Stuff lately
Life is back to normal, well back to crazy that is. The past 4 days has been hectic. On Thursday and Friday I went to Charlotte, NC for an assessment center. It consisted of group activities, case study presentations and interviews. It was quite intense, I definately felt the competitive atmosphere among the 60+ participants. I think I got about 8 hours of sleep between those two days, and drank about twice amount in beer. So in two days, 8hrs of sleep + 16 servings of beer = not much energy. I was so tired when I got off the plane Friday night that I drove against the one way twice in downtown, and once I was driving on the light rail tracks. I went straight from the airport to K's apartment where some good friends threw a little party for me. We had some nice wine and beer, nothing heavy though. Saturday and Sunday I was in Wassau, WI to judge a dance competition for the Hmong New Year. It was pretty cool, I learned quite a bit about the culture. People said there weren't that many people there, but if we had a Chinese New Year, there would be less than a fifth of Chinese compared to the Hmong that showed up. I volunteered for the judging because they needed non-Hmongs with dance experience. I judged 10 dances, they were all pretty good but didn't reflect too much of the Hmong culture, mostly of the Indian culture. After the party I went to a sports bar with a couple of people I knew. We were the only Asians there, but it was a cool place. My friend Choua's uncle really likes to drink and I found out just how much that night. This guy was hardcore, the two of us finished 4 pitchers within a couple of hours, he then insisted on getting 2 more. Good thing we didn't. I finally got to drive back to MN on Sunday, except I drove straight to school to study for my exam which was this morning. The exam wasn't as hard as I had imagined, but I don't think I got all of it right, actually I'm pretty sure I didn't. I ran out of time on this one and actually I've noticed that I've been generally running out of time on tests lately. I don't know if I'm just a slower thinker now or if I'm actually learning things and it takes time for me to regurgitate what I learned instead of just scribbling down equations for partial credit. The interview process should be wrapping up soon. I got an offer on Friday for the client engagement position. I will know if I have an offer from the interviews in Charlotte by the end of this week. I will also interview with my current company this Thursday and find out what the offer will be. And finally, I'm waiting for the semiconductor company to get back to me on whether or not they want to fly me out for a final interview. It's kind of funny how I started with a long list of companies to apply for and now have ended up with 4 possibilities. Out of all the companies on my tier-1 list, only 2 out of 40 have made it into the final 4. I either didn't get response from those companies or have been dropped out of the running or I declined to pursue any further with them.