Sunday, October 11, 2009

TOPY : A new beginning

As part of my Uni's unique program, current undergrads who plans to pursue masters in engineering in the same institution can undergo a 5 month long industrial training. Somewhat like a long-term internship. And, as far as I know, no other institution in Japan offers the same thing to undergrads. Yes, they also have internship programs but they last only about 2 months at most.

As for me, 5 months internship sounds swell...I mean, I'm bound to learn something useful right? And that’s why I chose to enroll into Nagaoka University of Technology. 80+ students joined this program and were sent to various places in Japan and also overseas, including Malaysia, Thailand, German, Spain, Mexico and many others.

And I chose TOPY Industries...

Photobucket
what? Never heard of it?

Don't worry, neither have I!!

Why I chose this? Well, part of the reason is that it is situated in Aichi Prefecture, the farthest one away from my Uni.

But that's not the factor which made me choose it. You see...in Japanese, it is written as 「トピー工業」, pronounced as "toh-pee-kou-gyou". When I first saw this I mistakenly read it as "toh-pee-ei-gyou". In Japanese katakana, "ei" is written as 「エ」, similar to Japanese kanji, "kou" written as 「工」.

So, during background check (Yes, as reckless as I am in making decision, I still always do a background check!!), try as I might, I couldn’t find out anything regarding 「トピーエ 業」. After many minutes of futile effort by me and my Japanese friend, it finally dawned upon us that it is 「トピー 工業」.

One click and tada...there you go, full corporate details. Some 2000 employees working for this misunderstood company.

Those who know me well, will know that this is reason enough to make me want to do my internship here. I go with the flow of events, never any planned ones. Any other companies are boring anyway. Yes, there are other big fishes like Toyota, Honda, Hitachi, Mitsubishi...but that doesn't mean you can get good experience, but only a name to show off to your friends to.

And besides, I spoke to a senior who went there last year, said he learned a lot. So, yeah...good choice for my part (no matter how ridiculous the reason was: reading the name wrongly).

So, yeah...here I am in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture...here to do my internship for the next 5 months...

here to corrupt them if they don't corrupt me first!!