From: Gary Duncanson (gary.duncanson@googlemail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 22 2007 - 07:35:25 ART
Well done Mark,
It sounds like you were only just off a pass on your attempt.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Abrahams" <mark@abrahams.co.nz>
To: <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 11:13 AM
Subject: Beijing lab experience
> Hi all
>
> Just thought I'd share my Beijing lab experience with you all, as I
> would have appreciated similar info prior to taking it on.
>
> First, the history: I was a victim of the Great August 2007 Sydney Lab
> Reschedule, and so received a phone call from Cisco two days prior to
> sitting my first attempt in Sydney on August 2nd advising that my date
> had to be rescheduled to early October. As I felt ready to do the exam
> at that point, I looked for alternatives, and the one feasible option
> turned out to be Beijing. Thankfully, Cisco offered me an August 15th
> seat there, but as travel to Beijing is quite a different proposition
> than to Sydney (I live in New Zealand) it took a while for me to make
> arrangements for this. Finally I confirmed five days out from the exam
> date that I was on my way to China.
>
> There were a few challenges, at least to me as a foreigner, that the
> Beijing lab environment introduced:
> 1. The desktop environment used a Chinese locale, which wasn't too much
> of a problem since you didn't need to use it that much at all.
> 2. The lab had only HyperTerm as the console application (from other
> comments I had assumed that all CCIE labs used SecureCRT).
> 3. In HyperTerm, most of the keyboard mappings I was used to didn't
> work. For example, no up arrow - you had to use Ctrl-P instead, Ctrl-B
> for back one character, etc. So I wasted time before establishing with
> the proctor that this was the way of things in Chinese HyperTerm - and I
> wasn't about to wade through the Chinese menu structure to prove him
> wrong. Every time I reverted to using the arrow keys, the next
> character I typed was also gobbled. Didn't realize how ingrained my use
> of the arrow keys was until that eight hour stretch!
> 4. Also, the Chinese notepad has no search-and-replace function. More
> time wasted trying to look through the Chinese menus in vain for this
> function, then trying to explain to the proctor what I was looking for,
> and then finally establishing that you couldn't do this. Again,
> disappointing because I had learned from someone on this forum (whoever
> it was - thanks!) what I thought was a rather slick process of
> harvesting all IP address from the configs and search-and-replacing to
> produce a TCL script and switch macro for reachability testing (very
> useful these are!).
> 5. The proctor's English was reasonable without being outstanding.
> While most questions were understood fine, some took a little longer to
> get through than perhaps with a native English speaker - no major
> complaint though. Worst case, I had to use scratch paper to write out
> examples of what I was talking about. The proctor was helpful, while
> maintaining a professional distance.
> 6. The lab exam consisted of a paper copy of the diagrams followed by
> the questions, all stapled into one booklet, with no electronic copy (is
> that normal for other CCIE labs locations?). Although I found the
> provided diagrams adequate for most tasks (I did diagram a few point
> solutions), I was used to having the diagrams on a separate unattached
> page so that I could view them easily along side reading the questions.
> I had assumed that either this would be the case, or there would be an
> online copy of the diagrams to refer to. Again, I didn't realize how
> much I flicked from diagram to question to diagram etc. until I had to
> turn pages to do so. In hindsight, it would have been less problematic
> for me to copy a couple of diagrams verbatim to the scratch paper, just
> to get them on a separate unattached page.
> 7. The lab was _cooollllld_. The amount of typo's I made was
> understandably higher under the exam pressure, but I'm sure the very
> aggressive air conditioning didn't help as I felt my hands freezing up.
> Understandable though, as the exam was in the same room as the five
> racks of testing equipment. And I'm notoriously cold under normal
> conditions, so this probably wouldn't affect most normal people :-)
> 8. Lunch was nice but required chopsticks to consume. My chopstick
> skills are appalling :-) Interestingly, we only had twenty minutes for
> lunch, and we sat in silence at our lab desks to eat (although no work
> was allowed during this time).
>
> Despite all this (and although the list is long, none were major
> impediments), I felt that I knew all the topic areas and answered all
> the questions with about an hour to go. It was in fact with about 10
> minutes to go I discovered a problem with one of my IGP solutions that
> may have lost me 6 points or more (poor verification strategy - point
> noted). So I was flustered and rushed leaving as I didn't fix the
> problem, and so this made me feel I hadn't done very well.
>
> My reconstructed score ended up being 75%, which was obviously
> disappointing, and I couldn't help but think that if I'd had a little
> more time afforded by an English-speaking setup, things may have swung
> for me enough. However this is likely just me clutching for excuses,
> and probably because I felt I otherwise had a pretty good handle on the
> test. Having said that, I still lost too many marks on things I should
> have either known better or verified better. And this is the stuff that
> ultimately needed to be more up-to-scratch.
>
> So, back on the horse, and looking forward to wreaking some havoc in my
> next attempt, which will be in Sydney.
>
> Cheers, Mark.
>
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