Greetings from Tekelec Shanghai

Hey Everyone -

After a couple of days at our new jobs in Shanghai, Mark and I are settling in well. Tekelec, a Morrisville, NC-based corporation, operates a research and development location in Shanghai. I'm just going introduce you to where Mark and I are calling home for the next two weeks. Shanghai is the largest city in China, with a population of 18 million people. Thats about 10 million more people than in the entire state of North Carolina. Tekelec is located in Pudong district. Since Pudong is the most undeveloped of all of Shanghai's 18 districts, it reminds me most of North Carolina. You can actually see trees and grass not located in a park, in addition to the numerous new buildings in the Area. Mark's host lives in the Pudong district as well. I, on the other hand, live in Puxi, on the other side of Shanghai, specifically in the Jing'an district. My area is a nice, very urbanized. The train station is only five minutes from the apartment. However, living on the other side of Shanghai means my commute everyday is about an hour long.

Upon first arriving at Tekelec, Mark and I were immediately assigned our jobs. Mark is currently working in the IT department, while I am in Hardware Design. I'll let Mark tell y'all about his job when he blogs. For the first 6 hours at the company, I really didn't have a specific job assignment. I mainly just assisted with server rack modifications. However, now I am learning a new programming language and am charged with programming one of the boards Tekelec uses in it's multimedia solutions. Needless to say, it's a bit overwhelming. I'm having a fun time though, and am learning a lot.

While in China, Mark and I have been shown a lot of interesting sides of the country by our host families. We went with one family on a typical Saturday outting to SuZhou. SuZhou features three amazingly beautiful gardens, as well as a series of canals that lend a more Venisian feel to the city. On Sunday, my host took us to a corporate party for her husband's company. Mark and I got a quick look at life in a Chinese version of Preston, except the starting price for homes is 3 million USD. Not cool. There was also a good-ol'-boy presence at the soiree, where if you were on the boss' good side, you sat at one set of tables and you hung out with a certain crowd, while if you weren't on the boss' good side, you sat in the back of the room, with minimal interaction with other people. Corporate politics, it seems, is universal.

Since there are about two weeks left to go before the end of the quarter, my department is currently having a meeting to organize tasks that need to be complete ASAP. Unfortunately, the meeting is entirely in Chinese, and basically, I won't understand what their saying. First, because they are speaking Shanghai-ese, a dialect of Chinese that sounds like Mandarin, but with a Japanese pronuciation. Second, because they are using highly specialized terms that I haven't learned yet. So as for now, I'm continuing to chug along with my projects. We'll have to waiting see how the projects change and if the pressure increase as Mark and I get closer to the conclusion of our internship.

Best Wishes!
-John