Last Day in China

Greetings from Shanghai for the last time.

After Mark and I spent Friday closing out all of our projects, giving a final presentation about our impressions of China and the Internship, we said our heartfelt goodbyes to a company that had become family in matter of two weeks. We found out that our bosses were all quite pleased with the work that we had produced, even though Mark and I clearly were in a fog for at least part of this internship.

That night, Mark and I had dinner with one of the employees, Peter Lu. Friday was also Peter's last day with the company. When Tekelec sold this asset to Genband, Peter decided to stay with Tekelec. Later this week, he and his family will be moving back to Dallas, TX. Peter and his wife are originally from China. However, based on job opportunities, they moved to the United States, where their two kids were born. Everyone in the family is excited to move back "home."

For dinner, we went to a hot pot restaurant. Since I prefer not to eat red meat, this was somewhat of a challenge for me, since the only meat that you can cook in a hot pot well is red meat. I did, however, love the vegetables we added to the pot. It was overall a great dinner; it was Mr. Easley's (Mark's dad's) favorite while in China. At the end of the meal, we all said goodbye in our hotel lobby, and promised to meet up somewhere in the good ol' US of A.

On Saturday, Mark and I slept in...for the first time while in China. Needless to say, it was amazing. For breakfast, we went to a boulangerie. You can really tell that globalization is at work when we fly all the way to China, and are still able to eat in a French bakery. Later, we tested out the MagLev train. In the US, we really don't like to take trains anywhere. In China, they are the most popular form of travel over long distances. This type of train, built in Germany, uses electromagnetic forces to propel the train forward at very high speeds. Our top speed was 431 km/h or 270 mph. It took a distance that probably would take about an hour to drive down to an 8 minute journey. If you come to Shanghai, you need to ride this train.

In the afternoon, Mark and I, along with his parents, went to the Jin Mao Tower. The Jin Mao Tower is currently the tallest building in Shanghai. However, there is already a taller one under construction right next door to the Jin Mao. After taking a ~30sec elevator ride up 340m to the observation deck (making this elevator faster than the Tower of Terror), we were able to see the best panoramic views of Shanghai possible. It was really cool to watch the Shanghai World Financial Center being bult next door. Progress is slow, but I'm glad the workers are taking their time; if they rushed, steel beams and huge panes of glass could fall on people below. You could also look inside the building, down 30 floors to the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The faint of heart should not do this.

Toward the end of the afternoon, we went to the Shanghai Science Museum. This modern facility gave a taste of every branch of science from Astronomy to Zoology. Our favorite part was the IMAX film that had been dubbed over. The film we saw was suppose to have been narrated by Judy Dench...however, that lady was NOT Dame Dench. Furthermore, Dench probably can't speak Chinese that well. Oh well. The film was about insect life in the rainforest. I am still pissed at the film makers for showing a butterfly getting killed by a praying mantis. That is just not cool. Butterflies don't die. Other insects...ok, but the butterfly was just over the line.

For dinner, we had a quick meal at a Japanese restaurant. It was pretty decent, especially for what we paid. Afterward, we took the subway into to Puxi (the other side of the river) to see the Shanghai Acrobatic Circus. When our class was in Shanghai, our tourguide Lisa was pressing us to go see this show. While it was probably good for us to just rest and recover from jetlag then, the show still would fun to watch in that state.
The show was amazing and words are failing me; I have no idea how to describe it. It was like Cirque du Soleil but better and more interesting, and with more impressive acrobatic acts. Come see it if you come to Shanghai!

After returning to the Hotel, Mark and I packed, watched some rugby and retired for the evening. We are sad to be leaving China, but we also feel that we are leaving China without regrets.

Best Wishes and Safe Travels,
- John

PS: I personally am stoked to meet up with Ben in Julie in O'Hare. After having limited contact with any of our friends back home, it will be good to see some familar faces.

End Credits

Well, it’s Friday, June 29th, and today is my last day as an intern at NCR. Really unbelievable how fast time has flown by for me. It doesn’t seem so long ago I was at the Jade Palace Hotel packing up my things, saying goodbye to everyone, and getting ready to go to my host family’s apartment for the first time. Just crazy.
In any event for our last day here Julie and I finished up our second Kaizen project. This time we created a .asx website that would automatically display the status of all the ATMs on the factory floor, giving it in a real time, easy to use display that would track how far the different teams are on their machines. Apparently, hard as it is to believe, the supervisors and team leaders really like both of our projects. When we gave them instructions on using it they all shook their heads thoughtfully and said (in Chinese) it would be very useful. It feels good to contribute something in this second week. Julie has been taking a bunch of pictures of people and things at NCR - I will have to mooch off those photos. Not much else to say about events for today.
Since this will be my last blog post, I had hoped to summarize my epic foreign language trip experience. And it has been an epic one. Looking back I cannot believe how much I have done. In two and a half weeks I went to Shanghai, Xian, Zhengzhou, Chengde, and Beijing. I climbed Mt. Huasheng, scaled the Great Wall, saw the Terracotta Soldiers, watched Chinese opera, and did too many other things to put in a blog post I have five minutes left of my coffee break to write. Then I got the amazing opportunity to spend an additional two and a half weeks with a family in Beijing, living and working with them. Coleman and Janet have been wonderful; I am extremely happy I could stay with them. I will wrap it up here, simply by saying that China has been great, and after five weeks I am looking forward to returning to Carolina. That’s about it, -Ben Goldhaber

Tekelec 6/28/2007

Hello again from Shanghai!!

Well not too much excitement has happened over the past two days. Just business as usual. I moved into my new apartment which is on the otherside of town like John's house. It is a change to commute for an hour twice everyday. He has his own car but he also has a subway station right outside his apartment complex. They both take about the same time, surprisingly, and I rode both, although the subway was really convenient and cheap. Riding the subway during rush hour is an experience, but it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The apartment was quaint, a 19th floorer, and I got my own room and bathroom, complete with PC access, TV and air conditioning. The couple was nice, they lived in england to get their graduate degrees from Lancaster University, but they had no children.

The new boss of the company just flew in from Texas, Genband just bought this branch of Tekelec and he is making sure the transition runs smoothly. He took everybody out for brazillian steak house. It was almost like home except a little less high class, I was very surprised they had one. Gee, Shanghai has everything. Right now it looks as if Genband wants to incorporate this office to fuel its products and will keep a similar layout, but adding a sales department. It is Genband's intention to go IPO, which I think some of the workers here are excited about.

EMS dept. is pretty easy, I am just playing around with some code but no real serious projects. Only 1 more day to go. John and I are presenting a powerpoint tomorrow about our experiences and our company impressions. I'm not sure what we're going to do on the weekend but we might check out the famous underground market that apparently has a bunch of cheap stuff (last minute gifts w00t!).

It's finally started raining here, not much of a rainy season this year.
Mark

Work!

Yesterday was certainly a busy day! Believe it or not, Ben and I worked...all day! Upon arriving at NCR, we were introduced to several engineers in the TSE department (testing system engineers). They explained several Kaizen projects that they had been involved with in the past, so we could get an idea of what we would be doing. The project that we were assigned was to find a more efficient way for factory workers testing ATM machines to communicate malfunctions to the testing engineers. The current system that was in place involved all of the employees using a shared computer to page the four testing engineers; however, the only english phrase they knew how to type was "test fail." This wasn't very helpful to the engineers, because they never really knew what the problem was. Thus, they were forced to waste time and energy going down to the factory to try and understand what the issue was. Ben and I brainstormed for a while with our "mentor engineer," and eventually came up with a solution. We decided that a numerical system listing the most common problems involved in the testing stages would simplify things for the factory workers. They would just have to associate a number with a problem, and click it on their computer screen at their workstation. The engineers would then get a pager message telling them which station had the problem, and what the problem was. There were a lot of kinks to work out, forcing us to go down to the factory about five times, but it eventually worked. We were excited to see that our plan was actually implemented! In the afternoon, we were introduced to another TSE engineer, who showed us NCR's newest ATM model, which was going through shipping tests (basically the ATM is exposed to weird temperatures and dropped a bunch of times). It was very interesting to see how thoroughly the machine was inspected after the test was completed. This morning, we worked on doing the write-up for our completed Kaizen project. While working on the write-up, Grant, the head engineer at NCR, pulled us aside to give us a little lecture about business. After playing some interesting games, including one that involved drawing a pig multiple times to demonstrate how to follow "standard procedure," he lectured us on time management. The explanations were definately entertaining, if not completely helpful. This afternoon, we will be teaching the factory workers how to use the program we've set up. They don't speak English, so it will definately be a challenge. Wish us luck!

Nothing out of the ordinary has happened with my host family, but something interesting happend last night that deserves mentioning. Upon arriving home from work yesterday, I noticed that the power was out (yes, including the air conditioning). I asked Gexin about it, and she told me that they hadn't paid enough to keep their electricity going. Apparently in China you have to put money on a card that then gives you electricity, and my family hadn't anticipated their electricity usage very well. My family went to go get money for their "electricity card," leaving me alone in the house. Soon it was 8:00, and very dark. The only light I had was a tiny portable reading light...it was a pretty funny sight. Thankfully the electricity came back on and my host family returned.

After today, Ben and I only have two work days left. Hopefully we can learn more about what the testing engineers do, and be able to contribute. We are really enjoying our new work, but we are also very excited to get back home on Sunday.

-Julie

The Beginning of the End...

The beginning of my last week here at GenBand/Tekelec/SomeRandomChineseName has been interesting. Unlike Mark, I stayed with my original department, Hardware design. This week, I'm mainly working on running simulations using the VHDL programming language. Unless you are into CS, this isn't going to be the job for you. On Monday, the day started of as any other of my days in China had: Get up, drop off Audrey (Host's daughter) at school, commute an hour, and begin the day. However, right after taking Peter (Mark's boss in IT) to our favorite sandwich shop (you heard me, sandwich), I was told to go with Caojie to the airport. Now, a trip to the airport is always to pick someone up, never to drop someone off. So...my curious nature led me to ask Caojie who we were going to pick up. Apparently, the president of GenBand was flying to see first hand how this new branch of his company worked, and what needed to be done in order to make the aquisition smooth. So, after waiting about an hour for him to get through customs, I finally got to meet Jack Brickey. Jack is a really nice, down-to-earth guy with a fairly recognizable southern accent. As the "English Liaison," I basically served as a translator, and a mini-guide to the city of Shanghai. Somehow, four weeks in China suddenly makes me an expert...go figure. Anyway, while driving back to the company, I learned that Jack is a Charlotte-native, NCSU grad, who had plans to send his son to Cary Academy, until his move to Texas caused this plan to fall through. Furthermore, he currently lives in Austin, TX, which is where I used to live before coming to NC. Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about. Once back at Tekelec/GenBand/SomeRandomChineseName, I let Ping, the Vice-President, take over the tourguide duty. Once back up stairs, I finished the day as normal, went back home, ate more Chinese food, and slept.

Today, I came into work rather late...1.5 hours to be exact. Helen, my host, required my presence to help her manage her two kids while we took the baby for a six month check-up/immunization. After seeing the Chinese health care system up close, I must say it is quite different from how we operate in the US. Instead of having many private physicians to take care of these routine checkups, parents must bring their children to the local hospital. Most private doctors handle very special cases in very specialized fields. Also, there are three tiers to the hospital system. Every district has a tier one hospital that is only equipped to handle basic health care needs, sort of like Rex Urgent Care down of Cary Parkway. Tier two hospitals have more facilities, while tier three are on par with US hosptials like WakeMed, Rex, or Duke University Medical Center. I also discovered that you do not see one doctor for all your needs at this hospital, you go to different offices where each doctor or nurse performs a specific functions in the overall operations. So, Helen took all of us to the immunization office first, where we had to wait about forty minutes before we could see the doctor. Then we had to go to a different floor to see the Early Childhood doctor, and wait some more. Some things never change between the US and China. Once everything was done, we dropped Audrey off at her grandparents house （no school today) and drove to work. Even at 9:45, traffic is still bad, but not quite as bad as the normal rush hour.

Once at work, I worked on more simulations, went out to lunch with Mark's EMS department, and continued to work on simulations through out the afternoon. For lunch, Mark's bosses took us to the local subway station, which actually had a plethora of restaurants waiting to take our cash. We eventually went to Circle Line, a restaurant Helen took us to before, but since it was raining when first went here, we had a hard time seeing the full size of the complex. Today, we had Northern styled food, which we already sampled while we were in Beijing. However, the food was still good. My favorite was the egg custard.

Tonight, I will again, have dinner with the grandparents, go home, hang out, and enjoy a typical Chinese evening at home. With only three more days left of work (I'm not couting, I swear...), Mark and I look forward to making the most of our last days here, learning as much as we can, and hopefully, give a good presentation about our stay here on Friday.

**One quick additional note: For those of you that read the N&O daily, you may have noticed an article a while back mentioning that Tekelec sold off some of it's assets in China. As fortune would have it, this company was included in that sell off. So, for the first 1.5 weeks here, Mark and I thought we were working for Tekelec, while we were actually working for GenBand, a telecom company based in Plano, TX. Don't worry, our internships are exactly the same as they would have been with Tekelec, and we are NOT becoming Chinese hobos. They still don't pay us, which is unfortunate, but whatever, I take whatever I can get to have this kind of internship in China.**

Peace,
- John

The rest of the day

Alright, so me and Julie just finished up with our meeting and our new assignments for the rest of the week. The meeting was in powerpoint format, where an engineer led us through the Lean manufacturing process and the Kaizen improvement process. It was all actually very interesting.
We learned how the goal of NCR was to streamline the manufacturing so it all revolves around the continuous output of goods to meet a consumers request (pull) as opposed to the previous batch manufacturing that created a large amount of goods and then had them be sold off (push). We also learned about the Kaizen productivity model. Its a Japanese word that means Continuous Improvement, and they use it in combination with Six Sigma to address the common sense kind of fixes that step by step increase efficiency. For someone who has always been a big fan of Dilbert books and comics it was pretty funny to actually hear this kind of stuff and see it in action. That being said it makes sense, and for the last few days we are hear we will be assigned to small groups of engineers to work on Kaizen projects.
So I am very excited about this, though unfortunantely I am going to have to put my quest for solitare dominance on hold. Ah well, tradeoffs. I will blog again on Friday to share how this last week at NCR and in China went and to conclude the epic adventure that has been this foreign language trip.
-Ben Goldhaber

The following takes place between 8:34 AM and 1:22 P.M.

Well, I am writing a little bit earlier in the day because it looks like I might be busy at the end of it! Whoo! At the start of my final week here at NCR Michael Low, the general manager, called both me and Julie in to tell us that we would be moving to an engineering related project. The project, so far as I have been able to ascertain from the brief overview, is one of many that are aimed at improving efficiency on the factory floor. I am pretty excited about this for a number of reasons. First because I have always been interested in engineering and this seems like a good opportunity to see some of the practical applications of it. Second is because trolling Harry Potter internet forums is starting to get old.

That’s the only real thing to happen today, though I would like to add to Julie’s comments and just say that this weekend was great – I am really glad her host family invited me to go. We got to climb another mountain, which from my experience is apparently the thing to do in China. Oh and yes, it’s true; I did Karaoke. After a lot of peer pressure (apparently I’m not Above the Influence) I sang to the hit song What’s Love Got to Do With It, and I can honestly say I rocked the hotel patio. I have no idea why Karaoke is still so popular here – I had always assumed it was just a fad. Ha another thing is that after the 'hotel' this weekend, I must say I am jealous of Mark and John for staying in what was probably a hotel that does not require sarcastic air quotations. Seriously we squeezed six guys into a hotel room complete with six single beds packed so tightly together there was no room to move, and had a gym locker quality bathroom with no hot water/no towels/lots of bugs. To top it all off is that one or more of the persons in the room snored like a dying water buffalo. When I first heard it I thought to myself 'Oh my god I think a wild boar is in the room'. So yah, I was happy to get back to the host families Beijing loft, though I know I will be many times happier to return to my own American bed that does not have wood for a matress. lol.

Not much else to report on, though I will try to blog again after a 3:00 meeting if I get anymore details about the project I am assigned to.
-Ben G.

P.S. Mark's calculation of an 8-12 yuan wage were hilarious, though I have to note if we are going by lunches I am losing cash at about 30 yuan a day. Darn you Subway!