Day 23 - 6th September: Making a difference...

#ibmcsc China 30

Our final presentation is coming up well with just a few more things to complete. We sincerely believe that our solutions will prove helpful to the clients in the short and the long term and that we will be able to make a difference to the community. Our sub-group with Vince, Irena, Lisa (translator) and me have collaborated well together with a good mix of seriousness and fun which has helped us not get too stressed about the timelines or the deliverables. We have enjoyed this entire process and we will be able to take learnings from this assignment back to our day to day work.

We have also started work for the wrap-meeting with the IBM China Citizenship Manager, Jasmine, and the final closing ceremony with all the clients and the media. There are a few short presentations and reports that we need to prepare for these meetings. I feel good that we planned our final presentation a day earlier so that we have a full day on the 10th to take care of all these requirements.

With just 5 days to go, we are also trying to spend some time exploring the city more. We find some time after our daily team meeting to go to the city area and just walk around. We went to the city center today and sat there having an ice-cream, listening to the bands playing music. It was nice and relaxing. The city is all lit-up in the night and looks beautiful.

Every special place in the city like a temple, a tomb etc. has a Bell Tower towards the East and a Drum Tower towards the West. As the name suggests, they have a huge bell and drum placed in the towers. In the old times, the bell used to be rang three times at day break and then the drum used to be played at the end of the day. Here are the pictures of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower of the Xi'an city.

The Drum Tower

The Bell Tower

Day 22 - 5th September: Getting ready for the final sprint...

#ibmcsc China 30

It is the end of the third week and dash for the finish line starts tomorrow. It is interesting how time seems to pass at different pace at different points. After we landed in China, the first week seemed much longer than it was. I think that was because we were still getting used to the place. We were not really sure what all we need to do on this assignment. The initial discussions with the clients to validate the scope were still going on. But, after that, the next two weeks went by in a flash. At some point in the third week, everyone suddenly realized that we have only a few working days left with a lot to accomplish.

Now we have just one more week to go. For our sub-group, it is about the next 3 days as we need to complete our presentation on the 8th to present it to the clients on the 9th.

Today, we went to the Qujiang Ocean Park in the city and spent about 4 hours there. There were some interesting shows like the Dolphin Show, White Whale show etc. The place was full of kids, obviously, but we also enjoyed the place. Rest of the day was spent just sleeping, a visit to the supermarket and preparing for the next few days.

Day 21 - 4th September: Longmen Grottoes...

#ibmcsc China 30

Second day of the holidays and as I mentioned in my last post yesterday, we had planned a trip to Luoyang (Henan Province) which is about 1.5 hours long bullet train ride from Xi'an. There are two historic places near Luoyang, the Shaolin Temple and the Longmen Grottoes.

The day started very early as we had to take the first train out of Xi'an to be able to use the day to the maximum. The high speed train station at Xi'an looks like an airport and the train itself is very comfortable, and obviously, very fast. It touched the speed of 300 km/h a few times and ran at 275 km/h most of the time. I wish India had such trains to connect major cities. One day may be... 

Our first stop, the Shaolin Temple, is the cradle of the Chinese Zen Buddhism and the Shaolin Martial Arts. It is said to be 'the Number One Temple under Heaven'. The temple is among the mountains and needs a little bit of walk (about 5 kms in all) to see everything. The mountains and a mild drizzle made the temperature drop and it was nice to walk around. The main attractions here are the Martial Arts show by the monks, the main Shaolin Temple, the Pagoda Forest and the cable car to go up on the mountains.

The next stop was the Longmen Grottoes and though we had seen the pics on the net before leaving, seeing it with our own eyes was something else. There are thousands of caves and holes each with many statues of Buddha (about 100,000) carved out of the rocks. The caves are on two sides of the river Yi and the views from the top are breathtaking. Here are some of the pictures from our trip.

I like trains :)

The Pagoda Forest

Longmen Grottoes... the biggest Buddha statue among thousands

River Yi

All the holes in the rocks are like caves with Buddha statues

Day 20 - 3rd September: The rest day...

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was a relaxing day with not much activity planned. I got up quite late in the morning which was nice since every day so far started much earlier. Today, China celebrated 70 years of the end of the World War II and the victory over Japanese forces with a huge military parade in Beijing. It was quite similar to the Republic Day parade in India but obviously, with different traditions and a different setup. We watched it on TV and the aerial views of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square looked stunning.

A quite lunch at a nearby mall's food court was followed by a walk in the city. We visited the Muslim Street once again for some shopping. It is an amazing area with hundreds of shops on both sides of the streets filled with tourists and shoppers. The sight and smell of all the food overwhelms you every time you go there. Though we have such shopping streets in India too, experiencing it here in China is a different, with different things being sold, way people react and behave.

I think we needed this rest day as have had a packed schedule so far. Tomorrow we leave very early from the hotel to visit Luoyang and Shaolin Temple.

The team in Guilin also sent their pictures and it is great to see them having a nice time too...

The Muslim Street

The Bell Tower

The moat around the City Wall

The gardens along the City Wall have a lot of such interesting sculptures

Day 19 - 2nd September: Holiday Time...

#ibmcsc China 30

Yesterday was the last working day for this week before the 3 day long holiday starts here in China. Most of our work for the final presentation is done with just a few final slides and formatting pending. We should be able to complete it in time for our presentation to the client on the 9th. The other 2 teams are also working hard on their projects and hopefully, they will also have enough time to get it all done.

So, now it is time to relax and enjoy the holidays. Some of the team members left yesterday for Guilin in South China. This place is known for the landscape of limestone karst. You should look for the pictures of the place on the net. It is beautiful and I am sure the team will enjoy being there.

Some of us decided to stay back in Xi'an and see a few historic places nearby. We have planned a day trip to Luoyang tomorrow with the bullet train ride to and fro. I will write about it after returning from there tomorrow. We also plan to visit the Muslim Street once again today to explore it a bit more and maybe do some shopping.

We have some free time at hand now and I went for a walk last evening to a beautiful park nearby. It is a very well maintained part with a lake within. I saw people playing badminton, dancing and taking a stroll with their kids. Watching the small kids in their prams made me want to play with my daughter even more. Just 12 days to go before I get to see her...

Lake in the park

A very well maintained, beautiful park

Day 18 - 1st September: Work and Play...

#ibmcsc China 30

Goal Setting Workshop

Just a few last steps to our final presentation and closure of the project. One of the deliverables that we had committed to our clients was a workshop for their employees which we conducted today. The topics included Team work, Team Building activities and Goal Setting. We also played a few team building games which was fun. One of the challenges presenting something through an interpreter is that you get a delayed response to something you say. You are all animated with lots of expressions when you are speaking but there is absolutely no response from the audience as they do not understand a word of it. I found it funny today when Irena was presenting because she was all excited and the everyone was looking at her as if it is a mime :)

It also takes double the time for the meetings and presentations as everything has to be translated back and forth and we have to keep that in mind while deciding the duration of the meetings or presentations. Our interpreter and translator, Lisa, is exceptional. She is studying interpreting for her master's and is helping us on this project as an intern. Lisa has been involved with this project from the beginning and she understands our thinking process now. You can't do a literal translation as it would not make sense without understanding the context and Lisa does a great job of getting it right. It is great to have her on our team. Every document and presentation is being translated by her and again, the time to translate all the documents also has to be taken into consideration while planning the activities.

Team Games

Some fun activities as Ice Breakers - Paper Planes :)

We also celebrated Irena's birthday today with a team dinner at a Sichuan restaurant (very very tasty food) followed by Karaoke night. Karaoke is very popular in China and you can see board with 'KTV' written everywhere you go in the city which is the place for Karaoke. We had a private room with a touch screen console, a huge screen for the lyrics and mics for the Karaoke. It was great being with everyone and just relax. Everyone is tired and a bit stressed these days as we have a very few working days left and lot of things to complete for the project. This was a good stress buster and it was nice to see everyone enjoying.

Tomorrow is the last day in the week as a 3-day holiday starts from Thursday. It will be great if we can close a few things tomorrow so we don't have to think about the project during holidays.

Team Dinner

Irena's Birthday Celebration

Clown @ KTV :)

Day 17 - 31st August: The second checkpoint...

#ibmcsc China 30

The third week of our CSC assignment has started and we had our second checkpoint with Mr. Zhao (Founder and GM of ZHHZ Incubation Center) today. We have planned a workshop tomorrow with all the employees of the organization and we walked Mr. Zhao through the agenda of the workshop and what we would like him to talk about in the workshop. We have also been working on our final presentation and report for the last 1 week and we had the first cut ready to present to him. It was more of a validation that we are on the right track and that we are providing all the inputs that he expects from us.

The meeting went very well and Mr. Zhao seemed happy with our progress. All of us, and me more than anyone else, were relieved after the confirmation. It is good to know that we are doing the right thing and did not just waste the last week working on something irrelevant. Most of the day went working on the project, team meeting to discuss each other's projects and planning for the workshop tomorrow. No interesting picture to post today but will have something tomorrow for sure.

Stay tuned...

Day 16 - 30th August: Mt. Hua (Hua Shan)

#ibmcsc China 30

Mt. Hua or Hua Shan ('Shan' means Mountain in Chinese) was conquered today...well almost...since we reached almost the top of it by cable car :) But, it seemed like an achievement as after the cable car, we climbed 4 of its highest peaks. Looking back, I can't believe I actually walked up to all those peaks!

Mt. Hua is one of the 5 most sacred mountains in China and has a long history of religious significance. It is about 120 kms from Xi'an and it took us about 3 hours to get there by road.

The map on the right shows the map of Mt. Hua which has the highest altitude of of about 2155 meters (7070 ft.) at the South Peak. It doesn't sound much compared to Himalayan ranges but the beauty of this mountain is the steep hike and the treacherous routes. We actually had to climb up a rock using chains with small footholds carved in the rock. There are some other routes on the mountain where they just have wooden planks on the side of the rocks with iron chains to hold on to. We took picture but didn't dare to even put one foot on that.

I have marked our hiking route on the map:

Our Hiking Route

The red line on the bottom right is the bus route that we took to reach the base of the mountain from where the cable car starts. The right side shows the cable car route which is about 4.2 kms long and is one of the scariest rides that I have been on to. The ups and downs and then the final steep ascent takes your breath away. After we got down from the cable car, we started our hike to the 4 peaks.

Route 1: From the starting point to the West Peak (2082 mts.)
Route 2: Down from the West Peak and up to the South Peak (2155 mts.)
Route 3: Down from the South Peak and a visit to the 'Planks in the sky' point which we didn't dare to try
Route 4: Hike to the East Peak (2096 mts.)
Route 5: Hike back to the starting point through the Central Peak

This is one trip I will recommend to everyone visiting China and Xi'an.

The 3rd and the most crucial week of CSC starts tomorrow. We have 3 days Chinese holiday coming up this week so just 3 days to work on our deliverables, conduct a workshop and present our initial recommendations to the GM of ZHHZ during our weekly checkpoint meeting. It is going to be a busy week.

Entrance to Mt. Hua

Easily the most terrifying cable cars that I have been on

The West Peak with the ascent route

'Planks in the sky' route

Ascent to the East Peak

'Chess Pavilion' view from the East Peak

Climbing with chains for support

View from the cable car...looks amazing

Picture taken from the Internet just to show 'Planks in the sky' route... we didn't dare taking this route :)

Day 15 - 29th August - Community Service Day...

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was our Community Service Day and as I wrote yesterday, there were many activities planned for the day by our NGO partner VSO and the local community center. As soon as met at the hotel lobby, Shen Shuo from VSO handed the day's agenda to us with our national flags printed on the first page. We decided to take a picture with everyone holding their flags and as they say, a picture speaks a thousand words, this photo sums up the CSC program. 10 Team members from 8 different countries, all volunteering as a team representing IBM.

We received a very warm welcome when we reached the venue and we had a short introduction from all of us. The participants from the local community included kids, students from high school and elders. From IBM side, we had sessions on Language and Culture, Career Planning and Brazilian Samba dance lessons. I was part of the Language and Culture team and it was fun talking to the kids and students. They were very curious to know what kind of festivals we have, what languages we speak, Bollywood and much more. One of the things that I told them was about a festival called 'Rakshabandhan' which is being celebrated today in India.

From the community's side, we got lessons in Calligraphy, Dumpling and Noodles making and Chinese dance forms. Thankfully, I was not part of the dance group but I learnt to draw a few Chinese characters and also, the Noodles making process.

The day ended with all of us exchanging gifts and expressing our heartfelt gratitude for making us feel a part of their community.

The Team

Answering questions on our culture

With all the kids...all of them are so cute...

Calligraphy lessons for Wagner and me

Spreading the dough for noodles

Dumpling and noodles lunch

With the gifts from the community center

Day 14 - 28th August: Barbeque time...

#ibmcsc China 30

It was a quiet day today which started with a visit to the client's office to continue our work on the project and ended with a wonderful dinner at a Korean barbeque restaurant. One more cuisine tried and added to the list. We would really like to try the cuisines of all the countries my team members come from, like the dinner at the Indian restaurant, but it is difficult to find the right restaurant which serve those cuisines. But we are still looking...

Tomorrow is an important and interesting day as it is the Community Service Day. This is part of every CSC assignment where the team visits the local community to interact with them. Tomorrow, we are visiting a community center where we are going to learn to make dumplings, Chinese calligraphy, weaving and some Chinese dances also. We are also going to interact with some school children and we will teach them about our language, our culture and our dance forms (some of our group members are performing Samba from Brazil).

Looking forward to tomorrow....

The city looks beautiful in the evening

Our food...with a few vegetarian options too...

Ready to dig in...

Day 13 - 27th August: Correlation and Dependencies...

#ibmcsc China 30

We have so much information about our clients, their issues and the causes that it sometimes becomes difficult to make sense of it all. So, we decided to build a correlation matrix and dependencies chart to understand how things fit together. I think it was very useful and it helps us identify the cause and

Correlation Matrix

effect along with the cascading effect. We can now build a story around it and help our clients understand how fixing one thing can lead to an improvement in various areas.

Another interesting aspect of the day was the gift giving by Irena, our Slovenian colleague. She had brought some paintings from Slovenia and each painting had a story to tell. She went through each one of them and told us the stories. Thanks to her, we now know Slovenia a bit more.

That is the beauty of this program. You get to know people from different cultures and learn about them. This should be in the 'must-do' list of every IBMer who is part of any virtual team that works across countries and continents. You can never get this exposure sitting in the office and talking with others on phone.

Irena explaining her gifts

Day 12 - 26th August - Street Games...

#ibmcsc China 30

Yet another day spent in brainstorming, data gathering and presentation preparation. There are so many thoughts and ideas that we need to discuss, shortlist and finalize. Giving a structure to everything is the biggest task at hand right now. We attempted that today with some correlation matrix and dependencies chart. Days are passing by quickly and we need to be ready with the first cut of the presentation by Tuesday, which is when we have the next checkpoint meeting with Mr. Zhao, the Founder and GM of ZHHZ Incubation Center.

However, we have been able to finish our working day by about 5 PM everyday which gives us some time to explore the city and meet the locals in the evening. The evening walk today gave me such an opportunity. Buying fruits from the local market without an interpreter meant talking in sign languages or using the translator app on the phone, which was not add that difficult actually. I also saw groups of people at many places on the side walks watching some game played in the middle. It seems Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) is a very popular past time for people here, not just for the people playing, but for the onlookers as well. Though I did not understand the game, it was fun to just stand in the group and observe.

We also decided to have some street food for lunch and found a place which sells all the steamed food in small bowls placed in huge steamers. You just go and point whatever you need. I had some beans, eggplants and some Tofu along with rice and everything tasted great.

Everyday seems to offer something new here...

Street Food

Chinese Chess

Day 11 - 25th August: Some more history?

#ibmcsc China 30

The biggest work-related accomplishment for today was that we were able to develop an activity plan for our team. We decided on 6 major work-streams that we need to work on which are primarily the pain points of the customer. We then divided each work-stream at the task level and assigned each task's ownership to one of the team members along with the target date for closure of that task. We believe we have a good plan in place to ensure we get all the deliverables prepared in time.

Not too much to talk about work today so I think we have time for some history lesson now ;)

Canjie

We visited the Baishui county in Shanxi province on Saturday (22nd Aug) for apple picking with our clients and one of the places that we saw during the visit was a tomb of a historic figure called Cangjie. Legend has it that he had four eyes and he invented the Chinese characters. Many people do not believe that he was the sole inventor of the characters but they still think that he existed and contributed to it.

The tomb or we may call it a temple, since there is a statue of him and people offer prayers there, was an interesting place to see. The place was full of Cypress trees and as per the guide, all of them are more than 3000 years old. In fact, I did not find anything at the temple less that 1000 years old, except the priest there, or maybe even he is that old :)

This mix of history and modernity in China still amazes me.

Ring the bell three times for good luck!

Two trees in one...both more than 3000 years old

Day 10 - 24th August: The validation...

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was an important milestone for our team as we met Mr. Zhao, the Founder and General Manager of the ZHHZ Incubation Center, to present what all we did in the last week, our understanding of the organization, the issues, possible causes and our focus areas for the next 3 weeks. We were worried we will be told that we have not understood the issues well and a week's efforts would be wasted but thankfully, that was not the case. Mr. Zhao completely agreed with our

Presenting our analysis

analysis and was happy that we were able to zero in on to the problems. He also committed his time for this project and we will be working with him very closely now to identify the solutions. This validation was very important and we felt so good after the meeting...

One thing that amazes me here is the entrepreneurial spirit in the young people. Mr. Zhao is just 27 years and has already started a few companies on his own. The ZHHZ Incubation Center is also owned by him and the passion that he shows while talking about his vision for the company is very inspiring. Even the employees of the company, whom we met for dinner at an Indian restaurant, also want to start something of their own one day and they must be like 20-25 years old. It is wonderful to see and I hope to learn a lot of things from all of them and apply in my professional life back home.

We are having 14 hours days almost everyday, though not all for work. It is a bit tiring but there is no other way if you really want to interact with the local people and get immersed in the culture...I am loving it...

Day 9 - 23rd August: Protecting the king...

#ibmcsc China 30

Today was the day most of us were looking forward to...the visit to the Terracotta Army!

The Terracotta Army or Warriors is a collection of thousands of sculptures made of Terracotta (baked clay) which were buried in 200 BC along with the emperor Qin Shi Huang to protect the emperor in his afterlife. These were discovered in 1974 and the site was opened for public in 1979.

The Terracotta Warriors

The tomb of the emperor is also nearby but it has not been restored for public yet.


It is a sight to behold as you enter the pits where they have excavated these warriors. Thousands of warriors ready to greet you along with cavalry and weapons of that era. The excavation and restoration is still going on at various sites. The sculptures are being found in pieces and as per the guide, it takes 2 archeologists about 6 months to restore one sculpture. We went on a weekend, otherwise we could have actually seen the archeologists working on the pits and at the restoration site (also known as the 'hospital for the warriors'). It is all awe-inspiring and the whole experience is difficult to put in words.

Everyone I met at the museum spoke to me about our Prime Minister, Mr. Modi, visiting the Warriors a few months back and how the entire museum was shut down for security purposes. I also got to know about the Warriors in details when those pictures were published in the newspapers back home. I had never imagined that I will be visiting the place just a few months :D

All lined up to protect the emperor

At one of the three pits

A day very well spent with visits to Ban Po Village museum and the Terracotta Warriors with just a small hiccup at the end. We took about 4 hours and 30 mins to travel 40 kms back to our hotel :)

It was all due to heavy rains and flooding all the roads leading to massive traffic jams. The driving here reminds me of home and helps me not be homesic...ha ha...

But, as they say, everything is an experience and we got all that time more to spend with the team in the bus!

Cars waiting for the water level to go down...

The weekend ends and we are back to work...