I know I am going to say this every week and as is everyone else but I really cannot believe I am now going into my 4th week here at IBM in Shenzhen. It's been another busy week both in and out of the office and a lot of fun too!

Now that I am getting to grips with what is actually going on in the office I have taken on responsibility for the daily reporting of two of the four inventory sectors to the senior managers. I have to prepare the reports then analyse them, finding root causes for any adverse fluctuations. This can be quite a challenge with the language barrier because I have to speak to different people who work on the factory site here in Shenzhen and sometimes they are not so hot with their english. My colleagues have been a great help here, and one way or another we manage to communicate the right message. I find it amazing the things we can come up with in order to communicate when there is no common langauge - it can be quite funny sometimes. Right now is coming up for the end of month which is a busy time in manufacturing so it is all go right now! I had a one on one with my mentor Effie on Tuesday and we have come up with a few ideas for projects that I could get up and running come the beginning of August when normality returns. IBM manufactures the servers on three different sites; Shenzhen, Dublin and Rochester, and in terms of communicating with these sites, I have a language advantage compared to the locals here who can sometimes struggle to keep up with the conversations, especially in conference calls. I am going to be getting involved with these two sites, perhaps setting up a few conference calls and discussing the problems we are facing here in Shenzhen and seeing if Dublin and Rochester have implemented any ideas that could be of help to us here in China. I'm quite looking forward to that and hopefully I can bring in some new ideas from these sites. Inventory is a bit of a lose lose situation sometimes. Revenue will always be number one priority, sometimes at the expense of inventory control and yet it is still vital to keep control of inventory levels. It is definitely a challenging role here, but I am really enjoying it.

One of the managers from another department had asked me if I would give a presentation to his team about Scotland and about the different places I had travelled to. I was thrilled to be asked so I turned up in the conference room, powerpoint at the ready to be greeted by about 50 people - with all eyes on me. It was actually really good fun, I spoke for about 40 mins and after it I answered questions for another 40 mins. I showed them a photo of me in a kilt - the first question was "Why are you wearing a skirt?" which was then closely followed by, "Is it true you don't wear any underwear under the kilt?" They were also very curious about my family, I showed them a photo of me with my two brothers and sister. In China, having more than one child for most people is against the law - they have very strict regulations in place because of the population levels, so my situation is practically unheard of. It was really good fun though, and afterwards the team invited me to a really nice sushi restaurant to have lunch with them which was fantastic. I have experienced so many different foods here already - I love getting in there and trying the local stuff and I find that doing that helps you earn the respect of the locals.

Outside of the office, there has been a lot of badminton and on Friday night I headed out with three of the managers to one of the bars down by the waterfront which was good fun too. Over the weekend I have been out and about exploring the 'touristy' places, but Shenzhen is not really a tourist destination so they are few and far between. Today I went to a place called Lao Jie which is a market - almost like the barras only Chinese style - and I was amazed at the kind of things you could buy. Everything was fake of course - they sell fake i-phones for around £50, fake bags, fake watches, fake anything! It was an interesting day. Afterwards I came home and relaxed by the pool - just the way a Sunday should be!

Anyway, I have to go iron some clothes for tomorrow, and then it's bed time, so until my next blog...

Have a good week everyone!