I really feel settled in now, here in Shenzhen. I'm now in my 5th week and I am very used to my daily routines. My morning taxi journey to work - which in my first week I could probably only describe as the scariest experience of my life - is now very much part of the norm. I am also very accustomed to the 11.30-1.30 nap in the office where all the lights go out and everyone goes to sleep! I have yet to take advantage of this opportunity to sleep during the day - perhaps if you have been out the night before it is not a bad idea at all! From a Scottish mindset, pretty much all of China can seem crazy, but if you are willing to look beyond and delve a little deeper into the culture here, you can really reap the rewards. The locals will really accomodate you if you show them you are keen to try and learn new things and I feel I have scored many points here on this with my colleagues. I am a blackbelt with chopsticks too - often to the surprise of anyone who takes me to dinner!

So in the worklife, it has been a busy week with the month end on Friday - everyone was frantically running around trying to find out if we would meet our targets for July. People were actually relying on information from my reports to assess their performance which was quite cool. In the end, we met our inventory targets for the month so all the managers were very happy. This week I am going to be exchanging ideas with IBM's other sites in Dublin and Rochester on best practice for inventory control. This should involve a few conference calls which I am quite looking forward to and hopefully I can get some ideas for suggestions to bring to IBM Shenzhen. I've been having a lot of 1-1's with the senior managers here which has been really interesting, and I have some more scheduled this week. I've also now given my presentation about Scotland and the differences between Scotland and China to four different teams here in the office and at the moment I have three more to do! Everyone wants a piece of the Scottish guy! I am also getting to spend some time shadowing people from the finance department this week which will be very useful not only to my current role in IBM but also to my degree - being an Accounting and Finance student.

Outside of work I have been to a snooker club this week with some of the guys, tasted traditional Chinese Hotpot which was delicious and been to the tallest building in Shenzhen. On Saturday one of my colleagues invited me to come and see his brand new apartment that he and his wife had just bought and moved into. It was really interesting seeing the inside of a Chinese person's home. The apartments here are tiny and unfortunately for my colleagues, also very expensive. Afterwards 8 of us went to have dinner and then moved on to have some beer and barbecue. Drinking culture is very different in China, in Scotland if I go to a bar with my friends we would normally sit and chat - have a laugh etc. Here is quite different, they don't really do so much chatting - they like to play games with dice, cards etc. It was a good night, and a very different experience to Scotland.

Anyway - lunchtime right now in China so I am off to grab some food.

Adam