Spoiled on attention

Sometimes I feel like we focus too much on "quantity time" rather than "quality time". I suppose the reason we do that is because quantity is something tangible/measurable, whereas quality is something more subjective. Then when a small quantity of time is high quality, we believe that having more would be even better.

I wonder though if there is a trade-off between quantity and quality. I know that I'm nicer to my mom because I don't see her as much, and when I see her for a long period of time I start getting annoyed easier - does this extend to other relationships?

Maybe at the end of the day, I'm just not a "people-person".

BOREDOM IS BAD FOR YOUR WALLET

I have no idea how people (e.g. Sakura) can spend all this time surfing the internet. I've read a bunch of news sites, configured an iGoogle page, accepted Facebook requests, cleaned out my work and personal inbox, and watched a bunch of cool soccer videos on YouTube. I even looked up Red Vs. Blue again and started watching that...

Ugh. The thing that sucks is that I'm just waiting around for a deck from the client for the work to hit. Dum dee dum dee dum.

Btw, there's this random beer garden (really just a restaurant that serves beer) in the middle of a Japanese garden down here in San Diego. Went there for lunch. Pretty cool.

Oh and someone just told me that Sushi Ota is the best sushi restaurant on the whole West Coast - supposedly they fly all their fish in from Japan. Can't seem to find it on any website though - is it that good?

I almost forgot - now I'm just shopping online. Just makes me want to buy stuff. BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!!! Boredom is so dangerous...

GOOG under $500? AAPL under $120?

Oh and of course MSFT is under $29. Good thing I got out at $31. Wow looks like the market is really starting to crash now. The S&P is actually down for 2007 after 10% gains for the past 2 years. MUST BE PATIENT. Need to wait out the slump. dum dee dum dee dum...

In my job, sometimes it's crazy busy, and sometimes we don't have much to do - I guess that's similar to lots of other jobs. The annoying thing is that because we're always on site, there's not a whole lot we can do when we're not busy. There's some talk about being proactive, but most of that is just busy work.

I just want to go play. :)

New city!

Denver, CO

Denver has an uncannily large airport considering no major airline has their hub here. Took about 45 mins to get to the hotel although the cab ride wasn't too bad. Was talking to the cab driver the whole time. He was going to be DJ-ing at a bar after he dropped me off. He's also an aspiring musician. Judging from his looks - long shaggy hair, white, scrawny - I pinned him as rock & roll if anything. Turns out, he does hip hop. I even got him to rap for me - his band's called Captain Fresh and his whole act is that he comes out in a bath robe and shower cap like he just came out of the shower... and you wonder why he's driving cabs...

In the hotel lobby waiting for the client to arrive now. We have to look through a deck and then I have to rush off to Kinko's to get it printed for tomorrow morning. Splendid. Naturally all their flights were delayed.

Considering how much I see her, I am constantly surprised how much I miss my Sakura. Our time together this week was shorter than usual, but we definitely had fun. We got Rayman Raving Rabbits for the Wii, and that was just deadly. Can't wait for the new one in November. I guess in the end, it's time spent together is about quality, not quantity.

Oh and we got people some presents this weekend. A necklace each for her mom and my step-mom for their birthdays. Naruto 3 for one little sister, and Cooking Mama and Bratz Ponies for my other little sister. Hopefully they're not lame.

Ok, back to waiting. Sweet.

One down... how many more to go?

My first study is officially complete - software strategy validated, recommendations for improvement made.

All kinds of fun reviews happen now - always framed in the context of self improvement - for me, the team, the people we worked with.... surveys galore. At the end of the day though, I think only these 3 dimensions really matter (on a scale of 1-10)

Learning: 3
Even though this was my first study, since I knew the content, and I know how to build slides, I didn't end up learning all that much

Impact: 2
Client was on the path already and working through a lot of the issues. We helped them a little bit around putting things together and providing an objective opinion, but these guys knew what they were doing - just needed a kick in the pants.

Fun: 6
The team was very casual and people were friendly. Lots of mentorship and Sakura got to come to spend an all expense paid (well sort of) weekend. Can't complain. Of course there were some late nights and random deadlines that were kind of crazy.

Next stop, San Diego on Monday. I almost had to go to Denver / Dallas, but at the last minute, a partner on this study snatched me up. Another short study, and I have a feeling this one is going to be even more insane.

For now, I'm trying not to think about it - my mom just got us a Wii and a few games, as well as Guitar Hero II. Oh and Harry Potter as well - more than enough to keep me occupied. So much to do and so little time... sigh....

"Hey this should be pretty easy..."

"...why don't you just put this together tonight - shouldn't take you more than 10 mins."

Hey, why don't I just give you a swift kick in the nuts?

After flying in on a redeye to attend a very useless meeting of a few partners pondering life's great mysteries (blah blah blah - repeat, repeat), spending the day frantically getting stuff done, waiting around to chat with the partner only to continue to get blown off, then go home and wait 2 hours for a conference call with the team, only to also have that cancelled, and then right before I planned to go to bed, get a call from this guy - man....

This is why we need video games - so there's an outlet for aggressive - not because it makes you aggressive. Would've been good to throw a car at someone or something last night.

I'm clearly underpaid...

Ok if I knew I was going to be working from 8am-3am every day I'd would've gone and been a banker or worked in private equity. At least I would have a monster bonus to look forward to. This is ridiculous.

Talk about a cluster....

1st Assignment and 1st Day

Thursday afternoon - no info on where I'll be
Thursday night - still no info
Friday morning - nothing
Friday afternoon - nothing, hey maybe I'll be on the beach next week!
Friday evening right before I head to the airport to head back to Seattle - email asking me to call

Discuss project starting on Monday and told that we (he) will decide on Monday morning if I will join the project of not

Monday morning - show up at office and told that I will be on the project and need to head to Chicago ASAP. Multiple conferences in Chicago makes booking hotel almost impossible, stuck in crap hotels.
Monday afternoon - head home to pack and then off to the airport. Turns out ticket hasn't been issued yet so I have to call travel to have ticket issued. High call volumn so on hold for a while, and travel person is abrupt and short. Almost forgot to book rental car - didn't help travel person's demeanor.
Monday evening - reading background information on the plane, napping
Monday night - arrive in Chicago airport. Rental car area is so far from the gate. Not a gold member so have to wait in line. Some other guy forgot his bags on the bus. Poor guy. Get in the Pontiac Vibe (never heard of this car? neither have I. Can't even speed it's so underpowered) and head to hotel. Stuck with smoking room facing car park. Gym at hotel sucks.

Tuesday morning - wake up at 6:45, 4:45 in Seattle. Room service breakfast and then head to office downtown. Should take 30 mins, I allocated 1 hr, and I end up using that up and more. No parking at the building, need to go around in circles and park at a lot 5 blocks away. Rush to meeting - it's hot and I'm sweating.

The rest of the day doesn't go any better
- first task is to educate the partner on the industry that I only kind of know, ugh...
- sent off to the client with no time for lunch, pick up Micky D's and eat in the car. Of course something drips on my shirt
- traffic and shirt changing makes me late, partner asking me where I am
- had to change hotel to avoid 2 hr commute back and forth to client. The only hotel is Days Inn. Big pimpin
- stuck at client working until 9:30
- didn't want Mickey D's again, so bought snacks at Citgo convenience store (benefit of staying at Days Inn is that Citgo is walking distance)
- stupid Varejao takes the last second shot and Cleveland loses - WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?!?!

Ok, time for bed - meeting the team at 8am tomorrow for a full day until I head out at 10pm to San Francisco.

Got "oriented" and getting "ready"

After 3 weeks in Austra, last week I was back in Seattle for a weekend and then off again to San Francisco for orientation. Pretty interesting.

First off, I got my laptop - a sweet HP with a Duo Core Centrino, 2GB of RAM, 128MB ATI graphics card, and a 100GB HDD.

Secondly, I enrolled in all this HR stuff. The benefits aren't bad, but it's hard for me to be content since my previous benefits were supposed to be the best of the best. Compared to that, these benefits are alright... I think I'll need to work at an average company to know the difference.

Thirdly, I got to meet all these summer folks who are in the middle of business school. I think there were 3 people from HBS and 3 from Sloan - I think these schools ended earlier so they started earlier? It was pretty interesting talking to them and hearing their perspectives. All of them made it very clear that they thought business school was worth it, although I must say a few of them would probably have had a hard time working at a consulting firm if they didn't go to b-school given their previous careers. Naturally, none of them thought that they would be consultants since I'm sure that does NOT make a good career aspiration essay, but somehow they ended up in the same place as me... haha.... the true test is to see how many of them actually come back full time next year.


This week, I'm down in Silicon Valley for consulting readiness training. That's right, one more week of training before they let me out in the wild. It really does say a lot about a company who's willing to train you for 5 weeks before you do anything. Also, I found out that I'm actually free to the client for the first few projects. Boy those guys have a steal ;)

Back to home base

Just got back to HK last night and still suffering from withdrawal symptoms of not having my ChunSa around. Ah well, distance makes the heart grow fonder.



There's a ton of pictures from the trip, and I'll post up some later when I have a chance, but I'm trying to be productive today and work on the pre-work for my new job. Just finished the pre-assessments and now I have to go through all the individual study modules. They weren't kidding when they said it would take 35 - 80 hrs for all of this stuff. Lots of good finance stuff that's bringing back memories of accounting and finance back at school... nice...



Of course, once I start trying to do work, I end up also finding ways to distract myself from accomplishing the said work. As such, I've just started checking out Penny Arcade courtesy of an article in Time, and my wonderful sister has introduced me to Dlisted, as part of her education of websites NSFW (not suitable for work for the non-gen whatever we're on now).




This comic in particular caught my attention since this is the type of ridicule typically reserved for Microsoft services - and to be honest, the Xbox Live and Zune Marketplaces have pretty similar purchase processes - but it's pretty darn great to see someone else get smacked around for once.


Three cheers for crappy user experiences!