Summer in review

As it's been said that the summer appears to be over, I'm taking a little look back. It was really pretty uneventful. Compare to last summer, way less physical activity. Last summer I was at dragonboat 3 times a week, soldiers of fitness 3 times a week, hiking every saturday unless something else special was happening. Very busy all the time. This summer, still did the dragonboat three times a week. But otherwise that was about it. Did some jogging once or twice a week for some of it. Went on just a few hikes with very little elevation gain compared to last year's peaks. So, seems like I did pretty little until this trip down to toronto and area. And it didn't seem like I was doing much other non-physical things either. I guess I went to a couple out of town dragon boats that I didn't do last year, but I didn't go to edmonton at all. Now compare to the summer before that, that was an even more spectacular summer, with a month in vancouver having one of the greatest times of my life, followed by a memorable couple months in ghana and a bit in dubai.

I did do two big things this summer though. I bought a condo, and I changed jobs.

The condo... sounds like a big deal, but isn't really. People say "must be exciting!" It's not. Been here a couple months. Don't spend that much time here since I'm trying to be out doing stuff in the summer. Got a couch that I've hardly ever sat on. Got a queen bed that'll be totally lop-sided if I don't rotate the mattress soon. Didn't eat with my family a whole lot before, so that hasn't changed much. Didn't interact in general a whole lot actually. Don't feel particularly more "grown up" by living by myself. Walk to work instead of biking. Main difference is no smoking, and I'm getting used to it, meaning my parents place smells comparatively even worse than before. Other difference is 50% of my gross disappears into the condo, but I haven't cut back on eating out and theatre and such and it's going okay. I still haven't even explored my community though it's been a couple months. Partly busy, and partly exploring alone is less fun. It's not that I don't know anyone interested in exploring with me, it's that they're all hundreds or thousands of km away.

The job change, a big stressful experience in its inception. But actually started the job a couple weeks ago, first with some matlab programming stuff, similar to before but a different topic, and producing something more tangible, something that feels like it matters more. Then at the start of last week, a big issue arose, and everyone was working on that top priority, and it felt kindof neat to be a part of that. Haven't done as much training as I'd like yet, but has been neat to learn about some hardware and follow some circuits and stuff. Last and this week were supposed to be big training times, got most of the team in town for it, but the big issue kindof derailed all that. We were even supposed to do paintball as team building, but had to cancel that. (yeah this group's definitely the funnest, the few fun people in other groups are jealous.) And the manager's more interactive, energetic, and possibly "down to earth" (maybe cause he's just a couple years older than I am?). But things aren't all good with the new job, some work has been too difficult and I wasn't able to figure it out at all, and some other stuff sounds pretty stressful or overwhelming considering I still know nothing about electronics of RF and know I'm a slow (or stationary) learner. But hopefully I'll learn enough to do a sufficient job. And even though I'm officially less of an engineer than before, I certainly feel like more of one and don't feel like a complete fraud to wear the ring.

Still wonder about Japan sometimes though...