Cultural experiences

I've never had so many people ask me what my name is before. "Is it Lucy Wu, or Wu Lucy? Don't you have a Chinese name?" Whenever I fill out forms, I check to see if they want my family or given name first. Upon finding that the first blank is for the family name, I automatically write my first name in the next blank. And then I find that there's another blank for the "English name." On the newest edition of the company newsletter, I'm listed in the Welcome section as Wu Lu, Lucy. So weird. I noticed that people's engineer stamps, they don't put their English name. Just family name + given name, in English letters.

I also find that when I'm looking at engineering drawings, I tend to say the numbers in my head in English. Not that I would have any problems with saying numbers in Chinese. I think I'm just still not used to the idea of using Chinese at work. Chinese was always for family and not for work. But I haven't had to revert to speaking in all English. Actually I don't think some of my coworkers have heard me say an entire sentence in English yet.

Made a lot of progress with my model at work today. I think I fixed all the major bugs. Modeling water flow took the entire afternoon. I'm at a point where I need some input from people in order to move on. This is good because it means I have no reason to be working tomorrow (Saturday).

The group went to lunch at a "Western" place today and one person ordered a variety of dishes and we all shared. I don't think this would ever happen in the States. They had the burgers cut up into quarters. Most people have smart phones and everyone was playing around with theirs. Cultural experiences everyday!

Major apartment looking this weekend. I hope won't be too muggy out!