My roomate arrived Sunday night. He's very hard to understand. After fighting through the language barrier I found that he's probably a pretty smart guy. He's a professor a Chinese school with his PhD in robotic vision. Intense -> thastuff's hardcore. He said that he'll be working on a mobile device with 3D input sensors (like Microsoft's Project Natal, guaranteed to be the most ridiculously paradigm-shifting technology you'll see come out this year) and laser projection. Kind of like mobile + Project Natal + Microsoft Surface + projector. He'll only be staying in the room for a couple more days before he moves out, so this blip of a story can now fade away.
And to my first day of work:
Clothes, leave, wake up, nice hot shower, eat... in some other particular order... take an leisurely stroll 2mins down the road and I'm at my work building (thas awesome). Head up a few floors, see a few Western faces, and meet the HR onboarder. I sit down and sign some documents.
"I will not be stupid. If Microsoft doesn't like me they can fire me. If I don't like Microsoft I can leave. I will not reveal Microsoft secrets. I will not use Microsoft property improperly. I will not work anywhere except Microsoft for the next 5 years. Every thought I have for the next 3 months is Microsoft property. All your exist are belong to us."
Done all that junk. I signed it in China, so it doesn't count anyways :P. HR person introduces me to my mentor/manager. He's a kool guy. A Canadian and Waterloo grad. I couldn't ask for much more. Standard small talk beginning. Standard explanation of what's up with the team, what I'm going to do for the next 3 months. Standard introduction to a ton of people whose names I will never remember. And I'm deposited at my desk. Everyone's in cubes, and it looks like a good work environment. I'm in one with 4 other interns (of the 4-500 here - what!?) who've been here between -ve 5mins to ~2years. I look at my computer and... desktop, not laptop. That doesn't make me happy. That means I'll be writing notes in a notebook, not OneNote; I'll be unable to browse social networks when a meeting becomes irrelevant; I'll be traversing the office as dumb meat instead of a formidable man-machine team; thasux.
There are security guards at every floor (at least 2 per floor x ~5-8 floors). You're not allowed any outside electronic in (laptops, usb keys, cameras, etc.). I guess there have been some ip leaks... All internet traffic is closely monitored, BUT we can access any website (here, Microsoft uses a Japanese proxy: they get their internet through Japan instead of China). Everything is blocked in China: facebook, twitter, this blogging site because the websites refuse to filter the content when users from China access it (reasonable arguments from both sides). Regardless, the sly megacorporation gets past the law.
A small side-story: I randomly met this caucasian american guy in a police station. He's been teaching English in China for the last 7 months, and started right after he finished college. He's now starting an English teaching business (that's pretty amazing). Apparently he still barely knows any Mandarin... not looking good for my prospects of becoming fluent... and the police station thing was because I got arrested...
More to come!
-dough
p.s. just kidding about getting arrested - I was filling out residency paperwork. That paragraph didn't seem interesting enough.