Raining

It's been raining these past few days, even though it's the dry season. Just one more full week and then it's Chinese New Year. We get 3 days of holiday so we basically get a 5 day weekend. I don't have any plans yet. I'll probably stay around Hong Kong and explore more stuff in the city. Go hiking and such.

Last week I had 3 days of classes and left promptly at around 5:30pm. I feel like I could have gotten much more done if I had stayed later. I'm used to working late now and leaving early (on time) feels like I'm not being productive enough. Kind of sad to think about. But there are so many phone calls and such during the day that it makes it hard to concentrate. But it's nice to have an excuse to leave the office.

We got our Chinese New Year bonus on Friday, along with our regular paycheck. I also got a good chunk of money from overtime and reimbursements. So the paycheck was huge. My bank account has money again.

Ran a 10K race today in Sai Kung. It was the Community Chest Corporate Challenge. So everyone who participated was part of a company team. We all had company names printed on the t-shirts, which made it easy to find coworkers. There was a half marathon/marathon race at the same location and they started half an hour earlier than we did. I got there kind of early was confused for a while. I did see some coworkers but didn't end up running with anyone. The course was way more hilly than I had anticipated. The first half had so many uphills that I definitely had a negative split. I think I did the last 1km in about 5 minutes because it was all downhill. It was also very foggy. People who wore glasses must have had a hard time seeing. I didn't stick around for the awards ceremony because it was cold and rainy. I think this was a popular weekend for road races because next weekend is CNY and in a couple more weeks is the Standard Chartered HK races, which are a big deal.

I met up with a friend from undergrad today. She was back visiting family. We walked around a local mall for a bit and just chatted. She says she's not used to coming home and living in such a small space anymore. She commented that I seem very happy working here. The job occupies pretty much all my time nowadays and I'm glad I enjoy it.

There's been a recent influx of people into the team and it has made the team dynamics more interesting. One of the 2nd year grad engineers rotated to the structures group and the guy replacing him is Korean. So more non-Chinese speaking people in the team. There's also a girl who is in between site supervision assignments and is back at the office. She's very good so we're all glad she's back to help out.