Itzuli inguruan 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, azken erabiltzaileei erraza, flashy, multi-hizkuntza, etc. Sad to say, Seguru asko ez dut lan handinahi multzo bat bezala izan nahi dutenek ilusio hura betetzeko egun noiztik.
This effort pre-dated Microsoft.NET. Plain vanilla ASP was still somewhat new (edo, behintzat, oso nire enpresari Ohituta). "Brick and mortar" companies were doomed. Kondenatuta! This is to say that it was pioneering work. Partikula ez Collider aitzindari lana, baina gure mundu txiki batean, lana izan zen aitzindaria.
We were crazy busy. We were doing mini POC’s almost every day, out nola kalkulatzen egoera mantentzeko bat berez estaturik gabeko ertain, out kalkulatzen multi-hizkuntza gaiak, row-level security. We even had create a vocabulary to define basic terms (Egoera-iraunkorrak nahiago dut, baina arrazoiren batengatik, the awkward "statefull" irabazi eguna).
Ginen madly produktu hau asmatuz, 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, beti gaztelaniaz edo frantsesez delako zentratu, baina kasu honetan, Txinako zen (horietatik bi byte karaktere eta behar bereziak manipulazio ematen dugu teknologia erabiltzen da).
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:
- American: "Could you tell me how to get to [XX] kalean?"
- Txinako: "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
- American: "Oh, Mandarin ondo hitz egiten dut." eta haiei galdetu zuen berriro txineraz, baina argi eta garbi (onena izan zitekeen).
- Txinako: Oso adeitsuki, "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] kalean."
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" Niri pressuring negozio txarra erabakiak sartu zentzuan.
- Dugu, ez ziren onartzen autoak gidatzeko (ez zen zenbait gisa nahasmena hau ote zen ohitura, legezko baldintza edo, besterik gabe, bezeroaren arau).
- Baziren ohiturak igaro arau bereziak.
- Dugu, ez ziren onartzen American dirua erabili nahi ezer.
- You’re not supposed to leave tips. It’s insulting if you do.
Eta, azkenik,, Oroitzapenak nahiko freskoa izan dut Tiananmen sarraskia. When I was at college, I remember seeing real-time Usenet postings as the world looked on in horror.
Laburbilduz, 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.
Ni honetan I 14 orduko hegaldia eta zen enpresa klase nahiz, 14 ordu bat madarikatuak denbora luzea da. Besterik ez dira, beraz, modu asko zeure burua entretenitua irakurriz, watching movies or playing with the magnetized cutlery. Even a really good book is hard to read for several hours straight.
Azkenean, Ontzi-materiala irakurtzeko software pieza bat hasi dut nirekin bezeroaren esku-liburuetan izan dut, Netscape’s web server. I’m reading the hardware/software requirements, marketing blurbs du, argazki polita da eta bat-batean, bilatzen, I zero in on the giant "NOT FOR EXPORT" abisua, zerbaiti buruz 128 bit encryption. I stuffed the box back into my carry bag, aurpegia behera abisua (balitz bezala, lagundu duten zukeen) eta saiatu ikuspegi mantendu Midnight Express out of my head.
Atzera begira orain, Aukeratu behar izan nuen, kezkatuta, ez badu, denean US utzi nuen, 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.
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