And what are you doing this summer?

Wanted to keep this post up top. I added a poll to the left for anyone who has a strong opinion of where I should be working this summer. Also I got a phone call last night pass midnight from Parsons in Sacramento. The manager for one of their construction projects called me because he said that their HR person couldn't get through to me and he really wanted to know if I'm interested. Construction management sounds really cool and again, they have an interesting project. I told him that I've gotten other offers and I'll get back to him if I'm interested. It's such a shame since he must've really liked what he saw on my resume to call me instead of waiting for the HR people to try again.

=====original post. 3/5/08=======

Choices, choices. Earlier this week, I got an email from the Happold Trust saying congratulations, I have been selected to receive a scholarship along with a summer placement (internship) in one of their offices. Since Buro Happold is one of the biggest names in structural engineering, this is great. But... I'm not sure what I want to do. If you want to help out, keep reading.

So placement with Buro Happold will be 8 weeks long and mine will take place in Bath. The scholarship is £2,100. The monthly rent in Bath seems to be around £300 so it's enough to live on. They haven't told me which group I will be working with yet but it will most likely be a structures group. I might also get some experience in geotech because they do foundations as well. Bath itself is a World Heritage Site, seems like a nice place to live, very close to Wales, which I haven't been. There are many advantages to this internship actually. I would get to travel around Britain during the weekends, which I haven't done yet. Yalu will definitely come visit since she'll be in Paris. And since my internship is only 8 weeks, I will have time to do some serious traveling (with Yalu) at the end of the summer. And I just realized that working in England means that I can start my internship right after my projects are done (i.e. start the 2nd week of June), maybe come back to Cambridge for May Balls, and have more time at the end of the summer to travel. The only reservations I have about this company is that the female and male ratio is not great. When I went in for the interview, I actually had to look for the females because there were not so many. Also, people dress nicer than in the US. In most US engineering places, people just wear a shirt, jeans, and black shoes. There the guys had ties and nicer shirts. They do have some offices in the US, namely New York City and Los Angeles. But the LA offices is really small. No big plants like in Berlin. No one really had much personal pictures around their workspaces either, I'm starting to wonder if that's just an American thing.

So after hearing back from these people, I emailed MISTI China and asked about the China situation (China Communications Construction Company CCCC). Appearantly, it looks like they've already decided to take me as an intern but failed see the need to tell me. I think this is another one of those cultural differences business. See, American companies tell you as soon as they have decided so that they can grab you. These Chinese places don't see this as a priority. They don't realize that they've got to compete with other places for me. I think if I didn't ask, the whole thing would've ended up like last year where I got an email in June asking "So when are you going to arrive in Shanghai?" Okay, now that I've finished ranting about this place, let me tell you what they do. They're one of the biggest construction companies in China, working on mostly projects in ports. I would be working in a design office. Where? I still have no clue. Not sure if they're actually going to pay me for this internship although MISTI China will reimburse me for the flight, I'm sure. So I've been wanting to do an internship in China for like 2 years now. The reasons are that I want to improve my spoken Mandarin, understand the culture (since going there with parents and living by oneself is totally different), visit family, maybe seek out old friends, and of course, travel. Oh, and the food. Asian food here is questionable. Also, besides this, MISTI China has no civil engineering contacts. I would be helping future Course 1 students to have the chance to work in China for a summer.

And of course, there are other places that I am really interested in but haven't heard back from yet. There's Parsons Brinckerhoff. I did a phone interview with their office in San Francisco with their geotechnical group. They guys I interviewed with seems really cool. And they have cool projects. There's 2 major projects going on and they said there'll be plenty of work to do. Working for them would mean that I would get excellent experience in geotechnical engineering, which is something that I can't say for the above 2 places. I also interviewed with Gilbane Construction in Boston. An internship with them would mean really good experience in the construction field. Definitely on-site versus hanging out in an office like all of these other places. And there's potentially something in Iceland through Course 1 with Iceland's biggest structural engineering firm. Other than the opportunity to travel around Iceland, there would be other MIT students working there as well. And I would still get to travel Europe with Yalu if I work in Iceland. Not so realistic if I work in China.

Okay, there it is. One really long entry about my summer plans so far. Comments are welcomed.

Sunset in London

London Pics!

Just realized I haven't posted any pictures of me in London. I went there with a few people the weekend after Chinese New Year to see the parade and enjoy the other celebrations. Poting and I went around London for a little while after that.

Not sure why I don't look too happy in these first two pictures... Anyhow, we weren't really sure where we were going. I had a guide book. But then we saw the London Eye (that big ferris wheel in the back) and started heading towards it.

Westminster Abbey. Sadly we didn't get to go in since it was Sunday and they didn't want any tourists on Sundays. We peaked inside like all the other tourists and it looks pretty amazing. Hope to go back one of these days.

Big Ben! Yay. I should've taken a picture of the subway station next to it. We talked about it in geotech class and how they had to put in a lot of reinforcement to keep the Big Ben from tilting when they put in the tunnel.


As we were crossing this bridge, Poting and I speculated on the price of a ride on the London Eye. I said 10 pounds which seems reasonable. But when we got there, we found out that it was 15 pounds and they're called "flights" not "rides". And actually, a Thames river cruise is cheaper than a flight. We found this confounding. 15 pounds is a little too much for us. And it was getting dark when we got there so we didn't go on.

Black Swan!

more rants about Customer Service

I could not find ground turkey at Sainsburys (the local grocery store) yesterday. I complained about this to a fellow CMEer and neither of us likes the fact that Sainsburys doesn't restock properly. Their restocking things are either always sitting in the cramped aisles, blocking space or there would be empty shelves where my favorite brand of muesli is supposed to be found. It's very annoying since I only go to the grocery store when I really need something and don't want to make another trip back. Sometimes it means I have to go to another store or somehow eat breakfast without milk.

Why does this happen? (I) It might be that the store is just too small. At certain hours, the entire town seems to want to get their daily necessities all at the same time. The lines are super long and shelves are robbed of all the popular goods. And since the store is not very big, (i) can't have an infinite supply of ground turkey on the shelf and (ii) can't restock fast enough. (II) But actually, this might also be a case of seeing things through American eyes. We're a society where if our demands aren't met the right way the first time around, we complain and go somewhere else. Maybe that's just not the way it works here. Maybe the people here don't mind when they can't get their ground turkey and are okay with just coming back some other time.

A Sunday Morning

I woke up this morning and did not feel like eating cereal/musli. So I went out the Marketplace and got an ostrich burger and a mocha (pronounced mod-ka). The burger was amazing. They have this caramelized onion sauce that is also delicious as well. This whole experience made me feel like a local. The marketplace is actually a tourist attraction, full of souvenir things. But instead of waitinig until 1pm and wait in long lines to get the burger and coffee like everyone else, I went at 11am and got fresh burger and coffee with absolutely no lines. By the way, these two items cost nearly $8. Well, can't get an ostrich burger anywhere I guess.

I want to write an entry titled "It's the little things" in which I would tell my audience about all the little cultural differences that make studying/working/living aboard such a rich experience. But that would take a lot of work so I'll just write a paragraph or two whenever I realize something. Maybe I'll compile it later for an entry on the MIT blog.

So yesterday, I was watching Yahoo! news, New York edition, about the Starbucks closing its doors for 3 hours nationwide to retrain their people. I had already read about this earlier but watched it nevertheless. In the boardcast, one of the hosts said he's a regular customer and the only thing he ever orders is a ice latte with light ice. But the part that attracted my attention was that he said he refuses to call it a "tall" because it actually is a "small." See that cup of coffee to the left that I got this morning? That's a regular. I should really put a penny or something next to it but it's pretty small. It's like an extra-small cup of coffee in the US if they have something called extra-small. Kids sized. And it probably costed me more than getting a Verde coffee at Starbucks in the US.

So Starbucks closed its doors for 3 hours to reteach its people how to make espressos, steam milk, and how to give better customer service. But the only thing that the news boardcast people talked about was "I'm glad they're retraining their people because the service is terrible." Nothing about the coffee itself. Just complaints about the service. Customer service is a huge part of American culture. It's very important to Americans. I didn't realize this until I went to Germany this summer. People elsewhere do not value good customer service. They do not expect it or want it. Living aboard is actually not learning about other cultures as it is about learning about your own culture. Culture = the way we do things here = the things that we value.

There's a tank outside my window