) concert/performance/theater

As usual we started out day early in the morning and ate our beloved toast breakfast. We took our crowded bus and got to work right on time, being the perfect example of German punctuality 😉

Kenny had some network plans for us to take a look at and also showed us some testing equipment for fiber and copper cables. We also talked about the difference between multi-mode and single-mode fiber cable and which is used in which case.

networkplan „Work and a (violin) concert/performance/theater“ weiterlesen

Physical exercise Sunday

We woke up late on this Sunday. After enjoying our breakfast toasts we grabbed our sporting goods and spent hours on our schoolyard exercising. Like always we had spectators. This time it was a young Chinese boy who did not bother to watch the show from only a meter away.

We rewarded ourself with a few episodes of our favorite TV show. While inside our dormitory building I met a new student who told me, that he would not have school tomorrow, that he has one day off per week! To my doubting question, if he only had four days of school per week, he corrected me and answered that he has school on Saturday and Sunday too 🙂

We ate our lunch at our school canteen, long lost beef noodles:

nomBefore going to shower we cleaned our entire room and did the laundry. One could practically eat of our floor at the moment, but not for long. Anyways … I am going to end this short, irelaxed blog entry here.

After all, it’s Sunday.

Lukas and Alex

Art, Sport & Beijing Duck

We got up quite early to meet up with Daniel, one of the friends of Lukas we already met last Saturday. He took us to his art studio, where he had to pick up some things for a trip he will start on Monday. We took a look at his sculptures which were standing around inside. Here are some pictures of it, if anybody wants to buy something, just let us know, we will pass it on to Daniel 😉

„Art, Sport & Beijing Duck“ weiterlesen

Slow Friday

With little sleep we fought ourself out of our beds this morning. Still groggy from last days marathon we finished our morning routine and went to work. We enjoyed a strong coffee from Lilis coffeemaker and began to further improve our AutoCAD skills. A little while later we were called into the meeting room, where we discussed the plan/activities for the upcoming week. We decided on the following:

  • Monday: Kenny will prepare more project plans for us to take a look at
  • Tuesday: We will visit a Tesla Motors car dealership. Hoping for a ride or even a test drive
  • Wednesday: After work we will eat and then go to the cinema with Kenny, being invited to dinner with Johnny afterwards
  • Thursday: Alex and I will visit the Happy Valley Amusement Park
  • Friday: national holiday – láo dòng jié – Labor Day

After a delicious lunch with fried rice we went back to our work. Kenny was so kind to let us „Slow Friday“ weiterlesen

The Great Wall

We climbed the Great Wall!

After our breakfast, which is now toasted toast with honey and Nutella, we took the bus to get to Lili’s home. There we met Zu, a former tour guide and perfect German speaker. Together we drove to the Great Wall at Mutianyu, about 70 kilometers northeast of Beijing.

When we arrived there Lili bought the tickets although we offered to pay for them. But it seems to be Chinese habit to pay for everything when you have guests. The ticket office is about three kilometers away from the wall, so we had to take a shuttle bus to get there. After the bus stopped, we separated from Lili and Zu because they didn’t want to come with us on the wall. So we took a cable car to the Great Wall and started to walk to the left.

„The Great Wall“ weiterlesen

AutoCAD and Designs

Today was a normal workday. We awoke at 07:30, ate breakfast and were waiting for the bus at 08:30. We arrived at work on time at 10:00. We brought our own notebooks, because Kenny wanted to install some software on them. We installed AutoCAD and Autodesk Revit MEP together and Kenny gave us the project files of the project places we visited the days before. At first the controls were quite difficult, but we quickly got the hang of it and started to study the project plans and designs with Kenny in detail.
ahaaaaWe were interrupted by Lili returning to the office with another gift for us. It was a „AutoCAD and Designs“ weiterlesen

Back to Beijing

We started our day early in the morning and surprisingly without hangover. Kenny took us to a small restaurant to eat breakfast. It consisted of a hot soup in which we threw pork, vegetables, mushrooms, an egg and most important ricenoodles. Then we mixed everything and had a really tasty meal.

Afterwards we took a look at an other project of the company. It was a furniture store, but it was still a construction site. But nevertheless we took a look around and tried to image how it might look in the future.

Then we changed the side of the road and went inside a furniture store, which was already finished. The architecture looked quite the same, so that’s maybe how the construction site might look after finishing. „Back to Beijing“ weiterlesen