Christopher Mason

End of the Line

Well, this is my last blog entry. I'm writing from Washington D.C. as I've flown here to spend my last weekend sightseeing the capitol. Yesterday I got caught in Tropical Storm Hanna, which was not as fun an experience as I thought it might be. I got soaked from head to toe, but I still soldiered on visiting museums and sights until the streets started to flood a bit. At that point I thought it would be sensible to retreat to my hotel for the night. All is forgiven with the weather today though, its a beautiful day here, nice and sunny with the temperature in the high 80's. My hotel is just a few streets from the White House, so I'm going to start there today and work my way round all of the landmarks before going to Arlington National cemetery across the Potomac River. Being in D.C. is a nice way to end my time here, it feels like a little holiday at the end of the this great experience.

Friday was my last day at Genzyme and I was kept busy with plenty of work to do. It was strange though, knowing that I wouldn't be back to work on Monday. The Quality Control team have been great. They welcomed me from day one and I've felt like a big part of the group since then. They're all great people and I'm going to keep in touch with them. I felt a bit sad when I left work to get the shuttle home for the last time, but as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. On Friday night we all went to a barbecue put on by our friend from Genzyme, Alex, at his house. It was a great night and the burgers were awesome!

Tomorrow we'll be flying home and I can't believe how quick the time has gone by. I was trying to imagine what my summer would have been like if I hadn't been lucky enough to get this opportunity and it didn't really compare to my experience's here! My time at Genzyme has certainly opened my eyes to the career opportunities that are available to me and meeting people like Mark Bamforth and Alison McVie-Wylie has shown how far you can go if you work hard enough. This experience has definitely benefited me. I would say the main thing I have learned is to set my sights a lot higher, to really be more ambitious and confident when planning my future career. So a big thank you again to the Saltire Foundation and Scottish Enterprise team for the opportunity to be here, it's been a fantastic experience and I've loved every minute of it.

Time to go now I think, and do a bit of sightseeing...

Labor Day Magic

This weekend was Labor day weekend, and we were off of work on Monday, so we organised plenty of things to do over the weekend. On Saturday we went shopping on the fashionable Newbury Street in Downtown Boston and then we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. The main fun of the weekend came on Sunday night, when we visited the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, which is the second largest casino in the world! We booked ourselves on a bus tour which took us there at 9.30pm on Sunday night and picked us up again at 4.30am the next morning. The place was huge, i had expected it to big and glamorous but the sheer scale of it was amazing. It took half an hour just to walk round the place. Anyway, I had a pretty lucky night, winning $180 dollars which was good. On Monday afternoon we went whale watching off of the coast of Maine. It was a really nice day and we got to see lots of whales. They were good sports and spent most of their time near our boat so that we could take pictures.

After our busy weekend it was back to work on Tuesday. Over the week I've completed the reorganisation of the departments filing system and I have also been busy with plenty of gas analysis to do. On Wednesday, Jemma and I met with Alison McVie-Wylie for lunch. Alison is a director of the Pharmacology department here and also happens to be an expat Scot from Kilmarnock. We had a really good chat about her career path, from when she finished university in Glasgow, right up to her moving to the States full time. She was very helpful and gave me a good few ideas about what I can do when I graduate next year. Again, it was great to see how far someone who came from about the same background as myself has managed to go in their career. It has certainly opened my eyes and most definetly encouraged me to set my sights as high as possible, which if I'm being honest is something that I had never really thought of before came here to work.

This last week has been a strange one. Its weird to think that by next week I wont be living in Boston and working for Genzyme anymore, as I feel like I've just settled in, but I know that just goes to show how good my experience here has been. 

Sun & Soccer

Picking up from my last entry, our dinner at Mistral last Friday was fantastic. I think its the poshest restaurant I've ever been in! We all had steak and it was great and thankfully at a set price too. On Saturday we went on the unofficial tour of Harvard University. The tour is run by Harvard undergraduates and we learned of the University's history and some of its most famous students who include Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore. On Saturday night we ventured to a music club downtown called Middle East, where we watched a jazz funk band play. They were pretty good.

On Sunday I met up with Alex, a friend of Jemma's from work, to play football at MIT's sports field, which is only ten minutes from where we stay. What started as a kickabout with just a few of us ended up as 25 people playing a game. It was great, there was so many different people from around the world playing with us. I ended up playing for about three and a half hours in the blazing sunshine, which wasn't the best idea as I felt like I was going to collapse at the end of it.

On Tuesday night we took the opportunity to go to the skywalk of the Prudential tower, which is the second tallest building in New England. We got some great photo's and the Boston skyline looked fantastic at night. At work on Thursday our department had a pizza lunch in to thank me and the other intern Mark for our work over the summer as Mark was finishing up to back to college. My boss Bernie got our names written in pepperoni on the pizza's which was quite funny.

This week at work has been busy again. I've almost finished off rearranging the departments filing system. We got to finish early today as its Labor day weekend over here, so were off on Monday. I think were going to take advantage of that and try and do as much as we can this weekend. I cant believe that we only have one week left, I've got so used to living here that it seems strange to think about coming back. But its been a great 7 weeks and I don't think I could have asked for a better summer.

That's another week ended now, the time is flying in here and its been another busy week. Last Thursday, we went to dinner at a great Mediterranean restaurant called Avila in downtown Boston. Last week and this week is Restaurant Week in Boston, where high market restaurant's offer a cut price set menu thats very affordable. Some of the interns booked two restaurants for us all to go to and it was a great night. We certainly wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise! Friday was a quiet night in and on Saturday night we went to a party with some of the guys we had met at the baseball, which was good fun. On Sunday, we hit the beach at Manchester by the sea, which is only a half hour journey by train from where we are. The weather was great and we spent all day enjoying the sun.

Back to work on Monday and I have been spending time working with the Chemistry team in the Quality Control department at Genzyme. This past week I have been learning how to analyze various gases that the company use in their drug manufacture process. I have been training to use an Oxigraph machine, which tests the percentage purity of oxygen gas cylinders and a Blood Gas analyzer which is used to assess the percentage breakdown of gas in a mixed gas cylinder. It's been fun to learn something new and I'm enjoying working in the chemistry lab with the team there. I'm also still working with the final packaging team and helping to reorganize their filing system, so I'm being kept busy.

On Tuesday we all went to cinema to see "Pineapple Express", which was hilarious. Come Wednesday night and me Matt and Graeme had ventured to the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough to see the New England Revolution soccer team play. We had a great time there, ending up in a section of the stadium known as the Fort, where the Rev Army, the hardcore fans sit. It was a great atmosphere there and the Revolution beat DC United 2-1.

On Thursday morning, me and Jemma had a breakfast meeting with Mark Bamforth at Genzyme Center. Mark is one of the Vice Presidents of the company and is on the board of the Saltire Foundation and also just happens to be Scottish as well. He was interested to know how our placements were going and how we were enjoying ourselves in Boston. He talked to us about his career, from getting a degree at Strathclyde Uni right through to working for Genzyme. It just shows how far you can go when you work hard enough. We had a good talk and it was great to meet him, he's a very friendly guy.

It's Friday now and the end of a busy week. I've got loads of things I'd like to do a the weekend but I haven't really settled on what to do yet. Tonight, we are going to one of the smartest restaurants in Boston called Mistral. Its still restaurant week so we might just be able to afford it! It's hard to believe that we've been here for a month and a half, it really has flown in. I've learned and experienced so much and theres still two weeks to go, which is great. Anyway, its time I was getting ready for dinner tonight.

NYC Part 2

After a busy week at work, it was the weekend again and we all left for NYC on Friday to visit Leanne. We got the Megabus (surely Scotlands best import to the USA?) down early Friday morning as the journey is around 4 and a half hours. Arriving at Manhattan in the early afternoon, we met up with Leanne at her apartment and then the fun began.

Having spent 8 weeks living and working in NYC, Leanne knew her way about and had planned a great weekend full of things to do for us to do. First of all, we got tickets for a Broadway show that evening. After queing for about an hour, we managed to get tickets for a show called Avenue Q. We then went through Times Square and around the city seeing the sights. Leanne took us to the Rockefeller Center, one of the older buildings in the city, where you can take a tour to the top (67th) floor and admire the view all around the city. It was amazing, you could see from one end of the city to the other. Then it was time for a quick dinner and then we went to see Avenue Q at the Golden Theatre on Broadway. The musical was great, it was a homage to Sesame Street with an adult twist to it which was hilarious! After that we had an early night as it had been a long day.

On Saturday we took in even more sights. Leanne took us down to get the Staten Island ferry and on the way we stopped by at Ground Zero in lower Manhatten. It was quite a strange experience being there, its difficult to image how it used to look. The World Trade Center site is now a large building site as work continues on the new Freedom Tower. With all the cranes and workers there it just felt like a big construction project, so it was hard to imagine the scale of what happened there 7 years ago but when you look up there is a huge gap in the skyline where the twin towers used to stand. From there we walked down the edge of Lower Mahattan to get the ferry. On our way we passed the huge queue for the ferry to Liberty Island and a tour of the statue. Rather than wait around all day, we got the Staten Island ferry for free, which goes right by the Statue of Liberty, so we got plenty of good photos.

On our way back from Staten Island Leanne took us to Wall Street, where we saw the New York Stock Exchange building, as well as Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of America. After that we had a late lunch in the Meat Packing district of the city and then we went back to Leannes for a bit of a rest after walking all day.  After a take away dinner and a few drinks, we sampled New Yorks nightlife, ending up in a club playing house music where we all (or maybe just myself, actually) displayed some terrible dancing!

Sunday was a late rise after our exploits the night before and we didnt get up to much. I got the bus back in the early afternoon, as I had a early start at work on Monday morning. Our weekend was great, Leanne was a great guide and it was good to meet up with her. And it was great to be in NYC again, the place is truely unbelieve and I feel lucky to have had to opportunity to go there.

This week, work has been busy. My schedule is full all week as I am learning the procedures for approving more of Genzymes final packaging materials. Today I'm working on the actual box that the medication will be placed in and how it is proof-read and checked for authenticity. So theres plenty to do, I better get back to work!...... 

NYC Part 1

A lot has happened since my last post so heres a bit of filling in for the past week.

Last Friday I finished work and headed down to New York City for the weekend to meet my parents, who were on holiday there for a week. I was planning to get the bus down but my supervisor Bernie offered to give  me a lift as he was heading straight from work to visit his parents in Long Island, which is next to Manhattan. It was a great coincidence and I enjoyed the journey down with Bernie and his wife and young son much more than I would have had I been squashed on the bus. We had plenty to talk about to pass the 4 hour drive and I spent most of my time telling Bernie about Scotland and our culture. I got to see some nice sights as we drove through some major cities at dusk.

Bernie's sat-nav parked us right at the door of the hotel that my parents were staying at on the Upper East side of Manhattan. After some quick catching up with my parents and little sister, it was time for sleep as it had been a long day.

On Saturday the weather wasn't fantastic with rain for most of the day, but hey, we're used to worse than that back home. After having breakfast, me and my family went to Times Square where we visited Madame Tussauds waxworks. There, I got plenty of photo's with some waxy celebrities, some of which actually look like the real thing. From there we left to get lunch, then we took a look at the Empire State Building. The queue to tour the top of the building stretched almost all of the way round its base. It's a very popular tour. After getting some photo's we went shopping and I proceeded to get lost in Macy's looking for the mens section. The place was huge and the directory wasn't very helpful. Thats my excuse anyway.

I almost forgot to mention that Manhattan is one busy place. You need to keep your wits about you to prevent being either shoulder charged on the pavement or run over by one of the city's famous yellow cabs while your crossing the street (which doesn't help when you still look on the wrong side of the road). What an experience it is though being there, almost every street that you turn has an iconic building or view that you've seen on TV or in a movie. It's an impressive place to visit.

On Sunday I took the train back to Boston with my parents and little sister for a whistle stop tour of the city. Arriving about mid-day, I first showed them Genzyme Center, which they were very impressed by. After that we jumped on the T and I showed them round the main sights of Boston; the harbour, downtown Boston, the Hancock building and Quincy Market. I was surprised at how much I had remembered from our city tour during our first weekend here, so I was actually quite a decent tour guide. Before long it was early evening and my parents had to leave for their train back to New York. I seen them off at the station then I went back to our apartment to crash out after a very long weekend.

I'll get to do it all again this weekend coming though, as all of us in Boston have arranged to visit Leanne in New York. NYC twice in one week. You couldn't ask for much more, could you?

Its been a while since I last posted so its time for an update.

Last Friday we were lucky enough to get the opportunity to see the Red Sox play the Yankees at Fenway Park in Boston. A big thank you to Helen Sayles of Liberty Mutual who got the tickets for us. This is the biggest game in baseball, a big rivalry, so were very lucky to be there. Fenway Park is just a few subway stops away from us so we got there no problem. The place was packed and the atmosphere was amazing. Leanne Rimes was there to sing the national anthem, which was impressive. Helen's son, Iain, was with us as our guide and baseball tutor! After a few innings I managed to get the gist of what was going on and it wasn't long before we all cheering on the home team. Unfortunately the Yankees won by one run, but it was a great experience nonetheless. After the game Iain took us to a nice bar and that was us for the night.

On Saturday, we walked through the campus of MIT, which is very impressive, to the center of Boston. It was a warm day and we ended up in the Boston Common, where me, Matt and Graeme joined in a game of "soccer" with some of the locals. It was good fun, but running around in the afternoon heat nearly killed us!

This week I have been busy at work with the QC department having plenty to do. Catherine Brockbank, the head of university relations at Genzyme has encouraged all of the interns with the company to interact with each other and she assigned Jemma and myself as intern team leaders for our respective buildings. Our job is to make contact with other interns nearby and get to know each other and organize social events. So far we have had a few lunches together and we are planning one or two events for this month, including possibility of a big dinner out during Boston's food festival and maybe even a camping trip.

Its nearly a month we've been here now and I have to say, I've loved every minute of it. The position I have is great and I really enjoy working with Genzyme, they have a great working environment. And there is still so much to see on the social scene! So there's lots still to do. I'm going to New York this weekend to meet up with my parents, who are on holiday there, so I'll post again once I get back

Job Description

After a sunny weekend in Cape Cod, taking it easy on the beach, it was back to Boston for my second week of work

It's about halfway through my second week working for Genzyme now and I thought it would be a good idea to give a more in depth description of my job as I am now more familiar with it. I work in the Quality Control Raw Materials department of Genzyme in Framingham, a short drive away from Boston itself. Here at Quality Control, all of the raw materials (filters, flasks, bottles, packaging) and chemicals (gases and liquids) that are required in the production of all of the drug products that Genzyme produce are delivered and assessed for quality and suitability. As a pharmaceutical company, Genzyme's products must be clean and uncontaminated.

This is where Quality Control comes in. The team that I work with quarantine all materials used in production, sampling the product to assess its quality and checking to make sure that it has passed all American and European safety standards during its production. My job so far has to quarantine all incoming material and then have it reviewed, before approving it safe for use and then having it reviewed again as a safety measure. It's been interesting to learn the stringent procedures that must be adhered to in the production of these materials. Sometimes it seems excessive, but then I remember that these materials are used in making drugs for hundreds of thousands of patients, so safety and quality is paramount.

This week I have moved on to watching product pouches being "burst tested" to ensure their stability and helping proof read the small page of instructions that inserted into each finished pack of medication. My supervisor, Bernie, is allowing me time to work with each different aspect of the department. I have just started to work independently and confidently with quarantining products on my own, but soon I will move on to physical sampling and working with gases, amongst other things.

So far, my experience has been great. I really enjoy the relaxed atmosphere in the building where I work and in the company in general. It almost doesn't feel like work, and that can only be a good thing.

End of the first week

Its been a busy week and a lot has happened since I last wrote on here.

On Tuesday I started my first day of work for Genzyme. I got the shuttle bus to the company's site in Framingham, where the Quality Control department is located. I met my supervisor Bernie, who was very friendly and he gave me a quick tour of the facility. The place is like a maze! There are so many corridors and labs and I got lost a fair few times when wandering around.

After getting set up at a desk in the "bull pen", where the rest of guys in the department work, I had to run to make the shuttle bus back to Genzyme Center, as all of the company's interns had been invited to a lunch/Q&A session with Genzyme's Chief Financial Officer, Mike Wyzga. It turned out to be a really interesting afternoon as he told us the ideals that sets Genzyme apart from other biotechnology companies.

Wednesday was my first full day of work. I enjoy the relaxed atmosphere in the company, being allowed to wear casual clothes in this weather is helpful! In my job so far, I have learned how to quarantine all of the raw material that is used in Genzyme's production process, to make sure that its up to scratch health and safety wise. The rest of the staff have been great and I feel like a part of the team already.

Last night we all visited our local mall, the Galleria Mall, which is only a 5 minute walk from our apartment. After some shopping we walked backed home by the Charles River and enjoyed the view of the city at night . I think were going to visit Cape Cod for the weekend, as the beaches there are excellent according to Jemma's Lonely Planet guide.

I'll write more next week after our time away at the weekend

Day 1

After a weekend of enjoying the sunshine and getting to know our way around Boston, today was our first day at Genzyme, and there was a lot to take in.

We arrived early at the company's main building at Kendall Square, which is literally about 100 meters from our apartment, which is handy. From the outside the building looked impressive and it was even more so on the inside, with a fantastically bright  and open design.

Our day began with meeting the rest of the interns and temporary workers who were starting with us. After filling out various forms we got our security badges and then we were given a tour of the building. It was a real experience, as the building is renowned as one of the most environmentally friendly in the world due to its excellent design. We even got to sit in the boardroom, which was fun.

For the rest of the day, it was security and health and safety presentations and then that was us. In the mean time, work starts properly tomorrow. I'm working on the Framingham site, so I'll need to be up early to get the shuttle bus to work. We're also getting the chance to have lunch with Genzyme's Chief Financial Officer tomorrow as part of the Summer Seminar program that is held for all the interns, which will be a great chance to learn about the economic side of the business. So, its a busy day tomorrow and I'll report back on it soon.