work – afib@china

Accomplishments and Pizza

Today we woke up at 06:30am. We were told to be at the other branch of our school at 8am. We arrived early and our new teacher greeted us and quickly put us to work. Our task, as promised, was to build a fully functional Bluetooth Speaker. At first we were overwhelmed by the scale of the project, the amount of parts and the circuit diagram. But with excellent help from our new teacher everything went smoothly and after a few hours we had a finished and working piece of audio equipment. It has buttons for power, volume up and down, next and previous track and pause/play.
The whole workshop was a total success, they even bought and brought lunch for us <3

After work the teacher gave us a box of parts for us to bring to Germany. We have 25 DoItYourself Kits now. But I don’t know if the OSZ-IMT has „Accomplishments and Pizza“ weiterlesen

Last day of work

The days of the last things have come. Today we had our last day of work and our last lunch at work. I still remember the first day of work and the first lunch, time flew away here in China. After lunch we had a final meeting with Lili, Kenny, Tina, Johnny and Winder where we gave our presents to them and also received some. We talked about our stay here in China in general and also specific about all the things we did with the company. All these things they did for us, the visits of the construction sites, where we could get a deep look inside their work and planning, the trips to Shanghai, Hangzhou and ZiBo, the countless delicious meals we had together and the general hospitality amazed us again and again. We also took a nice group picture:

top, left to right: Winder, Luki, Alex, Kenny, Johhny. bottom, left to right: Tina, Lili, we don’t know, we don’t know

„Last day of work“ weiterlesen

English Class, Workshop and Gaming

This day did not follow the schedule we anticipated. Yesterday Teacher Chen visited us in our dormitory. He told us that he wishes us to exclusively attend school this week, especially for a workshop he finds suitable for us. We were able to negotiate one day for us to visit our company for the last time, say goodbye. So today we went to school at 08:15. English class was on the agenda. The teacher quickly separated Alex and me for us having more language skill impact on the class, I guess. We had a lot of fun at English class, listening to the students trying their best to squeeze out a sentence or two. Due to exhaustion some students literally feel asleep 🙂

For lunch our new best friend called Jason invited us to „English Class, Workshop and Gaming“ weiterlesen

Table Tennis Endurance

Today we stayed at school to participate in class again and to have some time to buy souvenirs. When school was over we went to the basement of the school again to play some table tennis . When we arrived it was very crowded, it seemed like lots of students tried to hide from the high temperatures outside (36°C in the shadow, in the sun you couldn’t walk ten meters without sweating). All tables were occupied, so we first played some hacky sack with some of the students. Then everyone had to leave and the basement was about to get locked. Luckily for us some of our Chinese friends could convince the teacher to let us play and to close the room later. We then had a total of three hours of ping pong matches versus different Chinese students. That was quite exhausting!

Afterwards we had to take a shower and then met with some other Chinese friends to go for a first goodbye dinner. We tried the Sichuan cuisine, which is known mostly for it’s spiciness. The dishes were delicious and, as expected, it was spicy.

„Table Tennis Endurance“ weiterlesen

Indian Food and Christmas

Today we arrived early at work as usual. With the help of Kenny we ordered a lot of things online, which we will bring back home to Germany. In China alibaba and jd.com are very common websites to get goods very cheap and fast. After lunch Lili and Kenny took us to buy even more souvenirs in a huge mall. Every store in the mall had at least 3+ employees who follow your every step, blabbering and doing everything in their power to sell you stuff. Wandering around the mall in some moments you have to restrain yourself from performing a roundhouse kick to free yourself from the surrounding salesgirl drones. Fortunately our trip was not in vain and Alex found something to buy bargaining the price down to about „Indian Food and Christmas“ weiterlesen

798 Art Gallery and German Dinner

Today after work Lili, Kenny and Johnny took us to the so called 798 Art Gallery not far away from our school. We took a look around and visited some of the galleries. The 798 Art Gallery is a big district where a lot of artists have a showroom, there are also some nice restaurants like the „Schindlers Autoladestelle“, where we went for dinner. But first some impressions of the 798:

Then we had our first real German food in seven weeks. It was just awesome, we had Weißwürstel, potato salad, bread with liver sausage, lard and cheese, a kind of Schweinzhaxe and most important „798 Art Gallery and German Dinner“ weiterlesen

Late night foto report

Hey, Lukas here, back again with a new HDD. Today the Dell technician brought a new HDD. After a few complications I just now managed to get my beloved notebook working again. Its almost bed time here, so I’ll make it quick.

Today we met with Tina and Lili to go to the Forbidden city a palace from the ming and later qing dynasty. We did the whole tour, starting with a walk up the Tiananmen gate, through the forbidden city and ending with climbing the Jingshan Hill, from where you are able to overlook the entire city.

It was extremely hot outside. We took a small „cabrio“ taxi to a restaurant, which is famous for their Kung Pao Chicken. A dish, which we grew quite fond of. And yes, it was the best Kung Pao Chicken. The chicken meat so soft, it almost melted on your tongue. By sheer luck we took the same „cabrio“ taxi to take us back to our car. Lili took us to a 6 story high mall, where we desperately shopped for souvenirs. Tomorrow we will go to an art gallery and later go to a place, where they serve German food (and beer). Alex is very excited 🙂

Now its bed time, please enjoy the slide show. Shot with iPhone5s and Nexus5 …

Pictures:
„Late night foto report“ weiterlesen

Yesterday’s dinner

Today we woke up a little bit hungover, due to yesterday’s feast.We took our bus to get to work and continued our AutoCAD-plan studies. We also discussed the plan for the rest of the week, tomorrow we will visit the Forbidden City and on Thursday we will eat some German food in the evening. Lukas also called the Dell customer support and with the help of Kenny he was able to arrange a hard drive switch for tomorrow. So after we come back from the Forbidden City we will pick the Laptop up and we will all be happy again 😀

Happy we were also during the dinner yesterday. It was the wedding celebration dinner for Justin (Lili’s son) and his wife, and it was a giant one with a lot of drinks. First we drove to Lili’s home to get a ride to the restaurant, which is located on nearly the opposite of Beijing. Although there was a lot of traffic we only needed 45 minutes. In the restaurant we had our own separate room with two big round tables. We were nearly the last ones to arrive, the room was already filled with Chinese people, mainly friends of Lili. After everyone found their seats the waitresses began to bring in one dish after the other and everyone started to eat and drink. Our table stuck to German beer and French wine, the other table enjoyed mostly the Chinese 50%+ liqueur. To conclude the evening we also had to drink some of it, meaning three small glasses in three minutes. And in China it is tradition to always finish your drink in one swig… Then „Yesterday’s dinner“ weiterlesen

Back from Shanghai

For now I can only provide a short entry, the WiFi in our building isn’t working and so is our own cabled one. We tried everything we could, but there is no way for us to fix this 🙁

Today we took the train back to Beijing and Lili and Kenny surprised us with first class tickets! Instead of the usual 3-2 seats per row we enjoyed a 2-2 seats per row combination. Also the chairs are a little bit more comfortable. As usual we used the journey to sleep, the last days were quite exhausting. At 4 pm we arrived at Beijing and were taken back to our dormitory by Lili’s son. During the ride we had a look at the skyline of Beijing, which is not nearly as impressive as the one of Shanghai, but that’s because the Bejing government did not allow tall buildings until some years ago. So Shanghai as a ten year advance and Beijing just needs some more time for a beautiful skyline.

„Back from Shanghai“ weiterlesen

The last day in Hangzhou and Shanghai

We awoke in our 4 star hotel and quickly headed towards to breakfast in the 2nd floor.
The breakfast buffet offered everything one could have asked for. We ate toasts with fresh marmalade, fresh fruits, eggs, bacon and orange juice.
After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and our driver picked us up to drive us to Leifeng Pagoda, a very tall ancient tower with an amazing view from every floor. Around the tower is a lovely park with a hill full of miniature buildings, statues and a bell: