I've spent several productive days here in Beijing, meeting many people, getting to know
the way things work here. I'm very excited to be creating a new team here. Sun has many
folks here already, but our little (ha) web engineering team has no presence here.
The Beijing office is very nice - apparently much nicer than the last time my boss was here - they build things quickly here.
And for evidence of speed, they've decided to tear down a smoke stack from a steam generation plan right next to the office. It started out 150' tall on Monday, and I bet it will be completely gone by the time I leave.
Just to let Rama know, I've struggled finding good coffee. Luckily, right outside the office is a small boutique tea and coffee place... They ground and brewed me a cup of coffee in a few minutes. They even had Blue Mountain coffee (for $20!!). Needless to say, I just had something more pedestrian.
The energy in Beijing is electric - it's really amazing at all the things going on everywhere. Not a block goes by that doesn't have some major construction. My pet peave is cell phone coverage - which is a joke here. I've not gone *less* than 5 bars of signal since I got here. And if you like food - it's a great place to try some "interesting" things - like scorpion, grasshopper, etc.
Of course my favorite thing has to be the method of delivery here. . Yep, laptops on the back of a bike. And it's not like this is an isolated incident. I saw this *everywhere*. Heck, I might resort to this for Sun servers - it sure seemed fast, and you get some exercise too!
ps. sorry for this uglified posting. I'll get it fixed shortly. (will)
