Nyuma kote 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, rahisi kwa watumiaji wa mwisho, flashy, lugha mbalimbali, nk. Sad to say, Mimi pengine si alikuwa kama seti kabambe ya kazi ya kukamilisha tangu siku hizo heady.
This effort pre-dated Microsoft.NET. Plain vanilla ASP was still somewhat new (au uchache sana usio wa kawaida na kampuni yangu). "Brick and mortar" companies were doomed. Wamepotea! This is to say that it was pioneering work. Si Hadron Collider pioneering kazi, lakini kwa ajili yetu katika dunia yetu kidogo, ilikuwa ni pioneering kazi.
We were crazy busy. We were doing mini POC’s almost every day, kuhesabia nje ya jinsi ya kudumisha hali katika kati asili wasiokuwa na utaifa, kuhesabia masuala ya lugha mbalimbali, row-level security. We even had create a vocabulary to define basic terms (Mimi kuliko hali ya kuendelea lakini kwa sababu fulani, the awkward "statefull" alishinda siku).
Tulipokuwa madly mzushi bidhaa hii, 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, kwa sababu sisi daima ililenga Kihispania au Kifaransa, lakini katika kesi hii, ilikuwa ni ya Kichina (ambayo ni mara mbili-Byte kuweka tabia na required maalum utunzaji aliyopewa teknolojia sisi kutumika).
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:
- Kaskazini: "Could you tell me how to get to [XX] ya mitaani?"
- Kichina: "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
- Kaskazini: "Oh, vizuri mimi kuzungumza Mandarin." na yeye akawauliza tena katika Kichina, lakini wazi zaidi (kama bora alivyoweza).
- Kichina: Sana politely, "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] mitaani."
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" katika hisia ya kuishinikiza yangu ndani ya maamuzi ya mbaya biashara.
- Sisi walikuwa hawaruhusiwi kuendesha magari ya (kulikuwa na baadhi ya machafuko ya kama hii ilikuwa desturi, matakwa ya kisheria au tu utawala mteja).
- Kulikuwa maalum sheria kwa ajili ya kwenda kwa desturi.
- Sisi walikuwa hawaruhusiwi kutumia fedha Marekani kwa ajili ya kitu.
- You’re not supposed to leave tips. It’s insulting if you do.
Na hatimaye, Mimi nilikuwa na kiasi safi kumbukumbu Tiananmen mauaji. When I was at college, I remember seeing real-time Usenet postings as the world looked on in horror.
Kwa kifupi, 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.
Mimi nina juu ya hii 14 saa moja ndege na ingawa ilikuwa darasa biashara, 14 masaa ni damned kwa muda mrefu wakati. Kuna tu hivyo njia nyingi za kuwakaribisha mwenyewe kwa kusoma, watching movies or playing with the magnetized cutlery. Even a really good book is hard to read for several hours straight.
Hatimaye, Mimi ilianza ya kusoma nyenzo ufungaji juu ya kipande cha programu mimi mara mkono-amebeba pamoja nami kwa mteja, Netscape’s web server. I’m reading the hardware/software requirements, blurbs masoko, kuangalia picha pretty na ghafla, I zero in on the giant "NOT FOR EXPORT" onyo, kitu kuhusu 128 bit encryption. I stuffed the box back into my carry bag, onyo uso-chini (kama kama kwamba ingekuwa ulisaidia) na alijaribu kuweka maono ya Usiku wa manane Express out of my head.
Kuangalia nyuma juu yake sasa, Ningeli kuwa na wasiwasi, kama wakati wote, wakati mimi kushoto Marekani, si wakati mimi kuingia China 🙂 Hakuna kiovu kilichotokea na mimi bado kufikiria kwamba kuwa bora na ya kukumbukwa safari ya biashara Nimekuwa na furaha ya kufanya.
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