Thursday, August 23, 2012

Home in October!

Bought tickets to be home for 4 weeks in October! Flight information on sidebar of blog.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Another crazy week

This past week was very front loaded where I worked really crazy hours in order to get a submission out. We promised to submit something on Monday, which was really unrealistic. Not sure why my supervisor still doesn't seem to realize that he is always underestimating the amount of time it takes to get something done. Anyway, I worked really long hours on Monday and at some point, I gave up on the drawings altogether. Those things can be massaged forever and not get done. Our calculations were not even halfway there so I couldn't justify not looking after them anymore. So I pushed all the drawings to my supervisor and was like, "I'm not looking at these things anymore. Need to make our report thicker!" He spent that night and the next day working with our draftsman to make the drawings better. After lunch on Tuesday, he finally realizes that even Tuesday wasn't a realistic deadline. So I went home after that and slept for a few hours. I felt a lot better after that and then came back to pull the rest of the thing together. We still had more things to put together for the drawings on Wednesday and in the end, we only got everything out to our client Wednesday night. I took a taxi over with all the drawings and supporting documents. It's really a waste for me to go over myself at night because it's pretty much the same as having a courier bring them over the next morning. But at that point, I didn't really care because I just wanted it out the door.

I went to meet up with a friend who is in town visiting. She's just visiting HK along with another friend. I really thought we were supposed to get things out early on Wednesday so I made plans to meet up with her at 6pm. But we were still printing drawings at that time so I ended up just meeting up with them for dessert. We walked around TST. They had fun at the Avenue of Stars. 

The next day I didn't show up to work until 11am. I just slept a lot and then didn't bothered to get up until around 10am. Even ate breakfast before getting to the office. Apparently my supervisor was still wondering where I was even though he was the one who told me not to come to work. 

There was another T8 Thursday night but that didn't happen until 10pm and became at T3 again before work the next day. So sad... no time off. I still took it easy on Friday though. Had a meeting in the morning and then did some coordination stuff in the afternoon. Left at around 6pm to meet up with some former coworkers for dinner. I swear we waste too much electricity by being at work so much. Former coworkers are such a bad influence. Not sure what will happen to our team since so many people have left and so many more leaving in the coming months. Total of 6 people leaving in the 6 months. My supervisor blames it on the good economy for the construction industry. Contractors are paying so much more. But I feel like people on this team doesn't have enough of a sense of belonging and loyalty to stick around. In the end, it's always the touchy-feely stuff that makes people want to stay. Anyhow, really not sure what will happen to this team.

I took Saturday off. These days I feel like my contract is for 7 days and I need to justify taking time off. I went to the gym, watched a movie, sat around at a cafe, went shopping, and then dinner with friends again. It was very relaxing day. I paid all my bills and such on Saturday and found that my credit card bill for the past month was less than $1,100 HKD, which is less than $200 USD. I took out a lot in cash but I think most of that was for taxis, which is reimbursable. So I went and spent some money on entertainment and clothes on Saturday.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Recent events

I just finished cleaning my work space at work. Managed to clear up some desk space for myself. I'm spending way too much time in the office these days. I think the last time I was not at the office was when I went on vacation to Guilin. We have so many submissions these days that it's just non-stop all the time. Back when I was interning in the US, I had heard about investment banking people working like crazy. I didn't understand how you can work so much and still be productive.

I feel like our end products don't really show the amount of effort and time we put into them. Some things just take a lot of time to put together. And we need to iterate a bunch of times to get it right. So even though the concepts and ideas are simple, it still takes a lot of time to get things together.

Last week, a friend was in town and I managed to have a couple of dinners with her. Both times I had to push back when we would be meeting because I was still busy at work. Can't believe I was so busy on a Friday night and Sunday morning that I couldn't get away from the office. We were supposed to go to the beach and mall on Sunday. But then she got bitten by some bug and her leg looked like it needed medical treatment. So I ended up visiting her at her grandparents' place.

I have another friend visiting this week. Hopefully we can manage to meet up. I'm hoping that I can have a some chill days after I get this submission out the door.

I feel bad for my supervisor. He's had to pick up a lot of the slack and do things that he hasn't had to do in years. His staff on this particular job are all too fresh to know what they are doing. For example, he spent the entire day today (Saturday) amending a set of drawings. I think I can take care of things like that but I'm busy working on a different part of the project. The rest of the kids might be able to take care of things but would need a lot of help and input. So he ended up doing things himself. If the project wasn't as rushed, we would have just let the new kids take their time to figure out things on their own. Can't learn without making mistakes. So clearly this is not an optimal situation for any of us...