Michael and I had some trouble with the blog sorry this has come so late. We'll keep updating on the internship from now on. So anyway, our first blog written about the first work week spent in Shanghai:
Ni hao from Genband-Shanghai!
So yeah. We’re working in China? How cool is that? Pretty, pretty cool! It took us a while to realize just how cool it was exactly. It’s been a long zen journey to realizing our happiness in this company, and we might as well start from the start (because that’s where you start… duh!)
So anyway. When we arrived here we were initially disappointed. There was a lot of change for a short period of time. First off, twenty-two people that we had lived with for the prior two and a half weeks just sort of disappeared from our lives. When we thought about them we realized they were nowhere. In the time that it took the rest of the class to reach RDU, we flew to Shanghai, met an unknown correspondent from the company (felt kind of spy like =), went to work for half a day, moved in with our host families, slept all night, and then came back to work. And the whole time the friends who we had been closest with for the past half a month were just… somewhere. Nowhere. We’re not really sure.
And on top of missing them, we were bored. The company didn’t really give us anything to do. The first day we set up some computers and then were told that we could do whatever we wanted with them. Well, after having Li Laoshi drive us like slaves from 6 in the morning to 10 at night every day for weeks (I really enjoyed the trip, I promise, that’s just hyperbole describing how exhausting our activities were), the lack of planning was unnerving. We were in a completely silent room filled with people working at identical computers in identical cubicles; the first thing Michael and I decided was that we needed a job that did not resemble this in ANY way. It felt like a waste of time. We wanted to be either working here, accomplishing something, or at home with our long lost friends and families. But don’t you worry too much, the story picks up form here.
After working (or not!) for about a day and half we both came to the same conclusion. It was an ancient Chinese zen woah everything is connected moment. Michael and I had the same epiphany at the same time. And it was a positive one. We thought about our situation and hey what do you know, we realize we liked it. We were in China. That alone is amazing. I mean how many people in the US get to live in China for a month? That’s a rhetorical question, but you should be thinking “not that many.” We realized not only were we in China, experiencing a completely different (and quite eye opening) culture, but we also had something we hadn’t had in a LONG time – free time! Yeah. We just finished junior year. Since August, all our lives have been is work work work work work. And now we get to relax. We can do ANYTHING. And where do we get to do it? China! That’s not such a bad situation after all, is it?
The homes we are both in are quite cool. I (Josh in case you didn’t figure that out yet) am staying with a complete bachelor, in his stereotypical apartment (sans roomie who’s in Texas on business, meaning I get my own room and computer!). He’s quite the cool guy. We go out to dinner with his friends, the food is excellent, and it’s a super relaxed environment.
I (Michael) am living in an apartment with a married couple. They are in their early thirties and are both extremely nice and fun to be around. The woman works at Genband in a cubical very close to mine and the husband works for General Electric. The two companies are very close to each other so every morning we all drive to work together. The husband drops us off at Genband and drives himself to GE and then at about 6:00 PM, he picks us up and takes us home. After work on Thursday, we went to GE so that I could see the office there. It was very cool. (Much larger than the Genband office and very high-tech) We went to a visitors’ area that showcased the progress of GE over the past thirty years. They then took me to a gym inside the office, which was very nice, and we played ping-pong for about an hour. I beat Bonnie (my host mom) three times, while she beat me eight times. I have yet to beat the husband, but I’m not coming home until I do. (Hopefully that’ll happen before the 29th) The apartment is very nice and I am lucky enough to have my own floor. It isn’t too big, but I have my own bed, TV, and bathroom which are all very nice.
So overall impression: this was definitely a good choice. After we got over our initial doubts both of us realized that living a normal life for a couple of weeks in Shanghai is a very cool thing to do, and we’re quite ecstatic to be here.
Happy Father’s Day for all of the dad’s out there.
- Michael and Josh
