From: Digital Yemeni (digital.yemeni@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 22 2007 - 22:32:51 ART
Tokyo is the best! Only thing is that if you lock yourself out of the
router, goodbye to your $1250! ;-)
Beside that here is my experience in Tokyo:
1. There is a little difference (no issue at all!) in the Keyboard layout
where the space-bar, pipe "|", and some other special characters being
shifted from the normal English 101 keyboard.
2. I did not like the lunch there! it smells fishy all the way and the rice
was fishy and STICKY! ;-)
3. The airport is quite far from Cisco, about 2 hours by Airport bus to the
hotel. There are some hotels near Cisco, 5 to 10 minutes walk.
4. Internet is FREE in the hotel. Don't make the same mistake as i did!
Going there without the proper Japaneses (shape/style/standard) power cord
for your laptop, otherwise you will end up renting the Internet terminals
and PAY extra for a FREE service! :-D
5. You'll have the honor to go thru the Tokyo HUGE bridge/Cisco Logo! That
will maximize your passing probability heheheh
-- EIGRP is actually Huawei's "shared" proprietary protocol!! ;-) and, Huawei discovered Cisco's IOS bugs!On 8/23/07, Ben Holko <ben.holko@datacom.com.au> wrote: > > Thank you for the informative post Mark, I WAS seriously considering > Beijing/Hong Kong, and even scheduled Tokyo. > > Has anyone got any feedback on the Tokyo location? > > Sorry to hear it didn't happen for you Mark, chin up :) > > Ben > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of > Mark Abrahams > Sent: Wednesday, 22 August 2007 8:13 PM > To: ccielab@groupstudy.com > 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. > > _______________________________________________________________________ > Subscription information may be found at: > http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html > > _______________________________________________________________________ > Subscription information may be found at: > http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html >
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