Teambuilding Annual R&D Meeting 2007 – part 1.

Well, I’m write this one in English, because I was together with the engineers from Europe – maybe they’ll have a look at it as well :)
As I’ve mentioned earlier we had our annual R&D meeting last week here in SH. PE’s from Europe attended as well, so it was a nice meeting marathon.
During the weekdays we had meeting during the day and dinner-beer combo during the night. :)
I think Friday night was the ‘longest’; we got home around 3a.m. but Lassi and Tanel (engineers from Estonia and Finland) wanted to try out some massage (just regular one, seriously – I put this here for their girlfriends in order to avoid any unnecessary arguments/fights), so they arrived back to the hotel even later. Around 6 a.m.
Next day we hit the road to Hangzhou since we had the teambuilding training and sightseeing there. We started off 9:30, so we were pretty tired.
I took some picture around 10:00:
Lassi:

Tanel:

Balazs and the Chinese colleagues (Balazs was not with us previous night, but he just could not get over with his jetlags).
I had some sleep as well as Esko, the other engineer from Finland. (But first I wanted to finish last weeks hvg, since I had no time at all during the meetings:).)
After arriving to Hangzhou, we went to have lunch first. The guys wanted Chinese all week, but we did not have the chance (actually we went to other, better restaurants, since we new we will have enough Chinese during the weekend). Now they got the chance to have enough:

Actually the lunch was ok (it was eatable and I was not that hungry after), compared to the last couple of Chinese restaurants I have been lately. (Except the Sichuan restaurant we went 2 weeks ago, which was pretty good.)
After lunch we went to the hotel and packed our things into our rooms. It was very funny because we had lunch in one hotel and then went to stay into another. Well this is not the first time and I still don’t get the logic behind, but w.t.f., I don’t really want to know anyway. :)
The hotel was ok, except it was not to close to the nice part of the city. Honestly the area was pretty crappy but it was not the worst I have seen. Anyway the lack of heat during the day hurt a lot more than the view from the room:

I think the main problem was with the hotel selection – during the weekend I have seen two hotels, cheaper, nicer and of course a lot closer to city center, but oh well, we have survived, I just did not get the logic behind again. Maybe we got the Extra Bad version, which seems to be pretty cheap:

>)
And since we are discovering new Chinglish words again, here is another:
This picture is a part of the fire escape plan. So in case of emergency, just take the ‘staircass’, maybe you’ll find yourself in a smaller shit. >)

Anyway, for this day we had some team building activities. The first was held by some ‘professional’ assistant – some local company delegated 2 chicks for 200 Euro (2 hours) so we got to play some stupid ‘games’. I think if we recruit some nurse from kindergarten, or not even the nurse, but some kids, that would have been more professional, but again…TIC.
After this sensational group activity we went to have dinner. Chinese again and I think the menu was 95% the same, but oh well, at least the beer was good >)
Finally we went to see some show in a local ‘entertainment center’. This part of the evening was simply great! The entertainment center was full of old style shops, small stages with performers playing different scenes of the history of China and the whole picture was amazing. But this was still nothing compared to the show we have seen, which was the best I’ve been in my whole life! It was incredible!
Here are some pictures of the center and than the show (which was one hour long, with at least 60 performers, full of fantastic effects and laser shows):
The entrance of the center:

Local guard – everybody was dressed in

Leaf-dragon – handmade

One of the many streets inside:

And some pictures of the show:







If you go to Hangzhou, you definitely have to see this!

After the show I went to visit Zoli, the Hungarian guy who now has opened his second bar and had his birthday party the same night we were there, so…
Lassi, Tanel, Esko and Balazs also joined and we went together to Kana Bar on Nanshan Rd. 152_2. (If you are in Hangzhou and want to spend the night in a very nice bar with good prices and good music, visit Kana bar.)
We had a really good time there - the couple hundred B52 served by Zoltan was just oil on the fire >)




---Lassi, thx for the pictures!---

We got back to the hotel around 4 a.m. and we decided to go for a massage, which was really great. Though the part when they were walking on our back really hurt, I woke up next morning without any pain in my back.