Today is the last day of Orientation Week. I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am that it’s almost over. Yesterday we were given a scenario like this: You’re in a plane crash in the sub-arctic region above the Newfoundland-Quebec border. The pilot and plane sank into the river/lake/some icy body of water, and you’re left with 15 items (sample: hand axe, compass, rope, sleeping bag, bottle of Bacardi 151 rum, etc.). You have to prioritize them in order of importance. Then you’re divided into teams, and your team has to collectively rank everything in order of importance. Then you have the official expert opinion on the most important items, figure out your score, then the team’s score and realize that (here’s the point of the exercise) you did better as a team than as an individual. Nevermind the fact that we’re all dead because we tried to walk 50 miles to the nearest town and we should’ve stayed put and kept our fire going to signal passing planes. But my team survived longer than the other 2 teams, so there you go.

This morning, however, we reached a new high (low?) in Consulting Suckiness. We have to come up with an actual scenario from our lives – preferably a consultant/customer scenario, but you could use anything from your life where you were dissatisfied with the outcome due to your own personal lack of communication (i.e., you wish you had said something, but you didn’t). Then we get to act this scenario out with our partner ON VIDEO!! Aacckkk!!! I couldn’t think of anything work-related, except one project where I was the only girl and I felt like the team secretary, and I really didn’t want to talk about that because I don’t like playing the gender card. So I talked to the group facilitator to try to get another idea, and he told me to use something non-work related, like maybe a bad experience with a customer service person or something. Here’s what I came up with: A few years ago, I was at the vet’s office, I saw a guy abusing his dog, I didn’t say anything to him and I wish that I had. So this poor other guy from Singapore has to act out the role of the dog-abuser, and I have to (calmly, mind you) ask him to treat his dog more kindly without killing him (which was honestly my first instinct when this happened in real life). We just finished acting it out, and it was so awful that there are no words.

Then a little bit later, I had to play the customer for this Australian guy, but all I had to do was act closed off and unresponsive, so that was pretty easy. Then – here’s the best bit – we’re about to get to watch all of ourselves on tape IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE GROUP and evaluate how we could improve our communication skills. I think I’m probably going to crawl under the table and die.

I cannot WAIT to get back to actual work.

I only have a few minutes to write this, so I’ll be brief: whoever invented the concept of “team-building exercises” should have bamboo shoved under their fingernails for all of eternity. Here’s a sample of this morning’s activities: each table (which in my case consists of me, an Australian guy, and a girl and guy who are both from Singapore) gets a white board and a marker. In the center, we draw a big circle. On one side of the circle, we write things we all have in common (example: we all have siblings, dark hair, that type of thing), and on the other side of the circle, we write down common challenges that we all face as consultants (kill me now). Then, outside of the circle, we write one unique trait about each of us, and the rest of the room has to guess who each trait applies to. For mine, I wrote “has 2 tattoos”. When our orientation leader read that out loud, all 35 people in the room simultaneously called out my name. Um, hello? I thought the whole thing about my having tattoos is that I don’t look like the type of person who would have them. But maybe compared to the other three, I was the only logical choice. Or maybe it’s because I’m the only American. Or maybe, just maybe, I give off way more of a badass vibe than I ever thought I did.

Aside: Jerry, an African-American guy from NYC, pulled me aside at lunch to ask me where my tattoos are. I told him on my back & on my ankle. I think he was disappointed that they’re nowhere obscene. Oh well.

Two other side notes:
1) Kris, or Mickie-G as Dave calls her, got a new job. Hooray for her!! It should be a great opportunity, and getting over a $5K pay raise is never a bad thing.
2) Today is my mom’s birthday. I would write a shout-out for her like I did for my sister, but she never reads this (that one time was apparently a fluke), so I guess it doesn’t matter. Just in case, though: I love you, Mom, and happy birthday. (And I’m not saying how old you are on the Internet, so be happy.)

I’m sitting in a huge room full of nerds. Not that that’s really any different than my average workday, but today the nerds are all strangers. And most of them don’t speak English as their native language. Translation: this is Orientation Week. Which is funny, since I’ve worked for this company for almost 6 months and they’re just now getting around to sending me to orientation. So this morning was hell – go around the room, introduce yourself, talk about your previous work experience, why you joined this company, and your favorite hobby. Oh lordy. Have I mentioned how much I HATE talking about myself in front of large groups of people? If I had some assigned topic to talk about, I’d be fine, but not about my career and “fun facts” about my personal life. Ugh.

Interesting side note: there are actually more females in here than I was expecting; however, only 2 of us are non-Asians. And I don’t mean Asian-American, either – these girls work for my company’s branch offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Bangkok. However, I am the only female systems engineer in here, the Asian girls are all developers. And the sole other caucasian girl is one of our company’s internal lawyers. Once again, I’m the weirdo for being the girl with a guy’s job. I used to like having that distinction because it made me feel like some kind of pioneer feminist, but it’s starting to get kind of old. I wonder if I’d be a good developer. I met a guy this morning who switched fields and said it wasn’t that hard a transition. Hmmm. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately.

Anyway, this past weekend was pretty good, although poor Dave had to put up with an irrationally grouchy me for 2 days. I don’t know why I was in such a foul mood, but I couldn’t seem to snap myself out of it. I think it had something to do with my sinuses being all weird – I tend to get irritable when I have a sore throat & runny nose. But anyway, we got a lot done in the house. The living room is totally cleared out (the big-screen TV was the most daunting thing to move), and the plywood has all been laid down. There are some really funky angles in that room that allowed Dave to play with his new circular saw, which he thoroughly enjoyed. (Aside: the saw has a laser sight guide on it, and every time he mentioned something about it, I would have to repeat the world “laser” in my best Dr. Evil voice, complete with finger quotes.) We got the floor itself put down in most of the dining room, and we were going to do the rest on Sunday, but we were both tired and felt like taking a day off. Plus the fact that I was (and still am) sore as hell from spending most of Saturday on my hands and knees with a nail gun. I can’t imagine that it’ll take more than a day to get the rest done, so we’ll do it next Saturday. No worries. We should have enough time before the gorgeous new furniture shows up.

So yeah… Did I mention that I can’t wait for Orienation Week to be over?

My little conference room crew is growing. We got a new guy, so I’m now the only girl with 8 – count ’em, eight – guys. There’s one African-American guy in the bunch, I think he’s probably the only one who gets a vibe for how outnumbered I feel. He & I had dinner together last night, he’s a cool guy. He’s shown me lots of pictures of his kids – he has a 7 year-old son and a 3 year-old daughter – they’re adorable. He told me that I better be sure to give my boyfriend “lots of extra lovin'” on the weekends since he’s taking care of my cat, because that is a task that no man should have to do. Dave seemed to like that idea when I repeated it to him. Heh.

Our project manager made a comment yesterday that if things don’t pick up soon, he’s going to have to cut our team back. It took every ounce of self-control in my body not to scream out, “Me!! Cut me back! Send my ass back to Seattle! I wanna go HOOOOOOOOME!!!!” I think he already knows that I’m homesick from previous conversations we’ve had, so I’m hoping he’ll take that into consideration.

I would talk more about work stuff, but it’s really dull and I don’t want to bore you guys with a rant about how I feel like I’ve become the secretary of the group because I’m the sole female. So instead, we’ll do a tattoo update: it’s in the really icky phase of the healing process. It basically turned into a big scab, and now it’s starting to fall off. Kind of gross to look down in the shower, see lots of flecks of purple and red, and realize that used to be your skin. Eww. I’m putting moisturizer on it constantly, per the tattoo artist’s instructions.

After the icky phase comes the itchy phase. More annoying, but less of a gross-out factor. I’m not sure which I prefer.

I should have more to talk about, but I can’t think of anything. Mostly I just wanted an excuse to look busy at my computer for a few minutes. 32 hours and 15 minutes to go. Whee.

As much as I hate flying to California every week (and I know I’ve been very vocal in my whining about it – thank you to everyone who’s had to listen to me), work is actually improving. The last couple of days, I’ve actually felt like I’m doing a bit of good here. I’ve actively participated in meetings, I’ve edited documents, and I’ve tweaked our intranet site that we all use to share information. Granted, this doesn’t really feel like an active contribution – it’s more like I do a lot of preparation and talking about what we’re going to do, but I don’t actually *do* anything. So I’m not sure if it’s the work or the travel (or possibly both), but I’ve noticed that I’ve started clenching my jaw all the time. I think I must be grinding my teeth in my sleep, I can’t seem to make my jaw relax when I’m awake. I can do it for a few seconds if I focus on it, but as soon as I stop thinking about it, it clenches up again. It’s giving me a headache.

Oh, and for the record, sitting in a conference room for 9 to 10 hours at a stretch with seven guys isn’t nearly as much fun as you might think. We’re all nerds, we all have our laptops on the table in front of us and no one really says anything to anyone. I’ll hear someone clear their throat and I’ll jump because I realize that except for mouse-clicks and keyboard taps, I haven’t heard a sound from another human for sometimes a couple of hours.

Blah blah blah… I miss Seattle. I miss my apartment. I miss Dave. I miss my cat. I miss Comedy Central. I miss having clothes hanging in a closet instead of stuffed in a suitcase. Whine whine whine. I’ll stop now.