Working...
October 8 – We left the downtown hotel early this am and headed for the one closer to the factory, stopping first at the Southworth Shanghai office. A surprise to me was that 6 people were working there on a Sunday morning, but probably because the president from Portland was on his way there for an evening board meeting. They had bought a China mobile phone for me, it has a lot of bells and whistles that I will never take the time to figure out. I still can’t get access to my Southworth e mail
On the drive there it became clear that Shanghai is much bigger than I had anticipated, about the size of Sao Paulo, but without the traffic nightmares, at least as far as I can tell. The new hotel is about 35 km from downtown Shanghai and we even passed thru some farming areas in order to get there. The hotel itself is even better than the first one, and it has cable internet access in the room. Unfortunately I still can’t get access to my Southworth e mail system, maybe the Southworth server is down for the weekend. It’s ironic that the only way I can communicate with Southworth Portland is via Phyllis’ yahoo account, despite all the high priced IS staff on board in Portland.
The area around the hotel is much less crowded, with many residences on all the nearby streets, typically three and four story flats. There are a few KTVs (karaoke bars) here also, but other than these it is going to be difficult to get in any trouble here. The hotel menu is a strange mix of western and oriental food, and my first meal here wasn’t so good. Unfortunately there doesn’t look to be many other good choices around.
Just a few observations on the last few days here:
From all the people I have seen here I have noticed only one small tattoo on one young girl, perhaps they are not permitted.
Despite western rumors to the contrary I have seen a few dogs and cats on the streets.
Except for the major shopping zones in Shanghai the place really reminds me of Indonesian cities, lots of motos and bicycles still being used, lots of the same sites and sounds, including horns being honked continuously to try to avoid collisions.
Some of the infants here are equipped with pants that are open in the crotch area to allow wetting and pooping without having to dispose of diapers. How they manage the human waste itself I have no idea.
October 9 – This is the first day at the factory. It is really two separate buildings side by side, one a machine shop where the parts are cut and processed and the other where they are welded and assembled. There are about 24 workers in the factory itself and another 4 or five in the office area. The machine shop is fairly well equipped, the machine tools look to be in good shape. The flame cutting of the legs is fairly impressive, but the leg drilling looks to be a little dated.
The factory was supposed to have wi fi access but it doesn’t. And to make matters worse I can’t get on the internet from here with their cable line either. It looks like this is going to be a long month. The shop is currently so busy that they are working 7 days a week at 12 hrs per day.
I had both lunch (yuk) and supper (yuk) here at the factory and worked until 6;30 pm and caught a taxi back to the hotel. I still had internet access at the hotel, thankfully. I had requested a phone call from the IS guy at 9 pm to talk me thru my mail connection problems. But his computer had crashed over the weekend so he didn’t call and I fell asleep waiting for him. I woke up at 2 am and called him myself, with the result that I could now at least get onto my web mail system.
October 10 – I worked on my e mail system until about 9.30 am and then went back to the factory. A quiet day here because the managers that were here yesterday are at a trade show and so there is no English spoken here today. I took some photos of the outside of the factory that I will post also. I didn’t want to take photos inside for fear that the workers would think I was spying on them. There is still no internet access from here.
I again had lunch at the factory, another gourmet experience. I had dinner at the hotel and met some Mexican people. Mision Foods is starting up a new plant here and so there are many Latinos and other ex pats working here. After dinner I went for a long walk and discovered that the area is much more commercial and crowded than I had found to date. I found a very nice street for shopping but couldn’t find a suitable coffee mug for my wife’s cousin, a prerequisite for most traveling that we do these days.
October 11 – Another quiet day at the factory, at least until the executives from the home office arrived in the pm. We met with them and then toured the factory, they were pleased that much progress had occurred since their last visit in June. For dinner I ventured alone into a nearby restaurant that turned out to be a steamboat joint, an experience which we had some time ago in Singapore. The meal was quite good except for the appetizers of pigs feet, not very appetizing if you ask me. The local wait staff really got a kick out of my willingness to try the food and also appreciated my limited Chinese skills. It was a small but clean café and I was of course the only westerner in the place.
October 12 – Yet another quiet day at the factory. The Chinese crew here really seems to have its act together, at least for the few particular models that I have seen being produced this week. Almost any manufacturing or quality advice I can give them is really secondary in nature.
Each day here I have breakfast buffet at the hotel and lunch is provided by the company at the factory. The buffet is really well done, with a large selection of all types of dishes, both western and oriental. But many times the western style dishes are rather poor imitations of what we would really get in the west. The factory lunch is a styrofoam
box lunch with much sticky rice, a tiny bit of meat, and some bland vegetables. Sometimes I feel as if the styrofoam itself would be more appetizing.
On the drive there it became clear that Shanghai is much bigger than I had anticipated, about the size of Sao Paulo, but without the traffic nightmares, at least as far as I can tell. The new hotel is about 35 km from downtown Shanghai and we even passed thru some farming areas in order to get there. The hotel itself is even better than the first one, and it has cable internet access in the room. Unfortunately I still can’t get access to my Southworth e mail system, maybe the Southworth server is down for the weekend. It’s ironic that the only way I can communicate with Southworth Portland is via Phyllis’ yahoo account, despite all the high priced IS staff on board in Portland.
The area around the hotel is much less crowded, with many residences on all the nearby streets, typically three and four story flats. There are a few KTVs (karaoke bars) here also, but other than these it is going to be difficult to get in any trouble here. The hotel menu is a strange mix of western and oriental food, and my first meal here wasn’t so good. Unfortunately there doesn’t look to be many other good choices around.
Just a few observations on the last few days here:
From all the people I have seen here I have noticed only one small tattoo on one young girl, perhaps they are not permitted.
Despite western rumors to the contrary I have seen a few dogs and cats on the streets.
Except for the major shopping zones in Shanghai the place really reminds me of Indonesian cities, lots of motos and bicycles still being used, lots of the same sites and sounds, including horns being honked continuously to try to avoid collisions.
Some of the infants here are equipped with pants that are open in the crotch area to allow wetting and pooping without having to dispose of diapers. How they manage the human waste itself I have no idea.
October 9 – This is the first day at the factory. It is really two separate buildings side by side, one a machine shop where the parts are cut and processed and the other where they are welded and assembled. There are about 24 workers in the factory itself and another 4 or five in the office area. The machine shop is fairly well equipped, the machine tools look to be in good shape. The flame cutting of the legs is fairly impressive, but the leg drilling looks to be a little dated.
The factory was supposed to have wi fi access but it doesn’t. And to make matters worse I can’t get on the internet from here with their cable line either. It looks like this is going to be a long month. The shop is currently so busy that they are working 7 days a week at 12 hrs per day.
I had both lunch (yuk) and supper (yuk) here at the factory and worked until 6;30 pm and caught a taxi back to the hotel. I still had internet access at the hotel, thankfully. I had requested a phone call from the IS guy at 9 pm to talk me thru my mail connection problems. But his computer had crashed over the weekend so he didn’t call and I fell asleep waiting for him. I woke up at 2 am and called him myself, with the result that I could now at least get onto my web mail system.
October 10 – I worked on my e mail system until about 9.30 am and then went back to the factory. A quiet day here because the managers that were here yesterday are at a trade show and so there is no English spoken here today. I took some photos of the outside of the factory that I will post also. I didn’t want to take photos inside for fear that the workers would think I was spying on them. There is still no internet access from here.
I again had lunch at the factory, another gourmet experience. I had dinner at the hotel and met some Mexican people. Mision Foods is starting up a new plant here and so there are many Latinos and other ex pats working here. After dinner I went for a long walk and discovered that the area is much more commercial and crowded than I had found to date. I found a very nice street for shopping but couldn’t find a suitable coffee mug for my wife’s cousin, a prerequisite for most traveling that we do these days.
October 11 – Another quiet day at the factory, at least until the executives from the home office arrived in the pm. We met with them and then toured the factory, they were pleased that much progress had occurred since their last visit in June. For dinner I ventured alone into a nearby restaurant that turned out to be a steamboat joint, an experience which we had some time ago in Singapore. The meal was quite good except for the appetizers of pigs feet, not very appetizing if you ask me. The local wait staff really got a kick out of my willingness to try the food and also appreciated my limited Chinese skills. It was a small but clean café and I was of course the only westerner in the place.
October 12 – Yet another quiet day at the factory. The Chinese crew here really seems to have its act together, at least for the few particular models that I have seen being produced this week. Almost any manufacturing or quality advice I can give them is really secondary in nature.
Each day here I have breakfast buffet at the hotel and lunch is provided by the company at the factory. The buffet is really well done, with a large selection of all types of dishes, both western and oriental. But many times the western style dishes are rather poor imitations of what we would really get in the west. The factory lunch is a styrofoam
box lunch with much sticky rice, a tiny bit of meat, and some bland vegetables. Sometimes I feel as if the styrofoam itself would be more appetizing.
posted by loshoags | 3:35 PM
1 Comments:
did you find my mug yet? If you got nothing better to do!
Post a Comment
<< Home