chaos EXPOSED

Wow, I'm pretty good at timing my blogs out. It's been a month and a day since my last post, and honestly I've been too lazy to even open this blog to write. All I've done was travel and travel and some more travel since then. Right after the last post, I hopped back on a plane and went to Dartmouth for the first time, which, to me, was very exciting, until my traveling experience was the most horrendous situation - everything that could have gone wrong did.

This is how my day was supposed to be:
6am wake up (bad enough)
8am flight to Denver
Transfer in Denver to Boston
Transfer in Boston to Hanover, NH
Arrive at hotel at 8pm EST.

This is how my day ended up..
6am wake up
8am flight to Denver CANCELLED
Shuttle from San Jose to San Francisco
Flight from San Francisco to Boston
MISSED flight from Boston to Hanover
News of Steve Jobs passing away and a shooting near my brother's school - way to put an even greater damper on my day...sigh.
Take 3 hour shuttle from Boston to Hanover
Arrive at hotel at midnight EST.

So I traveled for 16 hours that day... at least I got paid double overtime! One of the perks of my job? Paid to sit in airports, plus overtime and all expenses included. So while I'm complaining, I really shouldn't. It just made me tired, that's all.

After the horrible day of traveling, everything went uphill from there. I was happy to see that Dartmouth has very similar characteristics to Smith, and since Smith is always so far out of the way for me to visit, Dartmouth was great for reminiscing. Hanover is a quaint town, even smaller than Northampton, with a downtown located right off of Dartmouth's "lawn".

I stayed at the Hanover Inn, which was smack between the "lawn" and downtown. Albeit it's perfect location, the hotel should be on the tv show "Most Haunted". For $369/night, I felt as though you should have PAID me to stay there. Since Dartmouth is "my" school, I have to visit once a year and you can be sure that I will never stay there again.

The career fair went off without a hitch, and I was proud of myself for being able to manage our 3 reps, and set up our booth all by myself.

It's Monday and I'm lying on my (death) bed, sick with the flu. I just got back on Saturday from a crazy, but great, week in Boston/Cambridge. I ran into a lot of old friends, helping to prove that this world is much smaller than we believe. I flew in on Tuesday, landed at 7pm, and headed to my $400/night hotel and had the hardest time falling asleep. I'm still in shock that my company covers such expensive lodging! I finally got my corporate card (the day before I departed, phew), and have to learn how to fill out an expense report for all the cash monies I had spent during my week there.

On Wednesday, I spent the only beautiful day indoors at the MIT career fair. This is probably where I got my first instances of sickness... I shook thousands of hands and collected hundreds of resumes, germ-tastic! Forgetting all about the usage of Purell, I rubbed my nose and eyes with my germ-ified hands. Gahh! On a happy note, I ran into a Smithie at the fair and my Beijing roommate! SO random!

The following day, I had a meeting at Harvard with the Director of Career Services. I might be going back to visit next month! Afterward I met up with my good ol' Expo friend, Kate. It had been a year since I'd seen her and it was a great reunion at Harvard Law School. I sat in on a couple of her classes, where I found "Torts" to be quite interesting, and "Citations" to be quite damning. I was pretty lost and felt like Elle Woods all afternoon. Ran into my two friends from Fudan - Christine and Dorothy in the law library. Reunions everywhere!

That night, Kate took me to a house warming party, where outside the front door I ran into an old middle school friend (what?!) and inside I ran into a guy who went to my high school! So Harvard Law School proves that this world is infinitesimally small.
Following the housewarming party, we went to a bar for the weekly "bar review". It's some kind of law school thing for kids to unwind on a Thursday night. I had fun with Kate's law school buddies and the team of Harvard Business School Rugby boys. Yes...it was l.o.t.s. of fun... ;)

Friday for lunch, I met up with DDDu and Christine at Tory Row for lunch. Finally had a lobster roll!



On Friday night I finally got to see Tina and Phil from the Expo! It had also been a year since I last saw them both. Tina took me out to meet some of her co-workers for drinks and dinner. Then, we met up with Phil and Kate to go out to Lansdowne Pub, right next to Fenway Park. Loved the vibe and the live music that was playing.



Got home around 3am and had to shower in the dark since the electricity was out. Had to wake up at 5:30 to catch a cab to the airport.

Now I lie sickly in my bed for the past 3 days, with the feeling of razor blades in my throat. Ugh. But I still can't wait to go to Dartmouth in 2 weeks, and I'll bring Purell AND Airborne next time.

Greetings from my Oracle office! (This will be an extremely long post, with a plethora of photos. Be warned!)

It's lunch time and I'm taking a break to finally update my blog. Since my last post, a lot has happened. I finally made the transition to Oracle last week, and it has been amazing! While I thought my experience at Cisco was corporate, my new experience definitely tops that. I'm getting used to using "Self-service applications" to set up all my e-mail accounts, phone, laptop, etc... without having the access to phone or in-person support. Tough, I know.

Many of my friends have asked...well, what do you do? I'm a recruiting program manager (RPM) in the college recruiting department, which is the only on-site recruiting department at HQ. I work in a team with 5 other RPMs, 3 recruiting coordinators, and a handful of recruiting support staff. Together we reach out to specific colleges to find the creme de la creme of geniuses to induct into one of our company's many tech job openings. I, myself, am in charge of visiting Harvard and Dartmouth this season. I've been armed with a corporate card, have flights booked, and am ready to go!

I love my team and they have been extremely welcoming, especially my director. I feel well taken care of and have already felt the benefits of the many perks of working in corporate. Not to mention, I was given my own personal office! (I know, what!?!)

But that's the "boring" part of my life. On the more adventurous note...my trip to Costa Rica was incredible! It wasn't much of a relaxing vacation since I was doing 2 to 3 rigorous activities a day, but I had the time of my life.


COSTA RICA QUEST
Day 1: Flew into San Jose and met my roomie for the trip. We took the afternoon wandering the streets of of the capital, ate some Gallo Pinto (staple of CR), and visited the National Museum. Later that night, we met the rest of our travel buddies, coming from all parts of the world - London, Canada, Australia, and of course a couple Americans :)

I've gotten too lazy to write new posts. Either that, or life has been pretty boring around here. Summer has been absolutely beautiful, and my trip to Hawaii was nothing short of amazing. It was relaxing, and although it rained off and on, it was nice to spend relaxing time with my family. I got tan, learned how to surf, and ate my heart out. I think I wrote 40+ yelp reviews while I was there and surprisingly lost weight, haha. Photos below!

Some exciting news! I will be moving from Cisco to Oracle next month. My last day at Cisco is next Thursday and I'll have a two week break before starting work at Oracle. I'm the new Recruiting Program Manager, in college tech recruiting - and earned an office with a bay view & an assistant! It doesn't hurt that it's double the pay of my current job either! I hope that there is A LOT of travel, but I know there is at least SOME travel to the east coast. I'll definitely try to post after I begin my new job and show you some pics.

Also some great news, I've hit my new years resolution (for the first time?!). I have lost 25 pounds since returning from China. Unbelievable! Clothes that I was unable to fit in when I returned from China, are now falling off! Time to go shopping! It's sad, I had clothes CUSTOM MADE and I couldn't even fit in those! Now... all up for donation!

Now, I'm just anticipating my next vacation which is on August 23rd! I planned a last minute vacation to COSTA RICA! I'll be going "alone" with Gap Adventures. So, we start in San Jose and make a round trip through La Fortuna, Monte Verde, Quepos, then back. It'll be filled with white water rafting, canyoning/rappelling, ziplining, and more adventures. This 9 day trip will the ultimate precursor for my new job!

Hawaii Photos: