Red Brick Buildings

Business trip #2 (and probably also #Last), Thursday and Friday of last week, took me to Leeds, England. It was a much shorter trip, which was fine with me, because hanging out in a hotel alone for a week isn't that fun. But Leeds was very nice. I spent most of my working time on the university campus, which was very pretty. All red brick buildings, all very English. The University of Leeds is actually a huge school, about 32,000 people, I think I was told. And so, much like Boston, the university lifestyle tends to take over the city, and it had a very comfortable atmosphere. In fact, Leeds was a lot like Boston in a lot of ways, in that it was mix of the student crowd and also the very ritzy crowd. The city's main attraction, from what I can gather, is it's shopping, which is divided into three main districts: the Victoria Quarter (super expensive), the Cornwall Exchange (where trendy students pay with Daddy's money) and the Leeds Shopping Plaza (where there are some more normal stores). The exchange rate, even from pounds to Euros, wasn't really working in my favor, so I didn't buy much, but I did pick up some boardshots at T.K. Maxx. (Why it's T.K. Maxx here and not T.J. Maxx, I don't know.)

Of course the reason, I think, that Leeds reminded me of Boston was probably because Boston was built by the British, essentially. It's pretty obvious, I suppose, since the whole area is called "New England," but um.... yeah I guess my point is that it's aptly named. One interesting thing, though, is how much the British mentality is the same as the U.S. mentality (or vice versa?). Apart from the obvious shared language, the British and us are quite similar. Our political leaders have a history together, business is often dealt together, but on a more popular level, there are a lot of parallels. For example, the food. Neither the British nor us have particularly good cultural food, with the exception of breakfast (i.e. brunch, yum!), cookies, muffins, brownies, and the sandwich. And I never thought about these things before I left home, but these things are actually pretty unique to us. Seriously. I made brownies once for some people, and one of the guys I gave one to was like, "Oh, man, these are great! You know, once I lived with this English girl, and she used to make cookies, you know with little bits of chocolate in them, and they were so good!!"

And sandwiches. Man, I love a good sandwich. People at work were once complaining about how in the offices in the Netherlands the food is so boring, how everyone just buys a sandwich, but I think the brilliance of a good sandwich is understated. I mean, there's so much you can do with a sandwich--you can choose your bread, your protein (meat/cold cuts/eggs/cheese), your vegetables or lack thereof, your sauce or dressing, and any other toppings like avocado. Throughout all this, you have to bear in mind whether the combination of all these ingredients is tasty or not, and finally, whether your sandwich should be hot or cold! I mean.... shie-it! A sandwich is a masterpiece! Soo..... the point of all of that is that when it came time for lunch on Thursday, and I asked the people I was working with where would be a good place to eat, I was delighted to have a sandwich shop recommended to me. I went to this place called "The Opposite," which is... surprise.... opposite (!) the university, and had a delightful chevre, red onion and spinach sandwich. And for those of you familiar with South American culture, "chevre" is a type of cheese, apparently, in addition to being Venzuelan for "cool."

I'd also like to point out that while the next day I ate at a different restaurant (a Portugese burger joint), I did go back to The Opposite to buy a brownie, and hooooolyyy crapp!! BEST FRICKING BROWNIE OF MY LIFE! No, seriously. This brownie trumps anything I can remember. Like, maybe there was another amazing brownie in my life, and it was just overshadowed by some grander event, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't. I am honestly going to look up the address of this restaurant, buy a postcard in Tarragona, and write them a letter explaining that I am from the U.S., where the brownie was invented, but I'm pretty sure that their cafe has the best brownie in the whole world. If you're ever in Leeds...

But I digress. Well, I suppose I don't actually digress, because I sort of write about whatever I want. But I started with the intent of writing about the similarities in mentality between us and our historical predecessors, so I'll just quickly work something in. I dunno. We're a lot alike. In Leeds, I saw a lot of organic/free trade/earth friendly/save the world type stuff, that really had a U.S. feel to it. Plus, almost every restaurant had special notes as to what dishes were vegetarian friendly, which I DEFINITELY have not seen in Spain. I mean, I'm sure there these kinds of movements and people all over Europe, and I just haven't seen them since I'm usually pretty caught up in my work, my friends, and just trying to figure out language enough to buy NORMAL things, but it was pretty obvious the moment I got here, and I think these sorts of things take more prominence in British and American culture. The stores are also similar to ones at home (large, have everything, vs. little stores scattered about with very specific wares), and the products are more similar. I dunno. Just an observation. Obviously I have a fairly small sample window: a few cities in Spain, a couple in Switzerland, my trip to Scotland, and Leeds. But I suppose my point is that it's very clear, immediately, that we're very intertwined. Yeah, just thought I'd share. I'll contemplate this more as I get to roam Europe a bit.

And.... here's Leeds!

The university.

Chess in front of the library.

The square by the train station.

My Job

It appears to me that I haven't really written anything about my job. Granted, jobs are typically not as fun as traveling, eating, drinking, and learning a new language, but in reality, it's actually why I'm here, so I'll touch on my work briefly. Plus it's raining pretty hard outside and I'm recovering from a late (but amazingly fun) night last night, so in front of the TV with the computer is pretty much exactly where I want to be right now.

So... explaining what I do is a little tricky because we're trying to develop some new technology that we can hopefully eventually patent, and we have some secrecy agreements, but no one ever really sat me down and explained to me what I can and can't say. And seeing as how I'm a newbie at all of this kind of stuff, and I don't want to mess up, I'm going to err on the side of caution. Basically, though, Dow is a chemical company, but in addition to manufacturing and selling chemicals, they have a very large plastics business. I, personally, work in the basics plastics group, where we make stuff like polypropylene, polyethylene, polycarbonate, and variants thereof. More specifically, I work in TS&D--Technical Services & Development--which is a more customer-facing subgroup of R&D. Within TS&D (yes, lots and lots of hierarchy), I'm in the Films & Fibers group, although my particular project deals only with fibers.

Yup, so, plastic fibers. It's basically an extrusion process. You take your plastic, which comes in little pellets, melt it, and shove it through a die full of really teeny holes, on the order of 10-100 microns. It's like making playdoh spaghetti (actually, it's probably also like making real spaghetti), but way smaller. After you have these fibers, you can do a lot of different things with them, like knit them into cloths (i.e. polyester shirts), or cut the fibers into teeny pieces, lay them into sheets, and tangle them up or melt them together so that they act like cloths, just not woven. Thus, these latter products are called... surprise, surprise... nonwoven fabrics! So that's what I work with, nonwoven fabrics. Specifically, nonwoven fabrics used to make cleaning wipes. It's... well it's not groundbreaking research but it is product development, which is fun for me.

Maybe you're thinking that this doesn't really sound like a job for a mechanical engineer. Yeah... you're a little bit right. We learned a bit about polymers in 2.002 (Mechanics & Materials II) and some in the context of manufacturing/injection molding in 2.008 (Design & Manufacture II), but I pretty much learned everything I know about this subject while at my job. Which is fine, I like learning, but it is frustrating at times because I don't feel like I have the gut sense to make a lot of judgment calls about design choices. And sure, I can ask coworkers for help, which I do a lot, but sometimes I just get the feeling that I'm an information manager, pulling everyone else's knowledge and ideas together without contributing any of my own. Now, I know that's not entirely true, because ultimately I make the decisions, but it's frustrating to be in a situation where I know so little, as opposed to classes where you were presumably taught most of the material that you were eventually tested on. And while I'm confident in myself enough to do the job (at least now, I was a little shy at first), I really still prefer to know what I'm doing and use what I know. Plus, well, I chose to major in Mech. E. because those subjects really interest me, while plastic.... well I know there are people in the world that think it's pretty cool.

In the end, though, I don't actually dislike my job. It's engineering, after all, and I can get excited about that, but my project just doesn't quite spark passion in me. That, and the fact that sometimes my lack of background knowledge leaves me with a lack of foresight and causes me to make some pretty low-level mistakes, frustrates me at times. But I'm making progress, and I think I should be able to still complete most of our project goals before the summer's end. Which would be impressive, considering the 3-4 month delay in starting me work...

And Dow really is a great company to work for. The work environment here is great, the people are friendly and helpful, and I think for the most part, despite a few bureaucratic problems that I think all large companies have, Dow takes care of its employees and they are generally happy. In fact, if I was a ChemE or a materials science major living in Europe, Dow would definitely be one of my top choices to work for. (I specify Europe only because the Dow sites in the US aren't in the most beautiful cities.) For now, though, I'm just going to enjoy the ride, and hopefully make a good contribution.