Travel Chinese style20 september The day started with gathering at 7:45 and finding out that some of the suitcases would be too heavy for the coming flight. Not all our luggage fitted in the luggage compartment of the bus so a part had to be put on the seats. This made the bus trip extra cozy and the bus driver had a CD with copied western house music to add to the ambiance. During the check-in at the airport the scanning equipment started to beep at the luggage of some of the people and the people needed to go to another desk, there it turned out to be that Li-ion batteries were forbidden in the check-in luggage. This problem was soon solved by putting the batteries in the carry-on luggage. At the gate of the airport the Subway was quickly besieged tosatisfy our hunger after which we boarded the plane and took off with a delay of an hour. At one o’clock our plane landed and we went to the parking lot to find the bus which should take us to the hostel. When we arrived at the parking lot the bus turned out to be too small and after all our luggage had been put in the bus it cost some effort for us all to board the bus. A large number of people needed to stand in the bus and the others all had large bags on their lap, at every bump and corner the bus swayed in all directions and everybody inside swung along. There was a very nice ambience inside because it was very very cozy and it was extra cheered up by the loudly singing of all kinds of (children)songs to the amazement and amusement of our Chinese guide Vicky. Once we arrived at the hostel we squeezed ourselves out of the bus and quickly dropped all our stuff and suited up for again another company visit, this time at Seeed Studio. At this company the ambience proved to be very relaxed and alternative, this was probably due to the average age of 24 in the company. The desks where littered with PCB’s, components and paper so it was clear that this was a real work place. Seeed Studio started in 2008 with two engineers and an intern, the company has now grown to 92 employees. Most of them have been attracted by vacancies on the website and by visits to universities. Seed Studio calls itself an “open hardware facilitator” and helps people to convert their ideas to products. The company began with the production of arduino clones and that is still their largest product pool, but at this time they also create different products. At this time the employees are busy with writing improved manuals to make their products more user friendly. The plan for the future is therefore to make their products more interesting for a larger audience. The visit ended with a lot of questions to the employees and a lot of talking afterwards. The bus which should take us back to the hostel appeared to be a different one than the one which brought us there and this bus had less seats than the other one, eventually five people had to sit on the floor of the bus. After changing our clothes at the hostel we went to a restaurant for some delicious food. At the first restaurant we were asked to wait for a table, after a long while it turned out that they didn’t had place for us and we went to a different restaurant. This restaurant was very luxurious with nice seats and couches, there even was live piano music played by a lady in gala costume. The service was chaotic however, apparently they were not accustomed to such large groups. Some people even got a different dish than they ordered with the question if this dish was also okay, since the dish they ordered was not available. The day ended in the bar of the hostel, this unfortunately appeared to be a karaoke bar. All waitresses walked around in short pink dresses and constantly poured extra beer in your glass to improve the beer consumption. First everybody was just taking to each other but slowly some people started singing and eventually when the ambience was right even the number "through the fire and flames" from Dragonforce was sung loudly. Martijn Brethouwer |