Back from beijing

Well I made it back from Beijing this weekend. It was a great trip. The only problem was that my camera was stolen from my luggage somewhere between Beijing and Seattle. Which really sucks because I had taken about 800 pictures of my trip, including a ton of pictures of houses for Chris to look at.

I talked to a ton of people there about opportunities, there certainly is a lot of opportunity. Especially for Program Manager, there are tons of great developers in China, but people that can think more strategically, with strong communication skills and the ability to drive cross-group initiatives are a lot more rare. Which is great because I would be able to have a significant impact, which is getting harder and harder to do here in Redmond. The limit on growth for many projects, and I imagine on many companies in China, and also I think in India, is on Program Management (PM) resources, which are at a real premium in both countries.

I am hoping that part of the contribution I can make is to help MS Research Asia build up a more mature discipline around Program Management, and also to work with the universities on building core PM skills into their curriculum.

Now we just need to decide if we want to move to Beijing for a few years. Chris is still pretty reluctant. But I think we are committed to at least going on a second trip so she can see what it is like first hand. One of the great things about Beijing right now is that they are busy preparing for the 2008 olympics, which means tons of construction, modernization and making it much easier for foreigners to get around and survive.

I spent two days while I was in Beijing looking at housing, a big issue for both Christina and I. I looked at a number of apartments downtown, close to the embassy district, this is where most foreigners live if they choose to live in the city. There are tons of amenities for foreigners; shopping, english movie theatres, restaurants, etc. I also looked at a number of townhouses and houses (usually called villas in china) outside the city proper. This was in the northeast section of Beijing near the airport, which is where most foreigners live that don't live downton. These villa communities are also all self-contained, gated communities that include large club houses, with restaurants, pools, gyms, spas, etc.

In particular I liked the following two apartments:

East Gate Plazo

Which is a full service apartment located in the embassy district, full service means that it is operated like a hotel in terms of cleaning and room service facilities. It is a little older, but many of the apartments are recently remodelled. The kitchens were quite large, at least as compared to many places we looked at in China. The building includes a large playroom on the top floor for kids, the room has a padded floor and many large kids toys. Downstairs the apartment has a full-service gym and indoor pool, and is connected to a shopping center with a lot of stores for foreigners. Of all the places we looked at this one was certainly the most conveniently located.

Central Park

Central Park is a new apartment development also in the core downtown area, it is also right across the street from the People's Park, a large open public park with a lake in the center and many activities for kids. All of the apartments have pretty small kitchens, dark hardwood floors throughout and nice big walk-in closets. There is a nice spa/gym attached to the apartment complex, but no other facilities, although within walking distance there are a large number of shops and restaurants.

Lane Bridge Plaza

Lane Bridge Plaza is a complex of townhouses (or villas) located in an eastern suburb of Beijing called Shunyi. It is a brand new gated community. There is a golf course and driving range located right across the street and located in an area where many foreigners live. Like all of the places there is a large club house with indoor and outdoor pools, fitness center, playgrounds and tennis courts. The units are quite large, with hardwood floor throughout, nice kitchens, big master bedrooms. We looked at units in both phase 1 and phase 2. The units in phase 2 are a little lower quality in terms of fixtures and construction, which means the rent is also a little lower. In general the rent in Beijing for places in western friendly areas are quite high. Maybe as much as twice as high as in most US cities.

Yosemite Beijing

Yosemite is also a relatively new gated community located next door to the Internation School of Beijing. It has the biggest and nicest club house, with an indoor and outdoor pool, large fitness center, two restaurants, full hotel, high-end spa and conference center. The club house feels like a five-star resort. The units are also very nice. They are traditional chinese architecture with gated courtyars, hardwood floors throughout, lots of space with sitting rooms on each floor, decent sized kitchens and large master bedrooms. This is the most expensive place we looked at, and is at the very top end of our housing budget, but is by far the nicest place we looked at. I'm sure chris will like it the most, and may be the factor that most contributes to our decision. Here are some pictures from the web-site: http://www.yosevilla.com/C/gdyb.htm

And here are some floorplans, we are looking at C1, C2, C3, C9 and C10. Chris likes C2 and C3.
http://www.yosevilla.com/C/model_1024.htm

Well that's about it for now.