From: Marc La Porte (marc.a.laporte@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Aug 23 2007 - 02:26:00 ART
JH,
Congratulations! What's your number?
Marc
On 8/23/07, Jinhong Im <jhim@kornet.net> wrote:
>
> Dear Ben,
>
> Attempting four times in Tokyo Lab, I finally finished my journey to the
> CCIE on 8th June, a year and eight days after from start.
>
> Tokyo Lab is overall quite good.
> Computers with brand new LCD monitors But Keyboard is Japaness. The
> proctor will explain how to use it in some characters like : and - so on.
>
> The temperature in the Lab is reasonable but You may prepare a long sleev
> choths.
>
> There are two other rooms, on pull the lab door after got off elevator on
> 8th floor of Mitsui B/D, where a few refrigerators for bervages and coffee
> or something light meals. Passing by those you see another room, it is the
> room for waiting till the brifing by the proctor, lunch and saying good by
> after finishing the test.
> The proctor is kind and tries to make clear on the takers questions.
>
> As Mark said, I heard Beijing Lab is not recommandable. I think Tokyo lab
> hasn't any big problem.
>
> If you have any futher question, don't hesitate.
>
> Good luck!
> /JH
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ben Holko" <ben.holko@datacom.com.au>
> To: "Mark Abrahams" <mark@abrahams.co.nz>; <ccielab@groupstudy.com>
> Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 8:09 AM
> Subject: RE: Beijing lab experience
>
>
> > 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.
> >
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