Tuesday, May 15, 2001

INTERNSHIP: AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN HONG KONG, CHINA

JOURNAL

Today was my first day at the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. I had quite an experience.

First of all, I must note the weather. I knew that it was going to be humid, but I had no idea that it would be this humid. I don't know what to do with myself because I can't continue to wear a coat everyday or I'll lose 50 pounds by the end of the summer.

With that concluded, I'll continue on about my first day at AmCham. Norman Oie greeted me at 8:30 AM and he proceeded to show me around the offices and tell me where everything is. He also showed me each division of the office and their duties and who was in charge of that division. He explained to me that the office works much like watertight compartments in that every department works independently of the others. Therefore, no one department knows what the others are doing. I thought that to be very interesting. He also had an English accent. Another thing that I noticed was that everything that he handed to me, he did so with two hands. I quickly followed suit and have done this with everyone in the office as a habit now.

He then showed me to where I would be working, which is a little work station just 6 feet from President Frank Martin’s office. This is very interesting in that I can hear almost all of his conversations. Mr. Martin called me into his office and talked to me about what my interests were and about his daughter’s experiences in international business. Apparently his daughter signed on with Andersen Consulting for a large sum of money. Mr. Martin said that a large part of her being hired was the fact that she could speak Mandarin fluently and also had consulting experience.

He told me that he would try to make the experience as interesting as possible. He assigned me my first project of updating the import/export statistics for Hong Kong and America for Southeast Asia. This was not very hard to do, but he has not shown me what exactly he wants me to do. However, I went ahead and got quite a few up to date stats just in case. I will be ready.

Also, for the time being I am working for the membership department and I sent out emails recruiting business people in Hong Kong for membership in AmCham. I then sent out letters to those that didn't have emails. Ioline Martin (Membership Department Director) mentioned to me that she would like me to update the email list for all of the members of the Chamber. This is a huge task, but she said that she would spread this among the three interns to do over the summer. By the way I will be the longest staying intern this summer. This almost makes me wish that I had said two months instead of three. Oh well.

Also, I will be allowed to attend any of the conferences, speaker’s events, or committee meetings of the Chamber of Commerce. They provided me with a calendar of events and committee meetings for this purpose and I am very excited to attend some of those.

Currently, many of the office staff are in Washington D.C. lobbying for China’s accession to the WTO and finding out what the stance of the Bush Administration is on China. Mr. Martin couldn't go because he apparently has stones in his gall bladder and is too sick.

When I got back to the NTT I was completely soaked in sweat from the humidity, which means that I will need to find a way to properly clean my shirts soon and maybe find a dry cleaners for my coats. That is pretty much all there is right now. There are a few other things, but I will add them tomorrow.