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Huy Huynh
and
Steven Leigh
Hot
Shanghai
Summer
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Steven Leigh on the SBU
academic mall
with the Wang Center pagoda behind him. |
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June 2006
Three SBU undergrads are getting
an incredible opportunity to intern in Shanghai at RedNeurons, a
supercomputer design company founded by SBU Professor Yuefan Deng.
Two of them, Huy Huynh and Steven Leigh, will be writing about their
experiences for the Zine.
Steven, pictured above, has a knack for languages and is not only
learning Mandarin, although shy he is willing to initiate
conversations to practice speaking. As a consequence, he met Shi
Ying, aka Tracy, a journalism major at Shanghai International U
taking summer courses at Fudan U, near where RedNeurons is located.
Next month's Zine will contain articles from all three of them.
Steven is also now getting the opportunity to understand why P.H.
Tuan, the Wang Center architect, felt that a pagoda was so necessary
to represent the East. Begun in India as stupas in the 3rd century
B.C.E., pagodas traveled eastward with the spread of Buddhism and
are as common in Asia as church steeples in Europe and the US.
With Steven in Shanghai is the SBU
AA E-Zine Editor Huy Huynh. Of the 3 undergrad American interns, Huy
is undoubtedly having the most frustrating time. He is of Vietnamese
heritage and only knows a few Chinese words, mostly in Cantonese.
But because he looks Chinese, the natives assume he understands
them. Steven, on the other hand, when they speak to him in English,
is getting a kick out of responding back in French and blowing them
away.
It is interesting to note that Chinese students do not get the
opportunity to choose their second/third language after
Mandarin/their local dialect. All Chinese students must take English
beginning at the latest in junior high.
Here is the link to a copy of the RedNeurons employee newsletter.
Pages 2-4 contain articles about the importance of internships and
about Huy and Steve. It was written to give the staff an idea of who
they were before they arrived. They helped to produce the next
newsletter after they arrived.
http://www.aa2sbu.org/aaezine/articles/vol14/RedNetVol1No2May2006.pdf
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