Image taken from the very slick flight booking site vayama
If you’ve noticed that blogUT posts have been slowing down a bit lately, I apologize. That’s because your truly, JP, has been busy preparing for a 3 month stint in Japan.
Don’t worry, I fully plan on keeping blogUT going, and updating as much as usual. In fact, I have an interesting series of articles coming up. I spent the last month exploring online dating, so I’m preparing a first person account of my experiences. I’m thinking of calling it “The iDate Project: Dispatches from the Online Dating Scene”.
So about this Japan trip: I landed the gig through an organization called IAESTE (International Association for Exchange of Students for Technical Experience)… yes, they won the “Most Awkward Acronym” award in 2006. And true to their title, they are an organization that manages international working exchanges for technical students, mostly engineers and science students. I’ll be working in the R&D lab of KDDI, the second largest cell phone company in Japan.
The exchange program is quite large, and there’s all sorts of jobs, from research positions in universities to jobs in tech companies in countries from Brazil to Czech Republic to, well, Japan. Placement terms range from a few months in the summer to a full year. A few of my friends have completed the program and they’ve all love it. If you’re interested in applying, you can do so through IAESTE Canada. The next round of applications is near the end of 2007.