Of Clean Rooms, driving on the pavement & climbing Lian Hua Shan.

I think the highlight of my internship so far, is the chance to go to a clean room. Which, I think it's super cool. Really didn't expect to actually go in there for a visit. By the way, in case you don't what in the world is a clean room. I went to wikipedia it, and there you go....

A clean room is...
A work area in which the air quality, temperature and humidity are highly regulated in order to protect sensitive equipment from contamination. Clean rooms are important features in the production of silicon chips, hard disk drives and other technologies such as satellites. The air in a clean room is repeatedly filtered to remove dust particles and other impurities that can damage the production of highly sensitive technologies.

The measure of the air quality of a clean room is described in Federal Standard 209. Clean rooms are rated as "Class 10,000," where there exists no more than 10,000 particles larger than 0.5 microns in any given cubic foot of air; "Class 1000," where there exists no more than 1000 particles; and "Class 100," where there exists no more than 100 particles. Hard disk drive fabrication requires a Class 100 clean room. (by the way, the company I'm interning for, specialises in the manufacturing of hard disk drive components. Hence their cleaning rooms are certified class 100)

People who work in clean rooms must wear special protective clothing called "bunny suits" that do not give off lint particles and prevent human skin and hair particles from entering the room's atmosphere.


Oh, ah now I get it, the space suit I was wearing is called, a bunny suit. Hmm, weird name. I guess its because of the colour of the suit. It's pure white in color all the way from the head mask to the boots. It looks more like a space suit actually. damn interesting. even the air in there smells funny. I can't even have make up on any part of my face even the eyes. Thats how strict the regulations are. Absolutely minimal dust particles. After wearing the suit, We even had to pass through an air blast upon entering, to ensure all dust particles were sucked up by the vacuum in order to maintain minimal contamination in the clean room.

Darn, too bad, I cant bring cammie to the site, or else I can take a picture of myself wrapped up in the 'bunny' suit.

I really cannot imagine working as an operator at the assembly line all day long in the clean room. Imagine wearing the heavy space suit, piecing hard disk head stack components most part of the day.

Well, this post is just to ward off boredom of reading industry reports. Its as if Im doing a market research project all over again.... Gimme the clean room anytime....

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Ok, my friends and I conclude the drivers here, do not give two hoots about driving laws. We took a black market cabbie today, meaning that those cabs which are not registered as legal cabs and they just charge a flat fee according to the length of the journey. Oh anyway, back to their 'unorthodox' driving methods; we were at first driving on this mini road that is damn hard to navigate through plus there are like alot of cars on the roads. So, you know what did the driver do? He started driving on the pavement, pavement as in where the pedestrians (normal people like us) are walking on. And there were people walking on the pavement. He went right behind them and honked to get them out of the way. You should see that shocked look on my face. The 'I can't believe this guy' kinda look was really written on my face lah.

Im getting kinda lazy and drowsy to continue updating on Lian hua shan climb. To cut the story short, we walked up the nearest mountain (or rather hill) around our apartment. A good way to 'burn' fats according to Qiu Xin (she's labeled as our goddess of vict, which I think its lame but funny at the same time).

This bunch of friends are really awesome folks to hang out with. =)

For Your Entertainment.





Nicely done up by my housemate, Alaska (Lay Yee)

In case, its a damn slow upload, check the video out at Alaska's blog.

By the way, my shutterfly picture collection is at www.mylifeinshenzhen.shutterfly.com

You can also click on the side link under picture album. =)

MJ Itch!


I have been curbing the Mj temptation for as long as I've been here in China. I know, it's only been 1.5 weeks but I really do want to play my favourite game. I think I've started the itch going in my group of friends here. Out of 8, only 4 knows how to play. Which is good cause we just need 4 players. The other 4 can just watch and learn.


Technically speaking, we could have been playing Mj since the first weekend. The stores mainly sell Shanghai Mj set which lacks the 4 animal tiles. Ok, for those who don't play Mj, these 4 tiles (in Hongkong style Mj) are very important since it increases your stakes when you win the game). Anyhow, we didn't manage to get the HongKong MJ set.

To cut the long story short, we're shopping for MJ set this evening our work cause there's really nothing much to do at night except surf net, watch movies and play dai-di.

Adrian was thinking of going to Shekou for drinks and clubbing. But no one's seem to be really interested in that idea. I don't mind actually, but no way, I'm gonna go with him alone.

Stuck in a Work Rut


Internship is a foretaste of working life. Now, I can finally understand the reason behind those blank and sleepy faces on the morning train rides to town (school). I think I'm almost capable of looking like them. Give me 2 more weeks. Going to work practically zapped every ounce of energy I have left in my body after waking at 6 every morning and sleeping at 1 plus every night. Weekends seem so cherished once you work 8 to 5 every weekday.

Oh anyway, why am I still blogging during office hours? Its actually my lunch break now and I'm typing in near pitch darkness. In China, most people sleep during their lunch breaks, and hence most of the lights are off between 12 to 1. Another reason, is the energy saving policy in Shenzhen during summer. It's pretty obvious; the lack of elevators and the dark staircases (the lights will only turn on based on weight sensors).

Very different from singaporeans; we hardly conserve power energy (when we ought to) and we love to talk cock and gossip during lunch breaks while they, prefer to get their lunch done asap, rush back (not to work) to sleep. Even while typing this post, I can hear snores coming from the cubicle next to mine. Getting used to it. I'm even getting used to speaking in chinese.

I feel that my threshold for the experiences out of my comfort zone has increased tremendously ever since I got here. Foodwise, I dont find myself complaining much about the lack of tasty food in the company's canteen. Yes, I do complain once in awhile but I still eat the food. It's all about the getting used to.

Okies, its time for me to get back to work.

Check out my pictures at Shutterfly!

HI THERE!


(My friend took this picture using a cheese shaker and a folk. Damn creative right!)



Updates.
It was a superb saturday!

I have no idea where to start. Its the weekend, a very long awaited one. And it rained cats and dogs. BUT, that didnt stop us from going out. Armed with our umbrellas, we headed out to Shekou (Snake mouth), the pubbing district (somewhat like our clarke quay). Its seriously the wrong time of day to go, but we wanted to go get a glass of beer. So there we go after some light shopping. It was a beer-ti-fied saturday! We drank beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Goodness. From imported german beer to local brewed beer.

In the morning/early afternoon:

We went to drink Paulaner at this german pub at Shekou with the department heads Haha, we didnt pay for anything for the whole day. Everything was all free of charge. sponsored by the company. Awesome! Our department heads treated us to beer and german food. We took loads of pictures too. Presenting to you, my dear Hang-man partner, DONNA. LOL. During the 2 hours company training on Quality Assurance course, we played hang-man for 1.5 hours. The first half an hour, we were dozing off like nobody's business. Very very dry lesson, cause it was ALL in chinese, yet, the ppt slides were all in chinese. (damn cheem kind). Decided to play hangman to ward off the heavy sleep bug since dozing off with my heads bobbing up and down is so un glam and embarrasing. LOL. WE had silly fun hang-maning for 1.5 hours. the rest were playing tic tat toe and trying to pay attention. And I'll definitely wanna go to Donna's house when we get back to Sg, cause she has 2 awesome dogs. One is a Siberian Husky/Labordor and the other, a Mongrol. I just love gi-normous dogs.

The whole lot of us plus the 2 managers. They are such nice folks, always treating us to good food and bringing us around good places to hang out at. Seriously, young at heart and very personable managers.

Nah, to clarify, I DID'NT drink that 1 litre of Paulaner... Just for show.

The fooood. After we're like half finished with it. The german saugages...

Snapping in the rain:

It was still raining after we finished our beers. So it was all dreary and all, however it didnt stop us from walking around Shekou. And I'm not gonna wear my old navy flip flops on rainy days. I nearly slipped and fell 3 times. The first time, I nearly did a split infront of everyone. HAHA. Nearly spilled my starbucks hot choc all over myself. Xin was so nice to hold on to me the whole time we're outdoors. Ha, our motherly figure!. (just kidding, xin) By the way, her blog is much more updated than mine. Check her travel blog here.

Our 2 managers.

Our dinner:

It was Sze chuan cuisine for dinner on Saturday. Charles and Mr Cheok (our 2 managers)brought us to this restuarant at CoCo park (a pretty high end department mall). The dishes are really spicy. Every single plate was chilli-fied. Those with a low threshold for chilli really shouldnt even try Sze Chuan dishes. Haha, it was really spicy and I usually can take chilli but some of the dishes were really hot. We drank beer again. This time, Kingway beer, a locally brewed beer, which kinda sucked. Ha...We drank quite a bit, it was bottoms up all the way, cause according to tradition over here in China, once we knocked glasses, we have to drink it up. We were pretty woozy and high when we left the restuarant.

Check out this dish! Haha, its like hanging clothes to dry. Haha. The bowl below is filled with hot sauce. The way to eat this dish is to dip the slices of pork and cucumber together into the deep red chilli sauce. Its damn shiok. Those folks who love chilli dig this dish lah. Especially Adrian, Xin, Michelle and I, we love our food hot.

This dish of small prawns and fried water chestnuts is the hottest! I accidentally bit on a kind of chinese black pepper which is super duper hot. Hot to the extent, your whole tongue turned dead numb. The feeling is really bad. No matter how much tea and beer I drank, the feeling stayed for the rest of the dinner. It was that bad!

I love this dish, which is glutinous rice on top of roasted duck. It was GOOOOOOOD....

After dinner, it was a special event. We planned a birthday surprise for one of the boys, Shen Yeong. It's his 19th birthday (how young!). Yeah the 7 other friends I talked to you about, 4 of them are 19 and 20 years of age. Adrian is 25, Alaska is 23, Xin and I 22. Haha its a whole range of ages. And the best part, all of us get along really well. All of us are like damn good friends now, Love their craziness.

The cake. it was kinda melting. cause we were waiting for the birthday boy, Adrian and Charles to finish watching the soccer match between Man U and Chelsea. The plan was to ask Adrian to bring Shen yeong up to Mich and Don's place and we'll spring the surprise on him.

We waited for damn long. Blame it on the over time.....

While waiting, we decided to take pictures to entertain ourselves. The girls in the group (minus donna who's taking the picture)

The birthday boy, he was shocked and totally didnt see the surprise coming at all.

The whole gang. 8 of us.

if you look closely, all of us has a different expression on our faces. Haha. super candid.

Some artistic pictures, courtesy of Zhongwei, the abstract pictures guru.

Bye, Have to go sleep now. Good night!

Work.


Working in China is one hell of an experience! HAHA. It's really an eye opener, everyday.

First, the company is way better than what I've expected it to look like. Its pretty huge, so we pretty much walk alot around. In fact, we walk all the time. We walk to work everyday to and fro for approximate 30 mins. yes, half an hour in work attire and heels. And I bring my lappie too. So yeah, it's pretty much crappy the first few days. Getting used to walking by now. I do think the mainlanders love their morning walks; they walk to work every morning.

All my colleagues are really nice especially my manager, Maggie. She asked me if I can speak fluent Chinese after hearing me speak one sentence. HA, and I said, " Erm, not really." (back in English). I thought she'll be annoyed at me. Instead, she was alright with speaking English to me. She's effectively bilingual! Great! I think my chinese sucks really bad. All of us including Qiu Xin whose chinese is the best among all 7 of us, took very long to fill up the employment sheet at the HR dept. (cause its all in chinese). The worst, we had to write in chinese! LOL! I so wish I had a chinese dict with me right that moment. The HR manager had to write down some really basic terms on the whiteboard. At that particular moment, it was so darn embarrassing for all of us. We seemed like primary school kids lah.

Anyway, the last few days were an eye-opener cause for the first time, I listened to really nice chinese phrases everyday. Im surrounded by chinese words. I saw the warm and friendly side of the mainlanders. And I feel myself having this admiration for their work ethics, their attitude towards life. So humble and so hardworking. I have so much to learn from them. I'm still struggling with chinese language especially the translating part. I literally translated the english phrases in my head to chinese words. It's not easy cause the chinese they are speaking are not informal chinese usually spoken back home.

Work's basically market/industry research. The first week, we are required to go for company training and internal dept training (this company practically has the full HRM works going on). Employee empowerment is strongly encouraged and every employee is required to go for training sessions every quarter of the year. Anyway, I'm looking forward to going to the Cleaning Room. Before going into the room, we'll have to be fully covered with this white 'space' suit from top to toe. Every itch of our body will be covered leaving only the eyes. HAHA! The reason so, the place is manufacturing the hard disk heads found in hard disk drives and the air must be as dust/bacteria free as possible. My 2 other friends who went said it was really cool!. You walk around like space martians. Hehe, sounds like a cool intern experience. Really demanding and they do have extremely high expectations of us. At the end of the internship, I have to present a report and my research to the VP, the division head, the GM of the company. Eeecks. By the way, Youie!, is your uncle in law, L.M Phua? He's the VP right? oh my goodness, I'm presenting to him. LOL. No joke ok, I didnt sign up to present to a VP of a 5000 employee strong company. Challenging! But I would say, its a real enriching experience.

We're gonna buy MJ tiles this weekend! Haha cannot stand it without MJ. Gonna play overnight MJ on sat night. We deserve a good weekend after all the hard work this week.

I have this strong feeling, when I go back home to Singapore, I'll have this entire new perspective on China and mainlanders. Totally different light. I have no idea why most people have this perception than mainlanders are uncouth, un-educated and rude. All the locals I've interacted with are nothing like that stereotype. Seriously, So much to learn from them. The 25 year old over here (seriously) have a whole lot deeper wealth of knowledge than the 25 year old I know back home. Haha, =

One phrase I picked up from the company's training:

"Stay hungry, Stay Foolish" -- Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple

Sometimes, we think we know it all, but in fact, we do not. Think like a fool (figuratively, of cause), that way, you'll learn much more.

Off to watch the art of seduction with my friends over here in SZ.

Bye! =)

Greetings from China.

Hey guys, oh my goodness, I have so much to update you girls on. The first 2 days over in Shenzhen is really an eye opener. The apartment is alright, not that clean as we expected. So, thats means one work, housework! And I have never really mop, wash my clothes and undergarments myself before so kinda not used to it. But thats the whole idea. I think I'm such a strange person. Cause I think doing housework in our apartment is so much more fun than doing even simple housework at home. Perhaps, its the crazy roommates I have. Haha, esp, Qiu xin, She's so funny and hilarious! She's officially our cockroach exterminator! The 2nd night, there were a total of 4 cockroaches in our apartment. Yes, 4! So gross. and the roaches here in China is seriously the fattest I've seen in my life. No competition. Haha Oh my goodness big. Alaska (our other roomie) and I screamed so loudly, most prolly we disturbed the other 2 guys friends living next door.

Anyway, everything's surprisingly great! I really love the company here. All 8 of us are getting along really really well. We have designated a movie house and a cyber cafe house amongst all our apartments. Our house has turned into a mini cyber cafe with all 8 of us squeezed into a room to tap wireless internet. And the two guys living across will open up their house for movie marathons (they have super wide screen lappies so that makes good movie viewing). All the movies are bought at only 2 sing at this pirate stall with this back room (they led us thru this hidden door into this dingy room with dvds). In normal circumstances, I will not enter such places. Well since the manager recommended us and we have 8 of us, should be a minor issue.

I've spent 1000yuan in 3 days. Quite abit actually. And it was spent mostly on daily essentials. Look at how long our receipt from Carrefour is....

Roomies: Alaska and Qiu Xin

Our shopping cart was filled to the brim with vacuum packed pillows, wash basins, cockroach insectide, snacks, toilot rolls and pails.

Shenzhen in the night. The skyline is kinda sparse. Seriously, Shenzhen is not as dangerous as what alot of people think. It all boils down to your common street sense. If you take care of your belongings, its actually a safe place to walk around. Most people are really warm and friendly. My colleagues for example, even helped us hire a cabbie chaffeur for shopping trips (see, we are rich folks in Shenzhen, haha even have our own chaffeur to drive us around). Its like 2 bucks sing for each trip. Damn cool.

China rocks totally! (in Adrian's words)

And my chinese is improving albeit at a slow pace. Adrian, Alaska, Qiu Xin and I practised speaking pure chinese (without any english words in mid-sentence) for 30 mins everyday. We just went, 'Speak putong hua now'.

I think Jax should really come visit me. We can speak chinese together. HAHA, that will be interesting! By the way, Putong hua is mainstream chinese in China.

Well, after reading my post, I think my English is kinda going downhill. Hm, I might come back totally a different person.

ok, right now, I'm feeling the pre-departure jitters already. Kinda too early, I know. I have approximately 1.5 days to go. To be honest, my excitement level is somewhat less than the typical holiday trip's excitement level. Usually, I should be all ready to go, set off to somewhere new and interesting for a getaway. Hm,the way I see it, this trip is kind of far from a getaway, there's this nagging feeling I'm going to China for an internship, in other words, work.

What's with me?!

Pre-departure blues.


Anyway, Spiderman 3 was way beyond awesome. Totally love it! In my opinion, the best installment to date. So love the special effects. And the Green Goblin guy, Harry Osborn makes a not bad eye candy material. Haha, even youie thinks so! I hope Pirates will be equally good or even better!

Haha, got this blog trivia thingy from Sixpeg's blog,


Create your own Friend Test here

take the test! Just for fun =)!

My Aunt's Handicraft.

I got these 2 lovely necklaces from my dear aunt,

Gorgeous right! She made it from scratch! It'll be good if I have half of her creativity and half of her determination to get them done. No easy work, thats what she said. Heh, I can save money from now on, on necklaces. Mua- hahaha. My aunt's really brillant at such handicraft stuff. Most of my sis's and my ear-rings these days are mostly made by her.

Hopefully, she sets up a website! Will let you girls know if she decides to sell her stuff. =)

Updates!

With STILL pending photos. The result of my laziness to bring along my camera for every outing. I just like to pass this photo uploading chore to my friends. Ha, such a meanie.


Well, I just have to wait then.

Saturday 28th April

Cooking session at CG:

My stir-fried broccoli with beef and toufu turned out to be pretty much edible. Haha, it looks good, I must say. But it turned out to be quite salty cause I added in too much oyster sauce. Jax told me oyster sauce works wonders for any chinese stir fry dish, so I just pour in the oyster sauce using the most common method - agar-ration method.

At the end of the day, the result was not too bad though. I got an approving nod from the 'main chef'. He said it was not bad, alittle too salty and the beef was slightly overcooked.

Sunday 29th April

Sushi with the girls (those are not pinned down by horrid exam preparation)

Youie was there! Haha she's an excellent slacker. With 2 papers in the week, she still never fails to meet up for a catching up session. We ate a good deal of food and took truckloads of crazy photos. We kinda parked ourselves there for a good 2 hours just to finish our food and come up with lame ass poses for the camera.

Tuesday Labour Day Special

"Fun in the sun" event organised by the Young Adult Ministry in church. Yeaps, those who are between the ages 19 to 35 are considered as young adults. I have no idea how they came up with the definition of young adults and then go on to categorize the ages accordingly. But its still pretty comforting for those who are 30-ish with their adorable kids in tow, to be considered as young. Young at heart!

It was a day of games, orientation style. Talk about nostalgia. Surprisingly, I enjoyed myself. I don't really like orientation games, but the games we played are quite original. I didn't mind being splashed with water bombs and having mud splattered legs.

I guess, this goes to tell me; certain stuff might seem to be a little childish, a little too silly at times, but if we just play along, be a sport, it'll turn out to be even more fun than we've expected. We'll never too old to indulge in some silly, lame ass and sometimes seemingly childish stuff. Seriously, there's nothing wrong to loosen up and have silly fun at times.

Talking about fun, Mind cafe is really one place to check out for some really cool, interesting and 'never heard let alone play' sorta games. The 7 of us made our way there for some long overdue post exam fun and get together session. We went to the Mind Cafe @ Prinsep Street which is just across school. It's so much bigger than the branch at Boat Quay.

Thanks jules for the pictures!

Lunch at Pasta mania first. I'm not feeling well, hence the paler than usual complexion.

With lovely Julez (I love her jet black bangs!)

Ellena, sneaking up behind me.

Qihan. Julez and I got to know him during our NDP ushers days. Seriously, there're friends in SMU whom I have no idea how we met and became good friends.

Okies, the games.

A game of Taboo. Haha, I love taboo but I suck at describing. I'm alright with guessing though.

oops, Did I say the wrong word. Xin trying hard to explain a cheem word to us.

Oh there's this really fun and amusing game, Smarty Pants. It tests you on simple trivia and general knowledge on stuff like geography, the states in the US starting with the alphabets "I" and "A". I love the questions like, "Name the folklore cures for hiccups". Heh, now we know, how much on earth we know on trivia and such. Seriously, there are tonnes of things we do not know.

Anyway, all the games we played are non-strategic. All those really lame and silly games. Don't wanna get our brains fried. HAHA

Mark and Qiu Xin are serious in thought.

Julez and Li Ping

The couple; Mark and Ellena. Sucha small world. Mark's my OG mate and Ellena, my year 1 classmate. Who would have thought they would end up together! And the best thing is, we are all friends.

The whole lot.

I guess most people would think friends in SMU come and go. But not with this group of friends. I have my fair share of knowing people and working with them for projects just for the term and we ended up as mere acquaintances. Strangers we smile to. So I'm glad I got to know the good friends I have in school now, although we are all from different disciplines. We are really a chapalang group - the marketing, finance, economics, HR and the corp comms folks.

Till next time, friends! Will miss hanging out with you guys when I'm in Shenzhen for 3 months. =\

Of my long over summer study trip


I just viewed Sharon's pictures at UBC, Vancouver, the college where I went for my summer study trip. Vancouver really looks so different in winter/spring and summer. Okay, that is reall obvious, I know. But its this strange sense of the same place looking so different that really makes living in Singapore so dead boring. Haha, no wonder it cultivates in us (especially in me) this easy tendency to get bored and restless real fast.

The room she stayed in is exactly like the one I stayed in! I love that place cause they'll have room service where housekeeping will make and clean your room for you. Not only that, we got fresh clean towels everyday! Awesome. Doubt I will get this kind of service in Shenzhen. LOL! FAT HOPE!

I think Jax would most prolly say I'm getting all caught up in the past again. It's not wrong to look back at the past ok. Especially when its a lovely past. Oh well, just dwelling on what has been...

Bored.