China - Day 6 - Time to get to work

June 22
It's my second day at work and it's going very much like the first. I'm having the second safety training session; however, the person giving the training doesn't speak very good English (and I certainly don't speak Chinese well enough to take safety training), so I have to guess at what he's trying to convey. Probably not the best situation for safety training, but I'm going to be spending most of my time in the office and I think I got the general gist of the training (Don't touch anything). After safety training they take me out to another warehouse for more training, but this time it is training to use a five ton crane. That is way more fun than anything else I've been doing, and I start to get the hang of it pretty quickly. It's pretty much a pendulum game, albeit with a 500 kg pendulum. As we walk back to the office, Michael tells me that his boss thinks I "walk lazy." I'm confused, so I press for information. Apparently, the way I walk with my weight behind be, not walking with urgency, makes me appear lazy. I resolve to walk like purpose, to use my "city walk," around the office.

After lunch I finally get my own computer after two days of prodding (and spending the first half of the day studying engineering drawings out of context got grating). The only problem, it's in Chinese and there is no way to change the operating system language to English without buying an English version of Windows. Oh, and the software I'm going to be using (Unigraphics NX6) is also in Chinese. Excellent. After an hour or so of my fruitless searching, Michael comes and changes the language of NX6 to English in 3 minutes. Oh well, I have my own access to the outside world (Internet is spotty at best in my apartment) and something to keep myself entertained at work. I went for a run after work and I got a lot of strange looks, like I'm the first person to run in the history of Xiasha. Oh well, it is nice to get some exercise in.

Rome 2006

Rome was hot. Not only was it hot, but it was muggy too. There was culture all over the place, so much that it eventually became overwhelming. I will say, though, that the food was excellent, even if it could have been cooked by just leaving it outside,
One day we went to Pompei, which was a complete and utter disaster. Every train we got on that day was late and packed and broken. I finally understood why people said about Mussolini, "At least he made the trains run on time." When we got to the ruins, I decided that that name was very apropos, because the city looked as if it had been shelled.
The major takeaway I got from Italy was that personal space is a uniquely American phenomenon. On all of the trains and metros we took we were packed like sardines




An entire dimension for Tony Danza? Can I never go there?




Monument to Victor Emmanuel II. They call it the Wedding Cake, for obvious reasons.




Where Julius Caesar was cremated. Or so we're told

Germany 2006

We were in Berlin during the quarterfinals of the World Cup 2006. While Germany was playing. In Berlin. The city was insanely packed, but insanely fun. We went to the World Cup fanfest in the city's central park with a million of our (new) closest (literally) friends. We also saw some cultural things, but that was less fun.

Checkpoint Charlie, the old border checkpoint between East and West Berlin. Sadly, it is now a privately owned tourist trap.




At the fanfest during the Germany/Argentina quarterfinal match. Official tally, 1 million people in the park.