China - Day 39 - Finally made it around the West Lake

July 24
I worked a half day today because my friends were coming to Hangzhou from Shanghai for the weekend and I wanted to hang out with them. I've been working on my own little project for a while now without direction, but this is a purely personal project. Once I wrap this up (this being a complete manufacturing plan for a piece including fixturing and tool paths), I'm going to see what Michael has for me to do next.

I met my friends while they were having lunch at a place called Grandma's, which is not a little hole in the wall place as the name might imply, but rather a two story restaurant that is only accessible from the street by elevator. The food there was pretty standard for Hangzhou, but they ordered an awesome dessert that they offered me a portion of. It was blended mango with ice and condensed milk, kinda like mango ice cream. It was delicious. After lunch we walked around the West Lake for a while, taking in the sights and being sights ourselves as a relatively large grouping of laowai. We happened upon a few temples that were pretty, but would have likely been beautiful in a cleaner setting. The air and water pollution took a toll on the flora and fauna, which was less than impressive (in contrast to the picture they had posted of the same locations in better times). Around the West Lake, nature seems to be beautiful from afar, but disappointing up close.

The next stop on the great touristy trip of Hangzhou was to a famous shopping street that I completely forgot the name of, but it was a huge shopping street. It ran for the better part of a mile with a fairly consistent repetition of tea shops, food stalls and craft sellers. Unfortunately, most of the stuff there looked like it wouldn't survive the plane ride back to California, so I opted not to buy anything, but I was sorely tempted to buy that great Chinese souvenir, the dreamcatcher (seriously, they were everywhere with pictures of American Indians on them). I almost bought some deep fried ice cream (who knew China and the Texas state fair would have so much in common?) before being reminded of my friend Phil's story of getting salmonella from eating street food. I ended up chickening out. We went to dinner at a place called Angelo's that I had attempted to find twice previously, but had struck out. The restaurant is fairly well hidden on an alleyway off of a main road, not at all where you expect to find an expat hang out. Once we got there, it was marvelous. The food was fantastic and they had an impressive selection of different expat cuisine, including the best hamburger in Hangzhou (actually, one of the best I've ever had). I think we are definitely going to have to make a return trip here.

On the third try, I finally made it to Angelo's. It didn't disappoint. This restaurant would not be out of place in North Beach or along University Ave (except it cost about half as much).	One of the dishes we ordered was the Beijing Duck Pizza. My friend Alex said it wasn't a terribly good representation of Beijing Duck, but I didn't know the difference. Either way, it was delicious and perfectly passable as Italian pizza (surprise, Angelo is Italian)

China - Day 16 - The Grind Begins

I want to wish everyone a Happy Fourth of July. I'm quite sad to be spending my second favorite American holiday (the first being Thanksgiving) in a country that is rather indifferent to it, but such is life. This is the second time I've been out of the country for the Fourth of July, the last time was in 2006 when I was in Vienna. Curiously, it was also during the World Cup. I wonder where I'll be July 4, 2014?

Anyway, as the title suggests, things have started to slow down around here. Work has gotten more interesting, thankfully, but a lot of my initial excitement for being here has also worn off. Rather than seeing things that Chinese people do differently than Americans as quirky, I'm starting to look for underlying reasons for those differences. I'm probably going to comment more on that now (although I think I'm also going to cover what I work on so that I don't forget).

July 1
I'm working on creating a fixture to hold a workpiece to be machined in a CNC mill. I'm taking multi-faceted drawings from AutoCAD and recreating them in Unigraphics NX6 as 3D models that we can then use the integrated capabilities of NX6 to generate tool paths and code to machine the fixture. I think they might even let me help machine one of these work pieces eventually. Michael has also given me a second workpiece to look at with the assignment to take an NX6 model of the casting for that part, modify it to final specifications in NX6, generate tool paths for that machining and then to create a fixture to hold that piece. I'm excited that I'm getting exposure to this sort of work, but it is a bit daunting to be handed two projects at the same time. And I'm still having trouble with the tool path generation because the method I use to create them in UG generates paths that Michael doesn't like, so tweaking UG has been frustrating/useless. I wish I had a UG manual to walk me through this, but I don't. Oh well, no one said working in a foreign country would be easy.

On the homefront, I needed to get a power converter to charge my electric toothbrush (yes, I'm spoiled). I tried to convey the sense of an voltage converter to Michael, but he didn't seem to get it (perhaps they don't teach breadth in Chinese engineering, but I was glad to have E40 under my belt), but he understood it when I told him I needed it to charge my camera (a little white lie, but I didn't want to convey myself as terribly spoiled). So, we went to the Xiasha Trade Center (XTC, an acronym too awesome to pass up) to see his friend who runs an electronics dealer, along with about 100 other dealers, in a mega-mall with hundreds, if not thousands, of stores. Actually, stores is an overstatement, the shops there are more like 3-sided rooms stacked to the ceiling with merchandise, open to a common hallway. It is an assault on the senses. Luckily there is some semblance of organization and the electronics dealers and separated from the clothing dealers. The electronics dealers are an odd bunch, they sell all sorts of things, but mostly small computers and things like cell phones. But what I think is really strange is that almost everyone there smokes like a chimney, which surely can't be good for the electronics (or their health). Anyway, getting to the point, we find Michael's friend, who doesn't have the low wattage power converter I need, but he can order one and have it for us tomorrow. So I'm feeling a little dejected, Michael tells me that we should try upstairs, and I figure "Hey, let's give this a shot."

But it turns out the upstairs is not more electronics dealers, but instead is an arcade. For about 3 dollars we play video games for over an hour, mostly the little basketball shooting game. I have quite an advantage at this because I'm taller than the average Chinese person, who the game appears to be designed for. My personal best was 696; however, that was assisted by 5 60 second rounds and a rather touchy sensor that would trigger whenever the rim was hit, regardless of whether the ball went in. Overall, it was quite the fun night, although I was a little sad to not get a chance to go for a run like I was hoping to.