work

Now that I'm finishing my first week at work, I feel a little bit like sharing what it's like here at MSRA (Microsoft Research Asia...don't think I ever explicitly mentioned that).  It's been really easy to get work done, because all of you are asleep while I'm at work, except for a few hours in the morning, when you're not asleep but you're not chained to your desk and checking email every 5 minutes either.  There's about 300 other interns here (my mom would want a count of the women; my best guess is that it's 20% female) and we're all in one of a few areas scattered about the office.  Intern factory.  Pretty much all Chinese, except for a guy I met from Luxembourg and then two Koreans.  It's always really quiet in here, testament to the fact that they don't really chat with each other.  They use MSN for online chatting, but I don't think they do too much of that either.  Maybe a little, but not that much.  Everybody stays really late (like, 10 PM...); I definitely don't think anyone has any other activities besides work and things you can do in the break room (ping pong....unfortunately I've yet to see someone hold the paddle Chinese style..., pool, foosball, massage chairs...).  So anyway, yeah, you're gonna get a lot more done if you never have any reason to leave.  Ever.  So yes, they work pretty hard here....the stereotype is true....

 

I did hear that people sometimes plug in an Xbox to the conference room plasmas.  I think I remember some people doing that at UCSB or Princeton....engineers, some things never change.  Such as the nerd factor.

 

On another random note: I considered pulling my "I don't understand" card again last night (a la Apple Store in Tianjin) when the hotel told me they were changing my room and I was going to have to move and get a roommate.  I was just going to ignore the phone call and act like I didn't know what they were talking about.  I thought that would only work for a day though, so I ended up going down, putting on a sad face, and they let me keep my room.  Score.