Sunday, January 27, 2013

Life on Site

Thought I upload some pictures of what my site looks like. The site is very big and we have only "taken over" less than half of it, the easier half. The site is on the side of a hill. Part of it was a previous college that moved away.

I currently live in the little container to the left. But I think they are giving me a new (and bigger) one.

View of the site from Bowen Rd. Further development has a nice view.

This is part of the other half of the site that needs to be cleared. We're digging most of this mountain away and more.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Reflecting on 2012

First post of the new year! I just reread the first post I wrote in 2012 were I reflected on what happened in 2011. In a way, 2012 was vastly different from 2011 in that I really adjusted to life and work in HK. I spent a lot of time in the office that year, probably 1.5-2.0x more than I should be...

Highlights of 2012:
January. Visited Oat and Mahalia in Thailand and had a pretty relaxing trip.
February. Ran the HK Standard Charter half marathon. There were too many people and I was way out of shape.
April. Parents visited. We went to Thailand and Singapore and did a lot of sightseeing.
May. Coworkers started leaving. The team became pretty bare boned at one point.
June. Started working super overtime. Went to Guilin for a long weekend.
Sometime between June and October: 2 all nighters in consecutive weeks. Hit milestone at gym. Got below the daily fee rate!
October. Went back home for a month to take exam and then road trip to Seattle with friends!
December. Went to Shenzhen for a weekend trip. Went to Taiwan for Christmas

I think overall for 2012, I did a good amount of traveling and made use of the distance between HK and other places in Asia. Hopefully I can continue this for 2013. I got a 1 year visa for Mainland China sometime in June so really need to make use of that a few more times.

I also changed roles really rapidly at work. When I started, I happily adjusted to the role of assisting other engineers in my team. I learned a lot and made a lot of progress as far as learned technical knowledge. But as soon as my coworkers started leaving, I had to pick up a lot of work that I didn't have to deal with before. To complicate things even more, a bunch of fresh graduates arrived just as everyone was leaving. So not only did I have to pick up a lot of coordination (non-technical) work, I also had to train other people. Just as I was able to walk steadily on my own, I had to guide other people along in unfamiliar territory. We always ask people how long they have been working and it is really comparable to babies and toddlers. A few months makes a world of difference.