June 29
Not much happened at work today. I'm starting to think that I'm going to have to stay on top of Michael so that I have enough work to do. It's strange to be in the position of self-driving my own internship, but I guess it's necessary here. What I've gathered from Chinese students and other assorted sources is that internships are a relatively new phenomenon in China and it seems that Allied is not experienced at having interns. I think I might be their first intern ever, much less their first foreign intern. I've started to get more persistent with Michael, which I think is going to help me get more work to do, although I am definitely disadvantaged by my inability to communicate with the majority of the company. The fact that I don't speak very good Chinese means that Michael is pretty much my only conduit of information and, as I've noted earlier, getting a straight answer out of him can be difficult.
Conservation is one aspect of China that rather perplexes me. On one hand, there are power switches for all the appliances in my room and they seem to take energy conservation very seriously. On the other hand, there are a huge amount of disposable packaging/chopsticks used, which surely isn't environmentally friendly. I'm not sure I've thought of a good reason for this dichotomy yet, but it is curious in the face of the pollution that grips the city and, from what I can tell, the better part of the country. I would think there would be more environmental activism, but perhaps that gets to the difference between American and Chinese culture.
On an unrelated note, I went for a run tonight and it was nice to see a different part of the town. Running through an industrial district after hours is a weird feeling, kinda like running through a ghost town. There were times I would have a 4 lane road all to myself, which was slightly disconcerting. Also disconcerting was the lightning that was firing in the distance in front of me. I tried to count the time between the flash and the thunder, but I forgot whether every 5 seconds you counted corresponded to the lightning being a mile away, or if it was 2 seconds. Either way, I didn't get hit by lightning, which is a good thing.
June 30
Holy crap, blue skies. Today was the first sunny day I've had in China and, coincidentally, the hottest. I'm glad to know that the Sun still exists and that there isn't a permanent haze over the city. Work was actually kinda challenging today, Michael finally gave me a task other than reading a manual. I'm supposed to design a fixture to hold a workpiece while the CNC machines it. I got a rough draft done in Unigraphics (The demo fixture I was using as an example was in AutoCAD, but we couldn't get AutoCAD to run properly in English or Chinese on my computer, so I gave up and went to UG), so hopefully I can refine it tomorrow.
 | This is me and Michael, my mentor, in front of our building. There is a huge warehouse connected to the back of that building. |
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