On the way to chase bugs in China.

Today I opened my smartphone and this picture appeared – it has been exactly 10 years ago, that I travelled to China and wrote my first blog.

My first blog

And I went searching for it and finally found it and published it again. I blogged every day and called it “Chasing bugs in China“. My first footsteps in blogging, it was more of a diary:  feel free to look around!

Being censored

One thing I go reminded too – how it feels like to be cut off from free communication, facebook and this blog were blocked in China, a permanent state as you can read it in todays news being banned in other countries.

Deep experiences on work travel

And while being at home ,I felt this incredible feeling on traveling alone to a country to work there – not knowing what is waiting for me, but knowing it will be full of new experiences. I miss this so much! Experiencing a country and culture by working with people – hardware developers of course – is such an insightful and rewarding experience. I love to be a tourist and get in touch with people as well, however being at work is a very deep experience, being in the middle on a normal workday, a night out, a weekend side trip.

This trip was a very intense trip, Shanghai and Bejing in 10 days. Working in two different labs with different people.

Making friends

It was such a pleasure to meet all these talented people I was working with for months remotely to verify a chip was so rewarding and I made friends, people that I am still in contact with even if none of them still working at the same company I work with.

I can only keep coming back, you can work great together remotely, nothing replaces building a personal relationship meeting in person.

But here is something special, if you were in the location, met people, it lasts – even if people are joining the team later I never personally met, but knowing how it feels to be at work where they are gets me closer. Time to mention special friends Lu and Peng Fei. I met Lu when I was in Shanghai in 2012 and Peng Fei who joined the company a little later. I had the honor to be Peng Feis Mentor and became a good friend, and then finally at the end of 2019, they both got to travel to a conference in Chamonix and decided to stop by so we got to meet in person at the other end of the world.   It was such a merry and fulfilling moment so I have to share the picture!