Work Days in China

Well it was September since I was in China and I was without the mighty blog but I'm back at it now. The trip was an enlightening experience and I encountered many sights, smells, thoughts and emotions that I've never had before. It was a lot of work hours and few play days but overall I wouldn't have done it any differently. Conor and I first traveled to Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province, to finish an installation of a soil dynamics testing shake table at Chengdu University. The installation had mostly been done and most of our time was spent tweaking software and training. Here's Conor giving a run down of the system to some professors, some students and our reps.

A little background on Chinese earthquakes: In May of 2008 the Sichuan province felt an 8.0 magnitude earthquake that killed 70,000 people and left around 5 million people homeless. It also collapsed every bridge, both railways and roadways in/out of the affected areas stranding millions. The majority of these collapses was because of soil erosion and typical Chinese short-cut construction. The government pledged to spend $150 billion US to rebuild the area and they don't want to make the same mistakes twice. That is why many of the Universities in the area are doing extensive testing on soil and buying earthquake simulators. After some long work days we were glad to have brought a little Boulder brew with us.

Then I flew to Wenzhou to start an installation while Conor flew East for 2 days to complete a training. He then met me in Wenzhou to finish and train. Here are some pictures of the system itself.