The Fifth Week in Chicago

It is Thursday and the wind is howling outside. I am really glad I got home before it started blowing harder. Today was such a strange day. I finished my drawings for Annual Session and started working on some other drawings for another test apparatus coming up. I also was able to help my partner on his dynamometer again. Work-wise things went well :)

After work my coworkers invited me to go grab a drink. I don't know why it felt so difficult for me to stay there for long. I think part of it is because I just don't know how to relate to them outside of work. I managed to spill my drink which in retrospect is sorta funny. I left feeling sad for some strange reason and I wonder if it is because I just miss doing the things I normally would at home with friends like board games, arts and crafts, and karaoke. Drinking with the folks back home just seemed more fun even though we were really only beginning. I felt all teary on the bus ride home and managed to calm down afterwards. I knew leaving my friends would be the hardest thing about the move and I wonder when it will be a little easier to adjust to being on my own again. I had thought the transition would be much easier.

Don't get me wrong. Chicago is still a pretty neat city to be in and I like the people at work for the most part and the work I am doing. This time a significant part of my life feels like it is missing which wasn't so much the case when I first came here.

Some of the boldness and humor that was me because of my friends was left behind in California. I hope I'll get it back when you guys come visit.

The Fourth Week in Chicago

Saturday Farmer's Market in Lincoln Park

Breakfast. the crackers weren't tasty though :(

I hope to serve this as a snack for my SF guest some day!

Oh does the time fly. Thanks to the washing machine this weekend, it looks a bit like my clothes got shredded and my blanket too. The biggest gut-wrenching scare was when I thought it tore a hole in my big stuffed yellow bear that I had since late elementary school/early middle school. The bear used to be half my size when I was a child so it was named Big Bear. My yellow bear has traveled with me most of the time whenever I move, and has been my companion when I don't know anyone in the cities I've lived. I was relieved to find my bear intact. I realize that I don't have a lot of suitable work clothes which means I need to go shopping. I have been dreading shopping for clothes since I have been here because I just don't know where to go to shop. Plus, I dislike a lot of winter season clothing. This coming weekend, I am going to try shopping again and hope that I find more stores I like.

Pictures!

I have been meaning to add these photos but I left my camera at work!

First cooked meal!

View from the skydeck on the 8th floor. You can see Sears tower and Lincoln Park here.

Waiting for the bus to work.

Waiting for the bus home.

The Third Week in the Windy City

It seems rather unreal that I have been here in Chicago for three weeks now. Time really flies by fast and I am still trying to settle in properly. I haven't made much of an effort to go to events through meetup because most of them are in the evening with drinking and partying. Haha. I do have plans to find the tea shops in the city, some clothing stores I can shop at from time to time, and what I really need to work on is finding good eats in Chicago. I suppose things are a little slow because it did cost quite a bit to get down here.

Today I bought a honeycomb! I have some apples that I don't feel like eating sitting in my fridge, so I plan on creating my own fruit and cheese platter like Samovar and pair it with some awesome tea. I couldn't find a nice thermos that was big enough at Target, otherwise I'd be fixing myself a platter on the weekend afternoons hopefully with a sketchbook or library book in hand on the sundeck in my complex. You can see the cityscape and most of lincoln park from above. I am definitely going to be ready for afternoon teas when you guys come visit. It's my dream to have my own custom afternoon tea in my own domain instead of my parent's place. Then again, it might be too cold to do that outside. Hmmmm...come visit in the spring as well???

The Second Week in the Windy City

I started my job on the 6th of September and got a warm greeting from some of the old people I worked with during my internship. After that day, it seemed like the whole mood of the ADA changed back to normal. According to my coworkers, I just came after the worse of times in the Science Division. So many good people were let go because of an incident related to politics in the lab. Everyone has been hush hush and that makes me skittish and nervous because it feels like I entered at a bad time. My engineering is rusty and I am a bit lost at work which makes me feel even worse. At the moment, I feel like I am letting down my supervisor who hired me on. On Friday he told me that it will be okay and I will learn to be just as good as the other engineers in the lab. A lot of people assume I know how to do a lot things and I don't anymore. I don't know when lab meetings happen, and HR got on me today and found out they were the ones who made a mistake. It feels like I don't belong right now. Haha, I miss having friends to talk to and hang with, but I don't really miss the home life I left behind. My mind is clearer, and hopefully I'll get sharper as I adapt to the city I once loved.

The First Week In The City of Wind

First of all, I am dedicating this blog to all my friends and some of my family back home because I miss them and know that the time difference might make it difficult to keep in touch as often as we once did on chat in the Golden State. I hope some of the things I discover and post about will bring you guys over to visit me some day.

Day 1 and 2- August 31st-September 1st
My dad and I arrived in Chicago and took a taxi to the hotel I booked. As the taxi drove us to the city and past the tall buildings, I realized how similar Chicago is to New York as opposed to San Francisco because the cities have old rooted streets, buildings, and subways compared to cities like Seattle and Portland where there are fewer alleys and brick buildings. We spent the afternoon getting bus passes and the bus map from the Randolph Street Metra Station before heading back to the hotel where my dad enjoyed watching back to back episodes of "Operacion Repo." The next morning I took a picture of the view from the 14th floor window of our room. It was the first time I saw downtown Chicago in a long time and thought it would be best to capture it in a photo.

As I looked down below, I spotted a Dunkin Donuts which must be a MidWest and East Coast thing since I never encountered one in San Francisco. That morning at breakfast, I was excited to see the hash browns on the menu of Dunkin Donuts. The product showing up on the menu meant that the work the Research and Development Lab at ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston were working on back in 2007 became a success. 

Another taxi ride later I ended up at my future home for the next twelve months. Let me just say it was horrifying. There were paint chips and melted M&Ms on the floor, and the place was rather dirty. I always thought complexes cleaned the room before a new tenant moved in, but I sure was wrong. The first night, we slept on mats and garbage bags. 

Slowly but surely over the next three days my dad and I traveled to Costco and Target to get things for my apartment and worked hard scrubbing the floors everyday.

My table is made of cases of water

My headboard is made of cardboard

Kevin's neon dog made it to Chicago and was living with my bear until I moved him to the lab where I work for support :)

The tall building is Sear's Tower

It was crazy hot.

We had to seal the kitchen off from the closet because they cut the wall open. We lined the bottom of the cardboard with aluminum foil so the heat generated by the motor of the fridge wouldn't be a fire hazard.

Finally, the place looked decent and we actually got everything ready before the work week.