Malte Timmermann's Blog

I am here to work with Redflag Chinese 2000 for the next 2 weeks. We will talk about OpenOffice.org Architecture and different other things, and I'm really curious about working here for some time.

It will be a completely new experience to work in a Chinese company. At least I am prepared that there might be many differences compared to working for Sun in Germany or in USA.

And of course I am also happy that I have some time to visit different places, like the Chinese Wall or the Forbidden City...

Comments:

Congratulations, and enjoy your trip! I spent a semester in Beijing in 1997; it must be a very different place today.

Adding Redflag to the OOo community is a really big and important step, and I am glad to see concrete results coming out of the high-level collaboration.

How big is the company? What is the office culture like? What is their work with OOo like on a daily basis? How do you like the food in Beijing?

Posted by Benjamin on July 24, 2007 at 08:37 PM CEST #

Benjamin,
I bet Beijing is very different compared to 1997. The traffic is horrible, a lot of cars nowadays.
I thinks it wouldn't be appropriate to give details about the company here, sorry.
The food here is really great. Only strange to eat everything (really, everything) with chop sticks...

Posted by Malte on July 27, 2007 at 08:43 AM CEST #

It was still mostly bicycles in 1997, though cars were very common and increasing all the time.

The smog was terrible then, as I'm sure it still is today. (I wonder how this will impact the Olympic athletes next year?)

Have you ridden the subway or any city buses? Do people seem accustomed to Westerners yet? (Kids on school buses used to point and yell "wai guo ren" when we walked past.)

Posted by Benjamin on July 27, 2007 at 05:12 PM CEST #

Now I tried the subway...
Nice and big stations, very deep in the ground. Air condition in the train, very crowded. But seems people are accustomed to Westerners now.
Right now they have only 3 lines, to become some more for Olympics, and even more after that. I heard more than 20 lines should be there in the future, so I guess that will help a lot with traffic and smog.

Posted by Malte on July 31, 2007 at 05:01 PM CEST #



Malte Timmermann's Blog Malte about some of his work at Sun Microsystems, Inc.