It's been almost a year since I graduated from Cal and still I'm pretty much moving along with no destination in sight. How long has it been since I talked to you? You're probably in 1 of 3 categories so let's move step-by-step, shall we?
1. You still think I'm at Cal.
If you've talked to my dad, you know I've graduated. Some of you went to graduation, others went to the party. In any case, getting my degree should be common knowledge to most of you.
2. You still think I work at Hitachi.
This too is not true anymore. After graduation, I took up a job at Hitachi as a business analyst for them. I mainly tracked volumes and market share for them, giving them warnings when price levels appeared too low or inventory went to one of the extremes. I enjoyed my time there but some of you may not know that this job was a contract-to-hire position. The to-hire part was pretty much guaranteed until about November of last year, when layoffs hit the company affecting about 400 people. As a result, it was just a contract job and I was wasting my days away until that contract expired. So in the meantime, I got out the old resume and started applying like crazy, getting about 12 interviews at 8 companies within a few months. One of my pet peeves now is the lack of communication after the interview. You'd think the large companies wouldn't want to deal with you when you've been rejected, but they were the only ones to send thank you letters after I was passed over. So I'll still hate National Semi and Lockheed for not giving me a job, but at least they were courteous about it. It doesn't say much for the other six, considerly smaller, companies. My new job starts on Monday, bringing us to category #3.
3. You think I work somewhere else.
And you'd be right. Here, I'll be dealing more with the costs of their projects dealing with signal intelligence for the government. I'm not sure how much more I can say...I still need to go through a security clearance. The feeling I have is that it deals with a lot of accounting even though I've never taken an accounting class in my life. I'll see when the job starts.
So that's the need-to-know about my working life. Little else has changed. I bought a nice Mazda for $200 below invoice recently. I still have a 5-figure savings account, which seems amazing to me even after I bought the car. Hopefully, the loan payments won't eat my account up. I've cut down on my movies: only 7 in the last 4 months. I'll have less time for the movies now, though I'm serious about Star Wars and a midnight showing. And I'm thinking of traveling east this summer, but that has to wait too. I only get 1 vacation day for every month I work.
On a completely unrelated note, I used to live at Capitol and McLaughlin and across the street was the Gould, a great place with Alpha Beta, Payless, and the Cinema where you could watch a double feature for a couple of bucks. All those things are gone but my cousin has opened a new Hawaiian restaurant in that center, her second one to date. It's across from McDonalds and next to Starbucks so it's a great location. Check it out.
Finally, take a little moment to reflect on the past. 30 years ago tomorrow, Saigon fell.
No comments:
Post a Comment