Sunday, March 19, 2006

Tomorrow, Spring

So, another week of work under the belt. My first day at JOB 2 was insane. There's only one creative person in that company, with only one Macintosh. Guess who that would be? Anyway, my boss has made it clear that anything I need to get myself comfortable, just ask and I'll receive. Even to the point of a new Mac! It took a lot to get me caught up, but then again, there was a huge backlog of work and they hadn't had a designer gracing that Mac for a few weeks! Unfortunately, too, the last designer who'd left on maternity leave had to leave BC for a family matter, and this made it hard to get around her system - she had everything password-protected!

In came a Mac-repair consultant, a Swiss relation of ours, to the rescue. He fixed and got me (and my password) recognized into the system, though I'm now locked out of a lot of files! Par for the course when restoring passwords on a computer! I just copied over what files I needed that were locked, and am now on my merry way. At some point, I'll hope to get this lady into the office so that we can go over all relevant (and non-relevant) files, as it's looking pretty hairy between my hard drive and the secondary (much larger) external drive.

Weather-wise, things are looking quite Spring outside. We took most of the day yesterday to have a Yard Sale, selling off some stuff that had accumulated over the months, mostly old things from Europe. Last night, we saw a play at Performance Works Theatre on Granville Island, and now it's Sunday almost noon; we're about to take off cycling around False Creek and over the Burrard Bridge. There's not a cloud in the sky; our neighborhood is active with runners, cyclers, walkers, coffee-drinkers, all heading to and fro, either to the 4th Avenue shops or to the beach! So far, more are heading towards the sea!

Hope everyone's having a good weekend (those in Eastern Canada, sorry to hear there's more snow headed your way)! -

Signing off,

Ariane C

Saturday, March 11, 2006

I'm Working Now

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, all this networking and interviewing for jobs and information. I was hired to begin on March 1st at an ad agency in town, and sure enough as timing woud have it, that very day TWO OTHER companies called me to meet and discuss openings! I spent the last two weeks working days and half that time after hours at interviews. It was a mad rush heading out the door at places all around town, heading into rush hour on the bus. By week's end, I had two very strong possibilities!

The job I started on the 1st was more or less a job to make money. I saw from the first day that it wasn't going to be something I could put my heart and soul into. Really a lot less creative than the work I'd done in a while, and in terms of professional development, close to nil. I'd wanted to hold off on starting that job until the 5th, however the production manager wanted me to start on the 1st as the contract I was filling was a maternity leave. They were hoping that I could spend a few days with this lady before she headed out for the next six months, however on my very first day, she didn't show up, nor the second or third. That Friday, she'd already given birth a week early.

And here I was, somehow hoping that something better would come around, hoping to put off starting that job, when it really DID happen that way. I bowed out gracefully this past Friday, received my first official paycheck in BC and said goodbye to a friendly group of folk.

Monday, March 13th, I start again. Very excited about this one, as I'll be exploring the world of package design, something I'd always wanted to add to my repetoire, but was rarely given the chance (I can count on one hand the amount of packaging projects I've done over the last 20 years)!

The view is incredible! Out the large picture window spanning the entire office space, I will be catching glimpses of the gorgeous North Shore ski resort mountains, seaplanes and helicopters taking off and landing, the Seabus to Lonsdale Quay, and the West Coast Express trains, tracks almost literally below the building! I must add here for emphasis that the company where i WAS, occupied two floors, one half a floor below ground and not very bright and quite stuffy. That's the floor I worked on for the past two weeks. So literally a 180 difference here.

And tonight, even with three new player trades joining the Canucks, we managed to lose against the Dallas Stars, 1-2. Wonder if we'll make the playoffs at this rate?

More later as I start the working week and head out to enjoy

1) my Graphic Designers Meetup group on Monday night at a café on Commercial Drive and
2) Electric Six performing at Richards on Richards on Tuesday night!

Ariane C

Here's a look at the re-designed bus/subway ticket experiment from last month's meeting!