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! =)