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August 3, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 8, 9, & 10

My last three days in Beijing were rather more subdued than the previous 7; following our sightseeing weekend, it was back to work on Monday and Tuesday, with Wednesday being a (very long) travel day.

The remaining details:

• Monday was a shocking normal work day: wake up, brush, breakfast, walk to the office, unpack laptop, e-mail, an hour of creative work, meeting, e-mail, meeting, lunch, e-mail, snack, e-mail and then packing it up for dinner. The jet lag was largely behind me, so I wasn't fighting strange bouts of fatigue - in fact, the whole thing felt so overwhelming usual that it made me a little homesick. Rather than being a cool day in a new land, it was just another workday, but one where I wasn't going to see my girl at the end of it. It made me kind of sad.
• (On the other hand, I learned that acclimation takes, on average, five days.)
• Dinner was Schezuan with a gaggle of coworkers. They were eager to see how well Brooke and I would deal with super-spicy-hot food. We both love the stuff, and managed to navigate the sea of chili oil that came our way.
• Spicy food, apparently, knocks me out. Early bedtime.
• Tuesday was tinged with a bit of sadness, and a touch of frenzy. It was my last day in the office, so all the final face-to-face stuff I needed to get done had to be done now, before I left for the plane. I was also cognizant that this was my last chance for good, high-quality Internet access before I got back to Redmond. (Airport and hotel WiFi is usually fine, but you just can't trust that it'll work when you need it.)
• Brooke is staying on for a bit of vacation; his wife is flying in on Friday, so he'll be working the rest of the week in China and then the two of them are off for some much-needed R&R in Shanghai.
• Tuesday afternoon is also time for shopping. I promised some folks back home that I'd bring them Olympic souvenirs, and so we're off to one of the gadzillion Olympics shops to find appropriate stuff.
• While out, my curiosity finally gets the better of me and I drag Brooke and our colleague, Ray, to McDonald's. I'm eager to see what the local experience is like, and, as expected, it's pretty adapted to local tastes. I order the cheeseburger, and am surprised to find that the thing is wholly unlike what we get in the States - the meat is tastier; the cheese is different (lactose-free), and covered in paprika; it has the same special sauce as the Big Mac (but no ketchup or mustard); instead of pickles, it has raw cucumbers.
• (In all seriousness, if they sold this burger in the US, I'd buy it. It's really yummy.)
• The fries are perfect. There is no Diet Coke. And if you want your meal to go, a plastic bag is 0.2 Yuan.
• More souvenir shopping, this time on behalf of my colleague Stuart, who has asked me to bring him back some "authentically Chinese" alcohol ("Look, Russia has vodka, Ireland has whiskey, China's got their something. If you can locate a flask of whatever the heck that happens to be, that'll rock."). After conferring with Ray, we duck in to a convenience store and select a small, 100ml green glass bottle of something that Ray assures me is both "authentic" and "very popular". We also select a slightly-larger (200 ml) clear bottle of something else that is "not as authentic, but is also very popular." The combined price for the booze is 10 Yuan (about $1.50); the alcohol content of each bottle is 56%.
• (In the back of my mind, I'm praying that this stuff won't cause wood alcohol blindness.)
• Back at the hotel bar, Brooke and I both realize how badly we're missing our wives when, over successive rounds of drinks, we find ourselves engaging in an ever-escalating "argument" about which one of us managed to marry farther above his station.
• Wednesday comes, and I'm up early. My flight is at 8:55 AM, so I'm out the door of the hotel at 6. (Sigh)
• Once again, my taxi has no seatbelts. And, while this is something I managed to get used to while riding in the city, it's considerably less fun when we're going 120 km/hr on the aggressive Beijing freeway with less than a carlength between us and the vehicle in front of us.
• After arriving at the airport, I check in for my flight and spend a scant 15 minutes waiting in line at customs. I give my passport control person a "very satisfied" as I head to the gate.
• Walking to the gate, it becomes clear what a full-blown shopping mall the Beijing airport really us. Once again, I'm struck by how many American and international brands are offered for sale. If you need a Hugo Boss shirt with your Starbucks before that flight to Tokyo, you're good to go.
• On the four-hour leg between Beijing and Tokyo, I watch "The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters", which is an incredible documentary about two guys competing for the world record in Donkey Kong. It's a funny, poignant, and totally gripping human drama, and I loved it.
• In Tokyo, I manage to snag some WiFi and find, to my delight, that Elaine is still up and heading to bed. We flirt shamelessly for a good 15 or 20 minutes before my flight starts boarding.
• "Be Kind, Rewind" is charming and totally disposable.
• The flight touches down in Seattle at 8:25 AM, Pacific Time.

Damn, it's good to be home.

(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 3, 2008 3:32 PM.
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July 22, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 7

We woke up on Sunday to our second day of official non-work in Beijing, so Brooke and I decided to go for the the Big One of sightseeing - The Great Wall Of China.

• Hao and Fara claim that the best place to see the Wall is from Mutianyu, which is about an hour and a half outside of Beijing. They arranged a car and driver, and the four of us were off shortly after breakfast.
• The weather was not terribly cooperative - foggy, misty, and wet. Our visibility never really got beyond a few hundred feet. Each of us kept waiting for the sun to break through, or for us to leave the weather behind - never happened.
• We arrive at the base of the Great Wall, and find ourselves at tourist central. The path to the Wall is one gigantic tourist trap, with small shacks lining the walkway and selling every kind of Great Wall paraphernalia you can imagine - postcards, t-shirts, photos, knickknacks, ponchos, umbrellas, you name it. There's also fruit stands, snack stands, places selling water and beer. The sellers are aggressive, too, calling out in English phrases to get your attention, then trying to haggle with you on whatever item they saw you glancing at.
• Arriving at the base of the Wall is one thing; getting to the Wall is another. The government has installed a gondola to get people from the base to the Wall itself, but there's also a walking/hiking path made of stone. We opt for the hike. The climb is steep, and takes a good 20 minutes; I am reminded of the sand stairs at Baker Beach during Alcatraz. The moist weather isn't helping, either - it's like walking in a cloud. We pause as needed.
• The Wall astounds. The Great Wall is something I'd read about, of course, in my eight-grade history class (thanks again, Mr. DuBois, wherever you are), but, like the Pyramids or any of the other Seven Wonders, the Great Wall was something that was safely tucked in the pages of a book, and not an actual object that I'd be stomping around on one day.
• (And yet, here I am, and here it is, and here I find myself shaking my head with wonder about how small the world really is these days.)
• The overwhelming physicality of the Wall is incredible. It is made entirely of rough brick, made smooth and sloping in places from the contours of the land (which it hugs) or the erosion of millions of footsteps (which is has undoubtedly endured).
• At its heart, the Wall is a 20-foot-wide brick roadway, built to a height of about 30 feet. It follows the line of the mountain on which it's built, and has periodic guard buildings placed for lookouts and shelter for the soldiers that manned it.
• The thing is about as far from an antiseptic, safe-for-tourists attraction as you can imagine. The Wall slants and slopes, is slippery, has loose bricks, and offers many places to twist an ankle or fall on your ass. The hills are high and steep; going up is hard, coming down is harder. We feel like mountain goats.
• At no point does anybody complain about anything. The walk might be hard (and capable of taking the wind out of you), but, for all that, some poor bastards had to actually build it, which boggles the mind. (Your job, Oh 21st-Century Western Tourist, does not suck as much as you imagine.)
• Admission to the cable car at the Great Wall: about $10. T-shirt from a vendor at the Great Wall: 3 for $1. International roaming charges for the 2 minutes you use to call your wife from the Great Wall to tell her you love her and miss her? Priceless.
• The Wall is dotted with locals who are selling snacks, fruit and beverages. They sell from small milk crates, from hot-dog carts, from whatever they have. A number of them lead with "cold beer!" in English, which I think is strange - with this kind of climb, who wants to drink beer?
• It's easy to get vertigo up here.
• We ultimately walk the Wall from our arrival point to the 20th guard house (the end point of the zone), turn around and go back, past our arrival, and to the gondola. All told, it takes us about four hours. We take the gondola down, survive the tourist gantlet, and head back to Beijing. We are all smiling.
• All told, Beijing is incredibly clean. We see very little litter, and very few homeless. I am told that the government has been cleaning things up in advance of the Olympics.
• Olympics stuff is everywhere - banners, flags, logos, the mascots, billboards, bus boards, street signs. The city is swept with Olympics mania, and everyone is very happy and proud about it.
• A surprising number of signs come in English and Chinese. We see lots of Engrish.
• Hao and Fara take us to an expat district, which spans a river and has a healthy number of bars and nightclubs. Many of them have sofas and lounge chairs on the sidewalk, and are aggressive about getting you to sit down. We find a place that looks good, grab a table, and order some great local beer. It's outrageously expensive by Beijing standards, but about half the price of something comparable in the States. We watch gaggles of tourists zip by in the backs of rickshaws, taking in the sights.
• I want to by a t-shirt for Elaine, so Hao takes us to Plastered, which is a Beijing staple of hipness. I find her a super-cute white tee with a sketch of a Beijing subway ticket on it; I get myself an attractive blue number with "Kung Pao Chicken" written on it in Chinese. Hao assures me this is very, very, very funny.
• (Given some of the looks I get, I wonder if the shirt really says, "I'm a silly white guy who can't read Chinese", but the shirt is great, regardless.)
• Taxis in Beijing are mostly Hyundais, blue-and-gold Elantras. 2 yuan per km, 10 yuan minimum.
• After tromping around the dusty alleys of the city all afternoon, dinner is full-on culture shock - we go two blocks and find ourselves at a state-of-the-art shopping mall, all gleaming steel and glass, Starbucks and KFC, eleven stories, full of teenagers and cell phones and you name it. We could be anywhere in the States. We have some fantastic Chinese for dinner, knock back a couple of Tsingtaos, and call it a night.
• I sleep very, very, very well.

(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 22, 2008 9:00 PM.
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July 14, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 6

After three days of hard work, the weekend arrived. Brooke and I decided to do a bit o' sightseeing.

• From The "Jet Lag Cries 'Uncle'" Department: I awoke on Saturday to a feeling that was wholly alien, bizarre, and unfamiliar - that is, I felt refreshed and happy. No horrible fatigue behind the eyes, no crazy dark circles, no slow-draggin' of my sorry self from the bed to the shower. Eyes opened, smile appeared, bounced out of bed. About. Freakin'. Time.
• A peek out the hotel windows reveals that the weather is cooperative. A bit of sun is breaking through the white Beijing fogginess; the city seems to be inviting us in.
• Two of our colleagues, Hao and Fara, generously agree to show us the city, to which Brooke and I readily agree. They prove to be fantastic guides.
• First stop: The Temple of Heaven, 600-year-old complex that is now a public park, much like the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. People are strolling down paths, playing modified games of hacky sack (with this crazy, badminton-esque shuttlecock thingy), taking pictures, gawking at the relics. The Temple grounds are walled off from the rest of Beijing, and go on (seemingly) forever. We take it all in, walking from the north end of the park to the south, then out to the east.
• My longstanding transit fetish is indulged with a quick trip on the Beijing Subway system; we take Subway Line #5 to a shopping district not too far from the Temple. The subway is thoroughly modern, clean, and quiet - stations of this design are typical of any Western city (frankly, we could be in London, for all anyone knows). The #5 uses glassed-in tubes, much like Line 14 on the Paris Metro.
• Tickets are 2 Yuan (about $0.30).
• For lunch, we hit this Brazilian BBQ buffet restaurant. It's apparently a very popular cuisine in town, and the waiters are forever visiting our table with skewers of this or that meat on them, trying to carve off pieces for us to try. Everything is delicious.
• After much moral dithering, I ask to try Starbucks. Fara and Hao crack smiles; Brooke looks vaguely relieved. Turns out that Starbucks in Beijing is pretty much Starbucks everywhere; apart from the Chinese on the menu, the items, options, and prices (adjusted for Yuan) are identical.
• (The place is full of Westerners. I hear more unaccented American English in 20 minutes than I've heard in the last 5 days.)
• Starbucks also has free WiFi, which allows me to take my iPhone out of airplane mode and send an "I miss you" e-mail to Elaine.
• We pop back to the subway and transfer to Line 1 (the oldest line), which ultimately takes us to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.
• Look, there's no real way to convey how huge these structures and places are in words, so I'll just say this: we emerged from the subway, strode a few steps, turned to the left, and ... the expanse just goes on. Tiananmen Square is a broad, sprawling expanse of concrete, brick and emptiness, bordered by the Forbidden City at one end and government buildings on the others. It's enormous. Standing alone on a football field at night might give you a sense of it, but just barely.
• There are tourists, citizens, and guards everywhere. The cameras-per-square-inch ratio goes up noticeably.
• We walk the square to the gates of the Forbidden City (adorned with a gigantic picture of Chairman Mao), and then walk in.
• Beijing is a city built on a series of concentric rings. The inner ring, Ring 1, is the oldest; subsequent rings represent later generations of the city's growth. The Forbidden City is, in a literal sense, Ring 1 - it's the original seat of power, the home to the emperors who ruled China for centuries. It's called "Forbidden" because you would be killed if you went in without permission. Today, about 50 Yuan does the trick.
• The emperors are gone, but the Forbidden City is preserved by the Chinese government as a public museum - a museum that runs 1km by .7km square. It's big.
• The City contains everything a city would expect to have - buildings for the people who lived there, for the various support functions (guards, priests, etc.), for ceremonies, for celebrations, for dining and you name it. The City is surrounded by a high brick wall, and that has a moat outside it for good measure.
• Hao and Fara have arranged for a guide to take us around the city, and they leave Brooke and me alone to head out to connect with her. I stand, just trying to drink it all in and ... failing. It's too much.
• The level of detail in this place is mind-blowing. I look at rooftops, and notice that the roofs are ornately adorned, hand-carved, hand-painted. Every surface has incredible detail, which means you can sit on a bench and stare at a wall and see something new just about every time you move your eyes. As I take this in, it dawns on me that all of it was built without the aid of robotics, computers, or mass-manufacturing techniques of any kind. It's just ... craftsmanship.
• Oh, yeah: no nails. Anywhere.
• The tour is about two hours. We walk and walk and walk, ducking down alleyways, taking in exhibits of concubine's quarters, seeing the temples and the seats of power. The guide is good; she knows her stuff. Very shortly, I'm in overload.
• The doors in this place are not built for white guys with high-protein diets. I duck a lot.
• The toilets are ... well, they're holes in the floor. Porcelain, yes, reasonably clean, yes, but you better have good knees and a sense of humor if you need to use the can.
• We wind up leaving as the City is closing, which makes hailing a cab a rather time-consuming activity.
• Dinner is Schezuan at a place off a hutong. As expected, the food is astoundingly good. We drink Tsingtao, a local Chinese beer that's light, refreshing, and not too booze-y.
• I woke up easy, but I go to bed hard - it's been a long day. (I'm still smiling, however.)

(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 14, 2008 9:37 PM.
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July 9, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 4 & 5

(Sorry it's taking me so long to get to these entries; this being my first full week back at work, life's a bit hectic.)

More China notes:

• Thursday and Friday were both traditional work days, in the sense that I got up, brushed/showered/shaved/brokefast and then headed to the office. The fact that I was working from the Beijing office - rather than on West campus in Redmond - was not lost, exactly, but it didn't manifest itself very often - generally, only when I'd get away from my screen or campus. Seen one Microsoft office, seen most of 'em.
• (There's something surreal about being able to fly halfway around the world and live, essentially, as if you were still at home. Maybe Snow Crash is right, the future's just going to be a worldwide, smeared-out sameness.)
• Microsoft's Beijing office is pretty nice. It's a 6-story building, plus a sub-level; the main floor is for visitors (and has some additional retail tenants); the second floor on up is all for employees. The sublevel (the employees all call it "P1") is like a mini-mall for employees - a few food places (one of which serves a mean rice bowl), a health club (with swimming pool), a barbershop, that sort of thing. Convenient.
• After avoiding its deadly grasp for the past two days, jet lag finally stalked and caught me on Thursday afternoon. I was on deadline for a project (deliverable due 5 PM), cranking away, and suddenly just ... hit the wall. Brooke had it, too; I'm surprised we weren't drooling on ourselves. Walking around the halls seemed to help, but there wasn't enough Nescafe in the world to resuscitate me. I just had to hope for the second wind.
• Thursday dinner was a special treat - Peking duck. The restaurant was very high-end, very swanky, and dated from 1864; they even provided a 'certificate of authenticity' for the duck (now up on the wall of my office), which contained the duck's serial number (#77648, as in "we have served 77,648 ducks since we opened"). No fooling.
• Everyone here - on the street, in the office, in shops, taxis, etc. - is very friendly. A lot of people will immediately ask us where we're from, and many will try their English.
• (For some odd reason, they don't think two 6'+ pasty white-guy geeks look like natives.)
• Beijing weather is low-70s in the evening, mid-90s in the daytime. It's humid, too. It feels like Houston to me.
• There's an odd cultural thing I keep observing where people - friends - walk down the street holding hands. It's very common, and everyone seems to do it. One of my coworkers tells me that "it doens't mean what it means in the States", which makes me laugh.
• After dinner, four of us went out for a massage near our hotel. It was, without question, one of the best massages I have ever had in my life - one where they treat you like bread dough, pushing, pulling and dragging you into various shapes until you're just a puddle on the floor. The whole thing ran around 90 minutes, and cost about 90 Yuan (about $13) for each of us.
• One the way out, I asked one of my Beijing colleagues about the prices - and about the masseuses, all of whom were twentysomething women. He explained that each masseuse likely got 20 - 25 Yuan for each massage, and they probably did four or so per day. That may not seem like a lot to some (it didn't to me), but 80 - 100 Yuan a day is 400 - 500 a week, and 1600 - 2000 a month. In a town where ~900 Yuan/month is considered a good living wage (you can hire a combo cook/nanny/housekeeper for that), doing massage is considered a good job. And for many Chinese, it's incredibly attractive relative to staying in a village, where the prospects aren't nearly as bright - or the freedom as broad - as they are in the city.
• (I have to say, it's a little disconcerting to grok the economics of a place with such a huge labor pool, and such disparities between modern urban and old-country rural.)
• A lot of the city seems retrofitted - apartment buildings with AC systems bolted to the side of every unit, storefronts that are mostly facades against older buildings underneath. There's a citywide sensibility of re-use, of upgrade. It feels vaguely steampunk-ish. MAKE magazine would love this city.
• Friday was an early-morning arrival at the office (jet lag + more deliverables), and I got to walk the (semi-deserted) streets in the cool air. I was taken aback at how few people were out and about; Beijing is busy, full of people, and to see the place without too many bodies was jarring.
• Even at 6 AM, the city is covered in the same flat, fog-diffused light that you see at all hours. No variance at all.
• Microsoft Beijing cultural observation: the nighttime staff makes tea, using fresh leaves, and puts them in all the offices in these nifty glass carafes. It's delicious.
• 3:30 PM - Midway through a presentation, I do the jet-lag stall (it's 12:30 AM Pacific), and it's all I can do to keep focused. Following the preso, I begin mainlining Nescafe.
• Driving in Beijing is crazy. CRAZY. In the States, we tend to like our roads segmented - sidewalk, car lane, bike lane, crosswalk - each marked with its own line, its own rules, and we want our people to stay where they're supposed to be. Beijing is totally different. Nobody in Beijing gives a damn about lanes, lines, or anything else: cars mix with trucks mix with buses and pedestrians and cyclists and guys on mopeds and some other guy with a bicycle pulling a trailer with a 10 ft. x 10 ft. x 10 ft. bundle of empty plastic bottles he's taking to the recycler. People stroll out in the street when they want to, and, when confronted with the horn of an oncoming car/bus/etc. (moving at 20 - 25 mph, max), they pause, 2" from the side of the inbound vehicle, watch it slide by, and then continue.
• In its own way, it's actually beautiful. It makes me wonder, too, about throughput - is Beijing's road system packet-switched, compared to the circuit-switched system in the US? With so many people, maybe they need to work as packets to get anything done.
• American brands are everywhere. KFC is to the Beijing fast-food market what McDonald's is to the USA (but, it must be said, McDonald's is pretty commonplace). Wal-Mart is here. Bally Total Fitness is here. Starbucks is here. The list goes on.
• We close the evening - and the week - with karaoke (natch), at what is, easily, the nicest karaoke place on Earth. Private suites, leather couches, flatscreen monitors for the cheesy videos, great sound system, wireless mics, touch-screen jukebox, in-suite catering. Unbelievable. The place was busy, too - we walked down a couple long hallways of suites, each full of private parties.
• (Yes, Brooke and I sang - a little Tears for Fears, a little "Bust A Move", even "Never Gonna Give You Up". There are pictures. There is absolutely, positively no video or audio recording.)

(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 9, 2008 8:31 PM.
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July 5, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 3

Wednesday, June 25:

• The hotel has, perhaps, the best breakfast buffet I've ever experienced. It's got a huge range of food choices - Chinese, Indian, western, you name it (likely necessary due to their expat clientele). You can get anything from pork-filled buns to curry to Cheerios to omelettes. The food's of good quality, too, and very tasty.
• (On the downside, the hotel insists on playing soft Western music (e.g., Wham!, the "Titanic" soundtrack) during breakfast, which, while initially earning points for kitch, gets old very, very quickly as the week continues.)
• The Microsoft office is about 1km from the hotel, so we walk.
• Beijing is enveloped in a white, cloudlike, foggy substance - visibility peters out about 1,000 feet away in any given direction. At first, I'm not sure if this is pollution or fog or what, but it doesn't have any appreciable smell, and doesn't irritate my eyes or lungs. It also never goes away for the duration of the trip. Huh.
• At 7:30 AM, the streets are full of people - people on foot, people on bikes, people on mopeds, people in cars, people in buses (the buses are packed), people streaming in and out of subway stations, people, people, people. Everyone has a bustle and a focus, and nobody seems to pay anyone else very much attention. It's got a fascinating rhythm to it; I feel like I could sit and watch the flow for hours.
• The Beijing Microsoft office is exactly like every other Microsoft office I've ever been to, except I can't read half the signs.
• Brooke and I, badly jet-lagging, grab coffee from a Nescafe machine in the shared kitchen. It turns out to be very, very, very yummy.
• Our first order of business is an 8 AM video conference call with some folks back home in Redmond, where it's still Tuesday, 5 PM. After yawning and blinking and drinking oceans of coffee to keep my focus, I now have a much greater degree of empathy for my Chinese colleagues.
• After the call, Brooke and I hole up in an empty office and focus on getting things done.
• Working remotely is actually pretty nice because you can focus. During my usual workday, I regularly shut off my e-mail and IM for periods of time to give myself unbroken stretches where I can concentrate and get in to flow. It's a deliberate effort, and one that can be controversial (people sometimes expect you to reply to email right. this. very. second.). When you're 15 hours ahead, your work day starts as the home office is closing down for the night (8 AM = 5 PM), so the majority of the e-mail that was going to be sent that day has already been sent. As such, when I arrive I slurp down all the mail that was sent during the day, process it, and ... that's it. Not much new comes in during my day, and the quiet is wonderful. I'm able to really crank on some of my projects.
• Around 2:38 PM, we get punchy enugh to start Rick Rolling one another. The Dramatic Prarie Dog also makes an apearance. More Nescafe does not seem to be helping.
• For dinner, our Microsoft colleagues take us out to a very nice, very modern Chinese restaurant. At one point, I went to set my napkin on my lap, and one of my fellows gently explains that this is considered rude - I was "taking the job" of the server at the restaurant who was supposed to do that. Hmm.
• The food is amazing.
• By the end of the day, I'm exhausted - deep-bone exhausted, everything-is-funny exhausted, walking-like-a-slightly-drunk-person exhausted. I return to my hotel room, brush my teeth, and call it a day.

(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 5, 2008 11:14 AM.
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July 2, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 1 (& 2)

Last week, Microsoft sent me to Beijing (along with my fellow MacBU-er Brooke) on business. Our flight left Seattle on Monday, the 23rd; I got home this morning. This afternoon's been a bit brutal, energy-wise - my internal clock is still 15 hours ahead of Pacific time, so my 8:25 AM landing (it's the morning!) was 11:55 PM to me (it's time for bed!).

The last 10 days have been a total whirlwind. While very much a work trip, we managed to use our weekend stayover for a bit of sightseeing. Very exciting.

As usual, I took a few notes during the trip:

• During my Monday-morning suitcase-stuffing extravaganza, I peek at Dashboard, which says that Beijing has a low of 70 and a high of 95 all week. Yowza. Pack shorts.
• Brooke's wife gave us a lift to the airport, so on the way out of town we stopped by Vivace for one final cup of Seattle coffee. We then popped downtown so I could give Elaine a goodbye hug at her office. Mid-squeeze, I'm reminded of why I was glad when my insane Product Planning travel schedule came to a close last year.
• Since the time difference between Seattle and Beijing is so pronounced, it meant that our Monday afternoon departure wouldn't land in China until late Tuesday night. (Dude, where's my Tuesday?)
• We're on Northwest for this trip, living large in business class (Microsoft travel policy lets you go business if your flight is more than 7 hours). After clearing Seattle airport security, we head to the South terminal and check out the Northwest executive lounge. It's my first time there, and it's pretty excellent: plenty of windows (lots of natural light), tables (places to spread out and work), free soda and coffee, free WiFi, and lots of quiet.
• (Brooke and I are, I think, the most casually-dressed people in the lounge.)
• Business class is addictive: champagne before takeoff, a fresh Wall Street Journal, an appetizer of seared Ahi tuna skewers with ginger and cucumber. We remark to each other, many times, that we are forever ruined when it comes to future travel in coach.
• Northwest's Airbus A330s have AC power outlets in business. My initial feeling of joy ("Score!") gives way to mild annoyance as I realize the flight's AC power system is put together with baling wire and a couple of D batteries. The juice stops frequently, which makes it hard to sustain (or retain) a laptop charge. Our power manages to last the whole flight (and I have an outbox of queued up e-mail to prove it), but things feel very touch-and-go most of the time.
• Our flight connects through Tokyo. I've never been to Japan before, so as we're descending I'm peering out the window of the plane like a 5-year old in front of a toy store, nose pressed against the glass and trying to absorb everything I'm seeing. The country is unbelievably green - they have farms and fields laid out in grids as far as the eye can see, incredibly lush and gorgeous.
• We arrive in Tokyo at 4:15 PM, local time. We are pooped.
• My iPhone can't seem to lock on to a cellular provider in Japan. I had this fantasy that I'd be able to zip around the world and at least have the option of paying $4.99 a minute on foreign networks, but apparently the AT&T people aren't talking to their Japanese counterparts. Grr.
• The Tokyo airport has a McDonald's. Next to a sushi bar. I swear I am not making this up.
• On the flight from Tokyo to Beijing, I watch "Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man", which I find to be an insightful and balanced portrait of a very complicated and stubborn guy. It starts with his work in the 1960s and 1970s, and then proceeds up to his 2000 presidential bid. Truthfully, I'd been a bit mad at Nader over 2000, and had seen him as a spoiler for Gore. After the movie ... well, I'm not mad anymore; I think I have a good sense of where he's coming from. I don't necessarily agree with him, but I do think I understand him a bit better. Highly recommended.
• After the film, I manage to sleep for an hour.
• We touch down at 9:28 PM, local time (6:28 AM Pacific).
• Beijing's airport is gigantic, just enormous. It seems to go on forever. We taxi for a full 15 minutes after landing, and never run out of new things to look at - stretches of tarmac and clusters of buildings, going on and on and on.
• The plane's doors pop, and the weather hits us. Beijing feels a lot like Houston - humid and hot, almost menacingly so, as if the weather wants you to know that it can take things from "pretty warm" to "Crock-Pot cooking" whenever it feels like it.
• Inside, the airport looks like any other modern European airport, except with Chinese signage. Most signs and displays have English translations; international pictograms are used for bathrooms, exits, and the like. Navigating is not a problem.
• The Chinese customs people are friendly and polite. They also have a push-button customer-satisfaction poll on the customer's side of the counter; you push the smiley-face or frowny-face that matches your experience ("Very satisfied", "satisfied", "unsatisfied", "Very unsatisfied"). I give my guy a "very satisfied" and head off to get my bag.
• We are met at the airport by some of our fellow Microsofties. They meet us in front of ... the Starbucks. (I am a sad, sad Seattle cliche.)
• A taxi is procured to take us in to Beijing proper, and our hotel. I had been warned about the driving in China, but the reality of it is really quite striking - people change lanes whenever they want, drive at different speeds on the freeway (very fast, very slow), pass on the shoulder, you name it. For all the chaos, the drivers seem acclimated, alert, and ready for anything.
• (Brooke and I are both alarmed to find that our taxi doesn't have seatbelts in the rear seats. As we later learn, virtually none of them do.)
• Our taxi ride takes 45 minutes, and sets us back 75 Yuan. That's about $10 US.
• The hotel is very nice, very clean, and clearly caters to visiting Western businesspeople and tourists.
• After unpacking everything, I notice the small sign in the bathroom - "The tap water is not safe for drinking." The hotel has set out two 12-oz bottles of (privately branded) water for personal use. I'd been warned about the water situation before leaving, but being confronted with it still requires a shift in my thinking. I need to use these two bottles for pretty much everything - drinking, rinsing my toothbrush, taking vitamins, everything. Conserving water becomes something I think about a lot during the trip, and I find myself wondering whether this kind of water rationing is something humanity as a whole is going to have to get used to in the future.
• Slightly before midnight, I bomb out.

(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 2, 2008 4:47 PM.
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May 13, 2008

Office 2008 SP1

I'm happy to report that my colleagues at MacBU shipped the first service pack to Office 2008 (2008 SP1) today; you can get the bits directly from the "downloads" section of our Web site, or you can wait a day or two for it to appear in AutoUpdate.

All the product teams worked incredibly hard on this release, and I'm very proud to see the results getting out to customers. If you're interested in the scope of what got done, check out the KB article.

It's also worth pointing out that Office 2008 is a barnburner, sales-wise:

Office 2008 launched at Macworld Expo 2008, and sales for the productivity suite continue to soar, selling faster than any previous version of Office for Mac in the past 19 years.

..."The response has been amazing — since we launched in January, the velocity of sales for Office 2008 is nearly three times what we saw after the launch of Office 2004,” said Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac BU.

(Awesome.)

UPDATE: Schwieb has a great post on SP1 on his blog. Check it out.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 13, 2008 7:15 PM.
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May 9, 2008

The New Commute

My commute has changed quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.

For starters, I'm on two wheels once in a while. May is here, which is Bike To Work Month (with Bike To Work Day on the 16th). May also represents the last month before the Alcatraz tri, which means that, assuming I don't want to flail spectacularly in San Francisco, I needed to get out, buy a bike, and actually start using it pretty regularly.

My solution has been to start riding to work a couple times a week - or, in some cases, ride to work one day and then ride home the next or the day after.

I'm very fortunate in that 99% of my ride is along the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River bike trails, which are mostly flat, 100% free of cars, have periodic water stops and bathrooms, and run through some spectacular scenery. The total work-home commute mileage is around 26 (each direction), which takes me just shy of 2 hours. We have lockers and showers in the building adjoining MacBU, which makes it even simpler.

It's a easy, gorgeous ride, and a hell of a way to start the morning. I can't recommend it more highly.

When I'm not on my bike, I'm on the bus. I've moved from regular Metro transit to Microsoft's private bus service - "The Connector." The company rolled out Phase 1 of the service back in September, and recently kicked off Phase Two, adding a bunch of new routes (one of which is right by our place).

I was a bit torn about switching to the Connector. While it's a great perk for people with poor bus service to campus (e.g., you live in the suburbs, or a less commute-friendly part of Seattle, such as Ballard), we've got great bus service where I live. Further, the Connector seemed to be a bit of a push in terms of transit time (it's a private bus, not a private helicopter, so we're still stuck in the same traffic with everyone else), and the system requires advance reservation (through a Web site) to ensure that everyone gets a seat.

In fact, the service is amazing.

First, in terms of real-world throughput, Connector buses are actually faster than Metro. The shuttles leave precisely on time, which is a godsend if you've ever played the 5 - 15 minute waiting game that sometimes happens with popular Metro bus lines. It's understandable - Connector routes have 3 stops, total, while a typical Metro bus will stop, you know, 14,000 or 15,000 times over a decent-sized route. With such precise timing, you spend less time checking your watch at a Connector stop, and you can rely on the Connector being ready at the same time every day.

Second, Connectors all have free WiFi. While this isn't unique (many SoundTransit buses have it, too), the thing that makes it awesome is...

Third, Connectors guarantee you a seat, and have space for your bags. This is the big one. Being guaranteed a seat - and knowing that it won't be Sardine Can Seating - means you can walk out the door with your laptop under your arm and be confident that you can do some violence to your e-mail (or Web surf, or whatever) while on the road. It's wonderful, because I know I can defer some of my last-minute work to when I'm on the bus, be confident of getting it done, and walk through the door of my condo with a clear mind and a closed MacBook Pro.

Connector Phase Two was just rolled out this week, and the buses are already at capacity - a trend I expect to continue as the good word spreads. Part of this is simple gas-price economics - as BusinessWeek wrote, "Suddenly, It's Cool To Take The Bus", and, indeed I've seen several e-mail threads from car-centric colleagues extolling the virtues of not having to drive in our stop-n-go traffic anymore.

More than anything, the biking and the bus-riding have helped me reclaim some of my commute as "me time" - time to get healthy, see my community, get a few more things done in the day - instead of feeling like it's The Great Sucking Sound of emotional energy and patience that I associate with driving.

If you're sick of your commute and are ready for a change, try your bike or a bus. You won't regret it.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 9, 2008 12:43 PM.
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May 5, 2008

Microsoft's Own Little EPCOT

Last week, I was fortunate enough to tour the Microsoft Center for Information Work (CIW) and the Microsoft Home (aka, "The Home Of The Future").

If you don't know what these are, they're very much akin to a Microsoft "concept car," a never-to-be-built prototype of a possible tomorrow that demonstrates how people might work together (or, in the case of the Home, live together) with a little extra technology, smartly deployed.

Tours are generally available only to VIPs (and the occasional lucky employee), and most of the stuff that is shown off is strictly under NDA. So I can't go in to any kind of detail about what was shown, or the general direction of the content.

That said, the most interesting thing to me about both tours - and I suppose this was made all the more apparent because I took them back-to-back - was how utterly, completely, and totally Disney-like they were. It felt, eerily, like I was on some Microsoft-sponsored exhibit at EPCOT or Tomorrowland.

Neither exhibit has audio-animatronics, but they do have the Disney exhibit hallmarks - a "concept" or storyline that serves as the narrative for the time you spend in the exhibit, audience interaction that moves the story forward, a series of lessons that are taught as part of the experience (Disney goes with things like, "Protect The Earth"), and, of course, insanely high production values.

Another Disney parallel is that both the CIW and the Home suffer from the "Tomorrowland Problem" - namely, that the future has an awkward (and consistent) way of, you know, actually happening, which means that one year's breathtakingly cool and cutting-edge exhibit is next year's collective yawn. I remember walking through the "Innoventions" pavilion in Tomorrowland back in 2001, and listening to a Cast Member breathlessly describe how, in the future, people would actually listen to the radio through the Internet (...isn't technology amazing?).

I remember laughing to myself, checking my watch to make sure it wasn't still 1995, and strolling over to Space Mountain.

Keeping up with the future is hard problem, and it's easy to get snarky about some of the more fantastical or implausible parts of these sorts of exhibits. That said, both the CIW and the Home are pretty well-done, and I've found that a few of the ideas that were shown off are still sticking with me, popping in to my cerebellum now and again and attaching themselves to some of my other, more "grounded" projects.

Which is, of course, the point.

I wonder how many other companies are doing this sort of thing - producing Disney-fied exhibits to tell the story of their business, product, technologies, or vision. Certainly, plenty of organizations offer plant tours or behind-the-scenes glimpses to the public or VIPs. As the stakes go up for these sorts of tours - particularly among companies that sell ideas - I have to imagine that a lot of Imagineers are going to find themselves lucrative work as private consultants.

Overall, a terrific experience - particularly the Home. The Microsoft Web site has a number of still images from the Home - be sure to check them out.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 5, 2008 9:16 PM.
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January 25, 2008

Office 2008: The 10-Minute Walkthrough

The fine folks over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog have posted an interview with MacBU's own Amanda Lefebvre.

Shot at Macworld, Amanda spends a good 10 minutes talking about Office 2008 and showing off a number of the new, cool things you can do with the suite. It's a solid primer for folks thinking about upgrading.

(Nice work, Amanda!)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 25, 2008 4:35 PM.
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January 13, 2008

Off To Macworld

Macworld kicks off tomorrow, and a good chunk of the MacBU (including yours truly) are heading down to San Francisco to meet customers, take questions, and show off Office 2008.

I'll be working the Microsoft booth during the week, so if you're at the show, be sure to stop off, introduce yourself, and say hello!

(And, if you're at the show, don't forget to print your Keynote Bingo card!)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 13, 2008 8:52 AM.
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December 19, 2007

Scale

It's the holiday time of year, which means that Elaine and I have been catching up with old friends at parties and family gatherings. Time and again, I keep getting asked about my "new" (four months in, and it's still "new") job at MacBU - what it's like, what a "program manager" actually does, and so on.

Generally, I get asked what I like about the new gig, or what's surprised me the most. The answer is the same: scale.

I've spent my entire career in tech, doing services (Internet access/Web hosting), custom software (Web application development), and consulting. In each of these areas, I've always seen through the lens of a small business - my partners and I had companies that offered something to a defined population, and we customized, where possible, for specific audiences and needs. In many ways, this was the geek equivalent of running a Saturday-afternoon lemonade stand - you brew your lemonade, hang out a shingle, and look for thirsty customers. Since you're the one selling the lemonade, you have a personal encounter with most everyone you do business with. Your transactions are in your native language, and likely all in cash. The product you're selling is the product you've got - there's no customization or after-market. It's a simple business, and a satisfying one.

Making software that's used by millions of people, by contrast, is not a simple business.

Let's take the product I deal with - Office for Macintosh - as an example.

First, Mac Office isn't just used by one type of person - it's used by millions of different people. We use research to develop customer segmentations and personas that we can rely on to help guide our product investments. However, the devil is in the details - if you're trying to cater the product to a user that is less technical, say, then you need to do a good job of remembering what problem you're actually helping them solve (as the old saying goes, "Nobody buys a drill; rather, people buy a 2" hole in their wall").

Your feature needs to be built in such a way that it's also attractive, as much as possible, to other customer segments, who will have different assumptions about what your feature should or should not allow them to do. You're forever trading off complexity for simplicity - what's "flexible" to one person is "confusing as hell" to another. Product designs have to be tested, tested, and tested again - you can't just put a crazy idea in the box and ship it.

Second, Mac Office comes in a number of languages (English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and so on). Consequently, the product is sold in a number of different countries, each with their own specific market requirements and government regulations. As a practical matter, this means we have to have people who are doing translation and localization work, but it also means that, as product designers, we have to worry about specific aspects of the product that you might not think about.

Small things - an icon, say - might be just fine in the United States, but be really offensive to members of a certain group in another country. "Smiley faces", for instance, can imply one thing in one culture (e.g., happiness), and something else again somewhere else. We have teams of people who are responsible for ensuring that our products have been checked for just this sort of thing, and are acceptable to a global audience.

Third, Mac Office isn't just used by the people who buy the product at the Apple Store. There are lots of people who are responsible for installing, updating, and supporting our software (e.g., IT administrators at universities or corporations; parents on computers at home), many of whom have concerns about keeping their systems stable, secure, and available. We have people who work on things like the Installer - something that many people don't think about (most end users only fire up the installer once, when they first get the product), but that are critically important to this community. We have people who worry about security, people who worry about "sustained engineering" (those are the friendly folks who bring you the .1, .2, and .3 updates), and people who do nothing but bang on our products all day long and try to break them before customers get their hands on them. Each of these teams has its own set of requirements and concerns, and many of these teams can prevent the product from shipping if they feel that their concerns are not being addressed.

Fourth, Mac Office has a partner community - people who have extended our products with their own code or intellectual property. Much of our product can be accessed programmatically, using macro languages in the products themselves, or external languages like AppleScript. When you design a feature, you need to think about how someone might want to access it programmatically - how they might want to build on top of your stuff. You also need to make sure that this has been well-tested by your colleagues in quality control.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point - at scale, software is much, much more than it appears to be, and has some incredibly important aspects (e.g., security, quality testing) that users never see.

(Since arriving, I've felt a bit like Charlie, getting a tour of the Wonka factory.)

I mean, I knew this stuff existed - I saw it, at lemonade-stand scale, when I was working for myself - but to actually step on to the factory floor and see the blue ball machine running full-tilt ... it's a bit dizzying.

One intriguing aspect to all this is that no change is simple. God knows I've sat in front of software on more than one occasion and proclaimed, "Augh! If only this product did [blank] - I mean, how hard can it be?"

Answer: damn hard. There's no such thing as a "simple" change, because even "simple" changes need to be run through the necessary machinery to ensure they're not introducing more problems than they're solving. You think that menu item should use slightly-different wording? Great, let's change it ... but we need to make sure that it doesn't break a partner solution, or cause a localization issue, or make the product harder to understand by novice users.

Learning what it's like to work at scale has been the most eye-opening thing about my new job. And, in truth, it was a big part of what drew me to the position. My contributions to our 2008 release notwithstanding, I've never shipped a shrink-wrapped product before, and I figured it was a skill well worth learning. (And not "learn" in the sense of "I understand, conceptually, how this process is accomplished", but rather "learn" in the sense of "I've got mud on my face and shredded clothes after crawling through the rainstorms and razor wire of getting the thing out the door.")

Hence: Gavin Shearer, Program Manager, MacBU.

I expect the next few years to be incredibly fascinating.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 19, 2007 8:47 PM.
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