Living out of the Hilton

I have not written in some time now. I have been very busy working in Warner Robins, GA at the air force base. Tomorrow will be my thirteenth week working on the C5 cargo airplane. About half of the weekends consist of me flying to San Jose, CA where my apartment is. I live about a mile from the office and it is a very beautiful city. This morning on the way to the airport, my shuttle driver pointed out: Microsoft, eBay, Cisco Systems, Yahoo, Intel, Apple, and IBM. Each of these companies look like a small college campus.

Most of my weekends in San Jose are short and consist of mainly catching up on sleep, doing laundry, and filling out expense reports. I try to make sure that I do or see at least one cool thing each weekend. I got to see the Braves play against the Giants in San Francisco on opening night when Tim Lincincum received his Cy Young Award. Leo and I played golf one weekend at a neat little course that was par 29 and weaved through the city only a few blocks from where I stay.

The weekends when I stay in Warner Robins have been a lot of fun also. A few weeks have consisted of me going in to the plane hangar alone with my supervisor, Avi, flying back to San Jose. I have visited Columbia a few times and Hilton Head during the Heritage weekend. That weekend, I met up with some friends and ended up getting to spend the evening on a Yacht which had a guy playing guitar and open bar.

I should be in Warner Robins for another couple months and then there is no telling where my next project will take me. I will try to add some pictures and update more regularly.

Singapong

It's 6am and I have been wide awake for 2 hours now. I have to be at work at 9 so it would have been nice to sleep but that wasn't happening. Luckily the Jack in the Box 2.5 blocks away is open 24/7 so I just had a delicious breakfast and am now sitting at my computer with my coffee. Since I finally have time I wanted to write a little bit about my trip to Singapore. The rest of the stories will be included in the picture captions.

Since we had to work from 9am to 5pm every single day, we tried to make the most we could out of our evenings. We did end up getting one afternoon off in which Jia(our trainer who lives in Singapore) took us to get lunch and ordered a large variety of local foods for us to try. It was great having her to explain everything from what we were eating to the political system in Singapore and everything in between. She is the reason we were in Singapore in the first place. She quit the company a few months ago because she is getting married and has a lot of experience training new implementers. She was contracted to train us but under the condition that she could stay in Singapore to deal with her wedding arrangements.

Work usually wasn't too bad depending on what we had to cover and what we had done the night before. We spent a lot of time debating theories. These debates usually lasted a few hours and ended with us coming up with the same consensus that Jia and the company had written out in better words on a powerpoint presentation or algorithm. It was frustrating to do all that work(sometimes getting in heated arguments) when the answers only took 3o minutes to go over, but at the same time we all left with a good understanding of how the answer was derived.

Once we got into the software training, things got a little more boring. It was interesting to get to play with the software that encompassed all of the theories we had discussed, but it was still four grueling days of learning how to use pretty intuitive software. The end of these four days was the worst part because we had to make a demo to show we knew how to use every part of the software. We spent an entire day creating a fictional project environment and then simulating 3 months worth of time while updating the software as if we were every project or task manager. We got a late start and I ended up finishing mine with Leo at Starbucks at midnight.

But the real reason we were there till midnight was because of a long break in the hotel room after work and before starbucks where we watched the movie District 9. We had begun a few days earlier watching a movie or tv shows after we got off work every day. Since we had the company's projector, we were able to watch it on a huge screen and we were usually exhausted by this time. The first four or five days we would go straight out to see Singapore but without a single day off this began to take a toll on us and the rest was much needed.

Boat Quay(pronounced “key) was were we ate dinner the first night and a few other nights as well. It is on the river and pretty touristy. As we walked down the road, we were continuously being offered buy one get one beers, free beer with an entree, or some discount on our food. At first this was a nuisance, but after seeing prices at some of the other parts of town we couldn't argue with 20% off food, a free beer(sometimes 2) and a view of the river.

Clarke Quay was our second most frequented tourist destination. It was across the river from Boat Quay but had a much different feel. Boat Quay was a row of pretty cheap touristy restaurants along the river while Clarke Quay was the more expensive, much nicer tourist area. It had the feel of a mall but was all outside. There were massive umbrellas, probably 50 feet high that covered all the small roads that were filled with nice restaurants, bars, and clubs. We had dinner here on two occasions, once (pictured below) when we all got an appetizer sampler that consisted of local Asian foods and a free beer. The second time we went to an Irish Pub that had a good view of the central fountains at Clarke Quay.

I'll be writing more as I post pictures. It is now 8:30am and I just got to work where I am finally posting this because the internet works better.

Singapore

Taipei

Those are all small fish, heads and all.

Taiwan

Don't have much time but i thought i would at least write up my Taiwan layover experience. There will be more to come including pictures when I am back in the US. Singapore has been great but we have been working really hard also. No days off, we are working 9-5 all 10 days we are here, so we are spending our evenings trying to see the city.

Last Friday I got a new apartment. I like it alot and we have it pretty well furnished. Both my roommate Leo and I got nice mattresses and box springs really cheap on a major sale at Ikea. We also got a few things off Craigslist.

Sunday night we were picked up by a shuttle at about 8:15pm. We arrived in our Singapore hotel 33.5 hours later.

On the way we had a 10hr layover in Taipei, Taiwan. At first we were upset about this but it ended up being great. We took the one hour train into Taipei with the help of a nice lady who translated for us. The tickets were only about 2 american dollars each way. We walked around Taipei for about an hour before we decided to try to find something to eat. It was 8am there time but felt like the middle of the day to us.

This is where is started to dawn on us that absolutely no one spoke English. We could not find any open restaurants but then saw alot of people waiting in line. Finally we decided that I was going to experience whatever they were eating so we got in line. I went first and when it was my turn, I pointed at the food that she had given the person in front of me just assuming it would be good. She didn't understand and we had no way to communicate. After a minute another lady working there brought me a menu that was in English. We pointed at what we wanted and got some delicious dumplings. Mine had pork and cabbage in it. Right next door there was another small bakery like place where I was able to use the point method and get a small egg quiche like thing(kind of sweet) and a slushy. All the food was delicious.

We walked around for a few hours just trying to see all that we could see. There were mopeds EVERYWHERE and driving crazy. We even saw two hit each other. The whole city seemed a little dirty and incredibly busy.

For lunch, it was almost impossible to find somewhere that had both food and chairs to sit. For four hours we had been walking with our carry-on luggage (my backbag was 30.5 lbs according to the airport.) We sat in a small place we finally found with chairs and food. There were two ladies making dumplings, and two other workers cooking and everything looked very authentic. We sat down and naturally our waiter who seemed to be the owner(only man working, in his 40s or50s) There were no menus in English, and the wall had all the items in prices but all in Chinese. I just pointed at a price I thought they would charge for what I wanted hoping it would be good. We made it apparent we spoke no Chinese and there was an awkward second where we kept trying to communicate anything.

Eventually, he went to the freezer, got out a dumpling and showed it to us. We all shook our heads and gave thumbs up and each got a delicious plate of dumplings. When the food came he pointed to the fridge and we all said yes, we would each like a coke because we saw those on the top row. He came back with 4 beers called "Taiwanese Beer" and there were no arguments. While we were eating there was a sort of buffet set up with plates of different foods set out for the apparent lunch rush to come. Being that I wanted to experience their food, I walked up and through a series of pointing let him know I would like one and chose what looked liked noodles. When I looked close enough, they had heads and tails. It was a plate of small fried minnow looking fish. They were delicious.

When we paid we decided to leave a tip since everything was so cheap. He didn't understand but we persisted. After this he brought us three more plates of various foods. Eggplant rolls, a salad that did not have dressing but ginger & herbs and prawn dumplings(amazing) that he put on the table and called "Special". The only English word we heard the hole time we were there. It was an amazing cultural experience and we left with lots of smiles and thumbs up. In total for about 24 american dollars we got 8 beers, 4 plates of beef dumplings, fried minnows, eggplant rolls, Taiwanese salad, and prawn dumplings.

This is Charles who was in the office for our first week while he was waiting to be deployed. He was in charge of finding things to learn during this week.
He studied physics and got his MBA from Texas Tech.

Raymond and Leo in Bullpen.

Sam in the Bullpen

Four engineers trying to make a pot of coffee. Left to right: Sam Gollin, Matt(not new guy), Leo Capalleja(roommate) and Raymond Demere. All four of these guys went to Ga Tech.

Here I am at with the Golden Gate Bridge before I took the Caltrain to San Jose.

Quick Update

Things are still going very well in San Jose. I have been at the office M-F, 9-5 getting alot of paperwork and studying done without much supervision. The three other new guys and I are in what is called the "Implementer Bullpen". It is the room where the Implementers(about 35 or 40 us) work until we are called on to projects. There is no one here to train us so we have been given books to read, presentations to watch, and many people have come in and shared their experiences with us.

Because no one is here to train us, next week the four of us will be going to Singapore for 10 days. I am very excited, it is 8am there now and 80 degrees. There is a woman there who use to work for Realization and is being contracted to train us.

I will be moving into my apartment on Friday. It is a nice two bedroom in an apartment complex that is mostly made of San Jose State students. My roommate is Leo, who is one of the other guys starting with me. All four of us have gotten along really well.

EARTHQUAKE!

We just had an earthquake shake the building for like 5 or 10 seconds. The guy from accounting popped his head in and said "Welcome to California".

That was fun, now back to writing my book report.

What I've done at Work

It is 7:30 and I just finished breakfast here in the Ramada. Last night I was pretty tired after walking around alot looking at apartments. I began looking with my three coworkers for a 4 bedroom place, but we have decided it will be much easier to find 2 2bedroom places. I will be living with Leo, who just graduated Ga Tech in Industrial Engineering.

When we first got to the office Monday, we were told about the history and heirarchy of the company. After that, we were told that there was no one in San Jose to train us and that we may be going to Singapore soon. We were instructed to spend this week getting settled in to San Jose and reading "The Goal"(book that our company is based on).

The implementers have an office with 8 desks that is for who ever is in town at the time. It is called the bullpen. There are about 35-40 implementers but at any given time only 2-6 are in town. We have filled out alot of paperwork, read, and looked at just about every apartment and house for rent in downtown San Jose.

We were told yesterday that there isn't anything planned for next week yet but after that it looks like we will be going to Singapore. There is someone there that can train us for about 10 days. After that we will be deployed to a project very shortly.

After work I have spent alot of time with the other three new guys(Raymond, Leo, another Sam). They all went to Ga Tech and just graduated in Industrial Engineering. They did not know each other before work and all three were in different fraternities.

I have been eating breakfast at the Ramada every morning. (OJ, Apple Jacks, eggos, bagles and cream cheese. ect) For Lunch we have been going out with people from the office. The hours are very relaxed. We are suppose to work from 9-5 but we ar e free to take lunch whenever we would like, and we are free to go look at apartments and take care of things as needed. The company is only about 100 people and there is alot of trust in the office. There really seems to be a team atmosphere.

Since my mom wanted to know what I had for breakfast....

I got a full night sleep and feel much better today after all of that traveling. I am eating my free breakfast in the hostel kitchen.(bagel and OJ)

Not sure what the plan is today. I am about to shower, see the Golden Gate Bridge, and then make my way to San Jose.

Real World: Day 1

I got into San Francisco today at about 12:30 local time. It has been hectic few days trying to put everything I want shipped with my car in boxes. It is a weird feeling having no idea when is the next time I will be on Roslyn Dr.

I got here with no plan and for about two hours accomplished nothing. It was like when I traveled Europe. I had my bookbag on and was dragging along my new luggage(great idea to get the kind with four wheels). I ate at Carl's Jr since I was starving and really just looking for a place to sit and recollect myself.

I talked to Scott with whom I lived in Nice with and he went somewhere for the day but said he would be back around midnight. At the time I was sure I would be meeting up with him but that is still two hours away and I am pretty tired.

I walked around a little longer and was amazed by the city. The buildings are beautiful and there are people everywhere. Street performers, tourists, shoppers, hobos, ect. The weather is perfect too.

I eventually sat down to rest in the Hilton's lobby to make my decision on where I was to stay. I looked at my maps and found that right across the street was a hostel. Being that I really just needed a bed for one night and have yet to receive a paycheck, this was a good option for $28. I checked in and the guy at the desk asked me if I had heard of Dreher High School after seeing my ID. Everyone was friendly and the hostel was very much like one you would find in Europe. Young people from all over the world traveling for all kinds of reasons, big common areas, and little rooms with 4 dorm style bunk beds.

I woke up from my nap to a tall girl who's stuff was already in the room walking in. I soon realized she had a 5:00 shadow and purple scarf. Welcome to San Francisco. After he left I got myself back together and walked around for a few hours.

There was alot of really nice, pretty parts of town and a few parts in which I stared at my feet and ignored many comments from homeless people with cups.

I got back to my room about half an hour ago and there was another guy in my room. He was from France and we spoke in French for a little bit. This made me feel much better about the room situation. I am now in the computer area which is very nice. There are couches and lots of people speaking many different languages .

I spent about half an hour going over my notes from the interview and company week before writing this. I could not be more excited about Monday. Tonight I am probably going to finish this one tall-boy beer I just bought then read for a little bit.