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.

Suiza is a way shorter name than Switzerland

Heyy…. Guess what! I really am going to write all about Switzerland, unlike the catching up I promised to do with Semana Santa. Because basically, Switerland was great. I mean, I really loved the place. In fact, all throughout my visit I’ve had fleeting notions of learning German, so that I could come back and really enjoy it. Or I could learn French. Or Italian. Depending on where in Switzerland I wanted to go. Or… I could just find someone to go with, that might be easier for the time being.

Haha, anyway. So like I said, I spent most of the near Zürich. Monday night, on the way home from work, I overheard some people on the bus saying there was some kind of festival going on in town that evening. I was originally going to go running and then go to bed early, but the festival supposedly involved fire and whatnot, so I quickly changed my mind. It turns out that the festival was an annual celebration of spring, which forecasts the upcoming summer much like our Groundhog Day foretells the type of spring we’ll have. But their prediction method involved putting explosives in the head of a Böorg—a giant snowman-like structure—lighting the bottom, and waiting for the head to explode. If it takes a long time for the head to explode, it’s going to be a rainy summer; a quick destruction signifies a nice season. Unfortunately for Switzerland, it took a while. I missed the explosion itself, since the lighting was at 6 and I got there around 7:15, but it was still burning and there streets were teeming with drunk people. Hooray, Monday!

Tuesday through Thursday were fairly calm. Tuesday I went to Zurich again for the Toastmasters dinner I mentioned, but Wednesday and Thursday I decided to relax and stayed in Horgen. Friday, though, I hopped on a morning train to Geneva for the INDEX 2008 Nonwovens Convention. Um… I don’t really know how to explain to you all what exactly that is, but long story short, it was for work. Geneva is clear across Switzerland, practically in France, but it was still only 3 hours and change to get there. And the Swiss train system is AWESOME. Super-timely, super-easy to get around, and the best part is in the Zurich main station, the boards change their listings by flipping various cards around!! It’s so cool!! Check it out:

It reminds me of something from Harry Potter, actually, but I don’t know if that’s actually in one of the films. Maybe they do it in other parts of Europe too, and that’s why it’s in a HP movie. Who knows. But yeah, you can get almost anywhere by train from Switzerland. Ugh, sometimes it is a little frustrating how disconnected Spain is from the rest of Europe.

Anyway, so the convention went well, I had a meeting with another company that we’re going to be working with and it looks like I’m going to be traveling to England for work in mid-May! Woo woo! I’ll try to stay for a weekend too, maybe hit up London or some other sights if possible. But I gotta remember to look right when crossing the streets… Moving on, it turned out that a bunch of people I knew from my time in Freeport were also at the conference, and they weren’t flying out until the morning, so after the day ended we made plans to go out to dinner together. We took the bus back to their hotel and agreed to meet back in the lobby at 6:30, but it was just past 4:30 at that point so I asked the front desk for a map and headed out for some wandering. I walked basically for those two hours without stopping, but I still got the feeling that I barely covered any ground. Geneva is a beautiful city. Completely different than Zürich, and it wasn’t just that the signs were all in French. I don’t quite know how to describe it. It’s very diverse. You get that impression right away. When I mentioned this to a colleague, she pointed out to me that Geneva is the home of the UN, but still. In Spain, you walk around and feel like you’re in Spain. In Scotland, everything felt very British, and even Zurich, with many more different cultural establishments, felt very Alpine. But in Geneva, I just kind of felt like I was in the gorgeous European city, not set in any particular place. Stores, restaurants, everything—you’d walk down a street and see things from every corner of the world. I definitely want to make some time to come back.

So 6:30 rolled around and we headed out for dinner. We went to this nice restaurant in the old part of Geneva; I wouldn’t pin it to any particular country or style, just nice. And we took full advantage of it. So Switzerland is pretty expensive, and it’s hard to find any real meal for less than 20 Swiss Francs (1 SF = $1 = 0.67 €, thereabouts). And even though I’m getting reimbursed for all my meals, as an intern and by far the youngest in the office, I’ve been trying to watch what I spend a little bit, not scrimping but not doing multi-course meals. But on Friday, maybe because it was everyone’s last day, or maybe they had been doing it all along, we definitely treated ourselves. A bottle of the wine of the month for the table (an excellent Chianti), a warm goat cheese salad to start, veal saltimbocca as a main course, all capped off with a dried fig and apricot crumble. YUMZORS. I was a happy camper when I finally plopped down in my seat on the train back to Zürich, and promptly fell asleep.

There's me in Geneva. If anyone has been there, maybe you can tell me where I was.

The narration continues (and ends) with yesterday, Saturday. After a run and my last magnificent breakfast, I checked out but left my stuff at the front desk to wander around Horgen for a bit. After a week of grayish weather, yesterday was a gorgeous day. I walked down to the lake, checked out a small historical museum that had a model railroad exhibit at the top, and then headed out for some wanderings around Horgen.

After that, I did some “grocery shopping,” aka dropped probably over 30 € on chocolate and cheese. C’mon… you’d do it too! Anyway, I’m saving at least two chocolate bars and one chunk of cheese for various visitors and guests from the states. Not that I’m expecting hordes, but I can’t be empty handed. I’m also going to pick up a baguette on the way into work tomorrow and share some of the cheese. Finally, I headed back toward Zürich to make my way to the airport, for a 6:30 p.m. flight. Upon a friend’s recommendation, I took the boat across the lake instead of the train that I had been taking all week. It obviously took longer (45 min vs. 25 or so), but it was well worth it. I love water. In fact, as blasphemous as this might be coming from a Southern Californian, I think I love freshwater more than the ocean. I don’t know, not necessarily freshwater, but water that is not surrounded by more water. I like lakes and rivers because you can see the banks and everything along the banks even if you’re out in the middle of it. Example:

Awesome Swiss town.

Snow-capped mountains to the south.

Approaching Zürich.

And I also love the rhythmic in/out sound that lakes and rivers have, when water laps up against the beaches or the side of a boat and then falls back again. It’s different from the ocean, which sort of makes a continuous incoming sound. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s something I’ve always paid attention to. As a side note, I’m definitely going to take sailing PE or do some sort of habitual sailing when I get back to Boston. As another side note, I’m definitely going back to MIT. It’s official. And I have a lab to work in too. Also, I may want to buy a kayak. Haha. Whatever, the money I’m making now is worth 50% more at home!

Ok ok so quick wrap-up to the day/trip. The boat ride was great, I got to Zurich and walked around the absolutely unaffordable Banhoffstrausse (Train Station Street) for a while, then finally got on the train to the airport. For future reference (for myself or anyone who might benefit), I’m pretty sure you can actually check in for your flight at the train station, and they’ll take your luggage. More evidence of Switzerland’s amazing-ness. But I didn’t figure this out until I was on the train. Oh, but before I got on the train, I did not neglected to take advantage of free milk day:

Yeah there was some campaign to get people to drink milk so they were giving out milk with flavor-straws (when you drink through them you can make your milk into chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry milk, one-time use), as well as some giveaways. I got a key lanyard. It was also apparently free hug day. I didn't get a picture but I did learn that umarmung=hug in German. But that was more grass-roots, I think.

Actually, I’m pretty sure it was just generally “free stuff day” in Zürich, because when I got to the airport there was some sort of promotion (for what? I still don’t know, I guess it wasn’t a very effective ad campaign), and the end result was that I got a free glass of champagne! Which I took around while I browsed through the 800 million shops inside the Zürich airport. I didn't buy anything, although the prices seemed to be about the same as they were in the city. Which means they were ridiculously expensive.

Well, that's all she wrote, I believe. I don't know what my next adventure is going to be, but I'll make it a good one!

More of me babbling

Man, I’m beat. I spent all of this past week in Switzerland for work (Dow’s office is in Horgen, about 20 km from Zürich), and while I’m never going to complain about a free trip to a foreign country, it was somehow super-exhausting. I guess traveling is like that, plus the fact that I wasn’t particularly rested up before leaving, and also I had to wake up a wee bit earlier than usual in order to make time for a sit-down breakfast every morning. Yes, I had to, because the breakfast at the hotel was AMAZING. Crepes, delicious scrambled eggs, pastries, lox, meats, cheeses, and really good yogurt, all every day. Except yesterday, Friday, when I woke up even earlier to catch a 6am train to Geneva for a convention. Too bad breakfast started at 6:30!

Anyhoo, so eventually I might catch up on all the things I did and saw on my trip (ooh, maybe I’ll even write about work! After all, that’s how I got here…), but for now I want to write about one thing in particular. Unfortunately, it’s not a new topic, because I want to write about language again. Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m becoming obsessed. But it’s an easy thing to obsess over, especially abroad. I’ve always wondered about people who, while studying a language, feel compelled to write comments or list quotes in another language in AIM or Facebook profiles or whatever, because it always seemed silly to me, since not everyone would understand it. But now I get it—it’s just that languages are so fun, especially once you really start to get the command of one, that it’s basically a game or a hobby to practice. In fact, the other day I realized that being in a foreign country is a lot like a giant game of Taboo, where every once in a while you don’t know how to say what you want, and you have to get really creative in thinking of ways to get your point across. And I think a lot of you know how much I LOVE playing Taboo, so it’s kind of fun all the time. Little things like having a conversation with a store clerk, or going to the bank (especially one in particular, where the guy loves talking to me and learning about the US, and almost has my name memorized even though I don’t have an account there!), or whatever, are really exciting to me, and even give me a feeling of accomplishment.

But that was actually an aside. What I really wanted to talk about was something that happened in Switzerland. So on Tuesday night, I went into Zürich with a coworker to attend a Toastmaster’s event. (What it was isn’t really important to the story, so you can check out the website if you’re curious.) While I was there, I sat next to an Argentinian woman, who has been living/working in Switzerland for the last 6 years. After working for several American companies, she speaks essentially flawless English, and now that she is married to a Dutchman and living in Switzerland, she has picked up Dutch and Swiss-German as well. Now that’s pretty impressive, but I’m pretty jaded on the multi-lingual thing after working with people at Dow. (That’s a joke, I’m still amazed every day when I go to work with people that can speak 3, 4, 5 languages.)

What really got me thinking, though, was when she started talking about her 2-year-old daughter, and how she speaks to her daughter in Spanish 99% of the time, since no one else her daughter sees speaks Spanish. Imagine that! When she first told me that, my gut reaction was, “well, if she’s living in Switzerland, why does she need to know Spanish?” And of course, she doesn’t, but if she does, there are lots of added side benefits, like being able to communicate when they go visit Argentina (which is apparently every year), or just plain knowing the second-most common language in the world. Of course, there’s also the issue of the Dutch father (who, I gathered, understands Spanish), but they’re solution to that is that he speaks to the kid in Dutch when they’re alone! So… in this little three-person community, the parents speak to each other in English (second-language for both), mom/kid in Spanish, dad/kid in Dutch, and mom/dad/kid/world in Swiss-German. WHAT?! That’s CRAZY. Crazy impressive…

And apparently it’s not totally uncommon in Europe. I guess when countries are closer together (and cheaper to travel between) than some US states, it happens. Because later in the week I was eating dinner in the hotel, and I overhead a dad at the table in front of me speaking to the waitress in German. I didn’t think much of it, but looked up to see a white European dad, an Asian mom, and two kids…but still, nothing new, especially coming from the US. Less than five minutes later, though, I suddenly heard one of the kids speaking in Spanish, with the mom answering! Then, about halfway through dinner, they switched to English for a few sentences, then the whole family went back to German again. Umm… ok? Again… crazy. I definitely want to have a multilingual household when I have my own family. That’s like Taboo times 100! Oh, also, I’ve decided I’m going to start studying another language when I get back to the states. I think I’ve narrowed it down to either Chinese or Vietnamese. Vietnamese for obvious reasons… Chinese only because I studied it when I was younger, so I wouldn’t exactly be starting from ground zero. But I think Vietnamese. BaNgoui would be happy, no?

Addendum (20 Apr): I forgot to mention... חג וסמח/Chag Sameach/Happy Passover! I obviously didn't have a Seder, and I'm not going to manage keeping kosher for Passover this year, but all the same, wishing the best to all those who are celebrating.