On My Journey

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Leading me where

I suddenly realized that I haven't updated my blog for as long as I've been working for this new job. So after my first crazy project in Netherland, I did 2 crazy projects in Switzerland, 1 crazier project in Italy, and 2 crazy projects in China..
I went back to Basel for the two projects in Switzerland - or to be exact, I went back to the company I previously worked for in Switzerland for the projects. It was really great to be back in the same company campus again, with some old friends there. I even slept back in my previous apartment for several nights since a good friend has taken over the lease so I tended to drop by most of the nights and eat homemade dinner there. It also gave me many chances to go back to my previous bible study group and church. Really a big blessing, I liked it very much.
Then came the crazy project in Milano - within one month, every teammate got seriously sick for at least once, one even got temperarily crippled, the team manager scratched both of her home cars on our way to the client's, her home also got robbed one night since she went home so late.. Nevertheless it was a fun project, Milano is a very fashionable city, even more than Tokyo (I had thought Tokyo is one of the most fashionable cities in the world!).
During my holiday back in Tokyo I got a call and was told they've staffed me to my next project in China. Praise God! I'd been hoping to work on projects in China and my dream finally came true! It turned out to be such a fantastic experience, I got to interview the top scientists in China. These scientists are truly amazing and I still feel so proud of them and of my motherland.
Now I'm working on the second project in China. This is an internal project and I'm standing alone in China, so I actually moved my office from shanghai to my hometown and work from a hotel near my family. Everyday I get to see my family and relatives and eat my family cooking... :-)
I had thought I'd be in China for just a month but now I took the second project and stayed for an extra month already.. and my second project is going to be extended again. I'm thinking about going to beijing for the opening of the Olympics..
Aug and Sep will be nice long period of rest since it will be mostly training. Right after the opening, I will be in Singapore for 2 weeks, then back in Germany for another training. A good friend is going to visit me in Europe from tokyo end of Aug.. then I'll be in Austria for another training.
When I come back from my training in Austria I will welcome my first anniversary at the new company. Time really flies. A year has passed like a nice short summer dream. I'm again facing the same tough decision: where should I go? Like what happened to me one and a half year ago in tokyo, I didn't know where I would be in a few months, not to mention doing what. I can stay in Germany for another 6 or 12 months, but honestly I just don't have any chemistry with this country and it would be a great compromise to my life quality if I stay there longer; I can transfer to either Beijing office or Shanghai office but it seems that the office culture is terrible there, maybe it'd be a better idea simply to stay in my current office; or I could quit the firm as I've been thinking lately - China has risen to become the world's center stage and there're so many exciting things we can do. Where am I going to be in 6 months' time? I'm curious about the future of my journey.
Keeping a blog like this is interesting in this sense -- every time when another small patch of my journey becomes clear, I look back and read once again my feeling when it was totally unclear -- it gives me a certain degree of completeness and it also reassures me that I need not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow is in the hands of my Lord whom I trust very much.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

First Job On the Road

After a whole month being on beach doing nothing but occasional training, I became so anxious that I would even do volunteer work. I volunteered to help with an internal project in Singapore for which I wrote a short movie script, I was having so much fun especially because the movie is going to be outsourced to an external movie producer, and we've decided to use one famous male actor from Singapore (whoever he might be, they will have to decide after the audition). Just after I finished my movie script and was so excited to join the effort in deciding the actor, my staffing coordinator decided to put me on a different project! I was completely uninterested in the content of the new project but I couldn't say no.

So this new project is in a tiny, remote village in Netherland, there's not even McDonald in the village. There are only 2 people in my team, the team leader (let's call him TL) and me, the rookie. TL is a happy newly wed German guy, very nice and easy to get along with. The only thing is -- among all the remaining pleasures one could find from this tiny village, eating is not one of them because TL is on diet! Imagine we eat cold sandwiches from the vending machine (a Dutch sandwich vender, not a Japanese one!) for lunch, then on our way back to hotel we drop by a gas station and I get another cold sandwich and TL gets a bottle of water.. TL said he would be fine if he just watches me eat in a restaurant (since we need to work together till around 10p every day) and I hadn't been so cruel to that yet. However, there are still 5 more weeks to go and I think I'm going to do so from this week onward.

As a new rookie, basically I know nothing. At the first time we visited the production plant, TL looked at his cell phone (the cell phone clock) and said something about the bottleneck of the cycle time and I thought to myself: My God! Where is he looking at??

Basically I couldn't even tell which one is the real machine which one is not. It was the first time in my life to walk into a production plant, and believe me watching machines work is not one of my hobbies. And I'm not a very concrete person, for example some people prefer having a product that they can touch... I never have a problem of not touching any product.. I'm always perfectly fine with abstract thinking. I actually prefer not touching any product. :P

But it turned out to be an extraordinary learning experience for me -- learning something that I neither know anything about nor having any interest, but I'll have to learn in a short time. In just 2 days the machines are like my pets already. I know exactly where they are (I'm not kidding, it's hard to remember!), how they work, and what they're making. I also enjoy talking to the workers (imagine the on whole floor I was the only female.. I get all the attention that I ever deserve! :P)

TL is so lucky to have me in his team because someone like me comes only 1 in a 1000 times. I'm entitled as an "associate", but I have no business background, no mini-MBA training, I can't even do excel sheet! (I do have a phD in statistics but we used professional softwares, not as dummy as excel..) This means anything I need to do for this job, I need to learn from scratch. I didn't know EBIT, I didn't know how to build pivot table either. The good thing is TL is also 1 in 1000 type for Germans, he is the most patient guy I've ever worked with, and whenever I have questions for him, he literally dumps all he knows to me. Now I really believe when this project is over, I will be nowhere near rookie anymore.

I had thought a new rookie like me would only add little value to the project. However, I think so far I've added great value already because although I literally know nothing, I can handle client relationship very well. The important source of information that they weren't able to get in the previous week before I joined the project, I got them all within 4 hours. According to TL, I'm very good at "motivating the clients". Well, the truth is these people who are struggling in a dying company (the company burns money 10 times faster than it can make) need very little motivation from anybody.. they know their whole future depends on this.

One funny thing that let me fully realize how Germans think -- TL decides that the team (he and me) will have a good no-work life style for weekends (because we work very hard Mon-Thur). So Friday afternoon after only 20 phone calls (he's from Hamburg office and I'm in Frankfurt) he said: you should go home at 5pm. I said ok fine. Then there's a party in my office and I went away from my desk to the party. By the time I went back to my desk it was about 5:40pm and there was a missed call from TL at 5pm. I called him back and asked him what's up. He said "I just wanted to check whether you left the office already and I was happy you were not there!". It made me laugh.

So despite the project is about boring production and the village is too tiny, it is a fun project that I can learn a lot. I mean, compared to my other colleagues -- eg, one colleague is doing a project in a village in UK now, there's nothing but McDonald. He told me every day he faces a touch decision: to eat at McDonald or to skip lunch. Another colleague has been doing a long project in Lybia, during the Ramada he could only eat bananas in the toilet.

The timing is also very good. It will finish right before the Christmas holiday. Officially I can't take any personal holiday during my first 6 months, but what else I can do if I can't get on any project? (there are no projects startig in dec). So I have very legitimate reasons to take holidays.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Rio de Janeiro

On July 7, 2007, Rio de Janeiro became even more exciting by winning one of the new 7 world wonders: Christ Redeemer statue. I was sitting in my office, staring at the photo and said to myself: Geez, I've got to see that place. On July 17 I shot an email to Lily, asking her to meet in Rio de Janeiro for Christmas.

2 weeks later I went for an job interview in Germany and received the offer. According to the Germany law, the new hires are not allowed to take personal holidays within the first 6 months of employment, which put me in deep doubt of the feasibility of my Christmas holiday. 2 months later after I joined the company, I found out the new company works a lot and parties even more, in fact the company Christmas party has been arranged to take place in Austria, although they "claim" the attendence is not mandatory, I think I'd better be there...

So I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't have a chance to see the statue this year, but not for very long. During my first week in the new company I was informed that I need to go to Brazil for a training, this time they said my attendence is mandatory. However, the training would be in Sao Paulo from Mon to Fri and they've booked the ticket for me to come back on Sat evening. Seemed that it's impossible to visit Rio since Rio is an hour flight away from Sao Paulo and it takes a long time to get to the airports due to traffic plus the flights are almost always delayed.

But it turned out during the training one of the colleagues is from the Rio office and he talked us into going to Rio with him. So a colleague from my office, and a colleauge from the Delhi office and myself rushed to the airport and jumped on a plane and landed in Rio! I saw the statue even before the planed landed, it is so prominent and it can be seen from everywhere!

The city has a stunningly spectacular landscape. I loved it so much for the great food, blue ocean, passion and heat. If only I could spend a year on the beach and get a nice tan as the local people...

Thursday, October 18, 2007

My New Home

My first month on the new job has been very leisure. Everyday it was either training or nothing to do. Some of my colleagues who are also new went golfing during office hour whereas I devoted most of my time doing yoga. My goal is to be able to bend backwards with my both hands on the floor within the next year... (sitll a long way to go and hopefully it's not next 10 years) :P I'm staying in the company accomodation at the moment but will need to move into my own apartment next month. I had been working with the company relocation agent but it had not been very fruitful. When we made appointment to see an apartment and the landlord would call and cancel it because it was rented out already.. and it happened to us 4 times! So much frustration.

There was one apartment that is everything I ever dream of: old-styled building (built in 1900), high ceiling, it even has a winter garden and a private garden outside of the winter garden. It was so hard to get an appointment and we had to wait for a week before we could go have a look. When we finally went there I fell in love with it immediately: it has a beautiful chandelier in the living room, fully equipped kitchen with washer and dryer.. etc. The ceiling of the bedroom is made of wood.. and the house is in mint condition.

The landlord was not there so we only met the tenant. We called the landlord as soon as we got into our car, but it was only his voicemail! All we could do was to leave him a message.. and wait anxiously because we were not sure whether someone had decided to take it or not. My agent called back an hour later and found out actually many people have decided to take the apartment! The landlord said he would decide the next day. We waited till the end of the next day and nothing happened.. (I'd been telling my colleagues about this apartment and they joked that if I didn't get this apartment, I would get furious.. and in fact I believe I would!)

So I kind of felt that it's not very likely that I'd get the apartment and I started looking for new ones on the web.. but nothing was nearly half as good as this one. Just when I was about to get furious my agent called and told me I got it!!! Oh thank you dear God! I probably felt more excited than the moment I knew I was accepted to graduate school, or my new job...

my new home:







Friday, August 24, 2007

Moving advice from a friend

BD(my friend): have you already found an apartment yet or is the company gonna giveyou corporate housing for a while?

me: the company will pay for a serviced apartment for the first month. I'll need to find an apt from Oct.

BD: Remember don't move in the senior community though. 哪儿年轻帅哥多往哪儿搬,或者等到上班后在同事中做个年轻男性人口普查然后有的放矢得搬,哦?咱们干统计的嘛,就要干一行象一行。

me: 天哪,怎么想得跟我一模一样。。。真不愧咱俩是同班同学,老师不是白教的。。。

远走高飞

远走高飞

说再会,是否就是离别。

我有一项绝技。每逢离别的时候,我总是会对所有的人说:我很快就会回来的!等我下次走的时候再告别好了。这样轻松愉快地告别,没有失落,没有眼泪,仿佛是一次周末旅行。然而从中国到美国,从美国到日本,从日本到瑞士,那些我亲爱的亲口答应过要回去看的朋友,没有一个再见过面。我想人生应当是这样的吧。当车轮启动,时光一去不复返。各人将有各人的缘分,所以迈步向前是好的,悲伤没有必要。从什么时候,我就练就了这样薄情的本领?也许是父亲去世的时候。情深不寿,懂得放手的人才是真正懂得世间之情。况且世间一切都有尽头。人活百年并不长久,十年也并不短暂。人与人的缘分也是一样。

这次又要走了。我打算再次将我的看家本领拿出来演习一遍。并非是不留恋,只是顺服生命的轨迹。我的生命要去到哪里,我无力操纵,只得谦卑地跟从。然而情感是我可以控制的,我可以选择要快乐不要悲伤。要微笑说再见,不要含泪说再见。

所以不要说是流浪四方,要说是远走高飞。那未来未知的旅途,如同神秘的没有人去过的海洋,静静地等待我去掠过。没有人知道会发生什么。我不知道会遇到谁,在我未来的海洋。所以我现在就展翅飞去,我自由的,蓝色的海洋,没有边际的海洋。再大些,远些,好让我飞翔。

这一首歌,仿佛我此刻心情。但是我的安慰并不是在任何人里面,而是在我心中永恒的神里。因为天地都要废去,唯有神的话不会废去。

"Time to say goodbye"

quando sono solo
sogno all'orizzonte
e mancan le parole
si lo so che non c'e luce
in una stanza quando manca il sole
se non ci sei tu con me, con me
su le finestre
mostra a tutti il mio cuore
che hai acceso
chiudi dentro me
la luce che
hai incontrato per strada
when i'm alone
i dream of the horizon
and words fail me
there is no light
in a room where there is no sun
and there is no sun if you're not here with me, with me
from every window
unfurl my heart
the heart that you have won
into me you've poured the light
the light that you found by the side of the road
time to say goodbye (con te partiro)
paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te
adesso si li vivro
con te partiro
su navi per mari
che io lo so
no no non esistono piu
it's time to say goodbye (con te io li vivro)
time to say goodbye
places that i've never seen or
experienced with you
now i shall
i'll sail with you
upon ships across the seas
seas that exist no more
i'll revive them with you
quando sei lontana
sogno all'orizzonte
e mancan le parole
e io si lo so
che sei con me con me
tu mia luna tu sei qui con me
mia solo tu sei qui con me
con me con me con me

when you're far away
i dream of the horizon
and words fail me
and of course i know that you're with me, with me
you, my moon, you are with me
my sun, you're here with me
with me, with me, with me
time to say goodbye (con te partiro)
paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te
adesso si li vivro
con te partiro
su navi per mari
che io lo so
no no non esistono piu
con te io li vivro
con te partiro
su navi per mari
che io lo so
no no non esistono piu
con te io li vivro
con te partiro
time to say goodbye
places that i've never seen or
experienced with you
now i shall
i'll sail with you
upon ships across the seas
seas that exist no more
i'll revive them with you

i'll go with you
upon ships across the seas
seas that exist no more
i'll revive them with you
i'll go with you.
i'll go with you.


当我独自一人的时候
我梦见地平线
而话语舍弃了我
没有阳光的房间里
也没有光线-------
假如你不在我身边
透过每一扇窗
招展著我的心
我那已属於你的心
你施予到我心中
你在路旁
所发现的光
是该告别的时刻了
那些我从未看过
从未和你一起体验的地方
现在我就将看到和体验
我将与你同航
在那越洋渡海的船上
在那不再存在的海洋
我将与你一起让它们再通行
是该告别的时刻了


当你在遥远他方的时候
我梦见地平线
而话语舍弃了我
我当然知道
你是和我在一起的
你---我的月亮,你和我在一起
我的太阳,你就在此与我相随
与我、与我、与我----------
是该告别的时刻了
那些我从未看过
从未和你一起体验的地方
现在我就将看到和体验
我将与你同航
在那越洋渡海的船上
在那不再存在的海洋
我将与你一起再让它们通行
我将与你同航

我将与你同航
在那越洋渡海的船上
在那不再存在的海洋
我将与你一起再让它们通行
我将与你同航