A fresh and amazing day!

Regional Marketing Team

Henkel's Office at KIC

Working Office

After having arrived in this new land and felt so lonely as having no experience at all in living alone, especially in another country and unable to speak its language even normal survival words, a good mood comes up with a lot of supports and helps from Mr. Meng Rithy (Rithy Chow, a name in facebook), an engineering employee in a more-than-60-storey building company, located in Jing An temple area. I have been introduced to some Khmer friends here studying in difference majors – Engineering, Information Technology, and Finance – in different universities in Shanghai and other provinces nearby.  

Given a warm welcome, I stayed in an old yet memorable apartment with him for a short period of time until I could find an apartment to live. Thanks to his support and intervention I knew a lot of Khmer friends and found a nice and acceptable shared apartment – surrounded by wet markets, banks, restaurants, and super markets, which I would say it is a nice area ever – with other two Chinese flat mates. Most importantly, it is quite closed to my internship place – Henkel, a German conglomerate,  based in Songhu Road, Yangpu district.

My first working day arrived, and I had to prepare the entrance application form before starting working. Like a blind journey as I could not read and speak Chinese, I had to take metro and find the way to the headquarter of Henkel based in Zhang Heng Road, Pudong District. I lost the way and spent around one hour finding the way by asking pedestrians and phoning Mr. Rithy; luckily, I made a good decision to take a taxi to the headquarter for entrance application.

Lunch Meeting of Regional Marketing Team

Spending a whole morning for application and travel, I managed to come to the office at nearly lunch time, but I felt so nice to see the working environment of Henkel where there are more than ten nations coming from all over the world and working in an open office. I was introduced to related persons whom I had to be working with by my line manager, Antje Chu, whose position is Regional Brand Manager, taking over for Schwarzkopf Professional branches and supporting APAC region.

A view at ASK area

With other interns from all over the world, I had invited to have lunch at a nice and high-class Chinese restaurant with a shared price. During lunch time, we made a short conversation and shared some ideas or interests about Henkel, and I felt quite interested in their jobs with challenging roles and responsibilities. A first historical start began  with a long journey of a six-month internship.