Dear Dad and Mom,
Winter break is already half over, and I can't say I've accomplished very much.
I spent most of the first week practicing driving, and I actually managed to pass my road test and get my driver's license on December 23rd, just two days before Christmas. By law, before you get your license, you aren't allowed to drive alone. You have to have someone with at least a year of driving experience sitting next to you. But now that I have my license, I can drive by myself. I've been driving almost every day—going to campus, catching a movie, or running out for groceries. I still avoid highways, though. Getting on and off Austin's highways around downtown is a little scary. Learning to drive a car itself isn't that difficult; the main thing is gaining experience on the road, which simply takes time. Life is definitely a whole lot better now that I can drive. I have so much more freedom, and getting around is much more convenient.
My new place is pretty nice, and the rent is quite reasonable, at about $230 a month. It's significantly farther from campus than my old apartment, but it only takes about fifteen minutes to drive there. The campus shuttles also run very frequently—one comes by every few minutes—so getting to campus is still a breeze. The mobile home park is in a quieter, nicer neighborhood in southwest Austin, near Lake Austin, and the surroundings are beautiful. I can even catch glimpses of the Colorado River as I drive between campus and home.
A couple of months ago, my classmate Xun joined me for the on-site interview at Morgan Stanley in New York. Unfortunately, he didn't get the job. The company put us up in a large hotel called Crowne Plaza Times Square, right on Broadway, one of New York City's busiest streets. It cost more than $140 a night—more than half of my current monthly rent! The interview site was only a five-minute walk from the hotel. We checked in around 7:00 on Friday evening and checked out early the next morning. Because of the busy environment, I didn't sleep very well that night.
The interview wrapped up around noon, and afterward, Xun and I took a cab down to Manhattan's Chinatown. At one point, we found ourselves wandering around desperately looking for a restroom. Eventually, we found one inside a Chinese restaurant, so we ended up eating lunch there—it was surprisingly inexpensive and very good. Chinatown doesn't have much besides Chinese restaurants—some of them quite large—as well as a few grocery stores. There were street vendors along the sidewalks, and the streets were packed with Chinese people. It felt like walking down Wangfujing in Beijing, except almost everyone was speaking Cantonese.
1 We flew back to Austin that same night.
The other on-site interview at National Instruments lasted the entire day. I went in around 8:00 a.m. and didn't get out until 5:00 p.m. I'll probably have another dozen or so interviews next semester, but I'm going to be much more selective this time. Interviewing takes up a lot of time, so I'd rather focus on companies that genuinely interest me.
In the United States, it's much easier for computer science and electrical engineering majors to find jobs. Companies of all sizes are eager to come to campus and recruit students. That said, more than half of these companies won't sponsor work visas, so our options as international students are much more limited than those of Americans students or green card holders. Even so, the majority of graduate students in science and technology fields are international students, mostly from India and China, and they are doing very well in the job market.
Time is flying by. I've already been in the United States for a year and four months. All things considered, it's been a wonderful experience. I've adapted to life here and really enjoy it. One of the things I appreciate most about America is the sense of freedom—you can basically live your life however you want, and nobody bothers you, as long as you aren't breaking the law. People here are very polite, law-abiding, and friendly, and society feels orderly and well run. You rarely see people shouting at each other in public, let alone getting into fights. Overall, it's a society that suits me very well.
I can't believe how expensive postage has gotten in China—more than doubled! I wonder how much the prices of everything else have shot up. Have salaries risen accordingly? What are your monthly salaries looking like these days? I've read some articles online claiming that the average monthly salary in places like Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing has already broken into the four-digit range, though I have no idea how accurate those reports are. You wouldn't believe how much information about China I can find on the internet nowadays.
Wishing you all the best for 1997!
Tong
01/01/97