When you hear of great scenic views and 1000 mile road trips, you just don’t think of IT and engineering. But when you take a highway control project in the midst of mountains, rivers, canyons and highways, that’s exactly what you get.
Last month, a couple lucky Startech engineers were invited to do a site survey of a tunnel control system in Ning Hai county, home of the Zhejiang Canyon. The canyon stretches about 20 KM (about 13 miles) with many cliffs, emerald streams and caves. Here’s one of the views we encountered.
Because of our heavy high tech electronic equipment and the trouble that we would have went through to bring this equipment on board a plane while dealing with security, we decided to to take the scenic route and drive a car from Beijing to Ninghai, a journey of 1600 KM (about 1000 Miles). It was a long drive but it also gave us a chance to see several beaitiful landmarks. One of them is the longest bridge in the world: the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, with total length of 36 km ( 22.5 miles). Here’s a picture:
Another great picture of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, post- sunset:
Not only the road was filled with attractive man made and natural sights, the work sites themselves included beautiful and lengthy tunnels.
Because of the work location and potentially dangerous work conditions of the tunnels, we were escorted by police and forced to wear safety work jackets. This only made our engineers more excited.
Of course, the working condition inside the tunnel can be harsh. Big wheelers and drills roam the tunnels. A couple of our engineers felt the intensity of the noise and environment and equated it to one of those tunnels you see in Hollywood action films. Either way, it did not stop our engineer’s from having fun and smiling:
Two day’s out in the field left many good memories for everybody. It really gave us time to bond and get excited about the products we were bringing into fruition and experience great natural and man made sights.
You have all heard of many IT outsourcing and engineering company’s only “window” view being their operating system. Not us. This time, we decided to hit the highways.
Category: China IT Pulse, Events, Fun, Technology