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Hello. Could you introduce yourself?
My name is Damien Foechterlé, I am 23 and I am a student at the Ecole des Mines of Saint Etienne, ISMEA cycle (Specialized Engineers in Microelectronic and Applies).

What is your speciality?
I am now at the end of my second year so I am not specialized yet but I will be next year. I choose the option conception of informatics networks.

What is your job in LIAMA?
In the frame of my second year’s internship I have to create then test a joint algorithm in a distributed network. Basically we have a network of wireless sensors which contains pieces of data. Following a joint request we have two different kinds of pieces of data that we name “alice” and “bob”. Every “alice” object has to meet every “bob” object and reciprocally. My job consists in developing an algorithm that let this action be done by optimising the transfer of network’s pieces of data within an acceptable calcul time and test it.

Why did you choose to make your internship in China and In LIAMA?
I was attracted by China and its culture I took Chinese class for one year before leaving. When I have had to look for an internship I thought about going to China. I went to my chinese professor to ask her if she knew places I could go. She was doing translation for INRIA and heard about LIAMA, she advises me to go on their website. That’s what I did.

How long did your internship last?
I stayed for months and a half in Beijing. I arrived on the 13th of March and started to work on the 15th. I am going back to France on August 5 with a little hook by Stockholm where I will be studying next year.

How did you apply for the internship?
I watch LIAMA’s website as my chinese professor told me. I looked internship offers and answered the one I found interesting. I send my candidature through e-mail to the secretary of LIAMA which reorientate me to Stephane Grumbach who is the research director of the project I’m working in.

How did your first days in Beijing went?
For my first day in Beijing I was luggage less because of a mistake at the airport (someone took my suitcase instead of his). I get my luggage back three days later. Thus I have not much to put in my room so I went to the LIAMA to introduce myself and see how my internship will be. Then I went to my residence, tired by the jetlag and the incomprehension between me and the Chinese (I spent an hour and a half to buy a phone card…).

After the tough beginning what’s it like to live in Beijing?
It’s kind of great: the Chinese are really friendly and nice, they are doing everything to help you even if they don’t know what you want and you don’t understand a word of what they are saying to you. To come back from LIAMA on my first day I had to take the bus 915 but I couldn’t find it. I manage to ask a Chinese but he didn’t know more than me where was the bus 915.Anyway he stayed with me a good quarter of hour to try to find it and explain me how to come home even tough I wasn’t understand his words. People are mostly open-minded and seem often happy to see laowai . A painful experience let me take advantage of the chinese kindness. During a week end I was biking in the mountain behind the perfumed hill. During my descent let myself enthralled by the speed and a (very) bad hump send me in the air… Unfortunately my landing was not pretty and my head touch the floor first. A Chinese tourist group rushed to help me: they brought me to their cars and washed my grazes with water and towels. They insist to bring me to the hospital but I manage (which was hard) to convince them I was alright. Anyway if you want do dud stunts with a bike, Beijing is the perfect place! What is also very nice in Beijing is that the food is really cheap. You can eat every night at the restaurant, Beijing people are very rarely cooking by themselves. But beware of going out to eat too late if you don’t want to find the door shut. Streets are lively very late but Chinese eat early, around 6p.m and 9p.m is the deadline to find a table without trouble. In Beijing the change of scene is immediate just with the huge size of the city. Everything is bigger in China: Lyon is a small town and Aix-en-Provence (where I lived in France) is a village to their scale. The change of scene also comes from the contrasts of the capital: within a few steps you are going from the poverty of the popular quarters (worsened by the massive destructions in prevision of the Olympics Games) to the wealth of brand new buildings.

Now let’s go back to the professional aspect of your internship: what can you say about LIAMA and your internship?
My internship in LIAMA gave me a good look on the research word in a very pleasant work atmosphere. The interdisciplinarity of the LIAMA let me learn a lot on fields a little bit away from my job. I was also able to follow every aspect of my project and not only my work field, which offers higher perspectives. LIAMA is also rich with the different cultures it hosts. Those different cultures enable different point of view, which I think is very useful in research.

As a conclusion could you do a make up of your stay in Beijing on a more personal level?
My internship in Beijing teaches me to live in a country totally different from France. The change of scene is much more important than when you are studying in Europe or even in the USA. The difficulties I may experience in the beginning made me more mature and independent. My stay in China let me approach a new culture. I have been able to see how China, the country everyone is talking about now, works. Unlike my first aim I haven’t learn Chinese (I’ve got to admit I have been a little lazy) but I may pursue my learning in France so that an hypothetic return in China will be easier. I advise every student that is considering leaving to China to do it: the discovery of a continent as different to Europe as Asia is is obviously a bonus. Beijing is a city where life is easy for students, notably because of low prices (incredibly low if compare to France). Moreover I am sure that knowledge of China will be a considerable asset in the future.