FIRST DAY OF WORK!

So I started my new job on Monday, and it went really well! First of all, I looked really cute :)

I had an orientation with OHR at 9, and then a meeting with my boss at 10:30, followed by lunch with her and two of her/our colleagues, and then I did some errands before our 2:00 meeting with the other Research Assistand and some of our student coders. (I'm basically a research assistant, but my technical title here is "Project Officer".) Everyone was so helpful!  The orientation was really informative and I got a whole packet full of info on salary matters, health benefits, setting up my accounts, finishing up my employment pass stuff, etc.

My boss, Tan Ying Ying (Tan is the last name, Ying Ying is the first), is really great. She's pretty young and just really interesting and open and very smart. I'm excited to be working with her. We had a kind of orientation of our own about the project, and then I got set up in my office. It's AWESOME! And the secretary, Maya, is incredibly helpful, and they gave me all sorts of office stationary stuff, and, well, here:

In the last few days I've spiced it up a little bit more:

Still need more pictures of people for the bulletin board, by the way. I realized I don't have any good ones of my sisters or my neice and nephew. Probably print of some FB photos sometime soon to put up there.

Our meeting at 2 went well, although we were having software problems. But we got them all worked out and got the software copied and sent out to our student coders in the next few days.

Oh, and here are a few more work pics:

View from a walkway outside my office.

My super long hallway. This is right near the elevator, and my office is all the way at the end of tha hall. Room 46 :)

The rest of this week, I haven't really done a lot of WORK work other than that. I've been running around making sure all my stuff is set up and organizing my office and getting my Employment Pass stuff settled, not to mention other sundry details of moving back just last week. Some other highlights include eating lunch with my friend Jocelyn who's a student here, getting asked to lunch my a colleague whom I have just met two days before, and continuing to look super cute ;)

Oh, and also monsoon rains while I was headed to work Tuesday and Wednesday. Ugh.

Actually, getting this blog up and catching up on uploading my Facebook albums is are some of the few final things on my "Get Back Settled In and Caught Up" list of things to do. The big ones still left are to see about getting my computer and my iPod fixed. For some reason, they both just randomly stopped working the day before and the day of my flight to Singapore! And, on the WORK list of things to do, I'm finally down to only one thing that's and errand, and the rest is all actually WORK! That's exciting!

The only other major thing is setting up plans with my friends that I haven't yet seen since I've been back. And speaking of friends that I HAVE seen since I've been back, the most interesting thing I've done since I've been back was probably going out to a private showing of Sex and the City 2 with a bunch of expat women :) Kathryn invited me. We got a cosmo, champagne, and free flow soft drinks and popcorn and M&Ms. And we looked good. Unfortunately, I am being informed that I JUST reached my maximum file storage quota,a nd I have to pay for more storage. and yet there's some problem with my account and the pictures won't upload. SOOO, pictures of that later. Or else I'll just put them on Facebook and add a link here.

Tonight-US vs Slovenia soccer game at 10 PM with some American friends.
Tomorrow: Bak kut teh ( garlicky pork ribs soup that I really like) for breakfast, North Indian food for dinner with our friends Shreya and Indrajeet, Skype with John Stuart.
Sunday: Church. Beerfest with friends Karthi and Beatrix.

Gonna be a great weekend to end a great week!

Goodbye America!

Well, I'm back again. It seems like only yesterday that I wrote my "goodbye Singapore" post! I had a great time when I was back home. I didn't take as many pictures as I should have--I have a bad habit of not taking pictures when I'm stateside. Anyway, there won't be any pictures on this entry, because

1) I'm not unpacked yet, and my camera is out of batteries, and my camera charger is somewhere in my luggage and I can't find it right now, and I can't unpack yet because I'm still at Dan's house. 
2) I have already uploaded some pictures on my computer, but right now my computer is broken. I don't know what's wrong with it, but it keeps shutting down right after I turn it on, supposedly to protect it against some threat or something. I don't speak computer, so I'll just have to bring it in sometime this week I guess.

So yeah. I'm writing this on Dan's computer. And I'm still at Dan's house because I got really sick the morning of my flight, which was awful, and I'm just getting better now, so I've just been staying at Dan's place these last few days and sleeping all the time.

But the main point of this post is just to summarize what I was up to while I was home! Which was actually mostly pretty boring, in an awesome way.

I spent the first three weeks in Lombard, catching up with my family, and also my friends who were in town. I didn't take a SINGLE picture. Sorry :(

After three weeks of that, I went to Norman, OK, for two weeks to hang out with some of my college friends. My roommate from last year, Julia, let me sleep in her living room for two weeks, which was awesome of her. I had a great time there, because it was all of the fun of college without any of the work! Plus, I was able to go the the Music Festival and the May Day Arts Fair. I saw one or two people every day, which was pretty crazy. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how many of my friends were still in town! And I ate at all my favorite restaurants ;) I did take a couple of pictures in Oklahoma which I will add later--but they're not all that exciting, so don't get your hopes up!

Then I came back to Lombard for 10 days, mostly to hang out with my sister Bobbie, who hadn't been home when I was there earlier. I also celebrated my birthday--yay for being 23 years old!

After that I went to Virginia for the next 10 days to help my sister with her new baby! I was actually hoping to be there when she was born, but I ended up being two days late! Oh well. The new baby's name is Elizabeth Rose Cox. I was there basically to keep Christopher entertained and try to keep the house clean so Beth didn't go crazy. There are TONS of pictures of Elizabeth on my facebook profile--
here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2424402&id=9620356&l=d4d3e8d144 
and here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2424819&id=9620356&l=b0acd827d8 
and here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2427027&id=9620356&l=d4128ca26a

Then I came home for one more week! Hung out a bit more with family and got ready to go home. I also went to two weddings--Matt and Renee Begale and Joe and Maggie Sokoll! I do have pictures of those and I will be posting them here and on Facebook as soon as I can access my photos :) I also drove out the Rochelle with Laura and we spent the night at Deb and Justin Ahlgrim's awesome house. That was tons of fun! Yay for sleepovers!


Then I packed up and left. Boo/yay. Boo that I have to leave because I had a great time and I will miss every one at home. But yay because I also missed Dan a lot and I was so glad to see him, and I'm excited about starting my new job and catching up with my friends here and getting back into a routine. I've also got a whole list of interesting goals and activities for the next four months, heehee. That'll be exciting! Plus I'm going to try to travel more this year! So that's a pretty big yay, actually. YAY!