Sunday, May 25, 2003



Well my sofa looks wonderful. Li and I tried about 7 different arrangement ideas but I think that the one we chose works. They are sooooo much more comfortable. I need to get his mom to send us some more shiny colorful pillow cases, they are sooo cheap from China, to add more splashes of colour.
I had a pretty relaxing weekend actually. Didn't do anything overly special. We went out on Saturday night. Li got off work early. We ended up being at the pub until after 3, then Li went off with Dan, Carlos and Gu to sing kereoke. I did not join them, I hate kereoke. I can not sing even a little bit and I have a huge phobia of the micro phone. Li didn't get home until sunrise I dont remember him coming home. I was very asleep. I woke him up the next day reminding him that he promised to go out for lunch with Dan and his girlfriend, and he pretended he was a zombie - arms out stretched and hopping instead of walking. He totally forgot that our apartment is old and that Japanese people are usually quite short. He almost knocked himself out on the doorway. Hehehhe
Shouldn*t laugh but he was.

So Z wanted to know a bit about my job. I am writing this from work right now so it is a perfect time. My morning classes have been screwed up a bit the last week due to a large amount of customer and sales marketing meetings. I haven't been complaining too much.
Ok.... This will be a bit long......
I work for Sumitomo Bakelit. I am going to add a link to their English web page for you to check out but I will have to do that tonight when I have Z's directions in front of me. Sumitomo Bakelite is a subsidiary of an enormous company called Sumitomo Inc. They own the bank (MitsuiSumitomo Bank - biggest in Japan), the chemical, steel, insurance, housing and other VERY large companies. They also own the Asahi beer company.
My company is one of the biggest in Japan. We have two other main competitors but we still are able to hold 25% of the Japanese market. Basically we are a resin company, which is a fancy way to say plastic. We make EVERYTHING!!! It is scary. We dont really make it but we make the plastic that is then bought by the product maker. We do create some things. We are very famous for our medical hosing. The building that I work in is divided into three sections.
My section is the Kaiken section. We are the circuitry materials laboratory section. We make pre-preg boards. When you break your cell phone or your toy car there is a green computer board inside. The same thing you see inside your computer. We make that. There are three grades of this stuff. We supply stuff to Sony and NEC as well as numerous other companies all over Asia. We create the board piece and then the customer stamps it with what ever circuitry pattern they require. It is extremely specialized. They work on making it thinner, lighter, more heat resistant, strong yet flexible, shock proof and so on. And all with a low cost. Their everyday duties include improving old products, devising new products and creating products that are tailored for one customer only.
The middle group in this building was originally a separate Sumitomo company but they were absorbed into the Bakelite corporation about 2 years ago. They create raw materials for industrial resin. These guys make the sticky part of tape. They also make the fake brick looking walls and all of that stuff. They also deal with batteries of all sizes. One guy makes the resin that sand paper of ALL grades (there are major industrial grades) uses. Another one of my students makes insulation wall boards. Here the insulation is not the pink stuff we use, and it is attached to a wall board that is then painted over to look pretty. These boards have to conform to all heat, fire and chemical tests as well as earthquake tests. They have many labs and sister companies in the USA.
The third group is the molding compounds laboratory. They make molds for basically everything. Their main area is cars. They make disk brakes (for Mitsubishi I think), starters, commutators (haven't figured out exactly what that is) and even new age engines. This section has a lab and factory in Canada.
There is one more small group of only 4 or 5 people. They are the MSK group. They make the arborite (spelt wrong) that is in your kitchen. They also make special stuff, in a wide variety of colour, for the kotatsu tables we use here. These are the heat element tables that we all sit under during the winter. Did you know that that stuff is made by dipping hundreds of sheets of coloured paper in resin and then pressing them together. Your kitchen counter top is actually paper.
There are many other sections not in this building. There is the Sumilite section that makes plywood and there is the recycling section that cleans the water that we use. They are very proud of themselves. Two of them are my students. There is the SBIS section that maintains our web page and all of the computers here. There is the quality assurance section that keeps the customers happy and many more. These are just at my factory. Other factories have different labs that deal with other areas of the resin market. It is soooo huge it gives me a headache.
My job is to teach these guys English so they can keep our customers happy. Many of our customers are in Asia but we are trying to expand our European and American market. We used to have a huge market in Russia before it collapsed.
Because we only have one teacher and my boss is not too keen on hiring another, my work load now is fairly high. I used to teach only 3 to 4 classes a day and then do the secretarial work that was assigned to me. Now I teach 7 classes a day plus the secretary work. They would love it if I would answer the phone when it is an in company call but I have been putting that off. I official start work at nine but really I start work at about 8:45 M-W and at 8:30 on Th and Fr. I officially finish at 5 but really I finish when the job is done. Sometimes this is 6, sometimes 7. Sucks but it lets me soak up overtime pay.
As I stated in another blog, my daily duties include the tea machine (who has received a new part and is working just fine). I have to wash them every morning, fill up the tea leaves and cups. Then at the end of the day I have to top everything up again and check the tea leaf garbage bags. I am also required to deliver the mail 3 times a day. Although with this new teaching schedule the other girls have to help me sometimes as I dont have the time to always do it. Half of the mail to deliver is usually for me. This is all mail that needs to be circulated throughout the company. In many cases photocopied and then divided up among the sections. Sucks. I hate copying. Some of this stuff is returned to me after it is circulated and there are special things that need to be done with them. Usually it is because an engineer has requested some sort of paper work and I have to order it for them. I also deal with the basic stationary supplies. I have to check them and order what is required. On top of all of this I have to teach.
Because Sumitomo is on this cost cutting thing they balk when I ask them to order me things. I have given up and have just started paying for teaching material myself. My name is on everything and it will go with me when I leave. Because of this, I have been able to put basically every class on a text book and it has made my life sooooo much easier. My preparation time has dropped to less then half. I can not imagine doing the schedule I have now with out all these texts. They were expensive but I have become the queen of ordering free samples from the publisher. Hehehehe
At this moment my inbox consists of a stack of online free lesson plans that I found with three wonderful vocabulary and suffix building games that I have to glue to cardboard and cut up. There is also two very large packs of engineer requested papers that have to be sorted and handed out. UGH!
Actually speaking about ordering and the inbox I have to check the janitors supplies and clear out some of my inbox. Gotta go to work people. Talk soon.

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::5/25/2003 :: 0 Comments:

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