Wednesday 26 July update: just words

No pictures today. (Sorry!) Just words.

Words: "Cut corners". This one had to be explained. I think I did OK explaining it. I was glad somebody asked. I reinforced that I want them to ask if they don't understand a word or phrase, by telling them not to sit there wondering "what the heck is that crazy Yankee saying?" The take-away here is that we all need to be aware of the things we say that, although they may be English words, they may not be clear. This is especially true of phrases (especially colorful ones) that we use without even thinking about. This is NOT to say that we should be putting everything into short, simple, monosyllabic words. Quite the opposite, in fact. Our friends in the China ODC will be working with us all, soon enough, and will be hearing and seeing these kinds of things from us and others. It's unavoidable. They will need to learn what we mean eventually anyway. SO, don't remove all of these kinds of things when writing to or speaking with the China ODC folks. Just be more aware and ask them if they understand. If they don't, patiently explain. They have also been directed by the management team at the ODC to ask immediately if they don't understand. Don't go overboard with the slang, though...

Word: Schedule. As in "on schedule". Which is what I am. EXACTLY on schedule with the training. It certainly hasn't gone exactly according to Hoyle, but I'm on plan right now. The Session 1 material was covered today instead of Tuesday. It was really rough, because not everybody had access to the machine and application resources they needed. For instance, nobody had access to the development/test terminal server. And while I got them all to load Microsoft Office Communicator, only one of the team members could use it. Two others could use it but there were problems downloading the Outlook address book. The rest couldn't even use it. Anyway, I have a list of account issues to work on now. And I've made it through the first 4 sessions. Session 4 went the best, I think. It was the one that included Risk material. We had a lot of fun doing exercises on that. I gave them an example project for which to assess risk: "Pat is to complete all training of the Xi'an staff within two weeks. What is the risk to that project?" One person thought up a good one: the instructor (me, of course) gets sick and can't instruct. Another good one was suggested: language challenges prevent completion within 2 weeks. Prevention steps to keep the instructor healthy: make sure he doesn't eat anything that disagrees with him. Mitigation steps for the same risk: have a backup instructor. We laughed a lot with this example!

Word: exhausted, which is what I am. I've been up until midnight or later every day and getting insufficient sleep too. Plus, just standing up giving training all day is really exhausting. But the experience has been tremendous so far!

Word: chopsticks, which is what I've used for every single meal outside of the hotel. So far, only the dumplings have really given me fits, because they're really slippery. I can even do a respectable job eating rice with chopsticks! (It does help, though, that the usual Chinese form of rice is sticky...) One of the ODC staff today even told me that in his opinion, I'm better with chopsticks than he is! (My head is NOT swelling!) I think we're going to have to have a chopstick tournament back in Dayton after we get all our planned folks to visit the ODC and back...

Word: Food. Lots of it. Every meal. I am surely pounding on the weight! The team has made sure I try lots of stuff. Tonight, we had a great meal at a great restaurant, in a private dining room. Andy, the account manager from Worksoft, treated and we had a great time. I got to eat a little rack of lamb, some pork (and pork skin - not very good), and a variety of unrecognizeable vegetables. One was some kind of fungus found growing off the bark of trees. I knew that this is precisely one of the kinds of foods that I don't like but I tried it anyway. Twice. I was right, too. I don't like fungus. I also don't like animals from the sea that don't have backbones. Like shrimp, scallops, octopus, jellyfish, etc. So those are the only limitations I've given the folks here: no fungus and no seafood invertebrates. I'll try everything else! :-)

Words: "Please watch your things all the time and ask the driver for a receipt". This is spoken on a recording by some Chinese female (she sounds very small) in the taxis. The taxis all have little meter devices on their dashboards that show the fare price. When they reach the destination, the driver folds the meter display over horizontal and there is a little printer that spits out a receipt and the voice says these same words every time. The English is very thick with a Chinese accent so the way she says it is actually a little entertaining.

That's enough words for today.