Summer Internship at Hisense (so far ...)

The summer internship I'm doing is at Hisense. It's an electronics/construction/telecommunications firm with several divisions and headquarters in QingDao. I'm currently working in the Industrial Design group, with an intention of getting a feel of corporate China (already getting totally immersed), how things work here, how companies interact, how the people within companies interact, etc. I started work my second full week back, and it's been fantastic so far ...

I LOVE my job. I'm part of the Industrial Design team, so basically I conceptualize ideas, sketch a bunch using pen/paper, then build the designs on 3Dmax, Rhino, Solidworks, or ProE, and render 3D models, and amp them up on Photoshop. Right now I'm designing a separate audio system for their latest LCD TV. Basically everybody here majored in Industrial Design or Art in college, so everybody is a wicked drawer and is into all the same artistic stuff I'm into, and loves pencil sketching/oil painting/watercolor and photography and all the things that I love that I have trouble talking about with people at MIT. For example, today I sat around and played on Photoshop (which is what I do for fun anyway), played around with my boss's and my cameras, talked with my co-workers about the latest DSLR cameras on the market, looked at each other's photography, looked through popular photography magazines, and made up English names for my co-workers ... the best part is that all of that was relevant to work, because Industrial Design is a creative process, so talking about stuff like photography and cameras is all considered part of the mind-relaxing routine ... or maybe an even better part is that they all know what they're talking about! haha, we were talking about cameras yesterday and my boss was like "OK bring in your Nikon D80 tomorrow and I'll bring in my old Nikon 35mm and we'll trade lenses for fun, I have a 50mm fixed focus f/1.8 lens, we can try out your AF-S lens on my film camera at its actual focal lengths, not x1.5 since digital SLRs nowadays are not FX and its sensor isn't film sized" and then today we sat around during work hours snapping random photos of stuff in the office and looked through Nikon catalogs hahaa.

I love my co-workers too, they are so cool and friendly and fun. Everybody walks around the cubes and chats pretty often, talking about each other's designs, and then we get on random tangents (like whether this guy's English name should be Sean or Chris or Ian or Frank). They take care of my lunch for me and show me around local places after work. And beg me to teach them English. We talk and laugh all the time at work which is really a change for me since last year in all 10 weeks at GE I barely spoke to any of the people in the cubes around me (granted, the team I was on last year wasn't all located in the city, let alone the same room in the same building). People always have really cool stuff open on their screens, like Rhino 3D rendering software or ProEngineering, or they're doing some wicked crazy stuff on Photoshop. One person is working on User Interface, which means those menus and buttons and icons that pop up on the TVs when you go through the menu, or icons that you see in computer programs that are all nice and sleek and pretty and shiny or whatever ... somebody had to draw that stuff from scratch, and that's what she's doing. (a fact I often overlooked as "oh those images/interfaces just ... exist.") Like, in my Firefox browser, the bars on the top and the right, with the shiny reflection on the top half, etc, all have to be drawn from scratch somewhere and that's what she does for the company's TVs! So sweet. They're all pros at Photoshop too - I can't tell the difference between their "effects images" and actual photographs. Except that their images look better.

A huge difference already evident is that Chinese companies are more fraternal than American ones. In America, it's all about protocol, confidentiality, standards ... in China, business is more friend-to-friend (often accompanied by let's-chat-about-business dinners). My team all eats together at the same table every day at the company cafeteria, and socializes quite a lot throughout the day. I'll often go with a co-worker to the fruit stands to get fruit after lunch, and last week one of them brought me to local shops for dinner after work a few times. People here live in their own apartments, but if they recently graduated from college and haven't married/bought their own house yet, then the company has "company apartment complexes" for their employees. Meaning the youngers workers all live together in the same company housing. Life and Work are intricately intertwined in China (Asia) so that probably contributes to the whole fraternal feel of it all. My specific team is pretty casual and relaxed, but that's because we're in the Research & Development building, and we're in charge of design. It's not necessarily this relaxed all throughout the company nor in all Chinese companies (obviously) but it gives me a feel of a broad work atmosphere here.

The usual day consists of:
7:45am - wake up, get dressed, breakfast either on my own or at company cafeteria
8:30am - start work
11:15am - lunch time at company cafeteria, surprisingly good! (and buy fruit/go to the bank/go for a stroll somewhere/chat in the offices)
1:00pm - as long as you get back to your seat by then, you're good
3:00pm - half hour company break (chat with co-workers, go out and shoot some hoops on the basketball court)
5:30pm - work day ends
6:00pm - get home, change, go out in search of dinner, eat, wander
8:00pm - back to apartment, shower, tv, internet
10:30ishpm - sleep!


... and now it's past the sleep time. Goodnight.