First day at "the office"

I realize I have a bunch of other days to account for, but this is today and it's nearly bedtime anyway (I'm a sickiepoo), so this will have to do. :)

So, today was the first day that everyone was at our new office. It's a small office, nicely set-up and a new set-up for the team, here. Well, we were missing one member, but besides that, all 7 of us made it on the same day, today, a lovely Monday with much rain.

We were split into two cars, so the first 3 of us who arrived (the first vehicle to leave, after loading both with desktops, boxes and other miscellaneous items) -- inconceivably, the one with the 2 women, heh -- waited until everyone showed up, before we got into choosing cubicles. In the meantime, I got a little tour of the 3-story building, on the bottom floor of which we have office space and warehouse space. Well, we don't have the whole bottom floor, there's another half to it, plus the top floors, so plenty of room for expansion, haha.

Being the women, though, we did hunt out the one bathroom in the building that has the sit-down toilet -- it's on the second floor and not in our section, so using it daily will be a whole adventure in itself, but at least the rest of the building isn't in use by any other companies, yet, so we're pretty much left to ourselves. One other adventurous aspect is that my legs don't fit in the space left between the toilet and the door -- it's pretty impressive how such things can be measured out and end up this way. Well, I actually noticed on the flights I took, there was considerably less space between the seats, front to back. I mean, airplane seats are already very tight, but these ones were so tight I couldn't do what I normally do and pull the tray down, put my pillow on it and sleep on the pillow that way, because I couldn't fit bending over, like that.

I also learned, today, that the Taiwanese nap in just such a posture, while at work. You shouldn't disturb most businesses between 12:00-1:00, because that's when the employees have lunch and nap. They have little pillows they pull out and place on their desks, then just hunch over them and sleep. Apparently, children in school do this, as well, which has been a source of consternation for one our kids who is attending Chinese classes, as she isn't used to being told she can't take her forehead off her pillow for a whole 20 minutes. Gasp! :)

Anyway, we had a good and productive day, for a first day. We chose our desks, Shelah and I settled in right away and got to work. The guys had more moving to do -- the place had been set-up pretty nicely. It's easy to see how well it's set-up as you just have to walk into the other half and you can see from whence it came. :) It still needs additions and final touches, like a sign with the company name, plants, a coffee maker (although I'll stick to tasty tea, thankyouverymuch), etc., etc.

I plugged away at work all day and am quite pleased with how much got accomplished -- am finally getting my bearings, after being in transit for a couple weeks; it's a good feeling. (Sigh...)

We had a good little meeting over lunch, too, to establish fundamentals, like departure time for leaving home, departure time for returning home, length of lunches, content of lunches, etc., etc. -- all super useful stuff. We determined that we will be on time for rides there and back, so as not to waste anybody's time. I also need to figure out how to fit exercise into my day, now... We get back rather late in the day, right before dinner, so it's not so good to exercise that late in the day, if one wishes to sleep well, but maybe I can exercise while there (already started taking my exercise clothes and shoes, today) and then work a bit once I get back, etc. Will have to see about all that -- just thinking out loud... And it rains a lot... And the options are limited, but one always has a computer and a big empty building to hide away in for some energetic exercising, haha.

Okay, well, that was today...

Then we had dinner... I'm enjoying the more Chinese-flavored stuff I'm eating... Lunch was take-out, as we hadn't set-up our schedule, yet, so I attempted to eat slippery flat noodles with chopsticks -- it was very educational; at least I got the spinach down okay, with those. Thankfully, the soup came with a spoon, heheh.

Then I did my laundry, since Monday is my laundry day, but I wasn't at home all day. Seeing as it rains so much, the drier gets pretty constant use -- a big, clunky, noisy thing -- so it went pretty quickly, between laundering and drying.

Then I sat down to watch 4 people play mahjong. It seems very complicated. I think they play with much lower stakes and at a much slower speed than your average regular player does, but still, mighty unintelligible to me. Though they did give me a paper with the Chinese characters for 1-9 and I started familiarizing myself with them and spotting them on the tiles, so at least I used my brain cells a little. The rest of time, I sat there and stared at the game, spaced out, watched the fire in the fireplace, hummed to myself, checked on my laundry, etc. So exciting! Haha.

Okay, well, contented and ready to read a bit of Word and then get to sleep...

P.S. to Zero: Yes, Ia is taking very good care of me. The first day I was here, which happened to be shopping day, she made sure I wasn't missing anything, got me a mosquito machine, etc. Such a happy helper! :)