Yeah, so the last three days have been so uneventful that they don't merit a breakdown by date. I'm still working on fixturing and now I'm creating a primary machining fixture (the first one I created was actually a secondary machining fixture, so now I'm backtracking). I should hopefully finish this up soon and move on to another project, but little things keep popping up and I make little mistakes due to a lack of direction. This is getting a little frustrating, but I'm looking forward to finishing up with this fixture soon. Hopefully I'll get a chance to teach myself some Pro/E soon (since I figured out how to change the language of that program to English). Tomorrow, however, will not be that day as there is a scheduled power outage from 7:30 to 15:30 while they upgrade the factory's connection to the power grid. I'm not sure if I need to come into work, we'll see.
On the fun front, I'm going to Shanghai this weekend. I'm leaving on Friday after work and coming back Sunday night; I'll be staying with my friend Susan (although there are at least 3 of us crashing with her, so I'll probably be sleeping on the floor, couch if I'm lucky). On Saturday we're going to get a tour of Google Shanghai and a meet and greet with some of their interns from Chinese universities. I'm going to try to swing by the Apple Store that's opening in Shanghai on Saturday that isn't too far from Google, although we'll see how the day goes. We aren't going to try to go to the Expo; we're going to put that off until later in the summer when the crowds have hopefully subsided.
Because things have been so slow lately, I'm going to delve into two topics that have crept into my mind over the last 3 weeks: corporate paternalism and children in public.
I will be the first to admit to my relatively short working history, but in that time I think I've covered a large part of the working spectrum. I've worked for a start-up (VG Market, 6 people), a Dow Jones company (Cisco, 60000 people) and a student government service (SSE, 30 people) and now I'm working for a mid-size manufacturer (Allied Machinery, 300 people). Perhaps it has been the nature of my job (intern/temporary employee) or the fact that I'm working in a foreign country (I have heard that foreigners receive deference in China), but I've never been treated so well by a company as I'm being treated by Allied. They give me two meals a day, they've given me 3 polo shirts so far, they're paying for my apartment and they assigned me a mentor who has been helping me do everything from buying a cellphone to furnishing an apartment (which he had already partially done before my arrival). They even went out of their way to get a wireless USB modem for me so that I could have an internet connection when I was having issues at my apartment. I don't know anything about the company's 401k or health care (actually, I'm not sure if those things factor into Chinese business), but on a day-to-day business the companies in China seem to be much more supportive of employees. My conclusion also draws on the experiences of the other Stanford interns who have: been taken to the Shanghai Expo from Hangzhou, had laundry done by the company (while I'm hand-washing mine like a schmuck) and been treated to extravagant lunches and dinners (again, I'm jealous). I know there are dozens of other factors influencing my experience, but none the less, I feel that Allied has a lot more invested in my well being than any other company I've ever worked for (sorry Raj).
And now for something completely different: children in public. I should note that my observations are based almost entirely by walking around my apartment complex, but it seems that children are everywhere and they are all of the temperamental ankle-biter variety. Every evening when I come home from work I will see about a dozen parents gathered in assorted places around the courtyard with their 2-3 dozen children running around screaming their heads off and playing games that make no sense whatsoever (just like children in America). However, there is one thing that is completely out in the open in China that isn't in America: children's genitals. None of the babies or little kids I've seen since I've been in China have been wearing a diaper, they all wear these crotchless pants that look kinda like chaps. Why would babies wear such clothes that would shame most people? For the same reason they wear diapers: so that they can defecate without getting undressed. But what takes this over the edge from cultural difference to "that's kinda strange and probably not healthy" is the fact that the parent get involved (positioning the children to not make a mess of their clothes) and (bizarrely) excited when their children relieve themselves in public. Something in me just feels wrong seeing these things every day, but I don't think a one man crusade is going to change anything, so I'll just have to keep calm and carry on.
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