Day 4 of "Scary May '07 Work Trip"

Had a terrible time yesterday, with the travelling from Changzhou all the way to Daesan. As the trip involved a number of transfers from cab to train and back to cab, by the time I arrived at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, I was so tired that I was sighing the whole time there.

This fatigue carried on all the way through the flight and on the road from Incheon to Daesan. It did not help that I had a deadline to meet, and had to work till about 2am local time. And woke up by 6am to get ready to meet the rep from the customer.

At the customer's site, it was some waiting (in fact, i waited until late afternoon to begin my real work). Waited and slept a little. Also had some nice discussions with several of the folks here. Some of them have really good english, and I must work harder to reduce my speaking pace, as well as reduce the number of strange phrasings that I seemed ever so incline to use (there i went again). It was also nice to meet some old friends, who had turned up at the same location for the activities.

Not sure how long this scary work trip will take. Have already completed the 1st part, with Changzhou (again) visited. After the work in Daesan is up, it will be back to China, though Dalian this time. Should be exciting.

Night Market @ 麦寮

After sticking around for almost 10 days, my work here is finally done. Taiwan is nice and all, but when you are away for that long... and I must admit that my productivity was on the decline.

One of the guys at work offered to bring me to the night market at the nearby town. While I was initially hesitant, the trip turned up really fun. The company was great, and there was a number of interesting sights.

There were a number of game stations, that I had not seen in night markets before. There were a lot of small pinball machines, and a row of basketball tossing machines. The latter had been featured in some Taiwanese variety shows, where the guests would challenge each other on the maximum number of successful tosses within the time limt.



There were also some game stations where people needed to catch fishes or prawns with nets or with small hook devices.


There were also plenty of food stalls, serving all sorts of delights. It was a lot of eating, a lot of looking around, and a lot of laughter. This was really what I had needed.

常州 - Second Look

Returned to China again to complete the work, and stayed at the Fudu Traders Hotel for the full 6 nights. It was certainly a lot better to be staying in 1 hotel room throughout, rather than moving every day... which was what happened in my previous trip ... 3 hotel rooms in 2 hotels for 3 nights. Changzhou was such a busy place that week.







I had no mood to go touring around the city even though I had more than a few nights of free time.

There was a time when I heard that the Chinese culture is strong on tea, and will not allow coffee to assimilate that quickly. However, a lot of people in the cities are beginning to indulge in a cuppa more and more. There are plenty of coffee clubs and houses in Changzhou, serving western food, local chinese food, and beverages galore. I had heard about Bread Talks in Beijing, and was not too surprised to see an outlet in Changzhou as well.

The shopping scene is quite nice and if I were in the mood to shop around, I would have probably gotten quite some stuff. But I was quite amazed by a nice-looking mosque that was along the shopping belt. It is a "寺", and I only realized it is a mosque after seeing the crescent and the star.