The Internet Suddenly Gets Worse at 8:30 PM

   My default font for writing documents used to be Trebuchet MS. Now, it’s Garamond. Must be a nostalgia thing from the time I took graphic design (a.k.a typography).

   I ended up recovering from the cold in about a week; in the meantime, I had to prepare my business writing course for new grads. Apparently being fluent in English (and going to an Ivy, I guess) makes me qualified to teach business writing. Previously they hired an outside firm to do it (now they are… cost cutting? My instruction would definitely be cheaper), and thankfully they still had a few materials from those classes. I ended up making a powerpoint presentation and activity handout. HR definitely helped me out, but their idea of decorating my powerpoint involved placing Microsoft clip art that may or may not have been relevant to the subject of the slide… so I replaced them all with rage comic faces. The actual presentation went better than I expected, given that I still had trouble vocalizing; speaking in public isn’t too much of a problem for me and I had help running the activities from HR. I apparently have a habit of rolling my notes up while I lecture and smacking furniture to make a point. Once I was done, I was gifted… an official Merck cup set. This is actually good, because I only had two cups in my house. Someone also gave me rage face stickers in commemoration, which I put on my subway card and nameplate at work. Overall, I think giving orders with a little room for creativity is a much better tactic for dealing with Chinese students than trying to prompt a discussion, precept style.

   This was further emphasized by the failure (in my opinion) of the second English corner. It started out okay, as I whined to my fellow foreign interns about leading it again. But then, I asked those that assembled (around ten people, still almost all girls) what they wanted to do. As I presented each option, one of them said no to each one right after I said it. I chose one anyway (taboo) and we ended up playing, but it’s such a noninteractive game for the non-playing team that many looked bored. In addition, I ran out of cards. After, I tried to lead a discussion about current, but there was very little enthusiasm for it. It’s quite hard teaching a class without grade motivation or even knowledge about how your students were brought up. I proposed to send a list of options on what people want to do and have people rank them; I still have to get on that.

   Two new colleagues came last week. One is going to be the eventual lab manager, and one is an EE colleague. Discussions have become more animated and knowledgeable, even if more conversations than before are in Chinese. Last week I ate out all the time because I didn’t go grocery shopping due to illness, but this week I vowed that it would be spaghetti week. Over the weekend, I didn’t do anything of note except make enough spaghetti to last about five meals. It turns out the ingredients are quite expensive in China, but I was in desperate need of something not rice related. It’s pretty good… given that I’ve eaten it for the last six meals or so. Variation is so hard when you’re only cooking for one.

   On a sidenote, I nearly bought pig intestines instead of ground beef. Nearly.

   I still am really bad at inviting people to do activities and coming up with activities to do. When I tend to rehearse things in my head, or think about how things will turn out, I always view it as kind of creepy (although in some cases, I probably am, haha). I think I just have to remember that this is the case for a good number of people, and that I’m a bit of a natural cynic. In addition, it’s not about what you do, it’s the company. Sigh. Regardless, I kind of want to try barhopping to really nice places one Friday or Saturday night, and it would sound kind of pathetic if I just went by myself, haha.

   The weather these days is quite hot and sunny with blue sky, which is quite a contrast from all that flooding going on in Beijing. It’s quite nice if you aren’t outside wearing business oriented clothing. Playing Diablo 3 is not as fun as I think it is, but it’s not bad. I definitely wish it was easier to talk to people when you play multiplayer though. The auction house is also like shopping with fake money, which is a lot more fun than I’m probably comfortable admitting to. I think my drawing style has moved past the point where I try to put super deep shadows on everything in an effort to get texture. Whether this is good or bad, I can’t really say.