- Vancouver is beautiful!
- Kristy and I found a basement suite, and got our internet set up. There's no wash machine/dryer, and no microwave, so laundromats are our new hang out place!
- As Kristy mentioned, Vancouver has Palm Trees!
- The public transportation system here is awesome! (One monthly pass gets you access anywhere in one zone (Of three) on SkyTrains, busses, or SeaBusses, and anywhere in the three zones after 6:30pm and on weekends!)
- It's really, really beautiful!
- It doesn't smell like an open sewer like Toronto did! :P
- Did I mention that Vancouver is beautiful?
Anywho, with that out of the way, let's get to the practicum placement stuff. Fjord West (Who I'm doing my practicum with) is the Interactive arm of Cossette, a rather large international "communications firm". Within Cossette, there are 9 other companies that do other parts of projects such as media, branding, etc. Cossette own three floors out of the 6 in the building I'm working out of. They also have 4 other offices in Canada, three in the U.S., one in London, and one more in Shanghai. I'd estimate there's over 100 employees (Not including contract workers, the HR department, or interns such as myself) within this building alone, spread out over the 10 smaller companies here at one time.
So now that you have a sense of how big the company is, you'll understand why I kind of feel like a name on a sheet, rather then a person here from time to time. Each company is sectioned into little cubicles (Or teams) of 4 people each. I'm part of the "tech" team. I share one half of a large desk with "Big" Steve Lindeberg (Who I'm sure you all remember from Toronto). I have a little lamp, a regular grey computer with two flat screen monitors, a phone with someone elses name on it, a key fob for opening doors, and a little pen/pencil holder. If it wasn't for the fact that walls of the cubicles are semi-see through and about 4 feet high instead of blue and 6' or 7', I'd almost feel like I was in a Dilbert comic.
With that said, the company is pretty relaxed. On the wall behind me is a rather large sticker mural of the 1st level from the Donkey Kong arcade game (That's from some other building, not Fjord West's) that just got put up last Friday. You can listen to your MP3 player or music on a thumb drive while you work (So long as you have headphones), and much like where Kirsten is at, they don't really mind when you get to work or leave, so long as you get your minimum 7.5 hours of work, considering there isn't a big project you should be staying late to work on. There's a kitchen with a 50 cent drink machine, and a patio where you can sit and eat your lunch, park your bike for the day, or just get a great view of the city. Everyone frequently goes out for lunch everday for Sushi, Thai, Italian, etc. (Yes, I've gone with. No, I didn't like Sushi, Thai was ok, and Italian was great!) Also, there's a personal gym on the 1st floor that has more then I would need to get in shape!
That's pretty much what it's like here from a non work standpoint! Things have been pretty stressful for me here the first week, so I'm hoping this week goes better! I'll do a much better job in my next post of letting everyone know how work is here! Since I don't want to take up an entire page with one blog post though, if you want to know more, just let me know in the comments!
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