Carry On Curiously

Do you ever find yourself being pulled in 100 different directions? Or find yourself having to figure what to do... when you don't?

Day one - not training day; this time, it was a 4.5-hour shift of work. At this point, I was pulled to the side and given a vibrant shirt to indicate that I'm an employee, that I work here and that it's my job to help customers.

My first task is to help stack and fill the empty departments. I noticed a note that mentioned where to put it, which helps and I quickly start picking up 10 books at a time.

I'm getting stared at...? Apparently, lifting 10 large books at once is unusual?

As the hours pass, some of the other workers with the same responsibility introduce themselves, which puts me at ease. Customers come in more and more, filling the store with people in almost every corner. It's not too bad to lead the customers to the designated areas since

There was another employee of whom I figured out his name by seeing his login info. .... totally not like a creeper/stalker.

Around my last hour, I'm reminded that I have a 15 minutes break that I need to take. Well, 15 minutes isn't enough to get lunch, but I do have snacks in my bag. Spent the break to refresh and fill my stomach for a little more since it's almost the end of my shift.

Once I return, I meet a Francophone customer with a list of books to find.

For those who don't know, Francophones are individuals whose first language is French. In my case, I'm considered an Anglophone since my first language is English.... or, at least, that's how it is in Quebec... I think.

I spend over an hour speaking with her in French to find out where to find all of the books. She occasionally apologizes for taking so much time, but I was happy to help.

I wonder how many I helped in my first shift.

I finished my shift 30 minutes after I was supposed to finish and learned a few things.

Converse shoes are not good for 'being on the floor'

I managed to walk some 10 000 steps in those 4 hours

I was exhausted after the shift

... I still don't know the name of most of my co-workers

I may have missed some kind of traditional introduction ... thing... as a new employee... or maybe I'm overthinking things again.

I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at 9:30 at night. I didn't get up until 8 the following morning.

Recently, having no classes during the summer, I tried applying to different jobs - a barista, a retail employee, a secretary, an internship, and a bookstore employee, among others.

After a while, with no success, I got a request to meet up - an interview!

What do I wear - a dress, a skirt, a dress shirt? How should I present myself - friendly, confident? Am I overthinking this?

I dressed in a semi-formal fashion - dress shirt & jeans - hoping that I don't come off as too serious or having put too much of an effort in dressing up. I came an hour too early and my mind spun in a circle while waiting to meet up with them. They asked me a series of questions - a short description of myself, my goods and bad sides, and a scenario with a... less-than-pleasant customer. We finished with a bit of Q&A for me to ask her, but I didn't know what to ask.

In retrospect, I could've asked her about the dress code, the duration of breaks, and expected hours of work each week.

I got accepted! Awesome!... Now what?! My first shift was training and was coming up early the following week.

Is there a place to store my stuff in the meantime? Do I show up at the entrance of the store or at the cashier? How do I know when's a good time to take a break?

Moreover, they sent me a bunch of paper to fill in, one included a direct deposit.

..What's a Direct Deposit? Why can't I just do like the 1990s and just get a check? Should I go to the bank and find out? There's a bunch of parts that I don't know how to fill in - does it need to be filled in before my training in the coming week? What if I can't fill it accordingly in time?

... This would be a good time to let go of the over-inflated balloon of thoughts.

I showed up about 15 minutes before my appointed time and went to the cashier to ask for her. According to her, I'm to be "on the floor"; the one who is walking around the store, guiding customers in and around the store. She redirects me to someone else who gives me a "rundown" of my responsibilities.

He's a bit timid - has a habit of mumbling - but gives me the highlights of my job. If customers want help, I'm to guide them to the appropriate area and inform them of the many alternative options so as to not spend too much; it's to entice customers to buy from the store and not look for it elsewhere. He also shows me where I can store my bag and other belongings in the meantime.

The training started at 12; the training finished around 1:00; now what? According to email, I was expected to be there until 4:00pm.

What am I supposed to do for the remainder of the time? I didn't get any uniform, was I supposed to get one? Should I ask for one? If not, should I approach customers and help them out? The layout was a bit odd - is there a logic to it? Is there a map that I could use as reference?

I thought, since I have a few more hours, I'll spend some time memorizing the layout - it'll (probably) help when customers ask me where to find their books. An hour passes, then two, and then three; at this point, I have at least 60% of the store memorized - the departments, not the books themselves.

At the third hour, she approached me and told me that I could head out since this was before the rush period - chances were that the store wasn't going to get many, if any, customers for the rest of the day.

That would've been a good time to ask about that uniform - the apron looked cool.

Before I forgot, I quickly went to my bag and handed her the papers that I had received in the email. Turns out that it was expected to have some blanks; those blanks were for the employer/boss/manager to fill in.

It would've been a good time to ask about when I get paid, but I guess I could check my bank account occasionally.

My next shift was the week after that. Time to get real! It was a 5-hour shift - I expected that from friends who worked in nearby areas.

What kind of shoes should I bring? What do I wear? What's considered as appropriate clothing? Should I bring snacks along with me? Water bottle?

Like last time, I arrived about 15 minutes before my shift started. It was at that point that I realized... I didn't know who I was supposed to "check-in" with. (Or if that's something I'm supposed to do)

In retrospect, it might've been a routine I picked up from volunteering for so long.

Also like last time, I go to the cashier and find a familiar face - maybe they can give me some pointers. They tell me that they'll let her know that I'm here and, since I'm early, I may as well wander around until my shift officially starts. 

At this point, I was wearing a casual shirt and jeans and helping the customers looking for things. Nothing to indicate that I was a paid employee

That I did... until I get pulled into the side and a uniform gets pushed onto me. It's a vibrant colour, which means customers are less likely to not see me. I guess the real work starts now?

(inspired by IWroteThisForYou)

I enjoyed the time,  The time spent talking with no end in sight, The time talking about my university while tending to bikes.

But those around me tell me to watch out, To watch out for the neighbour who suddenly warmed up,  To watch out for the man who suddenly seemed interested in me. 

I see your texts with questions,  I also see my finger hovering over the ignore button,  I see my reflection with an expression of inner conflict. 

Being a wannabe-avid-note-taker, I started making an Adobe Spark Page  for a study guide for one of the courses I’m taking this semester when it hit me - I wonder what would happen if I made another blog for studying? 

That would mean this blog would be a normal blog - rambles, thoughts, experiments - while the other would have things related to school - study guides, notes, templates. 

新年快乐! Happy (Chinese) New Year!

Another fact about myself - I was born in the year of the dog, which means this year.. is my year? XD

I learned a number of things about this tradition/holiday/event: 

1. the celebration can be 15 days long!

2. On the eve of CNY, it’s common to see people making their way home to their family for the event, hence why it can be called the yearly migration in China

3. Since it is the dog year, it can also be phrased as 狗年快乐 (gou3nian2kuai4le4) - literally Dog Year + Happy = Happy Year of the dog!

Another fun fact about myself - I like to take notes! 

Now, whether that means taking notes for lectures, for readings, or just while I’m listening to The Productivity Show/Taking Note/How to ADHD, I have... an urge (?) to jot things down. 

Some of the class notes I take are uploaded to the university while others can be found in OneClass. 

OneClass has invited me to be a paid note-taker for courses, but I have yet to try it. I also wouldn’t be surprised if other students are willing to do the same to keep up with the classes

However, being scatter-brained, it’s not the easiest thing to do, especially during a lecture where the professor barely takes a break to breathe! Moreover, I tend to want to make them look perfect. The result? I probably spend about 3 times the length of a lecture just to make it perfect. 

Cue templates! Over the years in Concordia, I’ve made a variety of them - flexible enough to be adjusted for every course, but simple enough that adding content doesn’t make my perfectionist-of-a-brain scream. 

If you’re studying any language that has accents, chances are you’ll need to find a way to remember it. Then, how would you write the accents on (digital) notes and/or assessments?  

Being a Mac user for many years, I spent a while scratching my head on how the heck do I write pinyin on Windows 10. Macbook had an Extended Keyboard, but I can't find an equal for Windows without going to a third party. Asking Microsoft on Twitter, I now have a better idea of how I could type the tones.

A. install the ENG US international keyboard:

This will allow you to write accents that you would find in French, like the accents é, à, ô, etc. However, it wouldn't allow for the flat tone or the third tone.

B. Skip all the fancy accents and make it simple

Since there are 4 tones in the pinyin, an easy alternative is to write the tone number after the letters.

For example:

商场 becomes shang1 chang3

火车 becomes huo3che1 

(The spacing is optional)

C. Unicode Character Code, ALT + X:

This approach is a little harder since it would require you to remember the 4-character code for each individual letter with a specific accent.

From what I could tell, upper or lower case doesn’t matter for the code, but it’s better to type the accented vowel first, then the other characters in the word.  NOTE: This only works for Microsoft Office (Powerpoint/Excel/Word...)

To get started:

Character (UNICODE Character Code)

ā (0101) | á (00E1) | ǎ (01CE) | à (00E0)

ō (014D) | ó (00F3) | ǒ (01D2) | ò (00F2)

ī (012B)  | í (00ED)  | ǐ (01D0)  | ì (00EC)

ē (0113) | é (00E9) | ě (011B) | è (00E8)

ū (016B) | ú (00FA) | ǔ (01D4) | ù (00F9)

How do you guys write Pinyin on your computer? 

Writing Tones on Windows... other than French Accents?

Recently, I’ve been using a Surface Book. Before then, I had used a MacBook which, of course, was Apple.

As a student, I study Chinese, which has a ‘romanized’ alphabet known as Pinyin, where vowels ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘o’, ‘i’, ‘u’ can have one of 5 accents (known as tones). I also like to write notes in Chinese and Pinyin.

As I started to review my Chinese notes, I realize that I couldn’t figure out how to write the tones on the vowels. I could get the second and fourth tones for ‘e’ from the French Keyboard, but the others, I couldn’t figure it out.

On my MacBook, all I had to do was to install the “Extended” Keyboard and use Alt + Accent Key then the vowel.

On the Surface Book, from what I could tell, would need a third party software to be installed to write some of the accents/tones.  

My jar of gratitude in 2018

Happy New Year everyone. Another resolution I wanted to try was to have a gratitude jar, but with a twist. As the Doctor said in Vincent & the Doctor, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Then, shouldn’t we include the bad things in the jar as well?

In my jar, I’ll be writing in two colours: red or green - red for bad, green for good. Each one would be time-stamped and has a short description of what happened. On Dec 30/31st, I’ll empty it out and look it over.

Side note: I was thinking about maybe have green and paper, but it’s hard and inconvenient to find two specific colours. 

A quote that I found on “I wrote this for you” blog. 

One of my new year’s resolutions is to reduce the scars on my arms... which means that I’ll need to get some skin lotion to reduce scars. 

The quote was found in a post from May 31st of 2017 

The Productivity Show talks about all sorts of good ideas on organizing one’s thoughts and one’s life in general. 

This episode talks about setting time purely for thinking, which sounds weird at first in a world that is almost like a constant marathon. 

My usual process

I think about things I could do for a project and how it could come out, but nothing ever gets written. 

Fast-forward to a few days - if not hours - before the due date, and the project has barely been touched. 

Throw away the plan! Just get it done as soon as possible 

Submit it and mumble about how I should improve next time

... do it all over again

My drafted new process: 

What is the project? When is it due? How long is it expected to be? 

put it in Evernote with tag:working space

“Book” a few hours for planning the attacking the project (between 1-3 hours with a notebook/tablet/something to write with)

Break down the steps until you’re comfortable with them (i.e. to crumbs for me)

Assign an allotted amount of time (i.e. minutes or hours) to each task

Research/google search -> 2 hours (afterward, I get stuck)

braindump -> 30 minutes (jot it down, make connections later)

draft(s) -> 1 hour (make it quick, correct it later)

Put it on the calendar app - create reminders! 

I have a fitbit alta, which notifies me for events and general alarms, so it’d be nice to make the most of it

EXTRA: recruit a friend - doesn’t need to be in the same class, just needs to be available with their own things to do (i.e. not socializing)

How often do you do online purchases when there are sales? 

I myself am pretty new at it but got curious when I was sent a special code from one of my favorite brands of earphones. No surprise, then, I found out that I couldn’t mix two rebates at the same time (i.e. SPC discount and the special code)... and that I couldn’t un-introduce the SPC code D:

What else is there to do on December 25th aside from Christmas? 

That was a question that I asked myself for a while. For some places, like China, where Christmas isn’t celebrated, people go on in their daily lives. 

In North America, however, Christmas is celebrated (arguably) everywhere, resulting in a lot of stores and restaurants to be closed on that day. If not for giving gifts to family and/or friends, it’s an opportunity for quiet time, lunch/dinner with friends/family and maybe an excuse to build that snowman you’ve been meaning to build for a while (*cough* guilty)

Visiting Urban Outfitters, I came across a book that I found to be interesting (and later wanted to buy it) called “I Wrote This For You”

For some reason, there seems to be a rise of people, myself included, that are looking for a form of reassurance that we matter. From the pages that I skimmed, it looked like the type of book that can give some whispers of encouragement. 

I’ve been trying to find it in the Indigo/Chapters branches, but all of them seemed to have run out. On the bright side, I might have found the website

... and I really want a hug >w<

How do you take notes? When I was cramming reviewing for my final, I was trying to figure out a way to write notes on the readings quickly that wouldn’t be overwhelming or long. 

Mind-mapping is nice, for visual effects, but when the article is 20 pages? the branches become really long. 

Notes (typed) are also nice, but I remember reading a Scientific American Article that mentioned that I would be less likely to remember typing it up. 

Notes (written) is something I’ve been trying but found myself often getting fixated on the formatting of headings and types of bullet points. 

The Main apps that I use: 

Mindmapping: MindMeister 

the limit is 3 mindmaps for free users

Maps cannot be exported

layouts are flexible

each ‘bubble’ can be assigned a colour

Notes (Typed): Evernote

Simple & Templates are available

iOS version has 3 sizes of fonts -> could be used for headings 

no offline use for free users

Difficult to export unless the entire test is Copy and pasted

Notes (Written): Notability 

Apple only! Costs 10$ on Mac, 14$ on iOS

Flexible for writing, highlighting and typing

Images can be imported

Templates can be loaded via PDF 

Shapes are treated as images and cannot be easily manipulated

Able to record audio -> synced with notes (typed/written)

Wide Variety of colours

Backup could be in OneDrive, GoogleDrive, etc.

Export Friendly

Notes (Written): MyScript Nebo

Works for all tablets -> $3 on iOS 

Requires a stylus?

iOS

Translates handwriting into text

Able to translate boxes into actual squares (and other shapes)

could be used as an alternative Mindmapping software

Backup is only in Dropbox T^T

Could read alternative languages, but only one per notebook

Has difficulty differentiating between lower and UPPER case. 

Why Mindmapping is Better than Outlining, Except When it Isn’t (TPS131)