Shanghai Tech Writer

So far I’ve blogged about productive workspace configurations. There are a few more that I want to add, but for now I want to mention a few workspace setup that could use some improvement:

1. Faster internet connection. I don’t think it’s so much that internet connection is slow at NI. I think internet connection is slow in general in China, especially accesing pages that are outside the country. I was told there are a total of THREE cables under the Pacific Ocean that transmit overseas data for the entire country of 1.3 billion people.
2. Access to blocked website. This is another annoying thing about working/living in China. Many websites such as Wikipedia are blocked. Other sites like Google, Flickr, YouTube, and many user-generated content sites are not consistently accessible. If you search the “wrong” keywords in Google (anything from rel*gion to Tian*men to comm*nism), the IP address from where the search was done is blocked for an X amount of time. This really sucks in a work place where everyone shares the same IP address.
3. Noise control. It’s NI work culture to have open plan environment. All the cubicles are open toward each other and there are no dividers between the cubicles. That means, sound travels easily across the entire floor. Generally, people follow office etiquette and keep voices down, but it’s hard not to overhear or “eavesdrop” on other people’s conversation. And occasionally, someone shouts out something really loud and I lose my concentration. Thank goodness for headphones and music.
4. Ergonomic keyboard/mouse. I need to get myself some kind of keyboard and mouse padding as well as hand braces. My hands get pretty sore typing on the computer all day, especially my thumb. I use certain shortcut keys so much (particularly Alt-Tab) that I feel the soreness whenever I press those keys.

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