Friends, site visit... another week

Every week here seems like a big battle. There's just so much to do and not enough time and energy. This week started off pretty well. The project that we've been working on like crazy finally went through on Monday. Hopefully the rest of it will go through smoothly as well. Our supervisor came back from vacation and we talked about all our projects over lunch. It took quite a while to go through all the projects and he started to realize in earnest that we don't have enough people. I think the rest of us realized this a long time ago but now it's getting to the point where we're not making deadlines and falling behind on everything.

Wednesday was the big day of the week. It was the last day for one of the guys on our team. I guess this happens a lot and is a part of one's career. People come and go all the time. But it's still very tragic, especially when the person is an essential part of the team and is one of your mentors. We miss him already...

That night I left work "early" to meet up with two friends for dinner. One of them is a classmate from Stanford who did her undergrad at HKU. She came back to visit and was meeting up with a friend of hers from HKU who happens to also work at Arup and is in the same group as me (but is now stationed at a site office). So the three of us had dinner and chatted about my long working hours among other things. After dinner, we went for dessert. It took us a while to find the street with all the dessert shops though. Had to go halfway into a dark alley before turning around and starting over. It was a very fun evening. I felt like I even slept better that night and woke up with a pleasant dream. Lately, I've been waking up very tired and wanting to sleep in more. I think it's due to the lack of exercise.

I'm going to try to join a gym again this weekend. Really need to exercise. Definitely getting fat.

Friday morning, I went to on a site visit to a project that I've been working on. The guy who left had been working on the project so the new project engineer hadn't been to the site either. The resident engineer at the site is also leaving to go to another site. So we basically had two handovers for the geotech part of this project in one week. The new resident engineer for this project is from England. He's here on an Early Development Assignment (basically a two year assignment). It might be a bit difficult for him because he'll be the only representative from our company at the site and he doesn't speak Cantonese. I'm sure it'll all work out though. He's survived four months here so far. This will be a new experience though. Wish him all the best. Maybe this will give me an excuse to go visit him once in a while. Although I have to say, I won't be that much more help since I can only pretend to speak Canto...

It's really nice to be able to see the stuff that I've been working on. The walls look a lot bigger in reality than they do on paper. The site is an abandoned prison. There are a lot of buildings and alleyways. I would totally get lost. It's located in a very busy area of HK Island. I wouldn't mind going back to check out "site activities" once in a while. So many opportunities to see things in action here!

Other random news: I have two more friends coming to visit in the next few weeks! Lots of people coming through since it's summer. Our group got a summer intern. He's only here for another two weeks though. I feel like we snatched him from another group. But he's only working for the month of August. Such a quick internship. I can't imagine. That's like settling in and then leaving right after. I just started a ShareBuilder account and waiting for money to be transferred in. I guess I'll spend some time this weekend investigating into stocks worthy of my investment.

First Day of Work!

It was not that exciting. In the US offices, you're doing orientation related stuff most of the day. They get everything over with on the first day, which could be information overload. Here, the whole process seems to be slower. I met with HR and we went over my employment contract again. There were some forms for me to fill out. She took a while to explain the two different retirement pension plans that I can join. I swear that we spent a lot of time going over information that isn't very useful. I got handed off to one of the secretaries of my group and she gave me more forms. We didn't do anything about timesheets, marketing, using OvaNet, etc.

It's hard for me to think of my desk as really mine. I've had temporary desks for every internship that it's weird to think that I might actually be using this desk for a while and that I can store stuff here. I think part of it is because my desk was a huge mess when I got there. It had been used as storage for people's project papers. A couple of people came by to claim their stuff when I got there. In the US, IT would set up your computer and phone the day before you arrive so that you can get to work right away. But here, it takes a day for IT to make your account. Luckily, since I asked them to get me my old email back, I was able to sign in with my previous login. The strange thing is that I couldn't get to the intranet. I could see the network drives and go online though. I poke around the network drives and the papers around my desk the rest of the morning because my supervisor was at a meeting.

There are several people on vacation right now so I went out to lunch with 2 other people. We talked about finding housing in HK and they said that if I go further away from the city, I can find bigger places for my budget. They helped me clean out the papers on my desk and then I read some HK geotech guides for the rest of the day. Didn't seem like they were prepared for me coming. Hopefully they will have stuff for me to do tomorrow. Real job, not an intern anymore... So weird...

Random happenings on a Thursday

I went to a SFGI dinner meeting last night. There were over 100 people at this one. The room was packed! I don't think I've ever been to one that had so many people. Surprisingly, there were a lot of people I knew at this one. It was very nice to see these people. I'm so used to telling people that I'm a "Masters student at Stanford" that I didn't even think about it until we sat down at the dinner table and two of my former coworkers from the Arup SF office sat next to me. At that point, I realized I could be saying that I work at Arup. So weird!! 

I went to SF before the meeting. I wanted to go to Levi's and that pair of jeans that I had been thinking about since the last time I went. I ran out of time though because I was looking through Ann Taylor Loft's sale rack. Another goal of mine was to get a Kobo (the eReader from Borders). Last time I was in SF, the Borders in the Westfield Shopping Center had a $20 off for all their eReaders. The Kobo came out to be $80. This is already a good deal since these things typically go for about $130. The Kindle is a bit more expensive than that, especially if you want a bigger screen, wi-fi, etc. As I approached the info desk, one of the sales ladies was putting up a sign that said $40 off for the Kobo! So the purchase was a no-brainer and my total came out to be around $65, including tax. Very cool. The device is charging right now. I'm excited.

I was a bit late meeting a friend of mine who agreed to drive me from his office to the SFGI meeting location. He's on the board so he was supposed to get there early to help set up. Oopse. We still got there early though. On the way back, I got a ride back to Stanford from someone I met at Arup, who lives in San Jose. I think it was out of his way. Guess I'll have to return the favor if he ever comes to Asia for work. heh.

I think I really want to find a one bedroom for my apartment in HK. It will make hosting people a lot easier. It's a big transit hub so I hope I get a lot of visitors. It'll be fun. It would give me an excuse to leave the office at a decent hour, I hope. 

I really need to get going on packing up my room. I get to bring 3 suitcases with me to HK. It's not like I've never done this before but it's still difficult. My parents got my visa via DHL yesterday. Now I gotta go after them about my flight. Doesn't feel real. It never feels real when I'm leaving some place. I've been at Stanford for so long that I can't imagine leaving and now coming back again. Going somewhere else is an adventure. It's always the leaving that gets me. 

Week 1 - Classes and Life Decisions

Super unproductive today. Did a bit of work but didn't managed to finish the entire assignment. Baked bread though. I felt like I spent the whole day eating, watching anime, and napping. I went running in the morning and was sore afterwards. Sore after running 3 miles, seriously...

This concludes week 1 of my last quarter at Stanford. The weeks will go by fast. This has got to be the longest time I've spent shopping around for classes ever. I've pretty much decided on my classes now. I will be taking:

• Earthquake Hazard and Risk Assessment Analysis
• Infrastructure Project Delivery
• Mechanics of Finite Element Analysis
• Financial Literacy (seminar)

And sitting in on:

• The Vietnamese Experience in America
• A Chinese class (maybe)

I actually went to a couple of linguistics classes as well but I don't think they are going to work out. I went to a phonology class which I think could be useful if I learned the stuff. I think it would make me a lot more aware of the way people speak, the differences, and reasons why. But it seems like a very work intensive class and it's not something that I can do easily. Doesn't seem like the best use of my resources. The other linguistics class is a joint class between linguistics, anthropology, and education. It's called the Race, Ethnicity, and Linguistics in Education. It's a very interesting class but it's definitely a grad level class. The other students are all doing research and seem very focused on a topic. So I'm not sure I can keep up with them. It would be interesting to sit in on though but there are already too many people in the class.

I think this will be an interesting quarter. I am also TAing a class on Foundations Engineering. There are 20+ people in the class right now. I hope the homeworks are straight forward and easy so that they don't all come to office hours! It will be an interesting class since it's being taught by someone who is working in industry. Maybe I'll learn something too. I am also helping out with the Peru seminar. It's starting a bit slow. I'm not exactly sure what's going on actually. 

I woke up at 7am Friday morning to speak with a former coworker about my future job. I have two offers now and am in the process of choosing between them. It feels like a big decision. First, real job. I think I'm losing sleep over this. I wish it wasn't such a difficult choice. But I guess they're both what I wanted. I'm sure that 10 years down the road, this won't even matter at all. I'm glad I have this network of friends and mentors. I can't imagine what I would be doing without my mentors. I really hope that I will find great mentors at my future jobs.

Anyway, new resolution for this year. I want to read at least one geotechnical journal paper in depth per week. That would be 52 papers by the end of this year. That's actually not a whole lot considering how many papers are out there and many of the ones I will read will probably be on the similar topics. But I think it's really important to get used to reading technical papers and find out about the latest research. There are actually a lot of empirical formulas in the geotech industry so academic research is highly valued. Maybe I'll get a chance to publish a paper one day for a conference, book, or something. People are always looking to verify numerical results with field measurements. That's something that I can imagine myself doing, even at this stage. Build different finite element models using different constitutive laws and collect field data to see how well the predictions are. Maybe set up the monitoring program in such a way that it captures something that is the industry has been wanting verification on. 

After holiday sales and last day at work

Wow, just spent a few epic hours at Walmart. We had just finished dinner and I was taking a nap when my cousin called and asked if we wanted to go to Walmart because they were having their after-holidays clearance sale. We didn't end up getting very much stuff. Got a cat scratcher thing that is supposed to dull the cat's claws for half the original price. We didn't even know it was on sale until we got to the register. It's essentially hard cardboard. Can you believe we were willing to buy cardboard for $25?? Anyway, the cat has yet to dull his claws on this thing so we'll see if it's even worth all the effort.

The head of infrastructure treated all of the infrastructure group out to lunch today. Very generous of him. We filled three tables. It was hard trying to keep the geotechs separate. We had too many people to fit into one table to begin with.

I left the office relatively late today. Later than everyone else in my group. Leaving gets harder and harder every time. Anyway, we got an email in the afternoon saying that we can leave at 3:30pm because no one seems to be doing any work. This was not true for our group. I was really rushing to finish up stuff but didn't managed to do everything I wanted to do. Still made pretty good progress though. People came to say goodbye as they were leaving. No one seems to doubt that they will see me again but half of them were wondering if and when I will be joining the SF office as a full time employee. .

Wrapping things up

Tomorrow will be my last day at the SF office. I still have so much work to do! I think this is mainly a byproduct of not really knowing what I'm doing in the first place. Had to get a lot of help from other people. One person in particular was very adamant about reducing the work and not wasting time. Wish he had brought up these points to begin. Instead, we got slammed with some new perspective just as I'm about to leave. Better late than never, I guess. I just hope that I can make some good progress tomorrow. Even though the other intern is helping out a lot, it's tough to hand out work. I really want to explain the geotech and engineering aspects of what's happening to him so that he's not just doing random data entry. But this all takes time and I end up not being able to do my own work.

Almost want to say I miss the days when I'm just doing work that has been handed down to me with instructions. Didn't have to figure things out on my own and realize three days into the project that I've done everything wrong. But I am definitely learning a lot and feeling more and more capable of doing engineering work as I fix my own mistakes. Really hope I can find a good mentor when I start to work full time. Of course it's nice to have many mentors but I need that one person who I can always go to for help.

Can't believe I start school again next Monday. People at work are shocked that I'm not taking any time off between working and starting school again. Definitely a workaholic. I've been ignoring all school related stuff for the last three weeks though. There are a few things I need to take care off before or as soon as school starts. But I feel like I can't focus properly until I get back to my dorm room. It's all about the environment. I know some people study for their PE exams at work (after work hours) because it's just easier to concentrate.

Last Monday of the Year

Last week of break. Going back to school next week. Starting classes again next week. Seems a bit unreal. I feel like I have been out of school forever even though it has only been two weeks. I think it's been really good for me to do something during the break. Working always makes me more motivated about going back to school. I always end up feeling like I have a lot to learn and am more eager to go and learn it. 

Today was an interesting day at work. Two new people started instead of just the one person. The other person is an intern who will be with the group for the next three weeks. I saw the full time person waiting in the lobby and introduced myself. I think I should've done the same the week before but I think I was in a bit of a rush that particular morning. 

I managed to help out with the new intern. He's only a sophomore and hasn't taken any soil mechanics so it's tough to explain things to him. I really don't think geotech reports make much sense to him. They barely made sense to me after taking soil mechanics. We had a lot of computer problems in the morning though. Anyway, I managed to give him some work. Hopefully I didn't confuse him too much. 

I realized I have a lot of work to do. I was bogged down with some calculations and graphing work last week and didn't really look at the whole scope of what I was supposed to be doing. Anyway, I feel like I have a much better idea of what's going on now. I feel like I've been doing more and more open ended work that are not necessarily prescribed step-by-step. Really feeling like I'm almost there in terms of being able to realize what is needed to be done and doing the appropriate things. Just need a bit of guidance. Can almost let go of safety lines and think on my own. Almost...

Had dinner with a friend. It's so good catching up with people in person. I feel like we're all on the threshold of something. Or maybe life is supposed to take us to many places. I always thought that once we graduate, we would all pick a career and stick with something for a while. But it's more like we've been released from four years of undergrad and now we're free to bounce around. Maybe we're supposed to meet up with friends after months and years and go, you've been up to what?? 

Lots of people doing after-holidays shopping in SF. The downtown area was packed with people with lots of bags from Macy's, Forever 21, etc.

Christmas is near!

Family just got a Wii today. I tried to convince them to buy it off of Amazon in order to avoid paying taxes. Things a little bit cheaper there too. Instead, we went to Costco and got the console and a charger. Then went to Walmart to get an extra remote. We also got a big screen TV as well, great for gaming. My mom wanted to do this in case we needed to return it for whatever reason. Costco doesn't have a restocking fee and they're generally really good about taking things back. Anyway, we ordered a couple more games online after we got back. I have to say though, the Wii Sports and Sports Resort is keeping us pretty busy. I totally owned ("pwned") my brother at the boxing game.

I went to work most of last week and will be working most of the next two weeks. We have a new persons starting tomorrow and another new person starting next week. It's kind of exciting for the group. I think everyone is looking forward to meeting the new people. At least, I am. The group is not so big that it makes a big difference when there's a new person. It's always a question of how they're going to fit in and what projects they will work on. I think the first few weeks is tough for everyone because people's roles have to shift to accommodate the new person.

Anyway, while I really enjoy working, I'm kind of glad I'm not doing this ridiculous commute next quarter. Never living 36 miles from work again! I'm going to be taking 10 units again, TA-ing a class, and helping to run a seminar. So I'll be pretty busy. But I think I'm going to try to take some more chill classes so that I can have a more balanced life. I felt like last quarter was not balanced at all. I didn't have time to do anything else other than studying and working on projects all the time. Didn't do very much running. Hardly baked. Didn't hold any dinner parties. Maybe it's because I had all these conferences in the beginning of the quarter and it threw me off of having a schedule. Last spring, I had a project class, worked, but still managed to bake bread for myself and work part-time two days a week.

I think next quarter I am going to start up my marathon training again. Running a marathon was my new year's resolution for 2010. I don't think that's going to be resolved this year. But I did managed to run 2 half marathons so I guess I'm not too far off. I'm going to try to do a marathon next year (2011), preferably in the spring. The Oakland one still scares me (first 10 miles are up hill) but I suppose it's something I can train for. I would rather start out with something flat. These hills make a really big difference.

Most of my readers should know about the status of my plans for after graduation by now. It something I really want to write about but don't think I should be announcing these things before they're final. But don't worry, once I've decided, I'll be writing about my preparations.

Can't believe Christmas is next week. Still need to get presents!

Conference in Hollywood

Yes, the conference was right in the heart of Hollywood. From the balcony, I can see the Walk of Fame, the elephants statues, and the Hollywood sign. The conference itself was interesting. It was on deep foundations technology, challenges, and related issues. People had some really interesting projects to showcase. I expected more people to attend though. Or maybe there were a lot of people but not everyone sat in on the sessions. The conference had a lot of technical sessions, committee meetings, and exhibits by companies. Maybe people hung out at the exhibits more.

The conference ended before lunchtime on Friday so I had a bit of time to walk around Hollywood. I walked around the mall area a bit trying to find an interesting place to eat. I was hungry and was about to give up on this search when I saw the Lard On food truck. Of course, I had to go. I got the BLT off of their lunch menu. The buns were heated on the grill, bacon was extra crispy, huge slices of tomatoes, and blue cheese. I thought the blue cheese was a bit weird for all this but it works. When I was trying to pay, the guy saw my US Navy wallet and asked if I was in the Navy or if it was a free wallet (ha!). At this point, I realized I was standing in front of a US Armed Forces recruiting center. I told the guy I did a military youth program back in the day and he asked if it was the sea cadets! Turns out the guy was in Bryce Canyon, one of the big units in this area. Actually the LA area has a quite a few big units, I think. I was a bit shocked. We chatted for a little bit but he had to take more orders. So random.

I brought my sandwich to the Coffee Bean. I was wondering why they were all over the place when I found out that it started in this area. It's like Peets in SF Bay. I got a tea latte which was overpriced but really good and made use of their free wi-fi. After refueling, I walked around Hollywood Blvd a bit but there wasn't a whole lot to see. There's about a block or two of "attractions" like the Chinese theater, Egyptian theater, Ripleys, Wax Museum, upscale clothing stores, etc. And then it becomes hooka bars, fast food joints, souvenir shops, and other stores with no one in them. I got tired and took the metro to downtown LA. I was planning to walk around there but sat at another Coffee Bean instead and used their wireless again, made some phone calls, and just sat around drinking my tea. I don't think there was very much to see anyhow.

I'm staying with a couple of friends from Stanford and we all went out to a Korean place nearby. This neighborhood has a lot of Korean and Japanese food places. Apparently Toyota and Honda has offices here. The food was amazing!! I've never thought Korean food was all that great but this was so delicious. All the other customers were Korean. They even served side dishes of kimchi and other sides. I've always thought kimchi tasted funny. I think it's because all I've ever had were ones bought from the store that are over fermented. The kimchi at this place was so good. I had a noodle soup that was cooked in a beef and kimchi broth. Never knew what I was missing out on!

We were all stuffed when we got back so we watched an episode of Firefly. After the episode, I found out that Serenity is the movie made to wrap up the Firefly series. I had watched Serenity freshmen year when LSC showed it as part of the sci-fi movie marathon. I don't know how I didn't manage to make this connection. I think if I had, I would've watched all of Firefly by now. Better late than never....

Short update - last week of classes

This past week has been pretty crazy. I don't even remember the last time I actually blogged instead of just posting random links. I pretty much spent last Saturday - Tuesday working on a homework and project, pretty much non-stop. There were a few social events here and there. There was a pig roast on Sunday at my dorm. The pig was pretty good. On Wednesday, we finally gave our presentation for the Indonesia project. There were a quite a few guests attending the presentations. I think we did pretty well and didn't go too much overtime. Xiumin arrived that day so I dragged her to the presentations too.

I went to work Thursday and Friday. I was actually pretty busy on Friday. I was doing some HR related stuff in the morning when people started arriving and wanted to go downstairs for bagels. So I got bagels with people and then was about to head to a meeting with the HR person when I got an email from one of the guys asking me to make a few changes for a meeting with my supervisor. Luckily, the HR meeting didn't take very long and I was able to finish everything just in time for a meeting with my supervisor and a few other people. Literally, just in time. The meeting went a little long so we actually had to push back my goodbye lunch by half an hour. Everyone came out for the lunch, even the supervisor. We went to a Thai place that had pretty good food.

Haven't had time to go exploring SF with X yet. So busy. I still have 2 take-home finals to do, 1 project to finish up, and a whole room to pack. So close... And then I need to seriously plan out my travels.

Networking within a small net

Wow, another day of small-world-ness. I went to a GEER (Geo-Engineering Earthquake Reconnaissance) talk/dinner meeting for the SFGI (San Francisco Geo-Institute). They do reconnaissance trips after earthquakes in order to learn more about geology, geotechnical engineering, and hopefully find things that can help the engineering community. I arrived for the social chit-chatting before the dinner and after I introduced myself to two people, one of the asked me if I went to MIT. I was a little surprised (I wasn’t wearing a brass rat or anything), and said yes. Turns out he’s a friend of Xiumin’s! He said that Xiumin mentioned that she has a friend named Lucy. I also vaguely remember Xiumin talking about a friend who did his Masters at MIT. Such an interesting coincidence. I also remember seeing him at an ASCE event last month and had wanted to talk to him because he works at Geomatrix, a pretty big geotech firm. I didn’t get a chance that time. Very glad I did this time though.

The actual presentation was really interesting. The two guys giving the presentation went to Haiti on a recon trip with a team of geologists and geotechnical engineers. They spent 6 days in the country about 2 weeks after the earthquake. They basically went around looking at structural and geological features for damage trying to find evidence of faulting. Their conclusion was that the earthquake did not happened on the well known fault in Haiti but that it actually happened on a fault that has not been mapped yet. Very, very interesting, mystery solving trip. They’re still analyzing data from the trip to map figure out the actual fault that had ruptured. They also did a lot of simple geotechnical tests with hand instruments. I really wanted to ask them about that stuff to see if its feasible/appropriate to do in Padang this summer. But I didn’t get a chance because I was trying to get a ride to a BART station. I think I’ll email the guy though.

They are also talking about holding a geotech recon training sometime in the fall. That would be so awesome. I need to join this organization (GEER)! I wrote about professional organizations in a previous post. And I’ve always thought that I would get more involved later, when I have an actual job and settle down and such. But maybe not since I get really good deals at events as a student. Companies will pay for professional society memberships but usually only one or two, not the four or five that I would like to join.

Meetings, activities, dinners, etc.

I can't believe it's still so rainy in May. I'm not sure weather.com is a very good weather predictor. But now I've gotten used to using it. One of the guys at work uses BBC. Maybe I should too. Only 2 more weeks at work. 5 days. woah.... time goes by very fast. I think this internship has been satisfying. I've been doing more and more actual work. Not sure if I will have time to work in the fall. I think I will have time to do something in the winter since I would only be taking 5 units worth of classes. Or should I just audit a whole bunch of classes? I really want to know what people are doing after they graduate. I think a whole bunch of people are graduating from my program after this quarter. Don't know where they're headed off to.

I think I need to get more involved in professional societies. I'm in a few: ASCE (GI), SWE, SEAONC (I think?). I think some people are very involved and sit on technical committees and organize events. I think it would be interesting to get involved in a technical committee. Not sure what that would entail. Pretty sure I don't qualify to do the work at this point. Anyway, I'll probably get involved in the Younger Member Forum(s) in the future.

Our visitors from Indonesia arrived today! Yay. There were all sorts of visa problems for them. At first they couldn't get an appointment at the US embassy until June but magic things happened and they are now here! I really need to get on top of this learning Indonesian thing. I sort of stopped because the lessons got harder. Very bad excuse, I know. But some of the lessons don't seem relevant to me. I also wish I had a book that focused more on the grammar. Maybe it's time for another visit to the library?

I told a friend today that I feel like I have too much social life. In addition to going to work tomorrow, I am meeting with a former coworker for lunch, and then going to a SFGI dinner after work. Hopefully, I can get back in time for the Thursday Night Thing at Rains. Then Friday, the department is having capture the flag and happy hour in the afternoon. Saturday and Sunday nights I'm having dinner with people. I will be cooking. This means I need to go grocery shopping sometime on Friday. Oh, and geology field trip on Sunday to some landslide sites.

Half Time!

I'm halfway done with academics at Stanford. Pretty crazy how fast things are going. I think I'm pretty happy with my decision of coming to Stanford instead of somewhere else (Berkeley). Anyway, that's a discussion for another time. This post is about what I have been up to the past week.

Tuesday. I found out at work that I will be moving desks. I feel like this happens to me at every internship. And my internship experiences change dramatically because of it. Usually for the better. I'm moving closer to my group but unfortunately, half the group is moving downstairs. I still don't understand why this decision was made. Someone, somewhere decided that people should be more "integrated" and sit by projects. But projects change all the time. And it's important to sit with your group because then other people know where to go when they need specialized help. And you can look around and find help when you need it. I think this will be one of my questions when I do interviews next year. Does the group sit together? I mean, it's actually a pretty dumb question because most of the time, the answer will be yes. But it's important. And it's always the little things that count. I don't care if my questions are non-standard and feels weird to potential employers. I think it's important to find a group that I like to work with. I feel like I have a lot of experience to bring to the group for an entry level engineer.

Wednesday. We had our mid-term presentations for our tsunami evacuation for Padang class. Things seem to be moving along for the class. Everyone has a ton of work to do regarding their project. I think we're doing really good work though. We definitely putting out engineering education to use. It's really amazing to see that I can really use my somewhat specialized knowledge to help communities around the world.

The summer trip is still in the pre-planning stages. We have a somewhat set date for arrival in Indonesia. But the tourist visa seems to be only for 60 days. The next step is 6 months and applying for that seems like a huge hassle that is very involved. The other option is getting a visa on arrival (valid for 30 days) and leave the country for a couple of days and get another one of these 30 day things. But even with that, we're still limited to 60 days and we want to be in the country for more like 70 days. So we would have to leave the country twice. I'm a little worried that immigration will deny our entry the 3rd time around. In which case, it will be a huge disaster. So if anyone has any bright ideas, speak up!

Thursday. I went to an ASCE dinner meeting after work. I should go to these more often because they are often free or super cheap for students. But this one only worked out because one of the ASCE officers at Stanford decided to organize a carpool and I was able to get a ride back with them. Otherwise, it would've taken me super long to get back to campus. I met some very interesting people. I met someone who is a long time coworker and friend of a coworker from a previous internship. I feel like this type of thing happens all the time. I think I need to get more involved in ASCE. I think I'm going to try to be active in the younger member committees or something when I get a job. It seems like a great way to network and find out what everyone is up to.

Friday. My soil berm design team met up with one of my coworkers from work. She gave us a lot of good advice on things to look into. I think it was pretty productive use of time. The only question is if we have enough time and energy to address all the issues. I feel like my team needs more team meetings where we tackle a problem. Maybe 4 people is too many and we would get distracted? I don't know if we should partner up and work on figuring out solutions to individual problems.

Saturday. I spent yesterday volunteering with SEAONC's Rebuilding Together day. We were helping out an elementary school with some renovations. I was painting the parent's lounge. There were other painting projects and building of benches and plant boxes. There were quite a few people from various companies. I was surprised to see many familiar faces as well. SEAONC is a structural engineering association. I'm a member but I don't think there are very many other geotech people. I feel like the geotech community doesn't really have an equivalent. There's the GeoInstitute but I'm not sure it's an equivalent.

Next week, I have a take home midterm for Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to go to the SFGI annual lectures on Thursday. The lectures start at noon and then there's dinner afterward. I usually work on Thursdays but I'm sure they won't mind since this is geotech related. I guess I'm just feeling like I don't have time. Because if I only work half a day on Thursday, I might want to go to the office on Friday as well.

Anyway, extremely busy, like always! Need to devote some time to studying Indonesian. Falling behind on my schedule already and I haven't gotten past chapter 4 of Teach Yourself Indonesian. Also, there seems to be a lot of buffalo in Indonesia. Now it makes more sense why my computerized flashcards was making me learn how to say water buffalo in Indonesian. I guess it would be nice to know when I go to a restaurant??

Third Quarter - Week 2... and the work keeps piling on!

I feel like I haven't blogged in a while. This is not true but time is really dragging by this quarter. I can't believe it's only Tuesday of the 2nd week. It feels further into the quarter already. I guess I don't have that much actual work to do yet but definitely feeling the lack of time. Mostly because I keep going home on the weekends. I can't get any work done at home so it becomes major time crunch when I get back to school.

Got out of work relatively early today. A lot of people are on vacation so I got to (finally) work on my own project. I'm actually writing the report for this thing now. It's really satisfying to be working on my own thing instead of helping other people with their plots and calculations. Granted, other people's projects are usually more interesting but still. I picked up some career books from the business school library. Not sure if they're actually helpful but it's good to be in that mindset of career development, I suppose.

Classes are going pretty well. One lecture class - Poromechanics. One seminar-style class - engineering in geology science. One project class - tsunami evacuation structures for Padang. And one actual seminar - infrastructure and risk. Poromechanics will get hard very soon. The geology class is interesting and shouldn't been very much work. Tsunami project is an ongoing thing. Work will never end for this. The infrastructure seminar seems interesting and not very much work at all. I think part of the reason why I feel stressed is because of this project class. Work for it never ends so it's not like you can read ahead or anything. But it's a good project so I'm okay with it.

Running Bay to Breakers soon! I'm excited. But I really need to get back into shape. Don't want to be in too much pain after the race... haha.

Geotechnically speaking...

I'm taking a class this quarter called Engineering in Geology Science. Half the class is civil engineers while the other half are geologists. I think this class more more catered to the geologists but I think I can still gain a lot from this class. Today, the professor went over basic soil mechanics and "how (geotechnical) engineers view the world." All the other civil engineers in the room were undergrads. The professor directed a lot of the questions to me and I really felt I understand the basics of geotechnical engineering. Even though I don't think I've done that much more academically than the undergrads, I think I have a much better feel for the material than they do somehow. I have definitely felt big leaps of understanding between last few internships. I think this constant switch from working and academics has done a lot more for me than I give credit to. I feel much more capable to solve problems, read engineering literature, and understanding concepts in general.

Before thinking about all this, part of me thought that school was got in the way of me learning on the job. Three months is a really short time and having to go back to school cuts into the learning process. And when you start a new job, there's so much more to learn than just the technical stuff. But apparently, I gain a lot more intellectually at school as well because I have felt better and better prepared for each successive internship than the last. So it's kind of sad that I will be stopping school indefinitely in about a year... scary thought!

Busy, busy!

Last week was pretty epic. I finished up homework for the quarter early in the week so that I can attend the geo forum. The geo forum was really cool. I got to see everyone I worked with in NY this past summer. Thursday was really long day of presentations but they were all very interesting. The forum started off with "state of the region" reports from various offices, something that is not really shared so freely in any other setting. I feel so lucky to be interning right when this forum happened. I got to put faces to names that I've heard of. And I even got to know the SF people better. Working part-time and sitting away from the group has not helped in allowing me to get to know the team very well. I hope they continue this forum thing. I think it's very useful even though it means that people have to take time away from their projects. I think most people were stressed out by this but it's good to get to know other people since the community is so small.

Next week is going to be another pretty packed week. I have a final on Monday. I'm going to work Monday afternoon and all of Tuesday. Work is very busy because there are a few deadlines looming in ahead. But Grace is visiting! We're having dinner on Tuesday night so I have an excuse to leave the office at a reasonable hour instead of sticking around until the crickets come out (this happened last Friday - the staying late part, not the crickets). I have another final on Thursday night. Stanford schedules in 4 finals a day so the last final is from 7-10pm. So late! More time to study, I suppose. Going to work on Friday. And then I'm off to tropical places Saturday night!! Looking forward to a week of beaches and relaxation.

Long(er) days

Last two days at work were very busy. Actually, I've been really busy at work ever since the second week... I was literally the last person on the train last night. Ran the last block and made it just in time. I'm glad I'm busy and doing useful stuff though. Otherwise, it would be a waste of time. I'm working on a project that is supposed to be done by the end of next week. But it's not a high priority project and my supervisor is busy with other stuff. And I've spent most of my time the last two days working on a different project. I finally got time to look at my own project today and made some good progress. Hopefully, I will have something substantial and write up draft of a memo next week. Next week will be crazy though.

Thursday and Friday is the geo-forum. Thursday is an intense day of presentations. I laughed when I saw the agenda. All the technical talks are 30 mins max. All the non-technical talks are 15 mins. Some technical talks are 15 min. This includes time for questions and discussion. Knowing how much some people like to ask questions and express their opinions, we are going to run over by a lot. I mean, seriously, 15 min is the time it takes to set up the See and Share. Can't wait to see people from New York again! It's funny how I already know more people than most people at this meeting. This meeting is supposed to be a meet-and-greet for the company's geo-teams. I know more than half the people on the list already. I realize why they chose SF even though most the biggest group is in New York. Because the NY office simply can't accommodate something like this! The SF office has nice big conference rooms that can easily fit everyone.

Hopefully I'm going to get lots of work done this weekend. 3 homeworks due next week. But one of them should be easy, like always. I'm almost done with the other one. And then there should be one more (the really hard one that I always stress out about) but it hasn't been posted yet.... And the policy is that we're supposed to get a week to do it. So.... not sure what this means. Maybe it won't be due next week?? That would be nice. It's not nice to have something due during finals week but I would rather have a homework than not, because I do learn a lot from those homeworks. And they're the only practice problems we're going to get for the final.

I think this working part-time thing will be much better next semester. I will be going in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, full-days. None of this half day business. I'm sure my "full-days" will be more than 8 hr days though. The upside is that the days are getting longer. I woke up today at 6:30am to sunshine outside. Two weeks ago, it was still dark when I woke up. And I realized that if I wake up just 10 mins earlier, I can catch an earlier, faster train and get to the office half an hour earlier. So that saves me 20 minutes! I'll try this out next week.

I'm still super excited about going back to Cambridge and visiting friends. The timing couldn't be any better. Going to start booking one-way trips again!

Long commutes

Got to the office at 3pm today instead of 2pm. I totally knew this would happen. I had a midterm today that ran over so I couldn't make it to the train station in time. I was hoping the midterm would start on time. But the professor decided to read the midterm to us and then let us work on it. She gave us more time at the end because no one was finished. That midterm was way too long. We were all in shock aftewards. Quite a few people from civil engineering is taking that class so we call converged in Blume and talked about it for a while.

It is now Week 2 of working part-time and all of a sudden I'm on working in 3 projects. I now have a backlog of work to do. I feel like I've moved through the "data entry and helping other people with mundane tasks" phase pretty quickly in this internship and is now working on more open ended projects. By open ended I mean that I have to figure out what's going on, do some calculations, and figure out how to present the stuff. This is a lot more interesting but at the same time more scary than, "graph these things on excel for me" type of projects. I just wish I can sit closer to the group. No clue what other people are doing at all. Can't eavesdrop on other people's discussions. Don't even know who leaves when and such. Maybe I'll get the IT guys to set up a desk for me somewhere. Just commandeer a space!

Gotta go to sleep. Will write more tomorrow or over the weekend. Getting up at 6:30am tomorrow to make it to the office by 8:30. Ack. Well, at least there will be bagels...

Epic Week!

I started writing this on the Caltrain south, back to Palo Alto. I managed to get on the Baby Bullet, which is the “fastest” train available. It makes very limited stops. I’m so glad Palo Alto is one of these stops. Very old train though, bought from Japan in 1985. Very shaky.

I spent last weekend at home. First time home for Chinese New Year in 4 years. It was great. Felt like vacation. I only had 2 things due this week so I didn’t bothered bringing any work home. I wouldn’t have gotten to them anyway. We had a huge feast on Saturday. This concept of being home for the weekend still feels strange. Usually I’m only home during breaks so it really is vacation. So strange to be home in the middle of the quarter.

On Tuesday, I started working. Usually I work Monday and Thursday afternoons and all day on Friday. But Monday was a holiday. They had nearly everything ready for me when I got there. My desk and computer was all set up. The group has an admin. I think it’s because the group manager is a principal. But she’s not his secretary though because she helps the group out with project stuff as well. It’s sooo nice having an admin in the group. There are a ton of admin related things you have to take care of when you start. Last summer, I just asked people in my group and they would direct me to other people. It was such a headache to find the right person to ask things. I’m sitting really far from the group though. Kind of isolated. It’s worse than the start of the summer because I can’t even see the group. I’m around the corner and down the hall. Not a great arrangement. I need to hunt around for space.

There’s a lot more space at this office. I had thought that the New York setup was by design. People here have very low partitions too but they go around 3 sides of the desk and you can’t see your neighbors unless you stand up. And everyone has much more personal space so it’s hard to know what other people are up to. It’s even quieter. In New York, there’s only a partition in front of you. The other two sides are very small and you almost share desk space with the person next to you. It’s great when you’re working on projects together though since you can talk to people without getting up and just dump all the joint project stuff on that desk. Really miss the “talking to people without getting up” part. Oh yeah, the SF office has a dining area. It’s on the floor below me but that’s really nice. Especially for rainy days or when you want to eat together with people but don’t want to go out. And no more having to buzz in after going to the bathroom. That was really annoying. The bathrooms are also much more spacious. The NY office had these really cramped, almost airplane spaced stalls. I didn’t do too much on Tuesday. I did a little bit of stuff and mostly talked to people. Chatted with the group manager for a while. After work, I went to Oakland for a Geo-Institute seminar. They have dinner meetings or seminars every month. This month was PhD student presentations. I was late so I only heard 2.5 presentations. They were good though. I really liked the last presentation, which has to do with liquefaction.

After that, I took BART back over to SF. At this point, I had two choices: (1) take BART all the way to Milbrae and then transfer to Caltrain. or (2) get off at BART at Montgomery and take Caltrain from SF. I chose to go with the second option because I wanted to get food. The problem with this option is that I only had 20 minutes to get from Market St to Caltrain (after buying a sandwich) and it takes around 25 minutes to walk. The next train was in an hour so I ended up running and walking there. Very tiring but I managed to get there in time for the train. Unfortunately, the train hit someone at the San Mateo station. I heard the guy survived but the train was delayed forever on the tracks. We weren't allowed to move so they ended up transferring all the passengers to the next train. And this next train (south-bound) had to go onto the north bound tracks and then switch back over. Such a mess. So what I really should've done was to take my time getting to the Caltrain station and taken the later train instead. I managed to finish the first Sherlock Holmes short story, A Study in Scarlet, and worked on homework while waiting at San Mateo. If we had been any closer to Palo Alto, I would've called someone to come pick me up. But San Mateo is still a 20 min drive so I wouldn't have gotten back any faster.

Wednesday was a lot less epic. I think I was on campus from 11am to 9pm, working on homework. I think this is the first time I stayed on campus for that long this quarter. I've been spending a lot more time studying in my room this quarter.

Thursday I went to work again in the afternoon. I didn't managed to get on the rush-hour express trains. I think I will try to make the express trains from now on. They really are much faster. Although, I should be able to stay late on Thursday since I don't have classes on Fridays. It feels like a waste of time for me to only be in the office for exactly 4 hours. I think I will be able to work full days next quarter. I think that's will be much better.

Friday was a very productive day at work. The SF office only gets bagels on Fridays. No pastries. By the end of summer, I was too lazy to slice open bagels and join the battle for cream cheese, so I got the pastries instead. There's this one pastry that has chocolate swirls in it, really good stuff. But since there's a large dining area in SF, there's no battling for cream cheese involved. All the spreads are laid out on a large table.I think that the paragraph above was meant to be about work.... Anyway, I managed to do a lot of stuff on Friday without very much direction. I think the guy I'm working with is surprised, if not impressed. In actuality, I think most of it is because I'm working for the same company. I mean, they're seeing me as a new intern, meaning, someone who needs a lot of help to get started. But I've done the same sort of things before. I know how the filing system works and can find things on my own. Basically, I'm coming in with a lot more background than they know about. I went out to lunch with some of the people in the group and they paid for me. That was nice.

I caught the express back (where I started writing this entry). I took the Stanford shuttle to Trader Joes and did grocery shopping. Caught another shuttle back. Very efficient process. I didn't go too much out of my way doing this. I got back around 8pm and a friend called to see if I wanted to go for dinner. So I ended up going to a Japanese place in Menlo Park. The food was pretty good. I was exhausted afterwards from the long day and food coma. I watched a couple of episodes of Detective Conan before sleeping.

Need to do a lot of studying this weekend. Last midterm next week. Only 3 more weeks of classes left and then it's finals week!! The quarter went by so fast! I'm pretty sure I learned stuff this quarter but maybe not on the subject as with semesters. This topic of quarters vs semesters warrants its own entry.

Part time work

Blogging from one of the few (two) computer clusters that I have access to. This morning was a little depressing. I needed to print something in color for my 10am class and I knew that there was a 9am class at the computer cluster that I always use. So I went out for a run at 8am and ran into campus to get my homework printed. Unfortunately, the color printer was being lame and didn't print my homework. So I ended up printing in black and white. And then not only did it turned out that the TA wasn't there to collect the homework, the professor went over some stuff and I realized I did parts of the homework wrong. So after my next class I went back to fix everything. Not sure if the fixed version is entirely correct either but at least it's better than before. The midterm for this class is next week...

Good news was waiting for me when I got back though. The Arup SF geo team got back to me and the supervisor said that they definitely need help. He forwarded my info to the HR person. So hopefully this means I can start soon! I think I want to start on the week of the 15th. I think I will work around 15-20 hours a week, 3 days a week. This will make me busy but I really liked working at their NY office so hopefully the experience will be the same at the SF office. I think I can learn a lot from them since they're working on so many different projects in different locations. The commute will not be fun though. It'll take about an hour and a half each way total. The train ride is an hour but I have to get to and from the station. I think I will need to bike. Maybe even bike to the office. This means I need to fix my brakes.

Over the past few years, the public transportation systems around here have implemented something called Translink. It's basically a card that you load money into to use on the transit systems. The cool thing is that it works on several different systems. I can use it on Caltrain, BART, AC Transit, to name a few. So as long as I use it on one of these systems, I'll never have to worry about having exact change or waiting in line to buy tickets. I can just tap the card on the reader. You can also preload monthly passes or discount tickets. Very convenient. Every time I go on Caltrain, I always worry about not having enough time to buy the ticket and watch my train go away while I struggle with the machine or wait in line.