Category: Work

Monday was the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, but it’s back to work today.   The Luohu Port border crossing building looks very spiffy with its new coat of paint.   I had to remember to turn around to take the picture as I exited from Customs downstairs.    

Tuesday night the project team had a little go-live celebration at the expat village swimming pool.   The pool is very nice –  I just couldn’t resist taking a picture of the sign.    No mention of doing that other thing in the pool, but I am sure it’s covered by the ‘civilized swimmer’ request.     I recall a plaque at someone’s house a long time ago that I thought was funny.  It said  we don’t swim in your toilet, so please don’t pee in our pool ! 

The Labor Dept reported Friday that the US economy added only 54,000 jobs in May – a significant slowdown from 232,000 jobs added to payrolls in April.     Since economists were expecting a gain of around 170,000 jobs, it was a big disappointment.     By most estimates the economy needs to add about 150,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.

This is also the time that new graduates are looking for work, and I found this editorial written by David Brooks that appeared in the New York Times very interesting!   It’s a big world out there and the realities for job seekers can be harsh.   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html

Friday was busy at work.  We discovered a bug in the SAP program that creates work orders, and several hundred work orders needed to get fixed.    We got the fix in and since we did not have to come in to work this weekend,  my colleague and I hopped on the bus and came to Hong Kong.     It took 3 hours to get here – about average – and this picture was taken outside the Four Seasons hotel, on Hong Kong island.      The snacks we had at the bar, was also dinner.

We had an early start (5.45am bus departure from Dameisha!) to make it in for the go-live.    But please note that we are not opening a website that sells tickets for a rock concert.     So the system does not get flooded with thousands of users trying to get in.   Instead, the first day users are the work planners, the supply chain users and the finance guys .. and some of them have already been in the system since last week.

And are you ready for your 5-minute crash course on how to install  SAP?    Let’s go!    Start by setting up a development (DEV) and sandbox (SBX) system.     SAP comes with packaged programs and some configuration but you will have to set up your own company’s configuration and master data.      Then do a ‘blueprint’ phase to draw up the plan for what functions the system needs to have.      The DEV system is used for this and for the ‘realization’ phase.    The realization phase – the construction phase – can take 6 to 12 months!    You then need a ‘quality assurance’ system (QAS) for testing the prototype that you built.    For that, convert your legacy system’s data into the QAS.     And then when all defects have been fixed and tweaks made to the design, you are ready to create the final system.      In our case we had a ‘production system’ (PRD) up and running already that had been in place for a few years.     But if it’s the first time SAP is installed at your company, you will create a brand-spanking new PRD system.   (A system is a gigantic database with several hundred thousand connected tables, a set of SAP application software, and database software from Oracle or IBM to keep the millions of data records indexed and organized).  

So all of this to say our project has ‘arrived’ at the end of the line.   We have a system that is up and running, that have active users in, that has the basic SAP functions with added bells and whistles that make it support the work methods here.     Which in our case is running a nuclear power plant’s work management activities,  engineering activities, supply chain functions (purchases of parts, materials and services) and all the finances that go with it.  

 

Yes, that’s me on the stretcher (cot? not sure that it’s a ‘cot’) doing night shift in the conference room that we set up as the ‘war room’ at work.    But please note 1. I didn’t really sleep and 2.  the lavender blanket is not mine!  (nice color, though!  LOL).    We are taking turns to do night shifts to support the final data conversion sequence into the production system that started last week.  

The ‘baby on board’ sticker is from Saturday morning’s ‘black’ taxi that took 3 of us to work to support the on-going data conversion for the May go-live.      The flowers are from the swank lobby of the Dameisha Sheraton where we had a burger and a beer Friday night.    It would have been nice to stay in the Sheraton for the project, but it’s too expensive and instead we stay in the Pattaya Hotel (with the blue LED trim, and marked on the Dameisha map).

I still see new real estate agencies every time I come back here for my next trip, but the word is that the 2009-2010 purchasing frenzy is no longer occurring at real estate centers.   The ‘sweet spring’ of real estate buying in March and April has not materialized this year.  There are reports that housing prices especially for second hand homes as they are called here, have declined some 5% in cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.   And there is still no sign of life in the Ocean Crown condo complex (picture with the reflection in the water) across from the Pattaya Hotel.

I found the golden dragon on a tea container at work and couldn’t resist taking a picture.  And the ‘looking down’ view is from my 31st floor hotel room at the Marriott.   My colleague and I made it to Hong Kong – the driver had to wait 30 mins for me because at the last minute another crisis with the data conversion happened.       So there will be more of that and there is still hard work ahead before we can switch on the system in two months, but hey – how nice to get away from the work site for awhile and go home!

 

This picture was a print on someone’s sweater here at work, and I felt I had to look it up.   Roronoa Zoro is a pirate-like character in the  One Piece manga and anime series, and only one of an extensive cast of characters created by Eiichiro Oda. The series takes place in a fictional universe where vast numbers of pirates, soldiers, revolutionaries, and other adventurers fight each other, using various superhuman and supernatural abilities. The series’ storyline follows the adventures of a group of pirates as they search for the series titular treasure.

The cute little birdies is actually an English-Chinese character translator from my colleague’s PC.   They sit next to each other fluffing their feathers now and then, but when the mouse is drawn over them they go into a tizzy, some flying up and coming down again.   Of course the egg does something special, as does the black bird, but I’m not sure what.   

The driver will pick three of us up tomorrow (Wednesday) and us out of here to Hong Kong for the trip home for a week.     I look forward to be at home very, very much.

Since February is almost behind us, I’d better post my desk calendar picture for the month.   (I’m not sure which one of the 6 reactor core buildings on site here is the one in the middle of the picture).    The 2 月 on the calendar would be part of  2011年 02月 26日 if today’s date would be written out.    The Year Month Day symbols serve as separators the way we use slashes or dashes.   

The second picture shows the final turn we make on the way to work every day (not sure of the purpose of the building).   The third picture is of the swank China Nuclear Power Engineering Company building nearby,  under construction but nearing completion.

No, not Bing Crosby, Bing the Microsoft search engine.   The picture is from http://cn.bing.com and is of the Langshan Mountains (Wolf Mountains) in Hunan province.    I noticed one of my Chinese colleagues pasting an e-mail into the Bing language translator.    (Of course there is Google Translator as well).

Just for fun I pasted something I would fire off in an e-mail into the Translator.  I suspect the English comes out translated in Chinese in a similar way it does in Afrikaans : the translator struggles with nailing the right technical terms but brings across the key points of the statement.

English Business area should be a required field on the Functional Location record so that the financial functions on the work order can work properly.

Chinese (Simplified) 营业面积应在功能定位记录，以便对工作秩序的金融功能可以正常工作所需的字段。
商务区
功能定位
工作单

Afrikaans Besigheid gebied moet ‘n vereiste veld op die Funksionele Plek rekord so dat die finansiële funksies op die werk om goed te kan werk.

Thursday was a stressful day at work, and so was today.    Never mind that it was Saturday :  sparks were flying in the early morning meeting with a heated discussion – and I was facilitating the meeting.   Later in the morning there was another difficult two-hour workshop.

We did get to bail out at 4pm, leaving me time to go hit some tennis balls with two colleagues at the East Coast apartments here in Dameisha.  The red and yellow lanterns are from there.

How to forget about work?  Lie back on your comfortable red leather sofa and eat your favorite chocolate candy.  For me it is m&m’s.  They are sold in a nifty yellow canister here that you can shake to gauge from the rattle inside how many you have left  :  ).

I have no illusions.  I lost them on my travels. – John Malkovich’s character the Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons (1988).

Well.   I think those of us that work on a very big system implementation- or worked on Microsoft Vista – or ever built a house- or have ever done something really hard!- could have said at some point  I have no illusions.  I lost them on my projects.

This picture is of the classic system implementation phases for an SAP project.   We are at the end of what we call the Realization Phase and entering the Final Preparation phase.   So we have to take stock of what we have done, and what remains to be done.   No room for illusions of building more, or taking on extra work discovered too late.  Fix the defects we found in testing.   Meet the deadline.   

Speaking of illusions – here is a building I found in Hong Kong last month (I don’t know the name).    Is the middle section bulging out or bending in?

We had a great Christmas dinner hosted by our client company at the Expatriate Village here next to the power plant.    There were several French countrymen attending as well – some of which had been here a long time already with the first of the units put in operation back in 1994 !   The French guy sitting next to me worked at Koeberg (South Africa’s only nuclear power plant) and (of course) liked the South African wines : ).    Most of the US team members are heading out today.     We are squishing in as much work as we can, handing over some responsibilities to our PwC China colleagues to hold the fort while we are away over the Christmas break (there is no Christmas in China, really – and the Chinese New Year is only in February ). 

Pictures : 1.  Dameisha bus stop this morning at 6.30am.  Some road-side trees on the right were blown over by the storm wind of Wed night.   2.  The stuffed Santa Claus himself got blown over, but was back at his post by the Expatriate Village this morning.   3.  Interesting diamond-shaped casing on a new administrative building close to where we work.

Here the outside of the official invitation from our client for the holiday party at the Expat Village close by.  (We don’t live there, we live in Dameisha 40 minutes away).   This one is Thursday night.   Our own PwC team dinner is tomorrow night in Shenzhen.     We are all happy to have survived today with the start of system testing – even tough we’re furiously adding final code and tying up loose bits and pieces.    So : one down, four to go.   Days until I get to go home, that is.  Yippee !

(This post is late).   Posing in front of a board with greetings arranged in a shape of the African continent at the PwC office.   The ones I recognize are –

goeiedag (Afrikaans) for ‘good day’
dumela (Sesotho) for ‘hello’
sawubona (Zulu) for ‘i see you’
bon jour (French) for ‘good day’

Here is the PwC South Africa head office building in Sandton where I worked today.  Sandton is a suburb in the northern outskirts of the Johannesburg metro area.   Yes, the new PwC logo is everywhere.   And the sun sets even after a long work day – taken from the outdoor deck in the PwC building where we had a beer after work in the canteen.  (I guess canteen sounds better than bar).

Today is my last day on site here in China for a while.   I’m taking a long-planned travel break from the project for two whole months.   So last night was spent packing up two big suitcases, and clearing out of the bedroom and bath room.  Someone else will stay in the place while I’m out.      I had to write up English instructions for him for using the washing machine, and I thought juxtaposing it with a future concept plane I found on the Airbus website would be fun.   The picture of the airplane shows what I feel like right now : take me home, big bird !

It is Sunday and we are working.   Before they adopted the Western-style week, the Chinese originally used a ten-day cycle known as a 旬 xún in ordering their daily lives and activities.  Although the Christian week with the Sunday was not unknown (for instance, it was known from contact with the Jesuits in the 16th-18th centuries), the seven-day week as we know it first became widely familiar in the 19th century with the coming of traders and missionaries from Western powers.   It was finally officially adopted by the Chinese government in 1912, after the fall of the last Imperial dynasty.

Even with a 7-day week, there are still differences of interpretation : is Sunday the first day or the last day of the week? International operator that I am, I’ll go with the international standard ISO 8601 that stipulates Sunday to be the seventh and last day of the week.

The picture is a depiction of Máni, the personified moon, and his sister Sól, the personified sun, from Norse mythology (1895) by Lorenz Frølich.  [Source : Wikipedia]

Saturday night here, and yes – we worked all day,  and will tomorrow.   Cannot have two Chinese holidays as well as a weekend in a row.      Check out the new logo for P r i c e W a t e r h o u s e C o o p e r s – which takes tooo long to say and to write.   It’s now a revamped logo and brand simply called PwC (an abbreviation which has been in use for some time already by the clients we work with, and we ourselves).    The design is by Wolff Olins (see http://www.wolffolins.com/ who also designed the logo for the successful 2012 London Olympics bid.    But is there anything new under the sun?   Does the new PwC logo not look like a 70s throwback, with those touchy-feely orangy and pink colors?

It looks like the typhoon will pass to the north of the coastline here, so we should be OK.  (If it can blow away some of the damp humid air and replace it will cool air that will be a welcome relief).

What color is your bridge*?   This bridge is close by and has the same colored lighting strips than the ones fitted to my apartment building.  All the pictures were taken in a total time of a minute or two.

*a word play on the famous manual for job-hunters and career-changers ‘What color is your parachute?’