White Swan Hotel Guangzhou

Like I said in the last blog post from the previous travelogue, this year is shaping up to be a good one. One of the reasons that I left off, is because I'm getting to leave this manufacturer, knowing that I influenced the decision to pull all, not just this project's but all, of our equipment out of their shop. I see this as justice for the incompetence, arrogance, obstinacy, and disrespect that they have shown to my company and to me. Now a buddy of mine, who I was talking with about this, ...

I used to love that show... I don't know exactly what it was. Maybe the traveling and the thought of jetting around the world. Maybe it was just Carmen's long legs and red trench coat(women in red...what can I say!). Or maybe it was Rockapella?? Who knows. But I always like the the original game show and the computer game. You may wonder how I got off on this tangent...I was thinking today that a lot of my traveling for work involves leaving on short notice, usually to solve a problem. Which ...

Sometimes all it takes a new perspective to see what we take for granted... A little background: As you've been able to tell from some previous posts, things have not been going so well for the project here. The other night, it all came to a boiling point when the senior managers from the supplier were not available for me to discuss(argue) about urgent action items. And one of the regular workers(I'll call him Zhang for this story) refused to try to contact his managers. This made me angry a...

We're packing right now. I left work early today because my stomach and intestines were killing me. I think I had a bad sausage at breakfast. Wish me luck that my body has finished "purging" itself before we leave tomorrow... We're taking the Fast Ferry from Guangzhou Lian Hua Shan to Hong Kong. That should be interesting. Pics and post after we check it out. It's been hard finding info on this Ferry. The people in the hotel don't know about it. But I had a Chinese coworker call for me today....

Jacqui and I arrived in Guangzhou on November 25th...right before Thanksgiving. We figured we be eating Chinese food for Thanksgiving dinner. But the hotel here caters to Western guests, particularly Americans adopting Chinese babies. So 'lo and behold, one of the restaurants in the hotel was putting on a Thanksgiving dinner. No clues about what it would be so we thought we'd give it a try. The dinner was actually held in the fancy French restaurant. We were served crawfish bisque(not my favo...

Work has still been going slow. Agonizingly so. The last few days have picked up slightly but its still nowhere near what I'd expect from a company in North America or Europe. Hooray for lowest bidders?!? But I did get to take Jacqui to the leather market with my coworker. He was looking for presents for his wife and mother...can't hurt to show Jacqui what Chinese shopping is all about. We didn't find anything that she wanted...at least not anything that we could by just one of. The leather m...

Here's the link to Jacqui's picture site. She's been taking lots of them and put them up here. Enjoy! http://picasaweb.google.com/jacqui.pitt enger/WhiteSwanHotel#

A buddy and fraternity brother from college let me know last week that he was going to be coming to Guangzhou this week. He works for iRobot and was visiting their manufacturer over here. He was staying in a hotel about an hour away from the White Swan, but I figured that since we were already on the other side of the world, we could take the taxi ride to go visit him. I had to leave work a little early so that I could make it back to the White Swan to take a shower and collect Jacqui, then t...

This is a test for getting the Facebook Note importer to link to my blog again. I've posted a lot since October, click on the link and check it out.

Hello hello, and Merry Christmas to all of you stuck in the past. Yes, I'm already in December 26th, so I already know what's going to happen to you tomorrow. Everyone who got things they didn't want are going to try to return them at once...the malls will be packed. Oh, and it's going to be cold and snowy(at least in the northern regions). Here's a video for you. Yes, yes...we're goobers. I know. But we do have a giant 3 story Christmas tree...that we don't have to take down, other people wi...