ESP team held a team building event to welcome the interns, actually just for the product marketing interns. We headed to play Bocce Ball in the morning and enjoyed our lunch there. It was a pretty fun place and it was also my first time to play Bocce Ball! It was also a great place to play with teammate and know more people in the group. I already schedule lunch time with a new guy I met today.

When we backed to office, it was almost 2pm. I even forgot about what I did in the afternoon…I think I just checked some email, sent some email, schedule the time for lunch, and read some customer reference about the product.

Dinner with a friend, who just moved to Bay Area this month after her husband transferred from China to U.S. Actually we haven’t meet for almost  four years since last time we met at Shanghai. It’s cool to re-connect people in a new environment.

Almost two week….maybe need to speed up the project….haven’t done any customer/partner/ interview yet.

Drive to another Sunnyvale office today to attend the “Welcome Intern Event”. It looked like just gather all the interns at Sunnyvale office and gave a brief introduction about the company. It’s not bad, but I think they could do much better. The meeting was scheduled for 2 hours but it turned out to be just 45 minutes. There was not too much content from the presentation.

Back to office and had a call with the Service Marketing manager in Atalanta, just want to catch up and introduce myself, and different people within the organization. She was pretty nice and shared with me some information, even help connect with the Head of the Service team JPA in HK.

Lunched withe Anderson alumni at Mountain View. A nice place for lunch and happy conversation!

In the afternoon, I just send a email to my manager and requested a mentor! And…I got One and will had lunch with him! Actually already talked with him, and found him pretty good to be a mentor. One of the best candidate in my mind.

I also talked with another product marketing manager in the group. He also gave me a whiteboard presentation,  and shared with me his personal blog about product management and marketing, etc.

Went to play basketball after work for almost 2 hours. Really enjoyed today!!!

But I am a little behind my project, for the past week and this week, I spent most of my time talking to different people and started to reach out people in China and collect some information.

While if I do want to do something, actually there are still lots things that I can do in the ten weeks….just need lots time…10 weeks really go too fast..

In the morning,

Meeting with two product marketing managers for two different product at the ESP group. Both of them give me a good introduction and discussion about the product and the marketing from a product marketing manager perspective.

One product marketing manager even gave a whiteboard presentation about the product, what problem the product address for each step. It really helped me a lot understand the product. Very cool! One product marketing manager sent me a email to provide me lots of information about the product in a very organized way…I can felt, at least, he spent some time sending me the email.

In the noon, we have a group meeting with the digital marketing team for almost 2 hours, it’s their quarterly review meeting, and go through every piece of the digital marketing during the past quarter.

In the afternoon, I attended the scheduled meeting with the Global Head of Product Management and Operation of one product. It’s one of the best things you can do when you do you internship at the headquarter in U.S. You can reach out to people in high level and talk with them, and learn from them. Those people they don’t refuse to talk to you if they have the time.

After work, I went to the Gym nearby and worked out for almost 1.5 hours in the gym and then grabbed some Chinese food on may way back home.

At 8pm, it was almost close to sunset, I drove with my roommate to enjoy the sunset. It turned out that I didn’t choose a good place for the sunset. I will find a good place for sunset this week.

I can not believe that it almost took me 1 hour and 20 minute to get to office today!!! The 101 traffic in the rush hour really sucks…..

Today, I started to reach out to ESP people at HP, and almost spent the whole morning scheduling the meeting with them, both for onsite meeting and phone meeting. It’s all about network but also need to talk to people in the organization to better understand the product and the business. Much better than just spending several hours learning the products by myself.

I scheduled about 8 meetings with people from different product, functions and locations, including product marketing, solution marketing and product management.

I feel so great that almost everyone accpet the meeting and would love to talk with me.

6:20 Get up….so early….

6:35 left home

7:05 arrived at Sunnyvale office….it was too early to get into traffic…..

7:30-9:00 All Hands Meeting

11:00-11:30 Meeting with Eric, got his ideas and expectation about my summer project.

Most people didn’t come to office at Friday….the work efficiency at Friday was low…..

Drove to St.Jone with Dan to meet with another two guys.

Drove to have Chinese food with roommate and their friends.

Played card at home till 12:00…

Welcome to the 1st weekend!

There are different things I could do for weekend, but still haven’t decided which one I want to do…..

Traffic is so bad everyday……it took me 1 hour to get to Sunnyvale office. I have to deal with traffic for 10 weeks…..need to get up so early everyday.

Today, I spent most of my time looking at the Gartner Magic Quadrants report, and try to understand the market, competitive landscape for each ESP product.  Frankly speaking, I still haven’t figure out what exactly those products, and their functions. I may need to spend more time on the product knowledge before I start to call customer and get some filed information about the product,channel and the market.

I felt a little noisy today as we five interns sat at the same meeting room and will stay at the same room for the whole 10 weeks. People would listen to music, talk to each other.Sometimes I just can not pay attention on the document I was reading when people were chatting around me.

The good news was I went to play basketball in the gym. It was my first time to play basketball since I came to U.S. Yup…before that..I played a little while after the 1st year played with 2nd year students at spring quarter.…..

Tomorrow I need to get up almost at 6am and leave around 6:30 and arrive before 7:30 to attend the all hands meeting.

So early……feel tired….

Need to find time everyday to write something down, otherwise I would totally forgot, even it just happened yesterday. When I looked at my calendar and found that it was blank yesterday, I found myself hard to remember what I did at that time, but I am quite sure, at least, I didn’t just waste my time at the office. I should do something during that 8 hours.

W1D2:

– I had a conversation with Max, another guy who interned at Strategy team, and he would also cover the China market.  Need to align with each other.

– Arrange the meetings for W1D3.

-Satiya introduce me to two people in the company.

– Talked with Eric to schedule the time to talk this week.

W1D3:

It’s a quite long day today and felt tired after the last meeting.

Get rid of my bed at 6:30 and left home at 7:00. It took me almost 1 hour from north San Jose to Palo Alto office, but I didn’t blame the traffic or the time I spent on the way. It turned out that most time when I drove on the highway to office, I would think about lots of things, not only for work, but also would thinks about the things happened to me during the past year. At least, during the past three morning, those things rushed into my mind and just could stop thinking. Good things and bad things, especially things that I could do better or things or people I should forget, for my own sake.

Arrive at the parking lot at 8:00 and met my boss there. Charles, another MBA intern guy from Haas also join us a couple of minutes later. Dan guided me around the main building and the Executive Brief  Center, and told us the story about the tree inside the EBC center. The Palo Alto government asked the company to make sure the tree would be alive in the future before the company built those office building and the EBC. It turned out that the company spent more than 1m dollar for the tree and even now, there are people would take care of the tree regularly.  Why? Because the tree was planted by the one of the founder of the company.

At 9:00,Dan started to give the presentation to the customer in meeting room 3. He is a cool guy and graduated from Haas. I think he is good at public speaking, and how to engage his audience when he presented. Something I need to learn and improve.

Right after the meeting, I met with Kaye. She is now a MBA intern at HR team. Satiya introduced her to me as both of them are in MAP program. She was nice and warm, we had a nice conversation during the coffee time. 

Then I met Adeline. I just met her when I visited Kaye. Adeline was at her 2nd rotation location at her HR MAP program after he graduated from Tsinghua MBA program in China. We had lunch together at Palo Alto office, and it was so nice to know more people in the company.

I am always happy to know more people.Need to make a plan to know more related people in the company. Alumni first, maybe.

Back to Sunnyvale office at almost 1:30.

Have a meeting with Strategy team from 2:00-2:30. Dan, Manoj, Max and I just went through our own plan about what we will cover in our China market for the coming summer project. The meeting was quite brief, so we just make some main points and split between Max an I. 

Actually it was a little below my expectation. Maybe I need to figure out the detailed plan and what I should do step by step by myself. As I know, it seems that no one in the market team have deep into this before. So need to do lots of home work later after I made the plan.

Back home a little earlier than yesterday, but it still too late to avoid the traffic.

At 7:00PM, conduct a meeting with Steve, GM in China.

Well….I planed to hold a private meeting just with Steve,so we could talk about business in China and also get some feedback about what I could do for the project.  But there were too many people join the meeting. It seemed a business review meeting for Steve. Sorry for that.

The meeting ended at 7:40 as scheduled and I didn’t have any chance to talk with Steve and even the project we will do for China. Sometimes, you just couldn’t know what would come out for a meeting with people from different department.

Right after the meeting, I get the message from Steve, asking me to call him.

Cool! Then we continue the conversation and talked a little while on phone.

He is much busier now, as he also took over South Asia now.

Now I have a general idea about what I should do for my summer project, but still need some time to make a plan. A plan that would be more practical and actionable.

That’s the next step.

Technically, it’s the first day not only for my MBA summer internship, but also in my whole academic and professional experience. Yes…you may wonder…but it’s true…I didn’t do a very formal internship in my college…sound weird..as I guess everyone or at least most of the students would do a formal internship.

I slept very well although it was the first night after I moved in…yup…I just moved to the house at San Jose yesterday afternoon.

Get up early, some time around 7:20. Put on my suit again. Dress code…business casual…so I left my tie.

Make the breakfast for myself…cooked an egg, got orange juice…a nice morning…actually I haven’t cooked for almost half year. Well…I have to say….I made a pretty good breakfast…mixed with egg, bacon, cheese and vegetables.

Set off on the high way in my car, more than a little traffic……it almost took me 45 minute to get to the office in Sunnyvale…I made a wrong turn when I try to turn into another high way…there are too much turns for the route I chose today.

Took a photo and got my badge at the main lobby and then went to the ESP product marketing floor with my manager. We have 5 interns for the team and would stay in a room for the coming 10 weeks. I was the last intern to be onboard.

A brief introduction to everyone in the team when we walked to the “Intern Room”, actually I almost forget all of them just  10 minutes later as we just said a “hi” or “hello” to each other. Maybe I will find some time to introduce myself to them one by one in the coming weeks and get t know them better. Be ready to proactively reach out to people, don’t be afraid to be refused.

Get my PC, bag, mouse, pen, book….such a familiar feeling when I got the computer bag. Later try to set up most of the accounts.

Get my I-94 check done. Checked!

Apply the gym membership..but not sure how much time I would spend there.

Talked with hiring manager about the project I would do in the summer and send several follow-up emails. Right before ending the first day, just talked with another intern from cross team( Strategy).

Not bad for the first day.

Need to quickly set up everything and figure out what I could do in the summer.

Let’s see what would happen for the next ten weeks!

上辈子估计是游牧民族的…只有精简的家当想搬就搬无压力…为了避免给任何潜在的坏人趁我不在敲坏车窗的动力以及自己旅行回来打开引擎说走就走的痛快…我完成了一桩壮举…把所有东西..衣服鞋子箱子锅碗瓢盆电饭煲各种佐料面条零食垃圾箱衣架被子被套以及各种杂物神奇的整进了Corolla的后备箱连后座都木占用任何空间..哦…对了…扫帚太长我放后座了…原来…青春不仅仅是一场说走就走的旅行…青春是一次想挪就挪的搬家…看着空如第一天刚搬进来的房间….方才对第一年匆匆结束有些感触…附一张二年级告别MBA的方式..那些覆在台阶的名字里多少看着透些不舍…..而生活总是如此…离别才是永恒的….

第一年就这么匆匆而过了…..其实自己有很多地方需要反思和改进的….有很多做的不够好的地方…没有尽情的投入在里面…总感觉依然还是有些距离…

如果是尽情的拥抱

你会感受到那份热切

和不顾一切的

勇敢

那些留在台阶上的名字…即将一个个奔赴远方…一场匆匆的聚会后…或许便消失在各自的生活中

我很好奇自己竟然没有扔掉第一天钥匙的小纸袋..一晃快一年过去了..我也结束了一年级的生活…

今天最后一门在教室的section 考试.. OB.. 开考前section c同学在教室门口合影..此后要四个月后估计再会聚在一起….一直感觉很庆幸自己能够在这样一个有爱的Section, 连其他section的同学说起我们都是有爱团结经常一起玩等..我感觉自己还是可以更多的参加活动多喝section的同学建立更好的友谊…fall quarter的时候比较积极活跃后…winter和spring由于个人原因并没有太多太积极的参加很多活动..而很多人的名字我现在还叫不出…真是太不应该了…

上周末给二年级的欢送晚餐….不知道下一次见到学长学姐们都是何年马月了.

这两天和不同的朋友聊天，都不约而同的谈到了同一个问题.

一个是国内的朋友，问我以后的打算。问我以后大方向：地点+行业的选择. 我说四种选择里一种对我来说最容易，一种最难，其他两个都是一种trade off.

一个是小学同学，目前在德国还在读他的博士，前几天回国才有我微信，在他荷兰转机途中闲聊.  我说，回不回国这个问题，在我们选择出来的时候，就注定会始终存在了。即使将来留或者回，这个问题会一直伴随着我们.  不过他也说的对，有选择比没得选总是要好一些. 而且这段在外生活本身已经给我们带来了很多。让自己了解不一样的世界。

大约是很多人的想法吧.

想给自己创造更好的环境，

充满更多机会和选择的环境。

只不过从一个熟悉到骨子里的母体离开

到一个遥远而陌生国家历练

最后是否想要留在异域国度

或许是每个人都会有自己的答案

试看我明年

何去何从