I realised I haven’t really explained what I am doing here! So, I am an intern at a Chinese company called Linky Sense, an internship I found through AIESEC. Linky Sense is the Group and I am working for Nappor.com. It is an E-commerce company and what they do is to sell products overseas. They have a big variety of products, but mostly they sell furniture. They have 3 shops on eBay and I am currently working at the Marketing/Editing department. What I do is to write descriptions of their products and promotional texts for their English websites. They actually needed a person who speaks Swedish and they were even looking for more people from Scandinavia but my Swedish has still been to no use. They supposedly want to research the Scandinavian market, I hope they will start with this project soon, or at least before I leave!
It is a quite big company, in this building there are 200 people working. The company provides accommodation to those who want, in a housing complex not far away from the company (but far away from the city center). That’s where I live. Every day there are buses picking up and dropping the employees off from their homes (quite convenient!). The working hours are 9-6 and we have 1 hr lunch break. There is a dining hall downstairs and they provide us with both lunch and dinner. There is a buffet so there is some variety but the food is always Chinese. There is cabbage and potatoes everyday for sure, cooked in different ways and then then it depends..chicken, fish, yesterday for example there was also seaweed! Rice is a must! I have always liked rise and I hope I won’t get tired of it after living here :P I have wanted to see how it is to work in a big company where people have punch-cards, there is a real organisational structure and everything runs smoothly. It is quite interesting to see.
Usually after work I don’t go home directly since there is nothing to do around here but I prefer to take the bus to the city center. Some days we meet up for dinner or coffee, or we just go for a walk or to the supermarket (which I find really interesting!) Every Wednesday I study Japanese. Yes Japanese, not Chinese! You might wonder why on earth do I study Japanese in China, but the reason is that my friend Akio has roots in Japan and he teaches Rachel and Jon once a week. I happened to be there once and I liked it so now I keep going. It is a nice language with a logical structure.. not like Chinese.. Chinese seems all Chinese to me! But next week I will hopefully start with Chinese lessons, I think it is enough with sign-language now.
I have also taken up some new habits. First of all I eat with chopsticks! Even though some of my Chinese colleagues prefer to eat with forks (they are more practical they say, of course they are!), I decided to practice my chopstick techniques. I will probably not be able to learn much Chinese while being here but I can at least become a chopstick master! Also since it has been so cold, all Chinese drink hot water which I at first found to be weird but it’s quite ok. They were very worried about me at first when I didn’t have a water boiler to drink hot water at night! The other day I tried a fruit I had never seen before and yesterday I had dumpling soup for breakfast. Soup for breakfast -not my thing, but there are these ladies in the street selling a selection of food for breakfast, it is fun to go maybe once a week.
So this is more or less what’s going on in Tianjin on a daily basis!
It is a quite big company, in this building there are 200 people working. The company provides accommodation to those who want, in a housing complex not far away from the company (but far away from the city center). That’s where I live. Every day there are buses picking up and dropping the employees off from their homes (quite convenient!). The working hours are 9-6 and we have 1 hr lunch break. There is a dining hall downstairs and they provide us with both lunch and dinner. There is a buffet so there is some variety but the food is always Chinese. There is cabbage and potatoes everyday for sure, cooked in different ways and then then it depends..chicken, fish, yesterday for example there was also seaweed! Rice is a must! I have always liked rise and I hope I won’t get tired of it after living here :P I have wanted to see how it is to work in a big company where people have punch-cards, there is a real organisational structure and everything runs smoothly. It is quite interesting to see.
Usually after work I don’t go home directly since there is nothing to do around here but I prefer to take the bus to the city center. Some days we meet up for dinner or coffee, or we just go for a walk or to the supermarket (which I find really interesting!) Every Wednesday I study Japanese. Yes Japanese, not Chinese! You might wonder why on earth do I study Japanese in China, but the reason is that my friend Akio has roots in Japan and he teaches Rachel and Jon once a week. I happened to be there once and I liked it so now I keep going. It is a nice language with a logical structure.. not like Chinese.. Chinese seems all Chinese to me! But next week I will hopefully start with Chinese lessons, I think it is enough with sign-language now.
I have also taken up some new habits. First of all I eat with chopsticks! Even though some of my Chinese colleagues prefer to eat with forks (they are more practical they say, of course they are!), I decided to practice my chopstick techniques. I will probably not be able to learn much Chinese while being here but I can at least become a chopstick master! Also since it has been so cold, all Chinese drink hot water which I at first found to be weird but it’s quite ok. They were very worried about me at first when I didn’t have a water boiler to drink hot water at night! The other day I tried a fruit I had never seen before and yesterday I had dumpling soup for breakfast. Soup for breakfast -not my thing, but there are these ladies in the street selling a selection of food for breakfast, it is fun to go maybe once a week.
So this is more or less what’s going on in Tianjin on a daily basis!
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