我在上海八年工作中的趣事—之三
个人日记
l Later 6 years in the proposal engineering department
I joined the proposal engineering department in July 2007, soon after the contract negotiation for Jingpin II. It was a very busy period. There were a lot of troubles for the model test results of Jishixia project, and several meeting was held in shanghai or Beijing because of that. Also I was busy for negotiation preparation for Nuozhadu project which we had two times negotiation on the guarantee of pressure fluctuation in the vaneless space (it was a very tough topic, but the superior lower than the guarantee from model acceptance had shown the stupid of our such insistence, but who can know the results first without insistence in advance?), and soon later for Jinping II. Since I took a very active role during these two contracts, I was in a quite happy mood about my future. The new boss offered me some attractive things like travelling to Germany for an early rollout seminar on SIMSEN. But later I found it was not a rollout. Also a new young and excellent girl student graduated from South China University of Technology joined me together. To work with a young girl with more fresh and energy than an elder, towards whom I disagreed a lot, can light the burden on me. I knew very well that I was in a little bit difficult situation, but without much hesitation I left the marketing department and joined the proposal engineering department.
But the beginning life in a new department was same as before, the young girl felt very fresh about the work, but didn’t like do this or that, other things she could not do. So the life was not easy, and I had to give her a lot of guidance even like how to write the e-mail, and to encourage her to call the colleague in Heidenheim. She was very smart, speaking English very fluently, and very active in the social activities. But she only stayed in the company with me for two years. I could guess the direct reason since I had some personal talks with her before she left the company.
As mentioned before, my new boss Mr. Lin was a local Blue Book member, and later a Blue Book mobilizer. He differed quite a lot from Mr. Tang. As a process manager, he liked to do anything in a systematic and formulated way, such like the folder structure on the computer and serve, and writing any report following the template. I learned what I saw useful from him, this process was reluctant but later I was willing to follow some. So I learned the process concept and the way gradually from him.
In 2007 he instructed me I should develop towards a technical specialist or expert direction. And I was following, my life changed a lot when I joined the engineering department except that I still liked seating in front of my computer always caring for all daily work and picking up some interesting topic for self-learning if I was free. Entering the engineering department gave me a wide access to the documents on the local server and later from product data management system and a wide view about engineering; I had frequent discussion with the experienced engineers for all the projects. They also came to me quite often to discuss the issues related to hydraulic, and later all the manager level people liked to come to consult me if they had the hydraulic topics. So the atmosphere was quite good, and I enjoyed this mood very much. And the engineering department was always very silent, which I liked, but it was too silent, thus I became sometimes an active talker in the room or on the telephone.
In proposal engineering department I stayed a complete 6-years from July 2007 to the end of September of 2013, so I would like to divide this period into 2 phases, one is from 2007 to 2009, and another from 2010 to 2013 before I left. Let me summarize them in such a way:
¨ The first 3 year(2007~2009) in proposal engineering department
This was a quite hard time for me because I had a belief one day I will earn similar or even more than Mr. Jin if I could achieve project success along the time after the 1st salary exposure. I didn’t worry very about the low salary situation, although this issue bothered me quite frequently because my life and my family life were developing also.
On 20th Oct. 2007, I and my wife went to register for a marriage before I went to Heidenheim staying for one month of Xiluodu bid preparation. On a heavy snowing day of 13st Jan. 2008 soon after I returned, we held a wedding ceremony at Zhenjiang when my wife graduated from the university. I remember a small arrangement fault of neglecting my new boss Mr. Lin on that ceremony by only asking him to pass the marriage certificates to both of us. I put him in a quite neglected situation on such important public event. The colleagues both from proposal engineering department and marketing department attended my ceremony with a big bus to Zhenjiang from Shanghai showing their very good colleagueship with me.
In 2007 my wife came to Shanghai to look for a job, but quite disappointed compared if staying in her university, and we decided she stayed in the university, and I could manage to buy an apartment close to the university with even a low salary in shanghai, and the university offered quite a lot for the young teacher with a PhD degree, which money we planned for the apartment decoration. In shanghai the house price is too high for my salary at that time. Our consideration for that is to have a baby first, and we need our parents to come and take care of the baby, so an apartment shall be considered first. On 8th Feb. of 2009, my son was born, and our both parents came in turn to take care of my son.
In 2009, it was also worth of mention there was a severe accident taken place when my parent dissembled and rebuilt a house at my hometown. It was almost close to the end of building, but such unexpected event happened, one women dropped from the ladder and passed away. We, 3 children, my elder sister and younger brother and I, went back for several days to take care of this event, and the relatives of the women died agreed that we gave a set of money for compensation after a tough two-day negotiation. So the following years, besides taking care my own family I had to send back quite a lot money to my parents until the house was finished. The economic pressure of these years was quite heavy for me. I was very disappointed when I found my salary was not improved a lot when I continued another contract in 2008. Thus at the beginning of 2009, I requested my boss to consider my status, and gave him an expectation on that performance review or employee dialog. I don't like him very much because he always found my problems for other intension, like I was not fully listening to him or under his control. Later I regret I was too aggressive or direct during that talk. The salary I asked was not high, but I felt my hard work and my difficult economic situation compared with the so unbalance salary are so contradicting, money was more important than respect during that time. Even I regret, but what else can I do? The mood of been treated unfair had a lot of influence on my daily work. In sight of my situation, the young girl stayed with me left the company in Sep. or Oct. 2009.
Working life were still very busy due to several key projects like Xiluodu, it was a huge efforts for their bid preparation compared to the normal one. Among the general coordination work, translation of documents from Chinese to English and vice versa, I managed the transient calculation for most projects during the bidding stage in Shanghai, especially with new software SIMSEN, which I started to learn in 2008 after its official rollout. During this period, Voith hydro got 5 contracts including the biggest one with 3 complete units for Xiluodu at my hand. The others are Tingzikou (turbine), Dagangshan (turbine), Mianhuatan (generator, we targeted the turbine but got the generator contract), Liyuan (Turbine). There were also several key projects we lost, and Qingyuan PSP was the biggest loss for the company, which I spent more efforts than for Xiluodu. The time I submitted the last document to our marketing for printing, I was in the hotel during a technical exchange meeting for a modernization project in Liaoning province. But 5 contracts within 3 years, I could only say I was caught by a golden time of China’s hydropower industry. Another was the modernization for Gezhouba project, which was a milestone project in China’s hydropower history. We spent quite big efforts by involving Voith Hydro York to perform the CFD calculation and the preliminary runner design. This project was lost because of its significant political importance in China hydropower industry. But it was clear the customer agreed to pay Voith for the technical support at the beginning.
As mentioned above, there were three different types of key projects, Xiluodu, Gezhouba rehab, and Qingyuan PSP. The big efforts for the bid preparation, and deep involvement into the engineering part not only broadened my knowledge, but also deepened my understanding about all the technical issues. Especially for Xiluodu, I first time attended the model acceptance test with customer in May of 2009. I experienced so many contracts, but this was the only one I attended the model acceptance test. I had a very nice memory about that. At the end I was very proud of putting my name on the model runner blade, also the 2nd time to meet the old expert Mr. Huang Yuanfang. Also Mr. Huang Yuanfang recalled his nice old story of putting Chinese names on the model runner during Three Gorges project in Canada several years ago. The reason for putting Chinese names on the blades during that time was they were afraid of GE hydro might change the blades or model runner at their absence like during the weekend. But this time was for a real ceremony after a satisfactory acceptance with Voith’s special arrangement to such a detail. It was a coincidence that both same stories Mr. Huang experienced, but they were never the same!
Through years of work, I always feel the understanding(悟) after doing is more important than just doing. But to be honest, doing and understanding are both important, without doing, understanding cannot be broadened or deepened. My two personalities, one is “enjoy doing”, another is “enjoy thinking”, help me harvest a lot during this golden time. Later based on these two, I developed the 3rd personality or hobby “enjoy writing” by summarizing my doing and my thought in the next 3 years.
This time period seems not funny except the busy daily work and studying when I was free. But a small piece of free talk with the chief engineer Mr. Michael Würst from Voith Hydro could be one. He talked with us his early story like a joke. He said when he was young he was always the person carrying the document bag for the experienced expert like Mr. Buchmaier as a fellow. He talked this in a joking tone maybe because of seeing my role on that meeting. But now when I recalled this, it was not so simple because it made me to recall another very early story in the preliminary high school. I liked mathematics very much, one day the teacher Mr. Xu proposed us a question, and he promised to give the student who can answer this question a piece of handwriting he will compose directly with his finger and the ink. I could not remember his question, but it was really long time nobody could answer this question, but I got a rough answer, and I discussed with my neighbor classmate who was the class monitor. He was much brave than me, and he spoke my answer, which was right and he got the handwriting from our teacher. Quite often I thought this award was mine, but later I entered a university while this my classmate stayed at home with this handwriting hang on the wall.
The handwriting was “书山有路勤为径，学海无涯苦作舟”(see a similar picture at right I found from the internet), which if translated into English is “diligence is the path to the mountain of knowledge, hard-working is the boat to the endless sea of learning”. Diligence and hard-working, and a humble and endless learning attitude towards knowledge and learning are all believes left on my mind since that time, only I never realized its strong presence before this reflection. Sometimes lost is not a lost, but a kind of gaining pleasure inside the deep heart by giving out.
To be continued with the 2nd phase!
文章评论
lele
师兄，我和你是同期的，我也是从2007开始在alstom做技术投标工作，好多项目咱们是“竞争着过来的”，呵呵，不过我没有你优秀了，我到时候刚开始，只是个小楼楼而已。