Working life in Xiamen.

I have had four workings days so far. And it is actually not that bad. I though working life would be just sitting behind a desk and be bored as hell. But it actually is quite interesting, not that much have happened but I guess the nice group of co-workers makes it very doable! Though of course I have my irritation points because work can go very slow due the different in culture. I have been working on a temporally website for the CHECK-IT website for the CIFIT fair like I said in my last post. There haven’t been any changes on that subject, except that we are almost done. The website will be available next Monday and of course I will post a link then. I am doing the website together with Carol but unfortunately she has no experience at all in developing websites. She is a “Java” programmer and has never done anything like making a website. So it is kind of hard to work with that. But so far we manage to get it done, we just have to do a lot of talking and she is a fast learner and very bright.

What I noticed so far is that the Chinese are very focus on producing instead of thinking about what they are creating. Perhaps this is a cultural thing, but it makes working together a bit hard. They produce so fast that they just create software/multimedia without investigating the purpose, the usability, and the needs of the end users etc. All these things are made up by the Chinese professors when they give the assignment for the students. So that means the students won’t have to do any research on what they are creating except from the technique. So they are great programmers but I get the idea that it ends there. But hey, that is the whole idea of Check-IT! Learning from each other! Because the Chinese students are experts at “Java” and can create programs very fast because their knowledge is very good! ( so I heard, I’m not a Java programmer ;) ). So if the company decided to use Java as a final language for programming, we will be able to create a lot! Though they are still discussing this issue.

Like a said, Chinese people work very hard. As most of you guys know, they also work very long. Fortunately we won’t have to adapt to the Chinese work hours and we can simply do nine to five. But I think we discovered some of the Chinese secrets on how to live up to those working hours. It is actually quite funny to see. But the Chinese workers, and not only those on Check-IT but also those in other companies (we see them during our break at the restaurant) will simply drop their heads and lay down on their desk to get a hour of sleep when they have nothing to do. Well, we shouldn’t try that at our work in the Netherlands. Something tells me that my boss wouldn’t be too happy seeing me sleeping at my desk :P.

I am finally starting to see the down side of this internship. Yes, there are bad parts as well guys! So we all like a bit of Chinese food now and then.. but imagine eating (warm) Chinese food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are (almost) forced to eat Chinese every single meal, every day. And most of the time you got no freaking idea what the hell you are eating. You simply point to something that kind of looks “okay” to the person behinds the counter and you are handed over to the element of surprise.. will you like it or not? So far the general idea is that I like 50% of the food that lays on my plate. So that is going pretty well, but you can imagine that eating at KFC or McDonalds feels like a little angel pissing on your tongue. ( that sounds weird in English! ;) )

So I work during the day and we spend the evenings mostly together. So far we have actually been drinking beer every single night. (In a proper amount, don’t worry mum and dad.) Today we also started to become a bit sportive. Sam, Rob and I have been thinking a lot about joining a boxing gym. But so far no luck in finding one, or even boxing gloves at all. So today we went out for some basketball, we battled a few locals and of course you would think that we have a great advantage over them. Since we are almost two heads taller but don’t be fooled by size! That is an important lesson I learned today ;). We got beaten down so god damn hard.. and lost with a score of 20 to 5 or so and I ended up with blood on my face. I thought to play some defense on this little Chinese dude, turns out he knew perfectly well how to defense the ball against a bigger player. Got an elbow in the face and my tooth went through my lips.. so that will be a fat lip tomorrow. ( grumble ) But it was a great work out though!

Tomorrow we will have to hold an presentation on the University of Xiamen about our life in the Netherlands. So I will have to tell some history about my home town and all. Before that we get a seminar on the Chinese culture so I am really looking forward to that! Saturday will be a different kind of culture lesson. We found a flyer for a Chinese bikini party Saturday night. We will go there with a few Chinese students and hopefully learn how to party Chinese style. And of course Chinese girls in bikini isn’t a bad prospect. I will give you all an update on that ;)!

Well, it is almost a quarter past eleven and I am pretty tired from the basketball. I think I get a cold beer for my fat lip and then get a goodnight of sleep.

Huges and kisses,

Frenkie!

( By the way! Thanks for all the sweets respondses! It is really nice to hear from you guys and I really enjoy the feedback on the blog. Keep up the good work I would say ;) )

(Written on Thursday 03 of September 2009 at 23:12 )