Strange

I feel strange. I don't have any real problems in life right now. I have some money tucked away, I have a good job that I enjoy, and I have some good friends.

This isn't the kinda thing I'm used to, of course I'm going to feel strange. Then again, how many people do you know who have reached a point like this in their life and stayed there? None of them are any fun. I feel like I must be wary of becoming dormant.

Humans live off of drama. After thousands of years of existence, if this wasn't the case, then everything would be pretty hunky dory. Everyone would get along, everyone would probably be about the same, and everyone would be rather uninteresting. I hate drama, I hate everything about drama, I am usually involved in a decent amount of drama. I've grown up a lot though, I can see all of this now, and I've gotten pretty good at avoiding the bad kind of drama. I guess now I want some good drama. Anyway, I'll come back to this when I have examples of good drama.

I've been working like crazy this week, I'll sleep 8 hours, work 8 hours, repeat. I often went home around 3am in the morning.

Atlanta is beautiful by night.

Good Times in Singapore

The last week has been a real blast here in Singapore. AIESECers have been taking me out every night and showing me the town! They haven't taken me to much of the touristy stuff, but that's fine by me, I'd rather do the more student-like stuff anyway.

On Tuesday night, Michal came to the hotel and we drank in the executive lounge, talking about Singapore and all the regulations and its pros and cons. When the lounge closed at 8:30, we left to find another bar and ended up exploring the Orchard Towers building. There were massage parlors and bars on every floor, and women eying us and offering us discounts. There was a disco club on the top floor, we walked in for a few seconds to see what it looked like, and it looked like a regular bar, with no dance floor or anything, but with music that was so loud that it would be impossible to talk and with strobe lights and stuff everywhere. We also found that there were two strip clubs, one on the first floor, and one right above it on the second floor, we avoided both. There were also all kinds of souvenier shops in the basement and first floor. From what I hear tourists usually love this place. There were "ladies of the night" standing around outside as well. Extremely sketchy! We ended up heading to an Irish Pub across the street where there were less women, but that was a good thing since it was hard to tell who you can trust.

On Wednesday, Wei Wei and Rachel picked me up from the hotel and we went to meet several AIESECers down in Geylang, which is a much cheaper and slummier part of town (one of the very few in Singapore). Everyone refers to it as the red light district of Singapore. There were cart loads upon cart loads of Durians and open-air fruit stands on the left side of the road, and tons of sketchy bars, hotels, restraunts, and women on the right. I didn't even want to see what the back roads of the area looked like. We walked many many blocks from the bus stop and ended up going to an open-air restraunt place where we had $5 beers (cheapest in singapore!) and some strange foods. Frog legs, which were delicious, then some kind of chinese omelet, and then a couple of things that were tasty but I can't really describe them. It happens a lot when food is so foreign to you. Another crowd of AIESECers joined us soon after we arrived too, I wonder if I can remember everyone's name >.<. Wei Wei, Rachel, Grace, Cheryl, Alex, Joel, Nabeel... I'm forgetting one guy's name but I think that's most of em. We stayed until the bar closed up around 2am and then ended up at the McDonalds near my hotel because I offered to treat everyone to some late night snackage. I had to bail out around 3am though because I wake up for work at 6am (VERY BAD IDEA). Coffee was the only way I survived Thursday, but I made it and did pretty well.

On Thursday night, I met everyone at the Manhattan Fish Market. All the AIESECers from Wednesday night were there except for one, plus some. Nadia, Aman, Mayas, several AIESEC alumni, and a bombshell from Holland named Vera who was only here for 2 days on a layover heading back to Holland. We spent dinner chatting about AIESEC and how we all ended up here, and I had an especially interesting conversation with Mayas. He asked about the situation in AIESEC U.S., and we discussed it for a while. He had read the whole letter and the forum, but he was probing for more information on everything. Before he left, he asked if I was coming to the Annual General Meeting on Saturday, and I told him that I needed to go so that I could talk to some of the MC and see if they'd be willing to support the LCs of AIESEC U.S. at International Congress. He said that it shouldn't be a problem, and handed me a business card. At the very moment I looked down and read the business card, he said, "I'm the MCP." Rather shocking, I wasn't expecting that! After dinner, everyone headed out to Clarke Quay to a bar called the Pump Room. I decided not to drink because I was still tired from the night before, and like a lame-o I left at midnight to go to bed.

Friday was a good day overall. I finished a big part of the project at ExxonMobil, 2 days ahead of schedule! The customer was very pleased, and I get the feeling that if we get more work here in Singapore, they'll be sending me back :). After work, I joined my boss and two salesmen at a country club for dinner. There's a complicated situation going on where Varec's representative in Singapore is passing the rep-job on to a bigger company who can handle the demand, and the salesmen were the heads of each company. Big name people, everyone at the table was at least twice my age >.<. It's always hard to tell if you're saying the right thing to salespeople, because they'll always make it sounds like you are, but my boss said I did well. All this week, I've been training the new reps engineers in how to use our product. I'm hoping that this deal works out, because they were a good team to work with.

On to Friday night! The usual group, Wei Wei, Rachel, and Joel, plus Michal, Grace, another Joel, a columbian guy, a singaporian guy whose name I can't pronounce, the LCP of NTU Wan Xin, a german from Oxford, England named Till, and probably one or two others, were there. We first went to a restraunt called Cuba Libre and saw a great singer and several great dancers for an hour or so, after that we went wandering around for something to do. Several of the AIESECers left because they had work to do the next day, but the rest of us went to a club called "The Ministry of Sound". Sounds like a government thing, and they do have a government office called "The Ministry of Manpower", which both Michal and I were convinced would be the name of a gay club in a few years. Anyways, this place was fun, there was a room for techno, a room for hip hop, and a room for disco. Now, if you've ever seen me dance, you KNOW that I'm a horrid, horrid dancer, but at least everyone in the group was a pretty bad dancer. Joel wasn't a bad dancer, but he was very over the top. Fun to watch and hard to avoid, the elbows and the hands flying everywhere! The club was packed, and no matter where we were, barely any room to move. We left the club around 3am and went to a 24-hour local restaraunt to eat some local food I can't pronounce. It was delicious, kinda like a sub sandwich with egg, sausage, and spices inside covered in cheese, chili sauce, and black pepper. Around 4:30 we were all exhausted and parted ways for home.

Saturday I found my way to the National University of Singapore for the Annual General Meeting. It's one of the legislative meetings in AIESEC Singapore where the LCs and the MC meet to discuss the next year and any motions, mandates, or amendments to the constitution are voted on. There were about 57 AIESEC Singaporians there and 10 - 15 guests (no voting rights for guests of course). Some of the Singaporians said it was boring, but man, do I wish we had something like this in AIESEC US! Motions were submitted before the meeting started (probably online), and for most of them, all they needed was a proposer and a seconder for it to pass. If someone in the room were to object, it would have to immediately go to a vote. Everyone in the room had to vote, the options were to be for it, against it, or to abstain, but everyone had to be accounted for. They wrote all the notes on a projector screen in front of us, that way we could watch and see exactly what was going on. Everything that was decided upon was written, as it should be. The big changes, the amendments to the constitution, were passed by a vote, even if everyone was for it. This ensured a proper procedure for making a decision by avoiding assumption. The meeting took about 2 and a half hours altogether, and it was truly beautiful to me. Afterwards, I had another conversation with the MCP, Mayas. I told him that I loved the meeting and he asked how we did it in the U.S., sooo I described it to him in full. Such a horror story really, the NDAs, the lack of notes, the decisions already made, the 16 hours of debate which lead nowhere, and the years and years of incompetence in the MC and division and derision between the MC and LCs. He was taken back by the story, he had already known some of this, and the MCPs of the world had argued about the fate of AIESEC U.S. in Macedonia last February. I told him that the LCs are going to need their support in Brazil this month at International Congress, and that they're writing a compendium this very week to present to the Global Plenary for the reform of AIESEC U.S. He was happy to hear that reform was happening. We parted ways after that and a Rewards and Recognition ceremony. I headed home and took the rest of the day off because it had been a crazy week, and everyone was feeling pretty lazy.

So here I am on Sunday. I'm going to spend a couple hours working on site reports and a project coming up in a few weeks. I also need to run out to a store and buy a bunch of computer junk for the job. Some final configurations are going to happen next week for a project that they have going on at ExxonMobil, then the all-important Site Acceptance Test where everything will be tested and accepted. Only after this test can everything be invoiced and paid for. I don't think I'll go out as much in the next week, maybe a few times for coffee and to hang out, but I don't really feel like doing a repeat of last week, just too much staying out too late!

My synopsis of Singapore thus far: Tons of people, everywhere. Many times, you'll just see people hanging around in the street because they have nothing better to do and nowhere to go. There are so many women here, and so many of them are extremely beautiful and at the same time, not at all attractive. I think that its like that because most of them look exactly the same, tall, thin, dark clothes, similar makeup, etc. There isn't a lot of diversity in the look, and I have a hard time finding the norm attractive. The AIESEC women looked good though, hard to find a part of AIESEC were there aren't very attractive women! Moving on, I'm afraid that if I were to stay in this city on the long term, I would be superbly bored. There's only so much you can do, really, especially if you stick to bars and clubs which aren't really my scene anyway.

I'll give a better synopsis in person later, so feel free to ask. As a summarized update of my own state, everything is actually going well! I've been able to understand, communicate, and adapt to everything going on at work. I've surpassed expectations there and completed work far ahead of the agreed-upon schedule, creating some flex-room in case things go wrong somewhere along the line. I've enjoyed meeting the people, seeing the city, eating the foods, and experiencing the life of this country. This has been quite the trip, and I feel rather revitalized already! Life simply doesn't seem to hold any problems for me at the moment, and I know that I better enjoy it now, because it never lasts!

Food and sights!

Hooray! AIESECers finally got back with me this weekend! The reason it took so long for them to get back to me was because most @ers in Singapore are foreigners and aren't here in the summer. Anyways, Wei Wei and an AIESECer from Slovakia, Michal, took me around town on Saturday night to a city event called Nightfest, and giant tourist attraction statue called the Merlion, pronounced Mer-Lion, for obvious reasons made apparent with pictures that will follow later. They also showed me around Clarke Quay, which was a very beautiful part of town. After all this we went to a couple of bars. Alcohol is much more expensive here than anywhere I've ever been, S$17 for a pint of beer at a bar. We also ended up running into another AIESECer from Indonesia who was working for Kraft Foods while bar hopping/exploring and got her to join us for a bit!

On Sunday I met up with Wei Wei and Rachel, another AIESECer from Singapore. They took me to an MLE eating competition where we got to see Kobayashi vs. Joey Chestnut (who beat Kobayashi in hot dog eating) rematch with Chicken Sautee. Kobayashi won, it was momentous! After that we met up with Michal and went to eat at a place called Makansutra Glutton Bay, and we had Sting Ray, Chicken-on-a-Stick, some Coconut drink that was served out of an actual coconut, a sugar cane drink and some other stuff that was pretty delicious, but I forget the names. My camera kicked the bucket today, which is what I get for having a pretty cheap camera :(. I'll probably buy a new one next weekend. I'll post pics soon, just getting around to it.

Anyways, I'm not feeling particularly inspired for writing this morning, so I'll make a better post later.

Walkin 'round

I took it easy tonight. I walked around the city for a few hours and just watched all of the people. I got watched too, you kinda stick out like a sore thumb when you're a tall white guy in a crowd of asians. Even the rare white person would look at me and other white people in sight with a look that said "you are rather out of place here". It was kind of fun I guess, but very lonely. It's so much more fun to explore a city when you're with friends.

I've seen more beautiful asians tonight than I believe I've ever seen in my entire life! I learned that you should avoid a beautiful woman who is sitting or standing around by herself and staring at you (I know its common sense, but I've never been solicited before). People watching is fun, its interesting to see that no matter where you go, there tend to be the same general types of people and situations. Varying cultures just put a different spin on these common situations. It's one of those things that's really hard to explain, so I'm just not going to try here.

I was reading Masato's blog, and man do I wish I could cook. There's a lot of interesting foods here, but I don't have anything to cook with here at the hotel, nor do I have the know-how to cook jack.

Anyways, someone from AIESEC Singapore finally got back in touch with me. There's nothing happening this weekend, but next weekend there is an AIESEC-Singapore monthly get together and the pre-IC national legislative meeting, which guests are allowed to attend. Sounds like fun to me! Guess that means I'll stay bored for this weekend. Talking to my boss is fine and all, but there's definitely that 20 year age difference keeping us from actually being buddies that hang out together.

Aiesec, Singapore, and how compliments fit in

So to start, I haven't heard back from AIESEC Singapore all week, which kinda sucks, but I've found enough to do here in Singapore to last me the weekend anyway. I'll probably hunt down some AIESECers eventually anyway.

One thing that sucks about being 12 hours away from home is that I have no one to talk to in the evening when I can finally be online, but my buddies on Horizons have been trying to fill that gap. A bunch of them are from Australia and so forth, so they're around when I'm online.

I went to the Executive Lounge with my boss again tonight, and we ended up talking to some random stranger again about business and his life story and so forth. Afterwards, when both my boss and I were pleasantly buzzed, I told him a bit about my experiences with AIESEC and my time as the VP of Incoming Exchange at GT. We talked about networking and so forth, and he told me that he could see that I had learned alot about building networks just by the fact that every time we were in the executive lounge, I found a way to talk to someone we didn't know about what they did and how our jobs correlated. He said that he was only really good at the technical side of things and wasn't very social, and that all he could really teach me were the technical skills of the job. Earlier today he said that I was progressing very quickly and that I probably understood more than some of our other coworkers (who he named but i wont name here) did after a year in the position. He told me to start watching how the COO of Varec, Marty, works. I took all of this as a massive compliment and major ego-booster of course :). I really do hope to progress quickly in this company and this industry, it really doesn't seem too hard to understand so far.

Anyways, I've been working with my boss on getting my roommate a job at Varec. He's the kinda guy that would do them a lot of good. He's good at coding, he loves to do it, and he has experience in working with databases and scripts, which seems to be the kinda thing they need. My boss said to get him to send a resume, and Dan sounded pretty excited about the opportunity. We'll see what happens there, but I hope he can get the job.

Singapore is great, I have had some very strange food since I got here, but not nearly enough yet! It's amazing how much smaller portions here are than at most places in the U.S., but I can't say that it's a problem. I've been wanting to lose weight anyway. This weekend I hope to eat a lot more street meat and a lot more of the strange items that I've been wary of so far. Chevron has been feeding us pretty damn good food though, every day. Nate asked me to document the food with pics, but we're not allowed to use cameras on Jurong Island, no matter what. Normally I'm lax on these things, but they definitely have F-15s flying over the island every half hour and armed guards with automatic guns all over the somewhat public parts that are shared by the companies on the island. Biggest port in the world, its crazy how big the cranes and stuff are that load the ships up.

The climate here is so strange to me, it's like the sky hangs lower than I'm used to. It's never just sunny or just cloudy, it's always a really strange mix of the two, and never one that I've ever been used to. It's really hard to explain. The equatorial sun is much stronger too, I haven't been outside far too much, but the intensity is much stronger than what I'm used to. I've taken on a fair bit of a tan already in just the past few days.

Fun so far, we'll see how the next couple weeks go!

The first couple days in Singapore

It's the beginning of my third day here in Singapore, and I'm in love with this place! I left the hotel on Sunday morning before 9am and walked around until about 2pm, I have no idea how far I walked, but I didn't stop moving almost the entire time, so it was pretty impressive. Every inch of this place is beautiful, even when we drove down to the port, it still managed to remain beautiful!

I wish I could take pictures of the port area, Jurong Island, it's extremely beautiful in an industrial way. The jungle of machinery and metal walkways climbing hundreds and hundreds of feet into the air is incredible! Especially the oil rigs that they're assembling, those things are freaking juggernauts.

It's a much more international city than I expected, there are people from all over the world walking around. The majority are the Chinese, followed by the Malay, Japanese, and Indians. The majority of food is Chinese and Japanese. I've never seen so many Asians in one place before! I stand at least 2 or 3 inches taller than 99.9% of the people around here. The Malay are interesting because I've met very few in my life, mostly just Firdaus. I see a whole lot of versions of Firdaus walking around, both male and female, and yes, I do find that funny.

One of the cool things about working with Varec, my boss got me upgraded to a room on the Executive Floor, which means free breakfasts (which are actually incredible and feature a ton of different foods), and free drinks in the executive lounge if I want them. All in all, it's a pretty sweet deal, they're taking good care of me to be here.

Lessee, I'll be posting more often on this blog since I'm 12 hours off from Atlanta and it's rather hard to talk to anyone unless its early as hell in the morning. I'm still fighting off jet lag, but I'll adjust pretty quickly, I think. I've always had a knack for changing my sleep schedule on a dime.

July 19th, 2pm in Tokyo

July 19th, 2pm in Tokyo

So here I am, enjoying what little Japanese culture I can as I sit in a 4 hour layover between the US and Singapore in Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. I’ve been awake for 3 days and 1 night in the last 48 hours. It’s literally been the longest day of my life! I just got off a 14 hour flight from Atlanta during which the sun never set. We flew west---west---west, the hours ticked down, then suddenly BAM! It’s Saturday, 24 hour jump ahead as we cross the prime meridian, but the sun never stopped shining. Essentially, I skipped a night. What a weird feeling.

I’m lost, slightly confused about what’s going on, I’m hungry, I don’t recognize any of the food options, and I’m pretty broke at the moment. It’s good to travel internationally again! I’ve been staving off insanity by playing Super Nintendo emulators on the plane, but it really isn’t the worst I’ve ever been through. Try sitting on a Greyhound bus for a 30 hour bustrip that ends up taking 50 hours, with layovers at least every 8 hours, THAT, my friend, is hell. At least here I wasn’t afraid of people stealing my stuff and/or knifing me.

Haha, I turn my head to see McCain and Obama debates on the local TV. I wish this shit wasn’t spread all over the world, I feel like I can never escape listening to election news.

Oh, so I sat next to this guy on the plane, and we got to talking about why we’re flying out to Tokyo. He said he worked for a company called EMA, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC, so I had to shake his hand, because apparently we’re co-workers and we didn’t even know it >.<. Of course, we work in completely different divisions of the company, but still, it was kinda cool.

I need a socket converter. I think I’m going to dedicate the next few hours to 1. finding this socket converter, and 2. finding a socket to convert, then 3. playing games until I can fly again. I’m so tired right now, it’s about 1:10am EST, AND I’ve been up since 7am on Thursday morning (also EST). I got sick earlier this week and had to take a day off work because I was contagious at the time, but I HAD to get work done, so I worked through the night on Thursday night after seeing friends for a couple hours. I got about 90% of the work that I needed to get done, done. I’ll have to rely on another project manager to ship this server out the door on Monday since I couldn’t get it out by Friday morning. I called my boss at 3:30am EST, which is 3:30pm in Singapore, and he said that some of his equipment was defective and he desperately needed me to bring a backup along. He then shot off a bunch of names of people that I needed to talk to, to which I responded, “Dude, it’s 3:30am, I’m the only one here”, and he said “What the hell are you doing in the office at that time? Whatever, this is lucky, just grab the test equipment we’ve been using and bring it.” So hooray, I do not feel that my exhaustion is in vain.

I’m going to try and post regularly while I’m in Singapore. Most of the people I love to annoy on instant messengers are now on opposite schedules, so, as per the norm, the blog will be the method of update while traveling internationally.

I wish I some actual time in Tokyo. Just from what I’ve seen so far, I’d like to spend some time here and just check everything out :-P. Plus, the Japanese language is amazing to listen to.

Singapore n' other fun stuff

Leaving for Singapore on Friday morning. I can't wait! I need to look up AIESEC Singapore and try to contact someone there to see if they're up for some company :-P. I also need to figure out how to pack for it...

Work has picked up, it's nice to feel productive again. I have a lot to do still before I head out on Friday, including another trip to Chattanooga on Thursday. I gotta order a bunch of stuff for work and confirm a bunch of other stuff. Woo stuff!

Last weekend was interesting, and when I think about it, the last couple of weekends have been interesting. I've managed to find something to do almost every Friday and Saturday night. Slowly, I feel like I've gained some sense of positive perception back. I'm all but back to good. This trip to Singapore is happening at a good time, I think it'll be the last thing I need to really get back to normal and on top of things. Who knows?

I'm curious about whats going to happen, still unsure of what I want to happen, just sure that I want to be there when it does happen. There's a lot going on with AIESEC US and AIESEC in general right now, which is interesting to listen to and be a part of. I'm being trusted with more work at my job and learning more about how everything works. As I become a bigger force at work, I'm going to feel better about where I am in life. I am still working to get over the insecurity that comes with being "the new guy".

I was reminded by a new friend this weekend how much I enjoyed doing geeky stuff like watching Anime. I'm gonna start that up again, so feel free to suggest 'em. I have a 19 hour flight on Friday and could go for something to watch. Feel free to suggest any more fun geeky stuff that you can do on a plane too!

Oh life...

So I've been working almost 2 months now. I'm starting to get basically competent with the work, I can at least do the work they give me. It's been so slow recently because a bunch of customers have had me on hold basically while I wait for them to get their crap together. My Singapore trip got moved back a week, but the good news is that it was also extended by 11 days!

Life's just seemed slow in general lately too. I'm gonna try to get involved in more things. I'm also starting a health kick, quit soda/fast food yesterday. In a week I'm going to start a work-out regimen that doesn't require weights (prolly a lot of push-ups and stuff), that way i can take it on the road when I go. I'm also trying to cook for myself and eat better. We'll see how it goes.

Been a while

I'm tired and it's late so this isn't going to be a long post.

A lot has happened in the last month, unfortunately, none of it seems to matter now. A summary of changes goes like this: I'm single now, I have an idea of what I'm doing at work now, I'm living on my own bill now, and I've all but paid back everyone who lended me money. Oh yeah, and we got a dog named George, he's cute, runs around n' stuff.

My phone number has changed, message me online or check facebook for the new one. I've ordered more shisha and some natural coals, looking for smoking buddies. I'm going to Singapore from July 12th to the 22nd. I'm looking for stuff to cheer me up, and I'd like something a little more than words and online videos/games/etc, so if anyone has any ideas, let me know. I'd prefer to do something that requires getting off the couch (for once).

Quirk

Have you ever done something strange for no apparent reason?

I told my boss that I'd have this table of comparisons between what some pipeline was saying to a company vs. what the company was getting by noon today. I'd put this together in a few forms in the past few days, but every time he was looking for something a little bit more. So I just went all out on it, headed down to the Airport at 2pm yesterday, went around back of it to the Air Cargo area, which nobody ever sees, and got to work in the Fuel Farm for the account I'm working on. I had to leave at 5pm because I had other things to do, but I came back at 2am and worked until around 8:30am straight through. I not only gave him this table, but also identified the trends, in the data and possible next steps.

Why did I do all that? Now I'm just tired and I have to get to work for the rest of the day still.

My dad was in town yesterday, he took me and Dan out to dinner and we talked for a long while. I dunno why exactly, but I'm not too psyched about the wedding this weekend. It's not that I'm not happy for my big bro and Coley, more that I just have a hell of a lot going on right now in every aspect of life except for the aspect where I actually do things.

I don't feel like I'm doing much with life right now. I'm just waiting. I hate that feeling. I don't want to wait but I don't know where to go or what to do. I'm waiting for Dunia to get back, I'm waiting for a paycheck, I'm waiting for equipment at work, I'm waiting for someone to get back to me in my game, I'm waiting for the weekend, I'm waiting for a chance to sleep, I'm waiting for a chance to impress, etc.... I'm waiting for life, so by association, I'm waiting for death.

Work is fine, it's interesting and it's not boring when I have something to do, but I'm not living to work. I need something better than work to do. Not healthy to have nothing else. Moo I say. I need life sustenance.

Things are picking up a little

So this entire week I've been trying to begin this job. I've finally gotten 2 of the 3 accounts that I need to fully access the work network, and I should have the last one in about half an hour when the system updates. I've been waiting it out and trying to push the process along all week. I finally got my company laptop today, but its not much good until I can fully get on the network.

So Wednesday afternoon, my boss Woz asks me to stay late an hour to jump on a conference call with him, and to head over to his office at 4:30 so he can explain the project to me. I head over at 4:30, he tells me that the project is with a client in Belchez, Louisiana, or someplace like that, and that he wants me to be the engineer on the job. I figured what the hey, so he continued on to tell me its setting up our Fuel Management system on around 500 tanks. I let him know that I had no idea how to do that yet and he said there'd probably be another engineer accompanying me while I started, comforting. We get on the call and figure out what the customer wants, he said I'll probably be flying out there Mon-Fri for 3 or 4 weeks throughout May/June. He then said I'll probably get a chance to work on a project in Singapore for 2 weeks with one of the head engineers. I like the sound of that!

Today one of the other oil & gas system engineers had me shadow him around and showed me how to set up our systems on both the client and the server side, but what all that exactly does, I'm still a little unsure of. I have a ways to go before I will understand this product.

I apply for my software/hardware master keys, Blackberry, Air Card, eID, etc. tomorrow. I like the speed of this job so far, there's not too much downtime in the beginning, so I get to jump right into it. I'm looking for an opportunity to impress some people, the first couple weeks/months are pretty important as far as showing folks what you can do. I think I've done some good towards this goal, but I also think I've done some bad towards it.

I need to adjust myself and my lifestyle to fit in this new concept of an 8 hour workday. I'm not going to get anywhere if I keep pulling less than 6 hours sleep a night. I also need to finish up with this moving business and put all my shit away. And Comcast needs to quit being a bunch of dickwads and activate my cable internet/tv already, they've missed the appointment time 3 times this week already.

I need to de-stress, the recent tremors and disturbances in my lifestyle have been making me feel very needy, and I hate that. I also need more work-work to do, that way I not only have something to do during the workday, but something to resort to besides Youtube videos when I'm bored at home.

Life Begins

Final Exam (ME3720) ended on Friday at 11:50

Grades:
ECE 2901 - A
ECE 4460 - B
ECE 4500 - C
ECE 4607 - C
ECE 4884 - A
GRMN 1002 - S (pass)
ME 3720 - C

Final GPA: 2.5 in ECE program, 2.39 in GT overall

I started working on Monday, a lot of orientation and getting started stuff. Not too interesting at the moment, but it'll pick up once I'm actually working.

Finals Week Update

3 Classes dead and done. 2 will be dead and done by 5pm tomorrow. Final exam on Friday morning. I have two papers to write tonight.

I aced my ECE4607 exam, Wireless and Mobile Networks. I needed a 70 to make a C
I did about as expected on my GRMN1002 exam, which is only so-so. I needed a 50 to score a D
I bombed the hell out of my ECE4500 exam today. I have no idea what I need to pass, but he curves heavily so I have a chance.

I have half my final paper for ECE4884 completed, the due date was tonight but we're praying that they allow us the 24 hour extension we emailed them for. The final deadline is Friday so it shouldn't be a problem. OH! We finished our demonstration today, and we've made a demo video for you all! Matt Britt, our team leader, is the one operating the theremin in this video......http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZUk8hKIUjU
I have most of my final project done for ECE4460, but I need to run simulations tonight and write up my final paper by noon tomorrow.
ME3720 on Friday, I'm not worried about it. Actually, I'm most worried about sleeping through it because its at 8AM.

I have moved into my new place up here in Dunwoody, and I really like it here! It's huge! I can't wait to enjoy it as a work-free and school-free environment like I haven't been able to do in my place of residence for over 16 years...

I'm still setting up life now with insurance and cell phone bills and all that stuff, utilities...woo! Should be wrapped up soon though

A Farewell to AIESEC U.S.

Hey yall, my role as a LIGER has come to an end, and my role as an Alumnus begins in a week. I’m completing transition and everything now, and I believe Rachel is going to be an incredible Marketing LIGER for AIESEC U.S.

Before I begin to talk about some opinions of mine, I would like to apologize for the times over the past year when my suggestions, tone-of-voice, and conversations have come off destructively. They didn’t help the situations, and often contributed to the problems in communication. I have put a bad face on my LC with these actions, and I’ve put a bad face on those who supported my attendance in subgroup and LTM. That being said, I would like to end my time on the national Leadership Team by making some constructive suggestions.

I wasn’t able to make it to LTM this weekend, but I would like to share my opinion on one of the subjects. The name LIGER should be changed as soon as possible. I’ve been studying Marketing as it pertains to AIESEC externally and internally. Right now, those who weren’t actively involved or very close to those actively involved in creating the LIGER structure often see us as a joke. And the truth is, the name “LIGER” was created as a joke. Appearances matter, and for most people who haven’t physically met us, the name LIGER is our appearance. Most people don’t understand what LIGER means, even if you expand the acronym out for them, and it makes the role entirely ambiguous. I heard rumor that the ACE will become another form of LIGER, and I highly, highly suggest that we rename all of the LIGERs to be ACEs. AIESEC Connection Expert, now that describes what we do, that gives us a better face to the members of AIESEC U.S. LCs, and will ultimately make us more effective.

I would also like to express the importance of communication yet again, and provide a simpler solution than the ones I’ve suggested and asked for in the past. I’ve been involved in a community recently where face to face communication aren’t feasible, but hundreds of people who are involved in the community want to know what is happening, much like AIESEC U.S. The situation became volatile towards the end of 2007 in this community, and things came to a head when people who were financially supporting the organization were about to back out. Finally, they came to a solution that required very little work on the topside, but brought everyone back together. They had a Community Development Leader, similar to Andrew’s role, and every month, he would post a long update on everything that the teams have been working on for the last month, and the changes planned and in progress for the next. This didn’t involve extreme detail, such as financial records or the hour-by-hour workings of the teams, but it gave everyone a fantastic overview of the work that was happening. The CDL also created a thread for people to comment on the monthly update, and to give their input. This calmed the community down immensely. It’s been 5 months since then, and the entire atmosphere of the community has improved in an incredible way. The top level and the bottom level of the community are working together for their betterment as a whole. In truth, a similar move to increase communication was made by FDR back in the day with a televised update that he called “The Fireside Chat”.

We are now cutting down the national Leadership Team to the LCPs, LIGERs, and national roles. This transition is likely to cause people to get upset because they will feel less involved, but we all know that having 63 people in a room is not the way to make decisions. At the same time, much of the time spent in LTMs is spent updating everyone on what is going on, and then those who are there are given the expectation of taking this back to their LCs. The issue with this is that the information that made it back was often incomplete, and may LCs never heard about what is going on because they couldn’t/didn’t send representatives. The solution proposed above is one that can make the transition to a smaller LTM easier, faster, and more acceptable to the LCs, and at the same time, one that can more equally and adequately inform the members of AIESEC U.S. LCs, be they nationally involved or only locally involved. It is also an opportunity to help build the leadership pipeline from the LC to the MC by bridging the communication gap. It also builds a working history as time goes on. Better communication, and working together as a whole, makes people more positive and more willing to be active. Active members spread knowledge of AIESEC through word of mouth, events, etc., and will bring more members and exchanges, both incoming and outgoing, to AIESEC U.S. and its LCs. All of this for a simple, monthly update email or forum post.

This is a long email, I apologize. I’m almost done. I really hope that AIESEC U.S. will become more than it has been, both in terms of exchange, and in terms of developing leaders. I hope to see the gaps between the international, national, and local communities bridged. It is not impossible, although I have found myself believing it to be in the past. We are still far from where we should be after 50 years, and we must encourage constructive innovation in our members in order to catch up.

I wish that I had a chance to redeem myself after my last volatile email. I feel that I have discredited myself in the eyes of the national staff for my outbreak. I am sure you have seen people act as I have before, and I’m sure you will see more. When you run into people like this, give them my contact information and tell them to get in touch with me. I will attempt to share my experiences with them and to turn the destructive arguments into constructive ones. My contact information is in my signature.

Goodbye, and good luck. Please remove me from the Leadership listserv since my time as a member of the LT has come to a close.

Meh

What a piece of crap day. I finished everything about the project except for the calculations, and now I'm just stumped. The presentation is in 6 hours too, bleh.

You know its bad when you're the go-to guy for everyone else in the class and you still don't know what the hell you're doing. I'm like the token lab guy right now, everyone knows I've been here the longest and know the most about everything except how to create the model simulations.

Whatever. I'm tired. I said I wouldn't do this anymore. I quit until thursday.

My temperment is way off lately. I've gone off on two people in the last 24 hours. One of them was my senior design project team mate who waited until the last minute to try and do his part of the project and is delaying us finishing the class, the other was just someone who was being a pain in the arse. To the pain in the arse, if you read this, I apologize for being so rude, but I still stand behind what I said.

I need more sleep and I need to eat better, these are signs of pretty severe exhaustion. I talk about how I pull all-nighters a lot because I like to get the shock effect from people, but honestly, usually I sleep a lot during the day to make up for it. In dead week/exam week when I'm actually stressing the fuck out and pulling a lot of all nighters, I feel like a completely different person, I sound like a completely different person.... I fucking hate exams. Pointless goddamn work that I'm pulling my hair out for. I don't even know why. Fuck.

Let's hurry up already, there's waiting to do!

Continuation of the previous log...
10:30am - Went home
11:00am - Called Dunia
11:30am - Sleep
3:00pm - Woke up hungry, got taco bell, went back to sleep
10:00pm - Woke up, went to the lab
12:40am - Calculating Wiring Efficiencies Complete
5:20am - Having no luck making any progress on testing/simulations
7:30am - Gave up, went to the Windows lab to try to create the EBG
12:00pm - Take a break to call Dunia, get lunch, and take a nap
3:00pm - Back in the lab
4:00pm - EBG layout completed
7:35pm - Routing Layout Optimized as much as I'm going to optimize it; H-Structure Clock correctly set up.

I started this entry right after I asked my calculator to find the width of my top layer wires via an iterative equation. I'm still waiting on it to finish (it's been about 15 minutes).

This project is almost over. The routing involved manually connecting 103 pins together in 98 different nets via 5 layers of metal, which took about 15 or 16 hours altogether. The EBG involved basically guessing at different power-plane structures until it worked out to the right electric bandgap for isolation of the chips in the package, overall it took about 6 hours. I've wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what I need to do, and a lot of time trying to do things that haven't worked, all of which amounts to the remaining 9 hours I've been in the lab(s) this weekend. I have to figure out how to do several types of Simulations, how to calculate and simulate the Power Distribution parameters, and how to perform a Thermal Analysis of the final module. After that, all I have to do is write a conclusion and I'll be done!

I'm going to stay in the lab tonight until it's time to pick up Nate and Preston at the airport, then I'm going to work on German homework, Thermodynamics homework, and Optics homework. I plan to be in bed around 1am.

I'm going to go to the teacher/TA tomorrow and figure out how to finish this project, then complete the project and presentation tomorrow night. I'll complete the rest of my homeworks in all classes on Tuesday, and I'll write the final report for my senior design project on Wednesday. The rest of the week will be spent studying hardcore for my exams and taking much, much better care of myself.

It is so unhealthy to do projects this way. Two all-nighters in a row, sleeping through the day, eating fast food, not getting any sun, spending all day working with hardly any downtime... It's just a bad plan. I feel like all my reserves are depleted right now, which is made more evident by my current tendency to babble on and on about junk that gets dramatically worse whenever I'm this tired.


Almost free!

A Night's Log

Friday, April 18th, 2008

8:45pm - Arrive at the UNIX lab in the Klaus building
9:15pm - Successfully setup the program that I need to do my project in
10:30pm - Somewhat beginning to understand the project
12:00am - Finally understand what the project is asking me to do. 1) Estimate how many layers of metal I need; 2) Calculate the Wire widths for each layer; and 3) Route all the net signals by hand.
1:41am - Tentative routing figured out
3:00am - Spacing and Sizing calculations completed
3:30am - Routing Methods improved, calculations adjusted
7:00am - Top layer routing completed
8:30am - Bottom Layer routing completed
8:35am - Power and Ground planes completed
9:51am - Layout complete.

I'm tired.

Blah, almost there.

Less than 2 weeks to go.

ECE4460 - Microsystems Packaging: I have to have a multi-chip package designed by next Tuesday and a presentation for it ready. The project must be complete with working simulations and a final paper by 5pm, Wednesday, April 30th. This project alone will determine whether I pass or fail. I am very worried about this class.

ECE4884 - Senior Design: The project is almost complete, with a few testing issues that need to be worked out. We need to present by Friday next week, and the final paper must be completed by April 30th. This project IS my grade. I am not too worried about this class.

ECE4607 - Wireless and Mobile Networks: The final exam is on Monday at 11:30am. It covers chapters 6 - 12 and is open-book/open-note. I made a 45 on the first test and a 95 on the second test. Homeworks have been average. I have a homework due on Friday next week. I am worried about this class, but not overly so.

ECE4500 - Optical Engineering: The final exam is on Tuesday at 2:50pm. It covers the last part of the course only, and we're allowed 12 pages of notes. I'm not too worried about this class.

GRMN1002 - German 2: The final exam is on Monday at 2:50pm. It is cumulative. While I have been learning the language, and I would say that I am at least average for my class, my grades have not reflected this due to a huge number of external factors throughout the semester that took greater precedence than a pass/fail course. I am extremely worried about this class.

ME3720 - Thermodynamics: The final exam is on Friday at 8:00am. It is cumulative. I've aced the homeworks, I've not done too well on some of the tests, but my grade is a solid B right now. I'm not too worried about this class.

ECE2901 - I'm a TA here, this doesn't have an exam or anything, I just have to show up for 3 hours on tuesday to watch presentations and people's demonstrations.

An Exam to Remember

The F.E. Exam, or Fundamentals of Engineering Exam, took place on Saturday, April 12th this year. I failed to remember about it until around 10pm Friday night, even though I'd been telling myself to remember it all week. In any case, it was a horrid affair. I went to bed at midnight on Friday night, and roused myself from slumber at 6am. Upon completing my normal morning routine, I jumped in my car and grabbed a McGriddle before heading out to the test site.

I arrived at the Classroom building on Georgia State campus at 7:15am to find a couple hundred engineers sitting around in a hallway like homeless folk. The registration person was nowhere in sight. I found some folks I knew (because apparently everyone is from GT, just about), and spent the next half hour lolly-gagging because there was nothing better to do. At 7:45am, someone started walking out the door, and everyone followed. We were led to some building around the corner, and upon entering, we were filtered into rooms based on our seat number that was on our entrance pass. Mine was on the 6th floor. The beginning sounded very much like the SATs or the ACTs did back in highschool, the usual shpeal about the rules and filling in dots and such. Upon completion of the instructions, we were given 4 hours to complete 120 engineering questions.

This is where the F.E. became far different from the SAT/ACT. These questions were actually engineering questions, we were forced to use normal calculators when an actual TI-89 quality calculator would have been greatly helpful. They supplied a giant book of equations from all sects of engineering for the test, but looking up equations takes time, and we were only given 2 minutes per question. I used the book and am fairly certain that my first 70 answers are correct. Unfortunately, at this point I had 50 questions left and only 1 hour. The rest of the questions were answered in a flurry of what I have come to call "Engineer's Intuition", which means that I read the question carefully, looked through the answers, maybe did a few quick calculations, then took the best guess. Luckily, I believe the test was designed for this, because I was at least 80% sure of most of my answers on those 50 questions.

Oh if only my story concluded at the closing of the morning session, but no, this blog entry must continue! We were given an hour break, and then filtered back into our rooms for yet another 4 hour exam in the afternoon. This exam was more specific to the field of engineering that the taker majored in. We were given 4 hours to answer 60 harder engineering questions. I took the Electrical Engineering exam, and though I feel I was better prepared for it than most, there were a few questions that I wasn't readily able to answer. In any case, I finished this exam in 3 hours and was able to finally go home and crash.

In other news, studying is really hard to do. It's really hard to bring myself to do. It's even harder to admit to myself that I'm just procrastinating like I always do, and that I need to stop playing games (literally) and start actually giving a damn about school. I loathe school, I swear, every single problem we complete is useless, brainpower and time put to complete things that won't help anyone or do a darned thing. I can't wait to do work that is actually significant in some form or fashion to someone. In any case, yeah, I need to be ready for these exams. I have 3 on April 28th and 1 on May 2nd. Yes, I know I am allowed by the school to move one, but the teacher I'd have to ask is a pain in the ass, and I don't want to take the test on Saturday the 3rd. I'm going to try to move the exam on May 2nd to the week before finals so that I can be completely done with school on April 28th. If I can do that, then I'll get an actual week before work in to rest up and recover.

Even though I'm trying to stop playing games so much, I might as well say a few things I've noticed while playing Horizons. As soon as I joined up in the game around 45 days ago, I immediately researched everything I could to get through the learning curve. Soon after this, I found an informative group in-game that was able to teach me the information I couldn't find elsewhere. Once I was finally up to date on things (around a week ago), I began working with the leader of the group, C`gan, who is also a well-respected member of the game (been playing for over 4 years), to restart a team effort to build up different parts of the game-world. There was a team for this 2 or 3 years ago that everyone seemed to like, but in the end, beuracracy took hold and tore it apart (like it always does when left unchecked).

Based on this experience and many of my AIESEC experiences, I'd characterize my personality upon entering any world/situation as one of the "Young and Vocal Upstart", someone who gets shutdown by the real realities of a situation and/or the past-attempts of other vocal people. With experience, I'll probably become the "Old and Quiet Fart Who Gets Things Done", like my dad. We can only hope that day comes soon, but until then, I'm going to annoy the hell out of each and every one of you with my bright-eyed cheery hopefullness and close-following pessimistic optimism. :)