Last Class Dinner

A few days before leaving the country, I invited Lab 318 as well as a few other students out for dinner at a nearby restaurant. I had informed the restaurant a few days earlier that I would bring a group of about 30 students so they set aside a few tables and made one long one.


The whole group except for a few people who had to leave early.

We had a really great dinner which, because it was in China, only cost about AUS$100 for the whole meal. Afterwards, we all went to KTV. Eventually I had to go to start packing and so I said goodbye to everyone many times and went forth. On the way home, I went with a friend for a drive around Hangzhou one last time. The driver took us to a temple we had never visited at the edge of the large river to the south of the city.


Blake, Eric, and I at KTV

Milan Furniture From China

The Milan Furniture Festival is quite well known around the world. This year, ZJU became the first school in China to be invited to submit work for it. That being the case, we considered this project to be quite a serious representation of Chinese Industrial Design and its education so we set high goals. Our aim was to design a brand that would work well with both the international concepts of what China is and what China actually is to its people. With this brand we went on to generate a line of products to be displayed.

My role was as a Project Leader. However, I was also heavily involved in the Design Team. As a project leader it was my responsibility to head one of the two project teams. The other was to be lead by some other students and Ying Fantian. I was put on as a team leader because of my international experience and interest in project management. During the project I worked with about 10 people, a few of whom I had not worked with before.


This is a house found in Anji, a village known for its bamboo and used in film "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon." We were inspired by the organic form created with straight members.


Before I was given this project, Ying Fantian made some suggestions about the brand we should form. He suggested that China had a lot to offer in the area of bamboo - especially in certain applications that could not be found in any other countries. He also was of the mind that implementing technology in excess within a product was close to uniquely Chinese. Given this realm of thought, my team and I built a our brand around bamboo technologies and creating products that held elements of design that might be common in western furniture, such as the ones our work would be compared to in Milan, while also using elements of the traditional design of China.

Being associated with bamboo, we decided to create products in two subgroups, grassroots and modern design. For the purpose of a brief this would mean we were to use the same design system and elements to create two relatively different approaches that would appeal to different slices of society, both affected by the western world but nonetheless fundamentally Chinese.


This is one of my concepts inspired by the house seen above.

We were given a 4 x 3 metre exhibition space in Milan and decided to split it to suit our separate product lines. We asked people in the team to offer some concepts for each sector which we would go over in meetings. We would talk about each concept and I would put minutes online. We would then request that people develop the seemingly most successful concepts and come up with some more new ones.

As well as holding regular meetings to create our brand and then demonstrate it with a product line, we also did an amount of research into a few areas. Our prime interest was the innovative use of bamboo, so we contacted a some local establishments associated with this science. We found a few manufacturers as well as a research center that agreed to support our interest. They offered us information on many materials made from bamboo and showed us an extensive sample set that we later used in concepts.

In the end, we presented our work to Ying Fantian after he returned from Australia in January 2007. As I was leaving China a few days later I gave my position to Yao LinNing, one of my classmates. Later I was informed that there was no final submission made to the competition because the lab and manufacturers were understaffed during the New Year holidays.


This is a bowl using carbonized bamboo which ends up being quite similar to a low density ceramic.

This project was an interesting experience for me in a few ways. It was the first large project with very little guidance that I had managed alone. It involved about 10 students in my team and counted for about 1 month continuous work by everyone, although some of the team was only with us for the last two weeks. It was rushed and on occasions a bit stressful but much less so than large projects I had done previously. When I look back on it I think the main reason we were not so anxious is because we were part of a system and we could count on the system. We did not imagine that it would take the place of our work if our work was not good enough, but the system was there working beside us and would take the concepts that we delivered and help us turn them into a finished project. The system was the lab and the fact of a lab manager and a secretary. In this project, they were not commanding us. In a sense, I was commanding the team but I decided to lead a flat team so everyone had an opportunity to contribute interesting ideas. This meant that we could count on one another and we could move together though our individual ideas. We tried to ensure that there would not be subgroups that may disturb our flow but we also tried to use our resources. I found that if we each performed our roles and counted on one another to do so as well we would work very efficiently.

Our output was not perfect but the experience was exhilarating and we all understand each other much better because of it.

Below is a library of images assosiated with the Milan project

Milan Funriture Festival

Robotic Lawn Mower

In connection with our robotic vacuum cleaner project, we worked on a long term project with the same client for a robotic lawn mower. In this project, ZJU was combining a number of its mechanical, electrical, robotic, and design teams with the engineers from the source company. That meant a few things but the biggest effect of working with such a large and specialized team was that our job as designers and thinkers was shown in full light. Sadly, most of the requirements of the finished product were predetermined so we did not get to go though a complete design process to find the consumer needs. Instead, we concentrated more on facilitating the work of the engineering team from an elemental design efficiency standpoint, as well as outward styling and communication with the client and various ZJU teams. In addition, Lab 318 and Lab 127 were providing the modelling as we had a few fulltime CATIA seats on our permanent team.

My role on this project was as a consultant to some of the aspects of the design team from Lab 318. Although I was not directly involved in the design, I aided in the design of algorithms for path finding.

This project is obviously quite large and many months by many people were spent on it so it was not worked on by the design team every day. However, it was really interesting to watch as over the months the product came together into firstly a finished concept, then a prototype and finally go preparation for manufacture. As my involvement was limited to research and some advising on certain aspects, I was not too worried about how things went on the project. Instead, when it was the center of every one's attention, I could watch closely in an effort to understand the subtleties of their immense pipeline and learn more about the Chinese design method.

After watching many meetings, of which I could only understand the drawings and 1 in 100 words, I found that in general their overall method is similar to that which we would discuss at RMIT. That said, their concept methods and development methods seem to be a bit different. For concept work, they would not research first then build a set of parameters and sketch around that idea. Instead, they would guess what they were making and do a lot of concept sketches, then build backwards to get a well designed set of interior workings. In the outward-in process, although they would ship some of the work to engineers, they would continue to work with the engineers quite closely. For this particular product, we used Lab 127 to house the prototyping and development sectors so when the mechanics were being ironed out, this lab contained a few ID people, a few engineers and a few CATIA modelers. They worked one-to-one to build the good practices and effective structural design into the shell that the design team had previously carved out. Once a mechanical system was decided upon, the files were sent off to a prototyping company (the same one I burnt my foot at, in fact) who returned a fully functional frame a week or so later. I do not know much about the early history of the electronic systems for this project, but once we had a base to work on there was a motherboard strapped to it and tests were being run to develop a home friendly and functional robot. As far as I know, this process is still underway.

Upon reflection on my encounter with this project, I think I have now seen a product go from a list of needs on a piece of paper to a nearly consumer-ready, autonomous disk that cuts grass and recharges itself. Details aside, the fact of watching a near complete product pipeline inclusive of virtually every respect of the final outcome was pretty impressive. Despite my small role in this project, I learnt a huge amount about what can be done with design. It seems the value of this education is the communication I can help people have.

Kitchen Sucker

This project was for a subsidiary of FUDA and involved developing and combining a number of technologies they had been working on to create a stove system. The technologies they were trying to showcase included: a rotary exhaust fan system, a light that keeps vegetables fresh, a UV disinfection system for plates and a touch controlled electric stove top designed for the fast cooking styles common in China.

My involvement on this project was as a consultant in various aspects of the development and embodiment of the final outcome as well as in a site visit to inspect design realization and manufacture quality. I was not a core part of this project as it was ongoing from before I arrived and is even now still in refinement.

I think this project is not very interesting which is partly why I was not very involved. However, it is a great example of the differing needs between markets. First and foremost is the lack of an oven, something that very few Chinese households have. The features which were included are also interesting. In China fresh food is very important and often meat will have been killed hours if not minutes before being cooked. They prefer not to refrigerate things if it can be avoided as it is said to change flavor, so things like this LED system are rather important. Similarly everyone is concerned about cleanliness of things that they eat off, there is a zero second policy¹ in China, so a solution like UV plate disinfecting is a key feature. Neither of these things would be included in a western version of this project and of course it would almost certainly have a oven as well.

Another way in which this project had an impact on me was in the prototyping. In the west, we continuously talk about how poor the quality of Chinese manufacturing is, but the reality it is only like this because the western companies push the budgets so low. In fact, the amount of highly skilled labour available in China is disproportionately large in comparison to most western countries and the level of manufacture quality available, if you pay a humane amount, is far higher than most factories in the USA or Australia can offer.

In this project FUDA, our client, was prototyping continuously and often members of the team would go and stay with them for a few days as they prototype-stormed to have a better inclusion of engineering and design with a faster turn around. What was really impressive is that the 2 people doing the prototyping were so fast they could make accurate, functional mock-ups in an afternoon and have production grade prototypes in a day or two. Before going to China, I had never seen quality and speed like this in my life.



¹Derived from the "10 second rule", which states that food that has been dropped on the ground is still safe to consume if you pick it up within 10 seconds of dropping it.

Vacuum Cleaner Project Zero

This project was a long term effort to create a great robotic vacuum cleaner. When I first interacted with Lab 318, the project was in its third revision and almost everyone had worked on some aspect of it at some point. Like our other long term fullscale project, the Robotic Lawn Mower, we did not talk about it every day. Also, because it was it was only a revision, we did not need to redevelop everything from the ground up. As far as I know, the task started as a face lift on the current frame and then some performance improvements were included in the mechanical object and software.

My role on this team was quite small in the grand scheme of things because most of the permenant crew were not English speakers. At first, I worked on some of the early concept work when the face lift was being set out. Later I worked as a consultant using prior knowledge of the end market place as well as knowledge of robotics and algorithm design which would be used to construct more efficient artificial intelligence. Finally, I went to the manufacturing facility in one of the later stints with the company's engineers.

This project was interesting because when I first saw the tell-tale shape of a robotic vacuum cleaner in the lab back in February, I thought that they may have worked on the original product. However, it was not until much later, after working in the same lab as the core team for about 3 weeks, that I was lead to understand that this one was made by another company. The company is FUDA, a long time client of the lab that dominates the vacuum cleaner market in China. Though the form of our robot was not all that different from early birds like the Roomba, it had been completely designed in house and seems not to have been a copy. I think their visual similarity is more likely to be an effort to capitalize on the success of the original.

Despite the mass of work assosiated with this project, it seemed never to really dominate the lab. This may be because our deadline was distant because there was a version already in the market but its effect on the working method was quite noticeable. It was hardly talked about until it was on the verge of completion, at which point we had a press conference with a number of local news companies.

As you may imagine, the team for a project like this is quite large. However, the industrial design group's connection was always very strong. At the moment, for instance, this project is in the hands of electrical engineers in Lab 127 for refinement of the motherboard, but they answer to the design team back in Lab 318 who are in charge of the human interaction so involvement is as high as ever.

Designing Interactions and Bill Moggridge

When we visited IDEO they had mentioned that there would be a book opening for Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge and that they would be going. We were very interested for obvious reasons so we went up to Shanghai again to attend this even as well as view a Design Korea exhibition.

We caught quite an early train to Shanghai and spent all morning looking at Korean design companies that were interested in providing work to the Chinese market. There was also a lot of student work some of which was breathtaking and quite a bit of other technology related stuff being put on display. It was quite a nice event and it included a few of the big companies like Momo Designs and Samsung. After this, we went shopping in Shanghai for a bit and then had lunch at a rare western restaurant. Then we walked for about 2 hours to the place the book opening was to be held. It was a small gallery and studio used by a local design and art group.


Some of the robots from the Design Korea Show

The talk by Bill Morggridge introducing the book was quite interesting and we got to meet up with a lot of the people we knew from IDEO from our previous visit. One of our team won a copy of the book. At one point, I was introduced to Bill but I didn't really know much about his work at the time so I did not talk to him for long.

The event was quite interesting and when we finally left we caught a slow train home that got in to Hangzhou at about 2 am.

In retrospect I obviously should have had some thing with more impact prepared for my interaction with Bill. He was kind and easy to talk to but I had been too busy to do any background research on him so we just talked about immediate things. I was not astounded by this man.

IDEO WEDO UDEO

After having returned from my summer holiday and then getting settled in the lab, people had started talking about changes that may occur and developments of the lab which may cause it to become more innovative. As I have discussed, a lot of it's work up until this point was more like that of a classic design consultancy. They have had a bit of competition in this sector and are interested in moving meta to get a competitive advantage. In discussion about this with some of my colleagues, I was reminded of that well known company IDEO and remembered they had a Shanghai office. I decided it could be interesting to pay them a visit and I knew that they were generally interested in seeing students and that sort of thing, so I sent them an email. The email address I had for them was defective so I tried a few other things to no avail. However, a few weeks later Soumitri and Simon were in town and Soumitri mentioned that he had the address of someone in that office through another friend. He gave it to me and when I sent the new address an email I got a response within a few hours. They were interested so we worked out a good time for everyone and made our visit.

The time we spent with them was interesting because we did not go with an idea of what we wanted from them and we did not go with anything to show them. They ordered some food for lunch and asked us to introduce our practice. They then talked about what they do and how their office in China interacted with the global company.

I was the team leader of this endeavor as I had originally expressed the interest. My involvement included initiating contact and scheduling as well as developing and managing relationship. Though we intended to continue the project, it is now over as many of the core people involved are no longer part of the lab.

This may not seem like a project as such, but if it is approached in that way the whole thing becomes a struggle to communicate well and offer a good client to costumer relationship. We never decided what service was going to be provided by whom or for whom but we had an interaction that needed to be managed. So I think we can think of it as a project.

Immediately after leaving the IDEO office all the Chinese students I was with started talking about how they thought this company could not work with Chinese clients very well and how it did not match the fast-paced nature of the Chinese market. This is of course true and I spent some time talking to a few IDEOers about this problem. In the coming years they are interested in opening up this office to participate in the Chinese design market more completely.

I learnt a lot from this little project. I learnt that people do respond to an honest request even when they are a design company that most designers look up to. I also learnt that everyone needs help thinking, even IDEO. Of course I also learnt a lot about how IDEO thinks and how they select people for jobs which may one day be important to me. This task built confidence and understanding in me and the team and has helped a few of the lab members get jobs and recommendations for further education programs.

As IDEO is a kind company, they gave us a few souvenirs including copies of the Art of Innovation in Chinese and The Ten Faces of Innovation in English.

After IDEO we went shopping and then to IKEA before returning home to Hangzhou that night.

Materials and Form

This project was a book for Ying Fantian that would be published under his name and the names of the editors. The book was to be oriented around the topic of modern materials and how they can be used in design tasks. Although the book was not well defined at the start of its writing, by the end it was to be something like a reference text designed to offer a standardized information model on the topic at hand.

My role on this project was as an assistant editor. My tasks were to help ensure that the English components were grammatically correct, to generate content at times and to offer suggestions on structure and style of the information used. In addition, I was extensively involved in the translation of parts of the text that started in Chinese.

This project was rather peculiar for a few reasons, but I guess the main one was that when I came aboard the task I was asked to do was to paraphrase an existing book on materials and put it in a usable format. It was then to be put directly into the project database. Following this, I was given another text with accompanying images and I was asked to extract articles again to expand our project database. These articles were slowly gaining Chinese counterparts as one of the other members of the lab translated them. At that time I was given the task of correcting other articles that had started in Chinese and then been put through the Google language tools to make them into rough English. I did a few single articles like this then just as I left the lab one Friday afternoon I was emailed a few documents accounting for about 200 such articles. I was going away that weekend and would not have my laptop so I spent most of that night working with another native English speaker from the international dormitory to translate as many as we could before I left. At the end of all this we had a huge bank of materials information in Chinese and English with images that had been sourced from a variety of locations including other books and undocumented websites. What I found peculiar here was not the fact that it was a lot of work to write a book, but that in China we did not have to make a bibliography or anything like that and we seemed not to have to think about credits on the images. On a few occasions I tried to ask if this was actually the case and the person I was working with would try not to understand as much as possible. (I am also guilty of having done this at times during my stay there.) I did not mind that I was participating in what we in the west call plagiarism - it was just an odd way of doing things and I was not too used to it, so I asked questions some times.

As it may sound, I was not well informed about some aspects of this project, and was not involved in it's management at all. The person in charge was not in the lab and the person in the lab working on the project was doing all she could to fix things up in the time frame and with a small budget. She was basically doing everything except the English half, which is what I did. She was not the best of project managers and most of the time I had no idea what was going to happen next.

I think this project changed the way I look at books. Firstly, it made me realize that writing a hundred pages is not that hard. Secondly, I was shown firsthand just how useful it is to have good information sources. Thirdly, I was exposed to back-end practices and fourthly, it was made clear how not to do a project like this in the future. Being a design student who has trouble sleeping because I often can't stop working, I was continually thinking about ways to do this task better and ways to make it more useful for the end user. Sadly, I was not able to do much to affect these aspects as the project was quite rushed and I had very little say.

In the end I think the book has not yet been published. I am not in the information chain on this project so I may never know what's actually to come of it.

Translation Tasks

Between major projects and smaller projects there were even smaller tasks such as helping translate a page or so from English to Chinese. The reasons people needed things like this would vary quite a lot but often it would be to do with impressing clients or customers by showing more international influence. In industries like this in China, it seems that international connections are directly akin to value so they are used whenever possible.

In my work translating I often found myself rewriting very rough translations, from people in the lab or Google translator. I would often work with a Chinese student to help ensure that the meaning was coming across appropriately and it was not uncommon that we would find some concept that could not be communicated. At a time like that, I would research into the area at hand in an effort to find out what they were talking about. On a number of occasions I was told not to change things too much but in general the results were quite readable as far as I could tell.

Some of the projects that I worked on in this capacity include the Tire Pressure Gauge, the Automobile Air Cleaner, a Text Enlarging Device and Visa as well as other applications for schools and that sort of thing.

Wireless Tire Pressure Gauge

This project is a combination of custom tire valves and a central display unit that can warn of pressure loss in any of the tires. Our task was to give an existing system a face lift and make the central control system easier to interact with. We worked on this project for more then 3 months. It is now in production.

My role was consulting, which in this case meant branding and copy and just about nothing else. The project was underway before I joined Lab 318 and I only had a chance to become involved towards the end.

I thought this project was quite cool once I got involved and knew what was going on. The device worked by having a wireless valve cap on each wheel that would transmit pressure information back to the central unit on the dash of the user's car. It would indicate if there was a flat or if there were pressure differences between the tires.

In the copy that was written for this product, some statistics were stated that claimed that more than half of the serious automotive accidents today are made worse by inappropriate tire constitutions and that this device would substantially increase safety I do not know it this was true but if so it seems like a revolutionary product. At the time I had not seen anything like such a turn key solution.

Automotive Air Purifier

This project involved designing a small device that would filter the air within one's car and indicate its quality or health threat at any one time. Our task was to modernize the look and feel of the product and help integrate the new technologies better. The project was short term and the product is now in production.

My role was that of a consultant, although it ended up including concept development, presentation copy writing and branding for an international market.

Strange though it may seem, the awareness of Chinese people about air cleanliness is quite high and given the feature-oriented technology market, many products are sold that offer readings of air quality and breatheability. As it is a common product, I was asked to look at the way people lived and interacted with this sort of technology from a outside standpoint to offer pointers on design for the final product and product strategy. I was introduced to the project about 3 days before leaving Hangzhou for my summer travels and told that I should keep an eye on the way people did things in different parts of China and try to observe emergent habits involving small personal devices that could make our product more appropriate for the cramped marketplace. I did this; however, when I returned from my travels the project had already started, as a few of our full time staff had been working on the form for some time. They were then implementing the technology within and thinking about how best to market their new product. I was put on with a group of 2 or 3 other people to develop the copy and brand identity of the project.

The technology used in this project included carbon catalytic converters and ultraviolet light to ensure clean, oodour-free air.

This was an interesting but small task so it was out the door before anyone had a chance to get sick of it. A few weeks later, we presented it to prospective clients at the Canton Fare in south China as a representation of our work.

Outdoor Lights

This was a project that to develop outdoor lighting units. It was relatively short term but the company pressured us to be innovative.

My role on this project was as a consultant in early design stage but I was not heavily involved after that. Much later in the process I offered some technical knowledge in the use of production packages.

Real Fake Exercise Equipment

This was a brief project in which a Lab 318 client asked to have an OEM product re-designed so that they could compete with branded products they were already manufacturing for the Spanish and American markets. After completing some research we found that we were unable to make the supposed changes without breaching international and US-PTO patents. For this reason the project came to an early halt.

My role was as Project Leader so I had responsibility over the entire project. I was also involved as a research person so I worked with the rest of the group on patent searches and elemental design research in looking for solutions.

This was an interesting project because it asked me to do what western companies fear China is all about, copy. At first I had some concerns about its legality and so on but I soon realised that it was common practice and just part of the world so I made the most of the project.

It was also an interesting project because I was given quite a lot of responsibility and I was not managed at all during its course. In relation to this project I answered only to the Lab Manager. I was given a secretary to help manage information transfer because it was a research intensive project and I had 2 fellow researchers helping me read up on all the patents.

Patent searching is something that the workers in the Lab were quite used to as they would regularly have to approach projects similar to this one. I was amazed by how well they could understand the convoluted and impenetrable english of a patent while their spoken and written english was relatively incomplete.

When I reported to the Lab Manager that the project should be discarded because it was inefficient to submit to the clients needs given the circumstances of the protection in place by the USPTO, I was surprised that she was not affected and said, "OK, I will call the client tomorrow," and that was the end of that. I am not sure why it was so easy but for whatever reason we never really talked about the project again.

Upon reflection, I think nobody in the lab wanted projects like this though more than a few of them are likely to work again in such a context in the future. It seems to me that designers in China are not as they had been described to me and it was only market demand that made copying and so forth common place. The jobs available to designers in China almost all require such things, even in relatively high priced organisations such as Lab 318.

Vacuum Cleaner Project One

This is an image of my most successful concept.

This was a 3 month project that the lab was involved with. The task was to offer a face lift to an existing vacuum cleaner to make it more appropriate for an international, namely European, market.

My role was as a design team member and I was primarily involved in the design elements listed below:

1. Concept work: I was a core concept designer and the company liked my concept. However, at this time I injured my foot so I could not make the necessary developments to bring my concept back for the second review. Elemental Design. Our client brought us a basic element set that we needed to keep in tact for the control system of the unit. I worked to explore interface designs and other aspects of the elemental array.
2. Consulting: I was part of this project almost all the way though and because it was intended for a European market they asked me to offer any international experience I had in this area. The main service I provided was in suggesting styles that the European market would be more or less interested in.I burnt my foot during this project so my work was not consistent. After the appropriate amount of healing I returned to the lab to finish my contribution to the project.
   

This is an image of the chosen concept.

The product is now in mass production.

This project may mark a turning point in my design ideology. Before having done this project I had a lot of knowledge about all the practices and methods used to do such things but I had not actually ever put my ideas together to form a full pipeline of this time. At RMIT many of the projects I had been involved with were much more about either technology or concept or theory. This was perhaps the first time where all of these things really came together for me. It should also be made known that, prior to this, I was completely unconvinced that anything I could draw could be useful to anyone. However, when I was told that I needed to make sketches for that afternoon of 3 to 20 vacuum concepts I somehow managed to come though. In fact, they thought I was drawing too accurately and that I should ease up to let the concepts develop more. I did this and my colleagues seemed to see my work as not only acceptable but even worthwhile - something I thought would never happen if I were drawing. I later realised that the degree of professionalism common in China in this sort of environment was not what had been suggested to me. It is not a shell of skill and technical ability without a strong theoretical core but almost the opposite. It came to be obvious that their theory and design studies were so strong that there technical ability just fell into place and, if you look carefully, you can notice this in their outcomes.

I learnt a few things on this project and it opened my mind to what I could do. I think this was perhaps the most confidence inspiring thing I did in China and repercussions of this project have changed the way I look at my work and my future in design.

Graduation

While I was immobile with a missing leg, the fourth years graduated. This meant that many of the people I had worked with during the semester were no longer students at ZJU, although a few of them stuck around to do a masters degree.

As I was incapable of walking, I missed out on the graduation party and graduation exhibition. They did sent me photos though.

This is the head of the former Creative Group I worked in at the beginning of my stay. Here he is demoing his graduation project which went on to become his job at a company that liked the design.

The Real Introduction to Lab 318

Lab 318 is essentially a commercial design studio based within ZJU and run by members of the design department. It is populated by students from the fourth year of the undergraduate program and masters students, as well as including a number full of time employees. We are made up of a few core teams that generally participate in different kinds of work. However, we often cross pollinate and most people work on at least 2 teams at any one time. The focuses of the teams include electrical, manufacturing, innovation, commercial work and competition work. During different times of my stay I worked on 4 of these teams but spent most of my time in the innovation group. We would often break a major project between the teams to either get multiple outcomes from one brief or to build parallel work flow. Out clients range greatly but during my stay we were gradually moving toward a more innovation centered work flow so we held preference for jobs that would call for this.

Changing Work Places

One day, after the mid-semester, week-long May First holiday, I got up and left as usual to go to the Creative Group room where I worked. On my walk there I ran into a boy who I had met when I first met ZJU students. His name was Blake and we said hello and he said something about some lab being closed and that I should go somewhere else. I did not really get the message and we were walking in opposite directions so it was disregarded. When I arrived at the the room it was locked, which was not a huge surprise but not normal, either. I had a key so I let myself in only to find that all the computers and everything else of value had been removed. I was a little shocked and called one of the lab coordinators, Chen Zhiliang. He said that over the holiday the Creative Group had been dissolved and that I was to be moved into a different lab. He then said I should go home and that I would be contacted about where to go later.

I waited a few days and was called by one of the other lab members. He asked me to meet him and he walked me to Lab 318, where I would spend the rest of the year working. At that point I was a bit lost as to what was going on here and there but I moved my stuff over to the new lab and started going there every day. This was the beginning of a very new interaction with ZJU.