My Presentation

I gave my presentation few days ago, last Monday 22nd August. It went really well and I enjoyed it especially because I was speaking of both Lebanon and UAE as they both are major in my life.

Lebanon and UAE - Youssef in China 2011

(click to download the presentation directly - 12.3MB)

Four new members joined my team which makes us 10 (including myself). My team members are relatively younger (21-28 years) than Saeed's teammates and their curiosity in asking questions was clearly different.  My teammates asked more about touristic places and costs of visiting Burj Khalifa or Burj al Arab and so forth. When I told them it would cost around 400 Dhs (approx. 700Yuans) to get into Burj Khalifa they had wide-open eyes and said "Youssef give us this presentation and it is more than enough to enjoy looking at the pictures!!" This is because 700 Yuans in China is a big deal of money. We actually as foreign interns earn 1860Yuans a month, and the entree level Chinese employees earn about 3000-4000 Yuan. So you could imagine their response. They loved the nature of Lebanon and that we can go around the whole country in less than 5 hours! They also asked questions like:

• Shouldn't women also cover their face in UAE?
• How can we live in the extremely grilling weather!

When I was presenting, the electricity in the room got cut off and the charger of my laptop stopped working. Luckily we are in China; the next day we went with Saeed's team, who are always helping us in everything especially Ms. Li, and I got the same charger for 40Yuans (around 22 Dhs)!! Of course its Chinese and of low quality but it would serve for some time! Getting 10 of these chargers is still cheaper than getting an original one for more than 200 Dhs.

Saeed did not have the chance to present his powerpoint presentation because the projector was not working so he got the chance of improvising on the whiteboard! It was really good and the team was so big and so interested that they asked for more than an hour.

Saeed's team asked more serious questions like:

• Are men and women paid equally
• How are weddings celebrated
• What is the average income in UAE
• What ages do couples get married

Overall, although we had to show most of the presentation on the laptop screen since the electricity in the room was getting cut, giving the presentation was delightful and was a perfect chance for practicing in front of a distinct new audience.

Work - Part 1

As I mentioned earlier, I work as a research assistant in R&D at Wanhua’s Polyurethanes Company. The R&D is relatively new, it opened around 1.5-2 years ago. There are around 17 research teams, each team consisting of around 4 to 20 people. To simplify the companies work, Production of Polyurethanes (abbreviated PU) follows the basic reaction formula:

Polyols  + Di-isocyanate  + catalyst = Polyurethanes

Di-isocyanate is almost invariant in all PU production. What varies considerably and what dictates the characteristics or the produced PU is the starting ‘polyol’. This is because polyols exist in limitless variations. A polyol is the starting basic polymer. Some examples are polyols derived from polyether or polyester, and infinitely other combinations can exist.

Some research teams are:

• Polyols team – 5 people (I am working with this team which makes us 6)
• Analysis team – 12 people (Saeed’s Team)
• Catalysis Team
• Coatings Team
• Product Quality team

The polyols team tries synthesizing new raw polyols.

The analysis team takes material from different teams and applies instrumental analysis mainly.

The company cares about the environment and safety and has a separate department for this cause called “Department of Health Safety and Environmental Protection”. They talk a lot about these issues but they do not really practice what they preach. They actually had a day-long conference about safety and we took that day off since we do not understand Chinese! They often spill chemicals on floors, leave chemical bottles open (sometimes toxic chemicals) and drain chemical waste. The smell in some parts of the company is bad. They are still better than other companies in China. But worth to mention, the cleanliness of our labs in AUS is way better than at the company here. Fortunately, they give us the right “protection gear”. So maybe their philosophy of health and safety lies within the protection gear not within the safe practice. So far I broke a 1Liter round-bottomed flask which is around 200$ (around a month worth of salary) but gratefully they said “Don’t worry, most important is your safety”.  So I can break stuff without worrying about paying back.

The protection gear set includes a uniform, durable shoes, gloves, eyeglasses, and most interestingly the gas mask which I never saw at AUS.

Gas Mask

Wanhua the Company

The company I work at is ‘Yantai Wanhua Polyurethanes Company Limited’. Yantai is the city where ‘Wanhua’ the company based (and where I am living).  There is no actual meaning for the word Wanhua. It is just a name.

This company comes from the bigger mother corporation named ‘Wanhua Group’ which is a group of many related companies such as energy, leather and other chemical production companie. The group also operates a school and a hotel. Wanhua Group is one of China’s biggest and most respected professional industrial groups (but, they did not seem to have the professionalism as what international companies posses, yet they are trying their best to reach and compete with international organizations).

A street within the company. Full of greenery and pleasant weather. Only few hot days

In Yantai Wanhua Polyurethanes, I am working as a research assistant in the research and development department (R&D). I will write another post related to my work and team sometime soon.

The major product of the company I am working at is polyurethanes, which is a material from the polymers family. Polyurethanes turned to be commonly available in our daily lives more than I expected. It if found in the following:

1. Sofa and furniture cushions
2. Automobiles steering (the leather-like handle)
3. Automobile dashboards
4. Shoe soles
5. Insulators (eg: in fridges or ovens)
6. Coatings and paint
7. Synthetic rubbers

And many more...

 (If you like to know more about the company check the links)

• Wanhua Group
• Yantai Wanhua Polyurethanes

I will also write more posts about what is nice and what is not about the company and the work environment to share the internship experience. I really wish if anybody of our AUS batch reads this or any later posts related to internships, to share the internship experience even if so briefly.

Plant inside the Company. Just a very tiny bit of the whole plant

Barrels of Chemicals

The Opportunity in China

First of all, I like to recall how the opportunity to come to China began. It is all about doing the internship abroad. IAESTE was one of the options for acquiring an internship, although it was not guaranteed. They called me one day and said that there is an offer to Australia, but then it turned out that UAE resident students cannot take this offer because they had to stay in Australia for more than 6 months, which means my UAE residency will expire and I would not be able to get back. At that time there was not any other offer than the Australian and I thought that IAESTE is no longer an option.  Until few days later, Ms. Rana calls me from IAESTE and eagerly offers me an opportunity in China and said that this was the only available. The first impression was “why China? I want Australia, Europe, USA, Canada…simply a western modern country to enjoy and gain experience from.” But surely I could not say no to the only offer that allows me to travel abroad although, initially, I was not feeling enthusiastic about it. When I gave out the yes to China, I had to give a no to Petrofac’s offer in Sharjah that would have possibly guaranteed me a full-time job after I graduate. This is because I thought, and others have also advised especially Ali my brother, that traveling abroad would be a more fulfilling and rewarding experience than staying in the same place that I have always been; that going to a new part of the world will widen my scope of experience in life and would actually open up more chances when I get back to UAE.

At that time, I had perceived China to be an East Asian country seeking development, a country from which all the world imports its Chinese “cheap” products. As a word itself, “cheap” actually primed in my subconscious mind that China as a country would also be characterized as such - cheap. Eventually, after reading and actually coming here, I realized that China turned out to be utilizing the word “cheap” to be able to develop itself to the highest standards, when many other countries still do not even think of being productive.

I do not want to make the first post longer so it would not get boring from the beginning! But soon I will keep on sharing all about what makes China’s experience unique. There are a lot of positives and yet many negatives, but in the end, it all includes priceless, interesting and joyful experiences  that one can only obtain by gaining real-life exposure to the country that is expected to be the world’s largest and strongest economy in the coming few decades.