Chan's Personal Blog

Well, it has been three years that I have been at my work as a web developer. We marked the occasion (and end of term) with a tasty trip to Japanese Village. (Our work always goes there for an end of term lunch.) In my time serving the organization, I figure that I have been to Japanese Village fifteen times with them.

I started this job as a co-op student, and now I am a grad student working on a technical project for them. I am quite thankful of how things have turned out. My boss and the powers above have been very accommodating of my academic schedule, my ambitions, and my funding. They also have been very supportive of various projects and initiatives that I have proposed.

It has been great working as a web developer all this time as it is completely related to my degree, and this is something I will pursue in the future. I don't think I'd be half the programmer I am now if it wasn't for this job.

Academically, the job has helped me a lot too because I could apply a lot of my skills to courses that involve programming. The job also helped me feel less stupid while I was doing my undergraduate degree. Perhaps I could not solve second order differential equations, but that wasn't the end of the world because I still felt useful at work.

I have also learned a lot outside the realm of programming. Learning about office politics and dealing with people have been immensely helpful. I also assist with interviewing potential employees as well, and it's interesting to conduct interviews from an employer's point of view. I've become aware of what employers are looking for in an interview. This will be useful information for the future.

I'll end this article with a story from my first day of work with this organization. My first day was a week before the next term started, so a lot of the end of term celebrations were still coming. Anyways, on the first day of work, I had my orientation in the morning. Shortly after the orientation, my boss asked if I brought a lunch. Apparently everyone was going out for lunch, so I put my lunch in the fridge and went with them.

We get to the University Club and we meet up with all these other people from the department. There's probably a twenty people here? Anyways, we sit down at the table, and I am sitting next to the head of the table. I'm extremely quiet at this point because I hardly know anyone. Everyone's chattering away, and the lady on my left (and at the head of the table) starts a conversation with me. She goes, oh, you must be the new co-op student, how do you like it so far? I'm like....uhhh..... good? It's my first day. She says, well... usually you can tell by now if you're going to like working here or not. I'm like... okay. (I've just started this new job about 4 hours ago.) I continue on a little longer with polite conversation.

Anyways, I order a delicious steak sandwich. While I'm eating, the thought goes through my head.... crap, did I bring enough cash? Nope, I hardly carry any cash. At this point, I'm hoping they take credit or debit cards. I discretely ask my co-worker on my right if they take plastic here. He laughs and goes, no dude, the meal's paid for. I'm feeling a little stupid for ordering a steak sandwich since someone else was paying for it, I probably should have ordered something cheaper. After the meal, everyone thanks the lady on left for lunch (the one that was talking to me). I thank her for the meal as well. The lunch is over, and I leave with co-workers. As we're walking back to the office, I ask one of my co-workers who that lady was. It turns out she was the director of our organization! Great. No one told me that, I hope I didn't say anything stupid.

In either case, free meal on the very first day of work, that's a good sign (especially since I love food). At the end of the work week, I had another free meal at Japanese Village as my office was celebrating its end of term. Score!

I'm looking forward to the next trip to Japanese Village .