Chengdu Trip #7 - Chengdu, Day 4

My bad luck with food contined on Wednesday. I didn't eat anything the night before so I was really hungry. Before hailing a cab to go meet the company car at Jiaotung University, I stopped to get some baos for breakfast. I really wanted the red bean paste bao but they were out so I got 4 meat baos. I think they changed the recipe since there was pepper powder and it didn't taste that good. Actually, I think that may be what's causing my stomach problems.

At work, I skipped the noodle breakfast and went with one of the office staff to the corner market and got some bread/cookies/drinks since I wasn't going to risk lunch in the cafeteria. The store is fully stocked but since it's in the middle of a fairly empty industrial zone, there are not many customers. At lunchtime, I guess they felt sorry for me eating cold food so they offered to cook wonton soup for me. It was actually pretty good and non-greasy. However, at around 1:30pm, I suddenly felt like throwing up again so to be safe, I ran to the bathroom and waited... Finally after 10 minutes, I got tired of waiting and stuck a finger down my throat to start the process. At least this time I didn't make a mess. Thinking back, the only common item between the two days are the meat baos I had for breakfast and the timing was similar both days. I think I'll pass on the baos from now on.

Leon had to leave for Taiwan at noon so I was by myself in the afternoon. I met with the production manager and the recent graduate we hired for R&D regarding production process and yields. Since we're still not in full production mode, cash flow is tight this year and I need to calculate how much money we'll need to survive. I also got to watch them load some In2Se3 powder into the graphite mold for pressing. Almost everyone was involved and it was pretty ghetto manual. I also got a good look at all the other production equipment. One surprising thing was how much electricity was required to press one target using the vacuum hot press, something like 500+kW. That's almost double what I use per month at home.