Descartes wrote in his Discourse that through observation of other cultures we would be able to free ourselves of "many errors which obscure the natural light of our understanding."

My internship with Ilfo in Germany allowed me such an opportunity to observe another culture at work.

Based 30 km outside of Frankfurt, Ilfo is a German multimedia involved film, television, and music production; computer animation; and 3-D virtual reality game production. In the course of my internship with the firm, I moved around the different departments of the firm, and was assigned to the different department heads for training.

Initially I had some problems adapting to the German language; it also took me a while to adjust to the German culture. Fortunately, the German language free elective that I took in NTU made the whole immersion process much easier.

Language was not really a problem when it came to work assignments. The computer animation software and the accompanying training manuals and videos used by the firm were mostly in English.

With the reference materials and the help of the head of computer animation, I learnt how to do basic computer animation using industry standard software like "Wavefront" and "Matador".

During my attachment, I took charge of Internet operations for a film.  My duties included writing, setting up, and maintaining the Ilfo web site, as well as writing and responding to queries that came in via the email.

One of the Internet projects that I did for this film included an Internet recruitment of computer animators.  Because of the  highly specialised nature of computer animation, recruiting good animators is usually difficult and costly. Nevertheless, I was able to recruit a Russian through Internet and when I left the firm was in negotiations with several other animators.  The cost and time taken to hire these animators was reduced quite significantly.

Perhaps the project which I feature most dearly is the one in which I was assigned to a team which conceived and conceptualised a 3-D virtual reality game which the firm wanted to produce.  Working with a team to come up with different scenarios by means of different aspects of a virtual world taught me a lot about the difficulties associated with such projects.

In retrospect, I found my time in Germany a tremendous learning and growing experience for me, and perhaps as a result, my "light of understanding" is that little bit clearer.