Ar ais timpeall 1998, the company I worked for at the time received some funding to create a new e-commerce product. We had the full gamut of business requirements to meet. It had to be fast, éasca le haghaidh úsáideoirí deiridh, flashy, il-teanga, etc. Sad to say, Mé dócha nach raibh mar shraith uaillmhianach oibre a chur i gcrích ó na laethanta heady.
This effort pre-dated Microsoft.NET. Plain vanilla ASP was still somewhat new (nó ar a laghad an-aithne ar mo chuideachta). "Brick and mortar" companies were doomed. Doomed! This is to say that it was pioneering work. Nach Hadron Collider obair cheannródaíoch, ach dúinn inár saol beag, bhí sé obair cheannródaíoch.
We were crazy busy. We were doing mini POC’s almost every day, figuring amach conas stáit a choimeád ar bun i meán go bunúsach gan stát, figuring amach saincheisteanna il-teanga, row-level security. We even had create a vocabulary to define basic terms (Is fearr liom stát-mharthanach ach ar chúis éigin, the awkward "statefull" Bhuaigh an lá).
Mar a bhí muid ag cumadh madly an táirge seo, the marketing and sales people were out there trying to sell it. Somehow, they managed to sell it to our nightmare scenario. Even though we were designing and implementing an enterprise solution, we really didn’t expect the first customer to use every last feature we built into the product day zero. This customer needed multi-language, a radically different user interface from the "standard" system but with the same business logic. Multi-language was especially hard in this case, mar gheall ar táimid dírithe i gcónaí ar Spáinnis nó Fraincis, ach sa chás seo, bhí sé Sínis (a bhfuil tacar carachtar double-beart agus láimhseáil speisialta ag teastáil mar gheall ar an teicneolaíocht a úsáid le linn).
Fast forward a few months and I’m on a Northwest airlines flight to Beijing. I’ve been so busy preparing for this trip that I have almost no idea what it’s like to go there. I had read a book once about how an American had been in China for several years and had learned the language. One day he was walking the city and asked some people for directions. The conversation went something this:
- Mheiriceá: "Could you tell me how to get to [XX] tsráid?"
- Sínis: "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
- Mheiriceá: "Oh, maith liom labhairt Mandairínis." agus d'iarr sé orthu arís i Sínis, ach níos soiléire (mar is fearr a d'fhéadfadh sé).
- Sínis: An-go múinte, "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
The conversation went on like that for bit and the American gave up in frustration. As he was leaving them he overheard one man speaking to the other, "I could have sworn he was asking for directions to [XX] sráide."
I had picked up a few bits and pieces of other China-related quasi-information and "helpful advice":
- A Korean co-worked told me that the I needed to be careful of the Chinese because "they would try to get me drunk and take advantage of you" sa chiall pressuring mé isteach chinntí gnó dona.
- Ní raibh cead againn chun gluaisteáin a thiomáint (bhí roinnt mearbhaill maidir le cibé an raibh sé seo saincheaptha, ceanglas dlíthiúil nó díreach riail an chliaint).
- Bhí rialacha speisialta le haghaidh dul trí custaim.
- Ní raibh cead againn úsáid a bhaint as airgead do rud ar bith Mheiriceá.
- You’re not supposed to leave tips. It’s insulting if you do.
Agus ar deireadh, Bhí mé cuimhní cinn réasúnta úr an Tiananmen massacre. When I was at college, I remember seeing real-time Usenet postings as the world looked on in horror.
I mbeagán focal, I was very nervous. I wasn’t just normal-nervous in the sense that I was delivering a solution that was orders of magnitude more complicated than anything I had ever done before. I was also worried about accidentally breaking a rule that could get me in trouble.
Tá mé ar an 14 uair an chloig eitilte agus cé go raibh sé rang gnó, 14 Is é uaireanta ar feadh i bhfad damanta. Níl ach an oiread sin bealaí chun siamsaíocht a chur ar tú féin ag léamh, watching movies or playing with the magnetized cutlery. Even a really good book is hard to read for several hours straight.
Faoi dheireadh, Thosaigh mé a léamh ar an ábhar pacáistithe ar phíosa bogearraí a bhí mé lámh-iompar leis dom ar an gcliant, Netscape’s web server. I’m reading the hardware/software requirements, na blurbs margaíochta, ag féachaint ar an pictiúr deas agus go tobann, I zero in on the giant "NOT FOR EXPORT" rabhadh, rud éigin faoi 128 bit encryption. I stuffed the box back into my carry bag, rabhadh aghaidh síos- (amhail is dá mbeadh a chabhraigh) agus iarracht a físeanna de a choinneáil Oíche Express out of my head.
Looking back on it now, I should have been worried, más rud é ar chor ar bith, when I left the U.S., not when I was entering China 🙂 Nothing untoward happened and I still consider that to be the best and most memorable business trip I’ve had the pleasure of making.
</deireadh>
