Work it on out

Since I came to China, I have worked in four different office spaces, and by a really odd coincidence, every time the company has moved, I have been out of town. When we moved from the Huabei Hotel into the G-Box I was in Japan, and they moved from there into a temporary space in The Place’s north tower while I was back in the US at the beginning of November last year. The latest time was while I was in Hawaii for Christmas. We relocated to our permanent office in the south tower at The Place.

When I first saw the new space last November, it was bare concrete with some walls.
That’s the future reception area.
And I think that’s the Call Center – kind of hard to tell. They’re using the area to build some of the custom fixtures. The one in the middle will be the reception desk.
This area would become my work space.

And here’s one more illustration of Chinese construction techniques:
Conduits for writing run across the building’s base floor, and channels are being built for more wires – network, phone, and so on. Notice how one set of conduits goes underneath the other, with the cement chipped out to make room.

When they’re done with the wiring, this pile of cement…
…will be mixed with water to fill in a new floor up to the level of the channel edges, then flooring will be placed on top.

Anyway, when I returned to Beijing it looked like this:
And this is about the same view as in the third shot above:
My work area is a little cramped.
My cube is the back left. If I’m not careful when I roll my chair back, I bump into RR, and the guys in the front cubes have to scoot in to let us pass.

Compare my G-Box desk:
Can I cry now?

For reference, this was the Huabei office in the fall of 2006, with my desk on the left:
And here is a picture of our temporary space I took with my BlackBerry from my seat. The Call Center is at the back of the room.

Back to the present, one last shot... we’re on the sixth floor, even with the Skyscreen.
That’s looking west, showing the back of the big TV screen facing Dongdaqiao Street and the edge of the Skyscreen running along the length of the building.