Vacation is over?

The weeks before our journey to Xiamen, we were told that the first three weeks would feel like a vacation. After those three weeks we would go into some sort of depression phase. So far the person that gave the seminar is right one on thing. The vacation feeling is starting to melt away slowly, we are getting more and more used to the idea that we really live and work here. But the depression phase has luckily not shown it’s face yet. This is probably thanks to the great group that I have around me. The Dutch student are a great group of guys and like most ICT guys they are very friendly. So far I hardly spend one night alone, we all hang out together at night. We watch a movie, sit around having a few beers or go clubbing. The Chinese students are become lose as well. At the beginning it was all a bit odd. Their English wasn’t very good and we didn’t know each other. Now we mingle a lot and go out together and laugh a lot. I think I am very lucky with the people that are on CHECK-IT. Vincent and Francis (Dutch coaches) are great as well! I can’t remember if I ever had teacher that were so friendly and fun to hang around with. A shame they don’t teach at the HAN.

I guess the normal life has started, so a part of the “normal” life of course are the activities you do at home every now and then. So what did I do? I thought it was time to get a haircut, which of course is very scary if you can’t communicate with the barber. I managed to get one of the Chinese students to write down my wishes in Chinese on a paper and bravely I set out to the barbershop. The sign outsight said: Fashion Barber, an English name gave me some trust. So me and the other Frank stepped in for hopefully a good experience. For some reason, the barber gave me the idea that they don’t get Western customers often. They looked at us like we were some sort of freaks and after I gave him the paper, he sight he understood. So I was very glad, the paper said to cut off one centimeter so nothing could go wrong right… well I was WRONG! After ( a great ) head massage the barber started to cut and to my surprise he cut of a big stroke of my hair. I was shocked and told him to quit! I called Carol (Chinese student) by phone and she spoke with the barber, turned out the barber though I wanted my hear short ( one centimeter high). Well Carol explained it the right way, but my hair turned out shorter then I wanted but then I figured what the hell! I am not going to see any of you for a long time so a bit shorter isn’t a real problem! :P (what you mean? I’m not vain. ;) )

So the day after my great barber experience (NOT!) me and a few others decided to go to a bookstore to get some cheap literature on software development. After the Chinese students told us what they payed for English schoolbooks, we simply couldn’t resist to get ourselves some good resources. This is of course the time to expand our knowledge on IT, especially for me since I am no programmer. (all the others are! So I hear a lot of new terms.) Arrived at the gigantic bookstore we were led to the English area. There were so many Chinese IT books that we thought we were in heaven! But unfortunately the English part was only four books shells full, that was a bummer! But I managed to get a few nice books! The books we couldn’t find at the store shall be bought online, that is even cheaper! Books that cost eighty euro in the Netherlands were sold here for 8 euro! But we managed to find out why it is cheaper here. The books are copied from the original! I was already surprised that the DVDs sold in a normal DVD store were pirated, now I was stunned to see that even gigantic bookstores sell illegal material. Well, you don’t hear us complain of course since the content is still the same! But I actually think that pirated material is a real problem here in China. Normally I am totally against agencies like the BREIN dudes in Holland. But buying things here makes me realize that it can be a real problem. If you want to buy anything official you really have to search hard, and that is a really bad thing if you ask me. Though the people behind BREIN in the Netherlands are still idiot, pirating isn’t as big in Holland as it is here. So perhaps, ill change my mind on them when everything is fake in Holland as well.

Today we had a day off for a cross-cultural seminar. We visited the Xiamen Museum that hosted an exhibition on Zoetermeer (what for? Deventer is more special if you ask me! :P ). The exhibition was very short and only showed like twenty pictures of the buildings in Zoetermeer. Vincent Broeren gave us a short lesson on Zoetermeer as it was his home town. I think the Chinese liked it, but for the Dutch students… there wasn’t much to see. So afterwards the Dutch delegation set out to the Xiamen Museum of Science and Technology which was a very fun experience! The museum was a bit like the famous museum NEMO in the Netherlands, but not particularly focuses on children. We saw a lot of different things that could mess up your coordination like houses that were bend. So you couldn’t walk through it normally without falling (very funny to see everybody triple, and doing their best to walk normally). Also you could walk through a gigantic tunnel that was spinning and messed up your orientation etc. Real nice stuff!

Tonight we are invited by Rose to celebrate her birthday party at a karaoke bar. This will be my first time to such a bar so I am very curious. I haven’t decided yet if I shall share my beautiful voice with the Chinese locals. If I may believe my family, my singing voice isn’t that great. But what the hell, it is not like they won’t stare at me when I keep myself quiet. This weekend all the water supplies here in Xiamen shall be cut-off for some sort of experiment with a train. ( Train experiment = water shut off, do you see the connection? I don’t ) So our teacher came up with the idea to escape from Xiamen for three days and spend some time in a different part of China. We will fly on Friday to Chengdu which is supposed to be one of the most happiest City of China. ( whatever that means :P, I have seen a lot of Chinese happy faces so far! ). So I’ll give you guys a update on that when we get back! Till then goodbye my friends!

Frenkie

(Written on Wednesday 16 September 2009 at 18:59)

Another working week!

A long time has passed since my last post. My apologize for that,but work is making us quit tired, at night we only have energy to eat, drink and watch a movie all together. Although I have only been here for two and a half week. I already managed to create an enemy… my stomach!! He kind of dislikes the hot food, the rice and having no bread all week. But I suppose it should be okay in a week or so, at least my stomach can’t be upset for any longer. I should get used to the food within a week!(I hope! ;) ) Though I must say that we finally found a small place where they serve us some sort of known food! The Chinese lady at the “Juicy bar” (that actually speaks English flawless) bakes us every now and then a sandwich with pork, egg, tomato, pickles and more! That are actually the best sandwiches I ever had! So we are regular guest at her “Juicy bar”, she also keeps us fit as she serves fresh squished juice cocktails every day!

Like I said, it has been quit a busy week. Though work went quite slow, we have the temporally website finished which can be found on http://www.checkitcenter.com. So we started off working on the final website which is a huge project. We have been analyzing the requirements this week and the website just keeps getting bigger and bigger! Rob and I also worked on the DVD project, therefore we were allowed to attend one of the biggest events China knows! We attend the CIFIT Fair 2009 which stand for China International Fair for Investment and Trade. So there were a lot of innovative products showed there! Think about real hologram equipment, projector books that turn pages if you move your hand (motion sensors) and some people (I didn’t) even saw paper with video in it! (think about Harry Potter newspapers) Looks like we have enough to look forward to in the future! Al those new products are nice to see, but of course the CHECK-IT stand on the fair was the most beautiful stand! I totally forgot to mention it before but the first day of CHECK-IT there were photo’s taken from me and Carol for some sort of poster. Well, I found out why at the fair! Ill add a picture of my first “photo shoot” thingy :P! Rob, Carol and I recorded a few video about the fair and of course about CHECK-IT. We did a interview with our CEO Vincent and Carol interviewed the Chinese coaches. So now it is my job to encode the video and do the editing! Which is actually a nice job to do! I even managed to get the RAW material encoded in two days! (I spend like two weeks in Holland on it and couldn’t get it to work properly.)

After the CIFIT fair we went back home, and of course went to our local restaurant downstairs like we do every single day so far. The food is actually pretty good, I don’t really mind eating Chinese every day (unlike my stomach). We are all getting used to it but every time we go clubbing we end up at the KFC or the McDonalds. So the only Western food we get is the healthy fast-food crap.

We are getting along with our coaches very well. They are quit young themselves so there isn’t a huge age different between them and us. I guess that is why we actually have been clubbing together for two days now. Thursday at work we heard that our coaches had a huge hangover from the night before… so naturally we got interested to their story. Turned out the Dutch delegation at the CIFIT fair went out with their group and ended up in a club at the other end of Xiamen. ( Not the clubs we ended up last time). So after a few talks we decided to go out with them Thursday night to the club (while we had to work on Friday), at the club we had a great time. Unfortunately our Chinese friends didn’t join us so it was just us and our teachers. We had a great time and ended up at home at four o’clock. So we all were a bit cranky when we showed up at work! :P

Friday was a hard working day, not only did we all have a hangover from the night before. We also had the goodbye party for one of our coaches. Francis was going back to the Netherlands so the Chinese teacher threw a (real) tea party. One of my good friends in Denmark once introduced to me a tea party but that wasn’t the real deal I guess. We had to sit down and got a show about the different kinds of tea in China. I’m not a real tea drinker but it was quit fun to see how certain tea affect your body. We actually felt pretty light headed when we got out of the room. After that we decided to go to the beach and do some freshing up before we went back. The water here is so warm! It is really unbelievable, and coming back out of the water while there is a lot of wind isn’t even cold! I wasn’t really used to that :P. So when we headed back we noticed that it was 5 o’clock so our working day was over! We went back to the apartments to get a few hours of sleep before we went clubbing with the teacher for the second time! We went to club KK which is some sort of R&B club, and unlike the day before we didn’t end up in the VIP. It was a bit harder to place a group of 20 at the small rooms at the VIP. Which was actually better, we were now next to the stage so we could dance again! The night was full of dancing and of shows with Chinese girls dressed in all the outfits you can think off. We saw sailor girls, school girls, nurses and so on! They do a great job on entertaining here but they should really work on their dance moves.

Tonight we have a BBQ at the pool café with the Chinese. We planned to go clubbing afterwards but I must say that I am pretty **** up right now and not really in the physical mood to go out another night. But hey, we shall see how I think after three glasses of wine. Ill update in three days again and let you know how the weekend and work was! So long my friends!

Huges and kisses,

Frenkie

(Written on: Saturday 12 September 2009 at 16:35)

Nightlife in Xiamen

The last few days were a big blast! We have finally been introduced to the nightlife of Xiamen. Though none of the Chinese students ever experienced the clubs here we decided to do some teambuilding after our work day on Friday. The day started off a bit slow with a seminar at the University which was held in a high-tech meeting room with seats that normally are used in CEO offices. The seminar was about the cross cultural difference but in my opinion it wasn’t very informative. The obvious thing were pointed out, but it was okay. After the seminar the Dutch students hold a presentation on their life in the Netherlands. We were supposed to show how we live our life down in the Netherlands so the presentation ended up full of movies with beer, friends and parties. Not the image that our coaches had in mind. But hey, they had their change to censor it! (they removed images from naked butts and so on). The Chinese had a lot of fun though and the workflowwas a bit less strict now we knew more about each other.

I guess that is why some of the Chinese students agreed to come with us to play some basketball and drink a few beers. We played them and of course lost… I’m not supposed to get used to that but so far is seems like a regular thing. Back at the apartments we opened up the beers and wine and had a few laughter and we decided to leave for center because we had seen a club over there. Arrived there the Dutch took the lead due the fact that the Chinese students had no experience in clubbing at all. As soon as we arrived we were welcomed by six cute Chinese girl dressed in young school girls uniforms (guess Chinese business people are in to that, but hey you don’t hear me complain.) Inside there were tables everywhere and no real dance floor apart from two small stages. Naturally our group stumble towards the tables near to the podium and that is where we spend our night. We paid 600 yuan for two tables and 24 beers (We had to spend a minimum of 300 for every table) so that means we paid like 2.50 euro for every beer. Quite normal for us but really expensive for Chinese standards. I was lucky that night because there was a hiphop bikini party, so my favorite music was played all night! We had the time of our lives there and have been dancing all night, even the Chinese students danced with us on stage. Normally there is no dancing in that bar, Chinese people simple stand still and look around. But we decided not to adept and push our Western culture through the club. Which actually worked pretty well, we even managed to get the unknown Chinese to dance with us! Well I can keep telling how great it was but ill add a movie that should indicate our hard work flow. (EDIT: Crappy internet, looks like someone is downloading. Ill add the video later.)

The next day was slow, everybody was laying in bed with a huge hangover and I haven’t left my apartment until half pas five. We got together and had dinner at the local restaurant, the Chinese had agreed to meet us at the beach at night to redo the last night on a new beach party. This wasn’t a club but more like a huge restaurant down the beach were they created a dancing stage. After having a few drinks we decided to go down and dance. Well, of course no one was dancing so when the pop singer finished his last girly song we threw ourselves on the stage and started dancing. For some reason people do dance if Western people start. I get the idea that all the foreign students here are losing their shame (including me) because it doesn’t matter if we dance and act crazy… people will stare at us anyway! So after having a great time on the stage for a hour and a half we decided to go back to table and spend some time there. It is really fun to hear from the Chinese students that there are not used to dancing in clubs and bars but that they really like it. They are really having fun with us and that is very positive on the workflow. A few even mentioned that dancing on the stage was the craziest thing that they had ever done. (so learning from each otter has already started ;) )

Sunday started of slow as well. We had to sleep of the two days of hard work but I actually did some “home work”. I had to do a few things to the website for the deadline and that went pretty smooth. When I had finished my progress report, me and a few others decided to go to the “Carrefour” to get a few things. Well I bought a lot of new boxer shorts ( this time they were really boxer shorts!) and a lot of DVD’s! We found an official DVD store with the latest movies that weren’t released yet in Holland. We were so lucky and bought 6 DVDs immediately for the amazing price of 6 euro’s! But when we got back to the apartment it suddenly came clear why the DVDs were so cheap. Though they looked real with the great prints and official boxes, it were actually pirated movies recorded with a handycam. Big bummer there!! So we still have to go to the cinema every now and then to be updated on the latest movies. Downloading is really not an option here since the internet has an amazing speed of 20kbs. I really miss my fiber connection now. Tomorrow will be a new working day and we can finally start on the real website, that means we have to get serious once again :).

For now I say goodbye and will update the blog within 2 days. Thanks again for reading, I hoped you enjoyed my little Chinese adventure in the club. Which hopefully will be a regular thing! They Dutch have already decided on that but let’s hope the Chinese will join us again next time.

Huges and kisses,

Frenkie !

(Written on Sunday 05 September 2009 at 22:47 )

Working life in Xiamen.

I have had four workings days so far. And it is actually not that bad. I though working life would be just sitting behind a desk and be bored as hell. But it actually is quite interesting, not that much have happened but I guess the nice group of co-workers makes it very doable! Though of course I have my irritation points because work can go very slow due the different in culture. I have been working on a temporally website for the CHECK-IT website for the CIFIT fair like I said in my last post. There haven’t been any changes on that subject, except that we are almost done. The website will be available next Monday and of course I will post a link then. I am doing the website together with Carol but unfortunately she has no experience at all in developing websites. She is a “Java” programmer and has never done anything like making a website. So it is kind of hard to work with that. But so far we manage to get it done, we just have to do a lot of talking and she is a fast learner and very bright.

What I noticed so far is that the Chinese are very focus on producing instead of thinking about what they are creating. Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but it makes working together a bit hard. They produce so fast that they just create software/multimedia without investigating the purpose, the usability, and the needs of the end users etc. All these things are made up by the Chinese professors when they give the assignment for the students. So that means the students won’t have to do any research on what they are creating except from the technique. So they are great programmers but I get the idea that it ends there. But hey, that is the whole idea of Check-IT! Learning from each other! Because the Chinese students are experts at “Java” and can create programs very fast because their knowledge is very good! ( so I heard, I’m not a Java programmer ;) ). So if the company decided to use Java as a final language for programming, we will be able to create a lot! Though they are still discussing this issue.

Like a said, Chinese people work very hard. As most of you guys know, they also work very long. Fortunately we won’t have to adapt to the Chinese work hours and we can simply do nine to five. But I think we discovered some of the Chinese secrets on how to live up to those working hours. It is actually quite funny to see. But the Chinese workers, and not only those on Check-IT but also those in other companies (we see them during our break at the restaurant) will simply drop their heads and lay down on their desk to get a hour of sleep when they have nothing to do. Well, we shouldn’t try that at our work in the Netherlands. Something tells me that my boss wouldn’t be too happy seeing me sleeping at my desk :P.

I am finally starting to see the down side of this internship. Yes, there are bad parts as well guys! So we all like a bit of Chinese food now and then.. but imagine eating (warm) Chinese food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are (almost) forced to eat Chinese every single meal, every day. And most of the time you got no freaking idea what the hell you are eating. You simply point to something that kind of looks “okay” to the person behinds the counter and you are handed over to the element of surprise.. will you like it or not? So far the general idea is that I like 50% of the food that lays on my plate. So that is going pretty well, but you can imagine that eating at KFC or McDonalds feels like a little angel pissing on your tongue. ( that sounds weird in English! ;) )

So I work during the day and we spend the evenings mostly together. So far we have actually been drinking beer every single night. (In a proper amount, don’t worry mum and dad.) Today we also started to become a bit sportive. Sam, Rob and I have been thinking a lot about joining a boxing gym. But so far no luck in finding one, or even boxing gloves at all. So today we went out for some basketball, we battled a few locals and of course you would think that we have a great advantage over them. Since we are almost two heads taller but don’t be fooled by size! That is an important lesson I learned today ;). We got beaten down so god damn hard.. and lost with a score of 20 to 5 or so and I ended up with blood on my face. I thought to play some defense on this little Chinese dude, turns out he knew perfectly well how to defense the ball against a bigger player. Got an elbow in the face and my tooth went through my lips.. so that will be a fat lip tomorrow. ( grumble ) But it was a great work out though!

Tomorrow we will have to hold an presentation on the University of Xiamen about our life in the Netherlands. So I will have to tell some history about my home town and all. Before that we get a seminar on the Chinese culture so I am really looking forward to that! Saturday will be a different kind of culture lesson. We found a flyer for a Chinese bikini party Saturday night. We will go there with a few Chinese students and hopefully learn how to party Chinese style. And of course Chinese girls in bikini isn’t a bad prospect. I will give you all an update on that ;)!

Well, it is almost a quarter past eleven and I am pretty tired from the basketball. I think I get a cold beer for my fat lip and then get a goodnight of sleep.

Huges and kisses,

Frenkie!

( By the way! Thanks for all the sweets respondses! It is really nice to hear from you guys and I really enjoy the feedback on the blog. Keep up the good work I would say ;) )

(Written on Thursday 03 of September 2009 at 23:12 )