I really cannot believe my second week here in China has come to an end. I am loving every second of it here. I must say, I have found a lot of humour in english translations this week. Every morning I attend the production meeting at IBM, and on the wall they have a poster with some Chinese writing on it - I guess it must be a phrase to try and motivate employees. However, it has been translated into english and it reads, "NO EXCUSE, ONLY EXECUTION!" Now, where I come from, that doesn't do much for the old morale - quite the opposite in fact haha! There are so many 'questionable' translations you come across from day to day - it can be quite funny. So for all those who read the title of the blog and thought I'd been arrested or something - fear not!

Another week at IBM, another steep learning curve. I still have so much to learn, but I feel I have conquered most of the abbreviations and acronyms in IBM that I need to know - I have filled about 7 pages of notes with them all, it's been crazy. I also had the chance this week to meet up with the General Manager here at IBM Shenzhen, Robert - he is responsible for everything down here - and he is from West Kilbride of all places. It was a really interesting chat with him, he started out with IBM down at Greenock 25 years ago and is now based here in Shenzhen, but living in Hong Kong. Right now he has gone back to Scotland for a 3 week holiday but when he comes back he has invited me to Hong Kong to show me around and have dinner. That will be amazing - not only do I get wined and dined in Hong Kong but I could probably learn a lot from this guy. I also had a chance to visit the factory here in Shenzhen where IBM servers are manufactured, which is away on the other side of the city. It was really interesting and helped me to see what we were actually trying to achieve from sitting in an office on the other side of Shenzhen. Factories here are very different from back home. Any factory I have seen in Scotland is normally a huge warehouse with everything happening on one level. In China though, that is just not possible, there isn't enough space! IBM's factory is built over 7 levels and it was fascanating to see how it all worked.

Outside of work, it has been non-stop too! I really feel settled in here now and I have made many friends in my short time here. During the week I have been out playing badminton with people from the office which was really good fun. Chinese people are amazing at badminton, so I have to say it is the taking part that counts and not the winning...right? Also, one of my colleagues called Ed invited to take me out to dinner with his wife. We went to a very traditional Chinese restaurant with food typical of that found in Sichuan Province - very spicy! The food was great, they really put on a show for me - I think my favourite dish was the crab soup - it was delicious! The weekend has been great too, played badminton again yesterday then the 8 of us went to one of the shopping malls for some lunch and then we caught the new Harry Potter film. The weather wasn't too great last night - apparently there was a typhoon off the southern coast of China so it was quite rough here. Seems to have calmed now though - just really wet!

It's been great reading everyone's blogs who are just up and running this week - hope you are all having a blast! Until next time....