I'm not someone with a lot of connections and I'm grateful to land this job in a big, successful architecture company. Losers can't be choosers, you know! I'm here for the experience, not the money. :) I began work two days after I got back to Hong Kong from Japan. I ended work three days before school starts (on Monday!)... what a hectic, packed schedule!
Pictures from this entry were taken over the spread of two months.
The above photo was taken on my second day of work. I remember when I first began I wanted to do everyday work OOTDs... obviously that plan failed, because...
- I got lazy with my outfits and ended up repeating a lot.
- I started dressing really casually as no one in my office actually bothers to get dressed up... maybe it's because we're an architecture firm? Like one senior architect's typical daily outfit consists of: a pair of trekking pants with trekking boots, an oversized tshirt and a scruffy pink windbreaker jacket...
I hope it's not against the law or anything to share pictures of my office. I really liked the interior, it was so different from the ONE other company I interned in in my life - which was a law firm. I suppose design firms pay more respect to the layout of their working environments more...?
Since my team had no spare seats/desks for me (and one other intern), we were placed in the model-making area/pantry. It was actually great because we got a lot more freedom, made good friends with the model-maker, and best of all, I got to snack nonstop!
I became really obsessed with eating fruit during the course of these two months. Like if I got bored, I'd nom a fruit. And the great thing was that they had free biscuits and crackers... yummy yummy raisin biscuits and digestive biscuits and omg they just awakened the binging monster in me again. I know that's not a good thing, but sigh... free food, y'know?
Pictured above: me and my red fleshed dragonfruit! Did you know dragonfruits actually come in a LOT of different colours? I DIDN'T! I was so surprised the first time I peeled my dragonfruit (in the office lmao) and it was red... I was like dafuq.
Anyway since I need to consistently snack because I'm a fatass pig, I decided I might as well do it on healthier options rather than devouring the whole biscuit jar in the pantry (plus it would be so embarrassing when my colleagues spotted me binging). So I brought one or two types of fruits to work each day... sometimes three types... The model-maker calls me "pear girl" in Chinese, haha, cos I'm always eating pears or other types of fruits.
Apples, cherries, watermelons, dragonfruits, pears, oranges are some of the fruits I brought back to the office to consume. And YES I do look slightly retarded and weird peeling my dragonfruit the way people do with bananas, and eating it in plain public. And for some reason, every time I decide to eat my fruits, my boss comes and finds me with work to do. So he thinks I'm always eating weird-ass fruits (which is true lol).
But the most extreme "fruit" I've eaten in the office has got to be THIS!
My Wakayama eggplant, as the text on the picture says! I know lol it's not even a fruit... I got it after working for the Hong Kong Food Expo (another entry on that soon), apparently this eggplant can be eaten raw just like an apple. I was so damn excited to try it hahahaaa cos it was like, a healthier version of fruit! Which is already very healthy LOL.
How did it taste, you ask?
... not that great.
I was so disappointed lol. Maybe my expectations were too high cos the seller (who's also my boss) described the eggplant as "sweet" and I really expected a fruity taste. But I guess a vegetable is a vegetable... maybe it had a slight sweet tinge to it? But anyway. It was pretty much tasteless. It tasted like... well... vegetable. I still ate the whole damn thing though because it was $10 okay! Expensive!
Omg moving on now. This entry is supposed to be about my internship and instead I've gone off on a tangent about food... as always.
On the third day of my internship, there was a horse-racing night organised by my company. Sort of like... a company get-together/party? Anyway, we interns were invited and I gladly went! (cos there was going to be a buffet at the Jockey Club HELLO! And cos I wanted to meet my new coworkers of course)
It was my first time at the Happy Valley Racecourse! VIP box! :) I didn't bet obviously, but it was nice to enjoy the atmosphere. The racecourse isn't somewhere I'd go to normally, and I doubt I would ever go in my lifetime if my company hadn't held this party, so it was good to experience something new.
The buffet was really something though! The smoked salmon was orgasmic... and the chocolates... and the roast beef and the chicken and most of all, the tandoori cauliflower LOL. Went back for infinite rounds of food. Okay I shall stop about the food here.
The interns who attended that night. After that I barely saw them again cos they worked on the 6th floor while I worked on the 5th floor. I became closer to the people I worked with but they visited the 5th floor pantry once in a while to talk. And on Thursday we (including non-pictured interns) all went out for dinner at Outback after our last day! :) Glad I made a new bunch of design-based friends haha. Half of us study architecture and half interior design. All in different parts of the world!
Me with my red hair... I miss it so much, the colour's all off now! :( I'm not sure if I should dye it red again or just call it a day and go back to black for the new school year. I love red but it's just too high maintenance, and I don't quite fancy showering in cold water in the freezing winter...
The following are three random pics from a particularly rainy day during work. We went out to have Japanese food and it was raining like CRAZY on the way back!
I think one of the best things about working a full time job is the regular hours. I get to have breakfast, lunch and dinner at regular times, which was good for my body after two years of sleepless abuse in school. Sadly I'll be going back to that messed-up pattern on Monday...
I got to try a lot of nice places for lunch as well! We had something different to eat everyday. Well, apart from the days when we're swamped with work and have to buy take out. But still, I enjoy being out and about with something to do rather than being trapped at home all day!
Me and Eunice! I didn't take any pictures with the other interns... I actually spent the most time with this dude called Andrew cos he was working for the same team as me and sat across from me in the pantry, haha. Eunice finished her internship two weeks before the rest of us because she had to fly back to the US.
Overall, I'd say I loved my internship! I had to pull a lot of OT's, but I guess that's life? And there was a lot of repetitive work, like I kept colouring in the same plan with tiny variations over and over again... but that's design for you.
I'm really grateful for this opportunity. It definitely made my summer a more fulfilling one (and seriously made me appreciate weekends haha)!
