{"id":2926,"date":"2023-10-05T09:40:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T07:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/?p=2926"},"modified":"2023-10-05T09:40:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T07:40:32","slug":"time-for-an-away-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/time-for-an-away-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for an away game"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Juliane Rabe has been living in Hangzhou for the past seven years. In November 2019, she took on the job of Project Manager, Sales & Appli\u00adca\u00adtions, Asia Pacific, at Koch Pac-Systeme in Shanghai.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cAfter seven years in Asia, Germany already feels almost foreign to me. I orig\u00adi\u00adnally went to China on a Bosch assign\u00adment, and then began working for Uhlmann in Shanghai in November 2019. Together with my boyfriend and our cats, I live about two and a half hours away from my work\u00adplace in Shanghai. Since I spend a lot of time working from home, I don\u2019t have to commute. A few months ago, I visited KOCH\u2019s head\u00adquar\u00adters in Pfalz\u00adgrafen\u00adweiler for the first time and got to know my colleagues there. Due to the pandemic and the Chinese government\u2019s strict zero-covid policy, I was unable to make the trip any earlier.<\/p>\n

What I like about China is that it confronts you with new chal\u00adlenges every day, like learning the language and culture which is chal\u00adlenging enough. That helps me to keep an open mind. The reason I\u2019m learning Chinese is because I feel like a guest in this country, so I think I ought to have at least some basic command of the language \u2013 but it\u2019s not easy. In the mean\u00adtime, I can under\u00adstand it quite well, but speaking it is still diffi\u00adcult. Recently, I had a conver\u00adsa\u00adtion about soccer with a cab driver in Chinese, which gave me a real sense of achieve\u00adment.<\/p>\n

I am very impressed by how quickly people here get things done, espe\u00adcially when it comes to building machines. While we stick to our stan\u00addards and work through the project plan, our Chinese colleagues are much faster. They just get on with it. Not haphaz\u00adardly, but in a completely different way to how we approach things. So even though you may only see moderate progress at first, every\u00adthing is up and running and can be opti\u00admized later.  And you also see this kind of speed in many other areas, here. Every\u00adthing is much more dynamic and spon\u00adta\u00adneous. We Germans are rather slug\u00adgish in compar\u00adison.<\/p>\n

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Always a high\u00adlight: Chinese food.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Animal acquain\u00adtance during the trip to Inner Mongolia.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The typical Mongo\u00adlian hot pot was not to be missed.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Impres\u00adsive land\u00adscape around the southern Chinese city of Guilin.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It took me a while to get used to the large crowds here and all the queues you see every\u00adwhere.  It\u2019s quite normal to queue up in front of a restau\u00adrant, grab a ticket, and wait for an hour and a half until there\u2019s a free table. But it\u2019s well orga\u00adnized: There\u2019s an app that lets you regu\u00adlarly check how many people are still waiting so you can use the time to run errands. It\u2019s also much more common here to order food or other things. When I broke my foot, I ordered crutches via an app, and they were deliv\u00adered within 20 minutes. For me, it\u2019s a bit of a culture shock when confronted in Germany with stores that close at 7pm or restau\u00adrants that don\u2019t have a delivery service.<\/p>\n

A special high\u00adlight for me was my stay in the city of Beijing which is incred\u00adibly rich in history \u2013 and another awesome expe\u00adri\u00adence was standing on the Great Wall of China for the first time.  And you can also see some stun\u00adning nature here. I do think it\u2019s a shame that people often have a nega\u00adtive opinion about this country, and I just wish people would be less prej\u00adu\u00addiced. I, person\u00adally, would be happy to stay here for a while. And living in Malaysia, Vietnam or India would also appeal to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tobias Jung has been living and working in Singa\u00adpore since the end of 2020. After starting out as a project manager, in October 2021 he assumed the posi\u00adtion of tech\u00adnical director at Uhlmann Singa\u00adpore LLP. <\/h4>\n
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\u201cIt was a really bumpy ride to start with. My visa was issued before the pandemic started, and when the time finally came in March 2020, I was not allowed to enter the country. Due to a an extremely strict lock\u00addown in Singa\u00adpore, people were only allowed to leave their homes in excep\u00adtional cases. In August 2020, the author\u00adi\u00adties finally gave me permis\u00adsion to enter the country provided I did the following:  take a PCR test in advance, a PCR test on arrival, spend two weeks in a quar\u00adan\u00adtine hotel, and take another PCR test after 10 days in quar\u00adan\u00adtine. Then, at last, I was finally allowed to leave and start working as a project manager.<\/p>\n

Actu\u00adally, I always wanted to go to the U.S. as an expat, but when I got the offer for Asia, I thought: Why not? The posi\u00adtion of project manager was limited to six months, but then it quickly became clear that nothing stood in the way of extending this contract. And later on, yet another door opened: I was able to take over Florian Weiher\u2019s posi\u00adtion as tech\u00adnical director \u2013 initially until December 2023. Natu\u00adrally this brings its own chal\u00adlenges and can turn out to be a bit of a balancing act, espe\u00adcially since I rarely see my girl\u00adfriend. I also miss my friends and family, of course, but not much else in Germany. And when I go home to visit, I quickly miss the culi\u00adnary delights you can find in every corner of Singa\u00adpore. Thanks to the many cultures that live here, Singa\u00adpore is a very open country where it\u2019s easy to feel at home.<\/p>\n

We also have a very inter\u00adna\u00adtional team. My former super\u00advisor was Italian, and I natu\u00adrally have many Asian colleagues. What I like about my job is that we are a small orga\u00adni\u00adza\u00adtion which gives it a bit of a \u201cstartup\u201d flair. We can push things through very quickly and are very agile in the way we work. It\u2019s some\u00adthing I enjoy and that suits me very well. So going to Singa\u00adpore was certainly the right thing for me to do.<\/p>\n

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Quar\u00adan\u00adtine hotel with a beau\u00adtiful view.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A look behind the scenes at Universal Studios.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Always worth a trip: Gardens by the bay in Singa\u00adpore.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Singa\u00adpore is also a fasci\u00adnating city at night.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Deli\u00adcious bowls can be found on every corner here.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Vaca\u00adtion break in Thai\u00adland.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Singa\u00adpore is a thrilling city and has loads of great places to visit. I intend to grad\u00adu\u00adally start visiting the surrounding coun\u00adtries as well, since travel was very limited until 2022. From here you can quickly reach many desti\u00adna\u00adtions in Asia. At the Agency Day<\/a>, I was there with the team in Indonesia, and that made me curious to see more. It fasci\u00adnates me to get to know new coun\u00adtries and cultures and to discover how differ\u00adently they tick.<\/p>\n

I can easily imagine working in Singa\u00adpore for longer, but I defi\u00adnitely don\u2019t see myself retiring here; the cost of living is just so high. Of course, whether I decide for or against extending my contract also depends on whether every\u00adthing fits privately. For example, if someone in my family were to fall ill, that would clearly be a reason for me to return. Fortu\u00adnately, my parents have since caught up tech\u00adni\u00adcally, so we now have regular video chats.  As a matter of fact, we do that more today than when I was still living in Germany where we lived 400 km apart and didn\u2019t consciously take the time to talk to each other on such a regular basis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As a company with global reach, Uhlmann offers its employees the chance to travel abroad and work on a tempo\u00adrary basis at one of our inter\u00adna\u00adtional sites. As such, they form the link between our foreign compa\u00adnies and our head\u00adquar\u00adters in Germany. Having taken the leap over\u00adseas, Juliane Rabe and Tobias Jung talk to us about their expe\u00adri\u00adence as expats. [\u2026]<\/p>\n

Read More\u2026 from Time for an away game<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pactuell"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2926"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2963,"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926\/revisions\/2963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pactuell.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}