Sweet Little Town - Corvallis

I have not been blogging for almost 2 weeks. Why? Because I was on the business trip and yes, it is more tiring than I thought. I think I didn’t have enough sleep. Did I work too hard or in retrospect, I play too much? Nope, I wasn’t at all.

Corvallis

 It is a nice sweet little town, located 2 hrs away from Portland Airport in Oregon. Why I like Oregon? Because it is tax free and I can do lots shopping there. Ha. I am crazy. Yes? People like to say this, work at Washington (Vancouver site) and spend $$ at Oregon (Corvallis site). Because in WA, there is no income tax but sales tax AND in OR, there is no sales tax but income tax. Guess where I work and stay? California!! CA has high income tax and high sales tax!!

We arrived on Sunday and it wasn’t raining. Well, it started to rain the second onwards. The fact about Corvallis (or rather Oregon) is that… it rains consecutively for 8 months and you’ll get a beautiful summer for 4 months! It rains all day, even at night :) the driving speed in CRV is slower, about 55 mph whereas in CA, people drive at least 70mph. and on normal road, CA residents drive 55mph instead of 25/35 mph. Isn't it crazy?! Hoho.

I like the Corvallis office more, the surrounding. So big!! I heard once it housed 7k people and now it only has 1500 people since they close down the wafer fabrication line and lay off people. Essentially the 2 biggest employers in CRV is Hewlett Packard and OSU (Oregon State University). So the WFR (workforce reduction) in HP was a bad hit to the CRV residents. Many were unemployed and they have to move elsewhere. Yes, US is not Singapore, you move because of a job assignment.

I am so grateful to God as I get to meet the nice people there although I am really like, know nobody there! I had a great meet up with the WS folks there (under my hiring manager Barb and we will be working as a team on the same product line). They are so nice and kind to me. Really. Thank God for the good favour!

First is SteveA. He is real kind and patience. I will be working with him on the critical solution whereby we need to have it installed in our press machines since there is great market demand. He coached me from the very basic introduction on the press to the tedious procedure of sending test files! My first few weeks down here in SD wasn’t as fruitful as this! He walked me thru the stuffs, inform me on the potential counterparts. You know the best part is.. since the press schedule is so tight and we can only run the test from 5-10pm. He actually worked till 1040pm with us on Wednesday night and he was there at 8am at the press the very next day. He is so hard core. Hoho. I am glad that I get to work with him. He is such a systematic and organized engineer!~ Oh yes, he likes to wear Columbia brand apparel, from shirt to pant to his shoe. haha.

MikeS. He is a pretty serious engineer. He is a man of few words. SteveA, MikeS and myself will be working as a team to develop and qualify the solution. MikeS just got back from his disability. Hmm he likes paragliding and he joined competition. I heard 3 months back, he fell off unto a cliff and almost paralysed. So it is a miracle that he survived!! Even the doctors commented that the chances of recovery is slim. Well, he made it!!

DonM. At first I was very clueless when he shared those technical info. So I have decided to schedule a 1:1 session with him for him to go over some basic training on the things he worked on. He has kindly agreed to. The session went well and now I am able to catch some ball. ;p I was sitting with DonM during the IHPS celebration, as I spotted that his kids has Chinese look, so I thought his wife is Chinese. As I bluntly asked about it, he told me that his 2 kids are Korean, adopted children. He has no qualms in sharing those personal stuffs and he told me about the homeschooling. I asked him why? He said he is Christian and he and wife believe in home schooling. Has our bible ever taught us that? I am unsure.

TonyK. I didn’t have a very good impression on him whenever I saw him over the videoconference. Because he always walked out whenever we talked about Mobius. It was a nice surprise that we actually chatted and he is also a soft spoken guy. He is now in Italy. Haha. He was also patience enough to tell me the issues they face at vendor.

JimK. Hoho. I heard he was a manager but he doesn’t like people management, so now he is the so called architect and consultant. He is quite knowledgeable and maybe a bit aloof. Haha. He always like to dress like a soccer coach and true enough, he is an assistant football coach. I asked him what it takes to become one and he said: talented son! I think to a certain extent, he was quite friendly to me. I was hogging SteveElgee’s cube since he is always not in. so when SteveE was back last Tues and I have to move away from his cube, JimK asked SteveE why did he take my cube? Ha. So amusing.

JoeS. After a few email correspondence, I do not think he is friendly. Ya, the first few days he didn’t talk to me and I thought he is quite of quiet as a person. During staff meeting, I can see his frustrations. So we schedule a session to talk about colorcal. Hehe. He wasn’t as cold as I thought. In fact, he is quite a nice guy too and he told me those background of the current system. Wow, he had a master in color science on hp fellowship. Cool ah. Anyway, I will need more guidance from him in future.

AprilS. She is the only lady engineer in the team. She has a reminder every 15min to tell her to take a break. When the pop up shows up, the monitor just freeze and she is not allowed to do anything. Interesting feature. April is the youngest in their team though she is still older than me. Ha. She has a unique feature and it seems to be that she is quite sporty. She taught me some plot creation stuffs. She is a icy queen. kekeke

Who else did I not mention? SteveE? BarbM? BillFisher? GeorgeR?

BarbM sits with the rest of her engineers. I am amazed by the open conversations. Effectively everyone else can hear what you said in your cube, even the 1:1 session is done at her cube. Hoho. I am still unsure would it be better for her to be my manager or Bill? Hoho. Again, I believe all things happen for a good purpose at the right time.

Trust the Lord always!