TGIF!

First off, I'm not dead yet. It's Day 9 of the Internship, our seventh day working, and Mark and I are pretty satisfied by our time in Shanghai. Thus far, we've worked 53 hours at Tekelec (Offical at the end of the day) and we are preparing for our 2nd week and last week at the company. For next week, Mark will be switching into the EMS department, while I will stay in Hardware Design. Mark and I have asked about ten different employees here at Tekelec what EMS stands for, and no one knows. Go figure. I guess it's some sort of secret society that works in the basement. When Mark and I first arrive, we both saw that acronym and instantly thought "Emergency Medical Services." Some how, we didn't think that would pan out. I'm not sure it's safe for Mark to even try to drive an ambulance through Shanghai. Drivers are really...um...aggressive? I guess that word works. There is no real way to describe the drivers in Shanghai; you will just have to visit to find out. However, my host Helen continually tells me that "Shanghai drivers are very skilled, especially the taxi drivers." If some has to continue tell me they are good driver, I'm eventually not going to trust them about it.

At work, things are interesting. I definately believe that our Shanghai group has been more engrossed in work than our Beijing counterparts. In hardware design, I've gone from assisting with testing prototype boards to learning the programming language used to program the boards to running simulations with the programmed code. Basically, I always have something to do. And, if I ever felt bored, I have been told to talk to either Jo, the head of Human Resources, or Helen, my host and the Buisness Operations Manager; both have many tasks that could keep us occupied for days. Mark is finishing up some testing for a new operating system that the company might switch to for programming. He'll tell you more about it when he blogs.

In case no one has mentioned it yet, Tuesday, June 19th was Duanwujie, or the Dragon Boat Festival. This is a very popular holiday at the office, but no one is give time off and no one takes time off from work. Occuring on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, Duanwujie is a holiday that commemates the death of Chu Yuan, a poet/patriot that commited suicide after his country was invade and destroyed by another country. Typically, dragon boats used for racing down rivers. Even though Shanghai has many rivers, I did not see a dragon boat. Also, it is tradition for people to eat zong zi on this day. This item was thrown into the river after Chu Yuan drowned himself, in order to keep the fish and spirits away from his body. Today, zong zi is made from sticky-rice wrapped inside bamboo leaves. Typcially, zong zi has a filling that can either be meat like pork or something sweet like a date. I had sweet zong zi while in Zhengzhou, but on this day, I only had ones that had pork inside. These zong zi were fine, but I still prefer the sweet ones. I had two at breakfast and two while at the office. Helen even saved some of the extra ones for breakfast the next day.

Overall, the week has been filled with work, and not much else. One big note: I am finally over my cold. Two days after arriving in Shanghai, I began to fall victim to many of the same symptoms that our classmate Colin had earlier in the trip. This weekend, I will go with my host family to Wuxi on Saturday while Mark goes to Qi Bao. On Sunday, Mark and I both will go to Hangzhou. Mark will give you an update of how the weekend went when he blogs on Sunday.

Until next time,
- John.