Work Update

Well, I survived my first week. I'm basically still in the training phase, but I've been working through the example exercises at a reasonable rate and will hopefully be let loose on real work next week. This afternoon involved shadowing members of my real actual honest-to-god team, rather than friendly members of other teams, which is a good sign for progressing through the system.

The work looks like it will be very interesting, and well suited to someone with an inveterate web browsing habit and good general knowledge. Only this week, I've been reading about conflict diamonds and efforts to stamp out the trade in same, wafer cleaning and handling issues in the semiconductor industry, a pharmacy company's recruiting efforts and NASA's magazine for publishing technical updates. And more semiconductors. There is an unexpectedly high number of semiconductor magazines out there, which is a shame for us, because the field is very very jargony.

For the first few days I was getting dreadfully tired by the end of the day and pretty much collapsing on getting home. My apologies to my nearest and dearest who bore the brunt of fatigue temper tantrums. :-( Anyway, that seems to be getting better as I adjust to office hours after a sustained period of holiday time - if nothing else, I've actually made it ten to twelve without conking out this evening. Also, I've been biking into town everyday apart from Monday and am finding it a useful burst of fresh air and exercise to counter a sedentary occupation. I've noticed that my cycling fitness has improved remarkably since last year - time was I couldn't cope with cycling in two days in a row because I got so tired, now it's just much needed exercise.

The people I'm working with are nice and talking to me, which is another good sign, although this week I've noticed the unavoidable drop in status you get in switching from being the technically knowledgeable old hand to the untrained newbie, despite everyone's efforts to get to know each other. One thing I really like about the place is it's location in Anvil House just across the road from the Michael Fowler Centre. A friend says there used to be bands operating out of the building when she was in her clubbing phase, and with names like "Sonic Machine" and "Squared One" on the directory I suspect this is still the case. It's also within cooee of the Civic Centre and associated buildings, Cuba St, Courtenay Place and the Waterfront, which is making my lunch hours varied and interesting affairs. I do like the architecture in downtown Wellington. It's not that I love each individual building, but they all work well together and the way they're arranged makes an inclusive space particularly friendly to pedestrians. It's just nice to hang out there, really. The closest my old haunts in Auckland got to that chilled out ambience was Aotea Square and the Town Hall, but even with the skateboarders adding some life to the area, it just can't compete - Auckland has a far more linear arrangement that makes me feel like it worships the motorcar. I like Wellington's more clustered arrangement far better.

EDIT: Actually, the names I misremembered are Sonic Mobile and OneSquared and they turn out to be companies selling mobile phone services.