Jan-chan’s Tidbits

Ok just a quick post before I go off to shower. Al and I went to pick up our copies of Hellgate London today. I had already expect lots of lag due to server getting hammered by users worldwide. However, what got on my nerve was not the lag. It was the fact that their website is “under maintenance.” On a release day?! Where thousands of gamers have to log on to create an account to play the multiplayer mode?! Maybe their server crashed because too many people are trying to access it at the same time but I find it hard to believe that they didn’t think of this before hand.

I’m pretty disappointed by this. Maybe I’ll try again later in the week and hopefully it’ll make me change my mind. But for now…”please stand by”…

We got our midterm and project back from my e-marketing course this week. It was such a pleasant surprise. For not studying, I’m pretty happy with my 87% for the midterm. I had a lot of lucky guesses right, maybe I should go buy lottery. As for the project, our group didn’t really picked a good website to evaluate but Al and I did an excellent job on tearing down the “bad” website so we got 89%. No thanks to our other group partners though, I had to redo most of their work.

To Brian: Who said anything about not bringing work home D: I think the fact that I can check email and have VPN is making it hard to not work from home – or anywhere for that matter. I’ve been checking work mail every few hours even on weekends. It’s a bad habit but I can’t seem to stop it.

Speaking of dreams, last weekend I had this crazy dream about … work. But get this, I was sleeping and I’m aware that I’m dreaming, but in my dream, I’m also sleeping and guess what I’m dreaming in my dream? WORK. O-M-G. Does that make sense? I’m dreaming about dreaming of work. I think I need some professional help.

Last weekend, my family and I went out to eat at Metro Restaurant for my mom’s birthday. My parents doesn’t dine out too much so it’s nice to take them to fine dining once in a while. I’ve wrote about Metro before in my old blog [I'll see if I can import the post here], it’s the restaurant where you can order by the ounce.

Much to my delight, Metro had changed the look of their menu. The items are the same, it’s just the layout is much more “user friendly”. It didn’t take as long to decide on what to eat this time around. I ordered Bread Five Ways to start and had Baja Spiny Lobster for main course, something that I don’t usually see in other restaurants. The five different types of breads were all really good [that or maybe I was really hungry at the time]. My favourite one is the walnut bread. The spiny lobster was bigger than I thought. It was cooked just right and tastes just fine on its own. The butter/side dishes that came with the lobster added new dimensions to it.

I didn’t get to take photos of the dessert as I was busy eatting it. I had the Rice Pudding Ice Cream. It got a really interesting texture, a bit grainy and tasted a bit like rice pudding, but the coldness makes it hard to tell sometimes. I like it because it’s not too sweet. Al had the Baked Cheesecake Mousse. It was really good. Creamy and soft, with a hint of walnut.

Anyways, on Sunday I went out to eat dinner with Al and his family. We went to Dozo Izakaya, a Japanese restaurant in Richmond. They have a lot of different tapa dishes like beef tataki and tai capaccio which I really liked. Their chiwanmushi [茶碗蒸し] is really good too. It’s got shrimp, clam, chicken and mushroom all inside this steamed egg custard. The restaurant setting reminds me of Hapa Izakaya in downtown.

The first picture is the chiwanmushi and the second picture is just the table setting before the food arrived. Take note of that fat bottle with a cork on top. That’s the soyasauce bottle. I didn’t get to take much photos when the food was here as once they place the plate on the table, everyone started digging in so I didn’t have time to snap pictures.

Restaurant Info:

Metro Restaurant:
200 Burrard Street
Vancouver BC
V6C 3L6
Phone: 604.662.DINE (3463)

Dozo Izakaya:
120 – 9020 Capstan Way
Richmond BC
V6X 3V9
Phone: 604.278.5808

It’s finally the end of the first week and I’ve found out many interesting and useful things. Here’s a list:

• work increases the value of weekends by 100% (#1!!!)
• scientists + marketing = bad mix – This isn’t always true, however, there’s a lot of miscommunication/understanding between the two groups. Maybe because their goals are different.
• always document the things you do – It’s a good way to keep track of what you’re doing and also makes the life of other people easier if they ever need to follow up on your projects.
  
• avoid doing things like tradeshows at the last minute – I don’t think some people know that coordinating tradeshows takes a lot of time, especially in terms of shipping, travel and hotel arrangements. With so many people attending the conference, hotels are usually booked full about 4 months prior to the show so if you don’t want to get stuck at a place far far away, make your reservation early.
• keep track of every penny you spend – How can you evaluate your budget if you don’t keep track of the money you spend? There should be purchase order for everything and they should be filed properly per project.

So things haven’t been exactly organize and I’m having a slight nervous breakdown over some crazy deadline. When ever people ask how I like the job so far the word I reply is “exciting”. Anyways, I’ve managed to have lunch with RS on Thursday [we have been planning lunch/drinks since September but haven’t got around to it] and she has been helping me out by giving me some of her contacts to make my life a little easier. I owe her now because I was sending her some panic S.O.S message on MSN because of the last minute tradeshow stuff. I offered to clean her closet. *lol*

So today was the big day. Even though it was raining, I looked forward to stepping into the office. The morning traffic was horrid. It took 6 trains to pass before I finally got on. The line up for the bus was filling up the whole plaza in Broadway. Thank god I take the 99 B-line, which comes every 2-3 minutes and only stop once every block, which made the bus ride much shorter.

The day started out slowly as I met with the HR person to go over some orientation stuff, followed by more orientations with different people. My first real task was to update a web page! It took a total of 2 minutes. Time went by faster than I thought, with only 30 minutes lunch break, I went to grab a bagel and mocha from Bread Garden and ate at my desk. I don’t know why I have a habit of eatting at my desk. I really like doing stuff while I’m eatting, like work or check emails or browse.

After refueling with food. I got the trade shows information from the lady at the front desk. She was handling them while my position was vacant. I looked over the files and panicked as there are some outstanding items and all the shows were not properly documented. Maybe I was used to the way how trade shows were organized in the previous company. Anyways, I’ve taken home some stuff and made a check list to get things organized. Tomorrow, I’ll be meeting with a few key people to fill up some of the holes so the shows [which are next month!] will run smoothly…I hope.

There are lots of stuff waiting for me ahead [plus a midterm which I'm taking tomorrow, yikes!]. I feel excited yet a bit worried. Al always say I underestimate myself but sometimes I don’t even know what my own abilities or strength is.