The reason I love CIES.

I received this email the other day from my trainer, Kareem, who sent it out to everyone in the unit (F&O). It is in regards to our supervisor's birthday.

SUBJECT: In the 1970s a baby Noguchi was born...

On a stormy night in the Nagano suburbs, Taeko was born to Mr. and Mrs. Taeko. Fast forward through the 80’s and 90’s and now Taeko has everything she’s ever wanted including an incredibly good looking group of co-workers in F&O (and Athena). To celebrate we are doing a potluck in the Havel Room on Wednesday May 5th at 12:15. The gathering will last until someone passes out, the elastic snaps on my sweats, or we run out of food…we can take wagers on what happens first.

You all are the best, never change.

Righttime = good time. Mostly.

Well, I broke down yesterday. My nose was stuffed up so badly and I was so sick of being sick that I got in touch with my RA. She said that there is a clinic nearby called RightTime that used to be a pediatrician's office but now does mostly clinic/emergency/walk-in type stuff. So I gave the number a call and they had an appointment in like half an hour. I called at like 4pm. Well, I totally wasn't expecting that and I had class, but I was like...okay, we'll give it a try. However, upon booking it to the station to catch the bus...I waved as it passed by...and decided to cancel. I called back and did so, wanting to reschedule, but she told me that they only do same-day appointments. The phone lines open at 8am, though, to take appointments from 11am to midnight. So I resolved to make an appointment at 8am the next morning.

Class was okay. Got into an argument with a classmate over the Google vs China controversy (ironically, I was on China's side). Also turned in my paper. We have three assignments left in that class. This is honestly one of the most...assignment-ridden classes I've ever taken, all coupled with TWC and the internship. Ugh.

I had a crap time with the metro last night. Moving on...

This morning, I had planned on going to work for a couple hours at least. But upon gaining consciousness, I completely changed my mind. I felt like crap all over again, though at least I could breathe this time. I stayed awake for the next hour and a half, talking to my mom, watching Dancing with the Stars reruns on Hulu, and called to make an appointment. They had one at 11:20 that I took.

Napped for about an hour or so.

I checked the weather upon waking because it's been crazy lately. 70 one day, 40 the next. Today was another cold day, which I was grateful for, because all my T-shirts are dirty. (I desperately need to do laundry.) I vaguely saw that the chance of rain was around 50%, but didn't really pay attention.

Again, I got to the station as the bus was leaving. However, a very kindly man was driving and stopped for me when I waved him down. He was awesome and I hope his life is filled with love and happiness.

Got to the clinic, which was thankfully right at the bus stop.

Well, apparently this isn't really a clinic like I thought it was going to be. It's not a doc-in-the-box. This is an awesome facility. The check-in process was completely electronic, complete with a little iPad doodad that you fill out all your paperwork on. Sweet. Once you turn that in, they give you a buzzer thing like at a restaurant. When it buzzes, you go to your exam room. Btw, they have TVs everywhere, in the waiting room and exam rooms. So I got to watch Monsters, Inc, which brightened my day because that little girl is so cute. (Also, on the way to the exam room, I noticed that this place had a lab and x-rays within, too. Doubly impressed, and relieved, because I was pretty sure I was going to have to have a chest x-ray to either confirm or deny pneumonia as a diagnosis.)

Anyway, the amazing electronic technology continued with an automatic blood-pressure checker thing, and not the kind that you sit in. She wheeled the machine over to me, strapped me in, pressed Start, and let it go. Weird. Also took my temp, which was 97. My normal temp. Good that I don't have a fever any longer. My blood pressure was also fine, but my pulse was 82. Hey, I was in a doctor's office. They make me nervous.

The doctor eventually came in. Dr. Simms? Simmons? Something like that. She looked in my right ear and immediately said, "Okay, well, your ear's infected." She went to my left ear and made a disapproving sound. "It's even worse in this ear." She then looked in my nostrils and at my throat. "Well, both of your ears are infected and you also have a sinus infection."

Lovely.

She proceeded to fill out paperwork for about five minutes while I watched Sully try to get the little girl to sleep by showing her that there was no monster in her closet and miming the universal "sleep" signals. I guess the paperwork is the only thing wrong with this electronic system. They still have to fill that stuff out, and it still takes a long time. Anyway, I ended up with two prescriptions, Flonase and Amoxicillin. I made my way to the front desk.

The receptionist looked at my paperwork and said, "Oh, we can have your prescriptions filled here if you want." My eyebrows shot up. "Really? Great!" I sat down to wait, watching other people coming and going through the waiting room/lobby. A few minutes later, the pharmacy tech comes out and says that BCBS won't pay unless it's filled at an approved facility, which is not them. Okay, no problem. I live above a CVS, won't be that bad. Can check-out now please?

Except that now about three people had walked in and needed help checking in and everything. Sigh.

I waited. And waited. Had a good view of the bus stop. Also saw one bus coming and going. Oh, it was raining now, by the way. Didn't know if you caught the fore-shadowing earlier. I was miserable, because I knew it was going to be at least twenty minutes for the next bus, and I was also feeling crappy because my benadryl was wearing off, and I knew I was going to have to walk home in the rain without an umbrella or jacket and just blah. I had my own little raincloud over my head.

Finally the receptionist called me up and apologized several times for the wait, said she wouldn't make me wait any longer, just wanted to give me copies of my receipt and everything and I could leave. This made up for my crankiness somewhat. After all, there was only one person at the front desk.

Anyway, I left. Waited in the (thankfully covered) bus stop for about ten minutes or so, freezing. Walked home in the windy rain, stopped at CVS and stockpiled on junk food while waiting for my 'scripts, then headed upstairs, took them, and went to bed.

I'm not really noticing a difference, though people are saying that I sound better already. I'm still coughing and sneezing and my nose is alternating between sliding off my face and being so stuffed that I can't breathe. My head is also aching, and my ear started to as well. At least my throat doesn't hurt anymore?

But there you go. Double ear infections and sinusitis. Wow. My head is just completely infected right now.

Probably going to stay home again tomorrow because I'm worried about making people sick and still being contagious. Also because I'm not in bed yet.

Next time, someone make me go to the doctor if I'm sick for more than three days.

Laptop woes...and laptop yays!

Well, my friends...last Saturday, I learned that soy sauce and laptops are not friends. In fact, they really hate each other.

We were eating Chinese dumplings, since we have six bags of them and never eat them anymore. I had finished mine, and was on my laptop, which I honestly never do, have my laptop near food, I mean. So I picked up my bowl to take it into the kitchen and it slipped...and splattered the leftover soy sauce all over my open laptop.

I immediately shut it down and wiped up all that I could. Did you know that soy sauce is greasy? Upon getting back on it, it appeared that everything was okay. It had been a crappy morning (crappy week, really) so before I had a mental breakdown, I went to take a nap.

When I woke up, my trackpad was being strange, and a couple of my keys didn't work. Sleep made me feel better, but I still felt like crying because my laptop was broken. I made an appointment to take it to the Genius bar the next day.

So, Sunday, rainy rainy Sunday, I trek out to Montgomery Mall to the Apple store. The guy says that they'll have to send it out to be repaired. He won't say that I spilled something on it on the off-chance that they don't find it. If they don't, they can replace everything for free because I have the protection plan. If they find it, they could requote me up to $755 plus tax. This made my jaw drop. He also said that I could take it to a third party certified repair shop, but that seemed really daunting seeing as I have to rely on public transportation to get anywhere. I called Dad, who spoke with the guy, and decided that he would rather them send it off because it's Apple, so we know they'd do a good job. I left my baby there, knowing I wouldn't see her again for 5-7 days.

This past week was horrible. Thankfully, I have awesome roommates who lent me their computers so I could get the stuff done that I needed to on Monday. But the first deadline for getting the applications into the new database at work was Monday, and we didn't meet it. We met it barely yesterday afternoon, when I was very near to strangling myself with my mouse cord while slitting my wrists with staples and choking myself with toner. I've done about 250 of these applications over the last three weeks. I want a day off. I especially want something new to do. Hopefully I'll get that something new to do on Tuesday.

In the middle of the week, I got a call from the Apple store. They found the soy sauce, but they were only going to charge $430 to have it cleaned up, thankfully. I think that might be their ploy. They suggest an outrageous price, so that when you're confronted with a less, but still outrageous, price, you actually feel relieved and agree to pay it.

Anyway, I trudged home last night and took the shortcut, which meant that I didn't come by the front desk to check for packages. I went out today to Maxim, the Chinese supermarket, to get some more pork buns (AGAIN no Chinese spinach! RAWR!) and Japanese candy. When I came back, I noticed a slip on our mailbox that said I had a package. Two packages, actually. I went to the front desk.

A laptop-sized box came out. I was trying not to hope it was my laptop. I was actually trying to figure out what the second package was, but he said he couldn't find one and I'm not expecting another one. So I told him to call me if they ran across anything.

I came upstairs, getting increasingly giddy because what else could this be? It HAD to be my laptop! I opened the box after some struggling (what kind of devil box do they ship these things in???) and saw nothing but padding. HAD to be a laptop! I dumped the padding out and my laptop slid out with it.

AAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!

I shrieked and jumped around for a long time. I'm pretty sure Alice thinks I'm a freak.

So I have my laptop back. I missed her. I feel tons better now that I have it back, but this semester is still stressing me something awful. At least we're halfway through.

Er...hi?

Wow. Two weeks since I last updated. Sorry about that!

Well, the last time I wrote I mentioned that someone had stolen a package of mine. It's still MIA. I sent Caroline, the concierge, an email yesterday explaining that I still had not received anything, but I hadn't exactly been checking in at the front desk, either. I also said that my parents have re-ordered the case and it should be here Thursday. No response. So I'm going to assume that they're having a meeting about what to do.

The 27th was my birthday. My unit at the office (aww, I'm so grown up!) threw me a breakfast party complete with Krispy Kremes, half-bagel and sausage sandwiches, scrambled eggs with shallots, granola, yogurt, grapes, etc. It was really yummy. And Taeko gave me flowers. ♥ I have the best supervisor ever.

My parents came up on Friday night for my birthday weekend. We...I don't remember what we did. Oh! We went to the Sichuan Pavilion. They enjoyed the authentic Chinese. I think they liked the dumplings more than the buns, though, which is the complete opposite of me. But if you're not an expert with chopsticks, it's kinda hard to get use to how to eat the buns.

Saturday night we had my birthday dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. Mmmmm. We didn't tell them it was my birthday, but they brought out my piece of cheesecake with a candle in it and "Happy Birthday to you!" written on the plate in syrup. Oh, and rainbow confetti all over. Good stuff.

Sunday, we went shopping at Montgomery Mall, which is a mall that is really close to here that I had no clue about. It's really easy to get to, too: take the metro and hop on a bus. Takes you right to the mall. But it's huge and awesome. Macy's is there, and if you have a uterus, you probably know about the huge sale they were having. So I stocked up on short-sleeved shirts for when the weather warms up, and got some new work pants, too. I also finally got my hands on a cashmere/wool coat that I've been wanting for a long time. The other coat I have is just too bulky. This coat is awesome and I love it so. They had an ivory one, too, which looked gorgeous on me and which I've also been wanting for forever, but we couldn't afford both and I wouldn't be able to wear the ivory one all the time. It would get dirty way too easily.

Monday we had programming, which was horribly boring and I read through the entire thing. They never took attendance, which really irritates me. If they're not going to do that, I'm just going to stay home during boring ones. Of course, next week is Career Boot Camp, which should at least be informative. But there are some other events that I have no interest in whatsoever. Also had class that night, where we talked about beastiality among the Mongolians and the baboon-esque habits of the Tibetans before Han Chinese showed up. Interesting, it is.

Yesterday and today was back to work stuff. I've been waiting on access to this system for at least a week. I finally got the email with my account info today and I only have limited access, and it's limited in a way that disallows me to do my work. So now Taeko's trying to get me full access. In the meantime, she's entrusted her login information to me, which was quite a shock to the rest of the team. ^_^

I've had a cough for the past few days. It's a tickle below my voicebox that feels like phlegm or something, but I never cough anything up. It's getting on my nerves, though. Hopefully I can get over it this weekend. I'm thinking of taking a half day Friday so I can recover early. I'm totally having my PJ day this weekend, since I didn't get one last weekend.

That's about all in the life of me right now. I want the weather to warm. I'm still addicted to pork buns. And I'm waiting for the dryer to go off so I can go to sleep. Life could be worse.

Another pretty crap day.

Well, today was not so good, as you can tell by the subject. I've tweaked my hours at work to Tues-Fri 8-5. It's tiring working that extra hour, and I have no idea why. It's not proportionately tiring. It's way more so. Odd.

Anyway, I ran out of work this morning and opened my big mouth to my supervisor about it, who told me to tell her and she would always find me something to do. I started doing the sudoku puzzle in my Express newspaper (free, daily) and she came by.

"Hi! How are you doing?"
":P I'm so bored."
"Come with me."

It scares me that she's always so efficient like that, and always has this grin like "you asked for it." The Japanese. They are an efficiently scary people.

She ended up loaning me to another department, since mine won't need me until next week. The department is Global Services. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but it involves more databases and spreadsheets. And a headache that's been going on for a while.

See, their old system was...well, old. They were moving to a new system with the apps from this year, and had all the scholars fill out the online apps directly into this new system. But now the new system is broken. So the apps have to be moved back to the old system. BY HAND. Like HAND-TYPING. That's where I come in. Because I am an intern and no one in their right mind who was getting paid for this would do it. But me? I do it for free. :D

The apps are about 24 pages long. It took me about 2 and a half hours to do four of them. I thought that was it. Nope! Global Services Manager Anneke comes by my desk that afternoon when I'm finished with the first four.

"Were you okay with the apps?"
"Oh, yeah, I was fine, no problem."
"Okay, I'm gonna give you more to do."

By "more" she meant "a helluva lot more." I got two done and was working on the third before the system hiccupped on me, I lost all the data, and only have fifteen minutes left. So instead of breaking down to cry, I left for the day. Seemed progressive at the time.

On the way home on the metro, I started feeling ill. I read about halfway, then had to put my book away and just breathe and concentrate on not throwing up on the lovely shiny shoes of the businessman standing next to me. I made it out of the station feeling much better, but still craptastic. I got to the apartment and got an email from my dad asking if I'd picked up the laptop case he shipped to me. I tracked it on FedEx and it had indeed been delivered. I stole my roommate's shoes to go downstairs and pick it up. In my pajamas. Because I just don't care after a long day's work.

I got down there and the attendant was someone I didn't know and hadn't seen before. I've made a point to make friends with the attendants. I told her my apartment number and my name and she said the package had already been signed for.

...What?

I said that I had picked something up a couple of days ago. She said, "Oh, maybe it hasn't been logged yet." And disappeared behind the desk. She came back a few minutes later saying that she didn't see it and then showed me the log where it had been signed. All I could see were a bunch of strange loopies that looked nothing like letters, much less my name, and much much less my signature. I told her so and she looked panicked, kind of like she didn't know what to do. "Oh...um...oh my god...Okay, I'll leave a note here for Caroline in the morning." She wrote down a strange, short-hand synopsis on the situation on a post-it. I explained that I would ask my roommates if they'd picked something up for me. She said okay. I knew none of my roommates had done that. They're all Asian. They have gorgeous, neat lettering and don't know cursive or whatever that language was that was supposed to represent my "signature."

So I've had a package stolen. It was a macbook case from Speck, so it wasn't anything really expensive. I'm disappointed because 1) it seems like Fate has decided I should not have this case because it was supposed to be a xmas present and has been backordered these last three months only to now disappear and 2) I love Fenestra and the security and the apartments and location and everything. I don't want to have to fight with them over paying for this if it was, indeed, stolen. It's their fault. They will pay for it. I just don't want it to get ugly.

And now I've stayed up way past the time I planned to go to bed. I'm looking forward to tomorrow being Friday, even though Saturday I have a field trip with my class to the Freer/Sackler galleries and then to Chinatown for some chow. At least I don't have to leave until 11.

CIES = AWESOME!

Hello, all! Sorry for not writing last night, but updates may get sparse anyway. Basically we went to more orientation yesterday morning. A sergeant with the DC Metro police talked to us, gave us his work email, personal email, and phone number with instructions to call him at ANY time. This is an awesome example of community policing. I can't imagine the B'ham police doing anything like that. I found it very impressive and inspiring. We also listened to the best speaker I've ever heard--Josh Sundquist. He was so hilarious, and also had moments where he was very inspiring. The auditorium was roaring with laughter and then completely quiet. He really has a gift.

After that, we ate lunch at this little diner. It was freaky weather yesterday, too, because it got up into the 60s. So we sat outside (there was NO room in the diner) and ate. The diner had tons of different foods. I got a pizza. I was starving, so it was good. Not sure if it would have been otherwise. The others seemed to like their food okay, though. I don't know.

After lunch, we were all terribly uncomfortable from having to dress in business dress for the meetings, so we came back to Rockville and changed. We decided to go shopping because Annie needed some dress shirts for work. We went to White Flint Mall, which is a couple stops down on the metro. They have several stores in there, but it's not nearly as big as the Galleria. I'm spoiled. Anyway, I bought a few things. At H&M, I got a black scarf and crocheted beret. At Nine West, they were having a huge sale/clearance, and I found some flat boots for $40. Couldn't pass those up! There was also a Cheesecake Factory in there, so we ate there for dinner and trudged back to the apartments being dead-tired and fat and happy.

This morning, there was a fatal crash on the red line at Rockville Station. This is the station that I use. I had no idea about it, so I went down there and they said that there were shuttles to the next station. This added on 30 minutes to my morning, so I'm glad that I left early. I feel bad, though, because I just wanted to know when the metro would be back up. I got a text from Annie that said a fatal crash was the reason the station was closed. They have everything back up and running now, but people at the office were saying that it's happening all the time now. I hope they get to the bottom of whatever's going on.

Anyway, I got to the Intelsat Building, where the CIES offices are located, at maybe 9:04am. No big deal. But security in that place is tight! I had to wait in the tiny lobby for someone to come get me and escort me to the conference room. They had heard about the crash, so they were all really understanding and didn't hold my tardiness against me.

To the conference room we went, where we were able to pick off of a small breakfast buffet they had set up for us, which included fruits and pastries and different things to drink. Sweet. We had meetings with the two people who hired us, Tanya and Jeff, telling us all about CIES and giving us info and different things like that. Apparently, we get a travel stipend for traveling to the office. $10/day, given to us at the end of the semester. Cool beans! Oh, we also have 5 personal days. Double cool beans!

We took a tour of the office. Interestingly, the Asia region people mostly speak Spanish. Huh? I know, I was like that, too. I asked if anyone spoke Japanese, and an older guy looked at me and said, "Nihongo o dekimasu" (I can do Japanese). I was so excited! I shrieked and we had a little conversation in Japanese while everyone around us kind of stared. It was awesome. Also on this tour, we met Taeko, my supervisor, who is Japanese. So I greeted her with "Ohayoo gozaimasu!" (Good morning!) And she greeted me back. I love working with people who can speak Japanese! (Note: I later found out that the older guy was married to a Japanese woman, hence his fluency.)

I met with Taeko and we went over my schedule and goals and whatnot. I didn't really know how to put my goals into words. I'm basically just trying to find my career path right now. I'm not sure what TWC is looking for, in terms of that. Anyway, I explained to her that we have TWC programming on Monday and the times vary. She said that she was told I would be working Monday-Thursday, so we just switched my days to Tuesday-Friday. Sweet! Three day weekends rock! Well, it won't exactly be a three-day weekend. Monday is still packed for me, it just starts a little later.

After this, she handed me off to the guy I'm working with to lighten his load. His name is Kareem and he's so awesome and funny. Basically, CIES is moving to an online application process where the info is directly put into the databases. Previously, they had to type all of it in by hand. There are 800 chosen applicants. This is a lot. So they're still tweaking some stuff, and this is what I'm helping Kareem with. There's an Iraq program which has a deadline in a couple of weeks, so that's on our agenda first, then to the regular applicants. But I think what we're doing is printing out the applications and making files for them. That's what I was doing this afternoon, anyway.

The interns all met for lunch in the cafeteria. I am so glad that they have a cafeteria, because I didn't really see many places to eat around the office. And the cafeteria is really impressive. They had potato and leek soup today! Wow! So I got a bowl of that and some vanilla pudding and water. All of that was over $5. Pricey! I'll have to pay attention to that next time.

After lunch, we got our ID badges so we no longer have to be escorted around. We also had more training time or whatever to do, so I worked on the stuff Kareem gave me. I sent him an email that I would be by his desk at 3pm for him to give me whatever work, and I was over there exactly at 3pm. He goes, "Oh...you're...here?" And I was like, "...Yes?" And he goes, "That's...so weird. I mean, you're actually here when your email said you would be." It was so funny. So basically, I just printed out applications the rest of the afternoon and put them into folders. I should be getting my own printer tomorrow and then I'm going to print out labels for them. Kareem checked up on me at 4:30pm and was impressed with how much I was getting done. He also said, "I'm tired of being here, so I'm leaving. I hope you will, too." And I said, "Oh, far be it from me to dash your hopes." And he goes, "Well, I can't tell you to leave. But I encourage you to do so." I ended up staying so that another intern and I could walk to the metro together, but still. It's nice that I'll get to leave early.

So I get along with everyone fabulously. They're so fun-loving and relaxed about everything. It's a great office.

It did take me an hour to get home. That was a bummer. And it got super-cold outside. Friday it's supposed to snow. It's going to be cold for this little Alabamian.

I have other stuff to catch up on, so...until next time!