Beginning of a new lifestyle

Full time work began on 30 April. Employed by GHD (ghd.com.au) as an Undergraduate Engineer. I am not located at their Perth office but in the Southern Gateway Alliance (consist of GHD, Leighton Contractors, WA Limestone and Main Roads WA) project office in Osborne Park. WA's single largest road project, the New Perth to Bunbury Highway (NPBH) is under the design process. Construction, or whatever the term is for them to start earthworks has commenced from what I can gather.

About the office

1. Staff kitchen has bonuses (other than the standard) such as coffee maker machine, sandwich toaster.
2. People are generally friendly and helpful and I've met more than enough amusing personalities.
3. My supervisor Robin Connolly was very helpful the first day showing me around and introducing me to the right people and showed me basic things I'd need to know.
4. I knew one person from a couple of units we did together, Michael Smith.
5. I meet at least one person I haven't met before everyday.
6. Cubicle space is relatively big, generally shared by four people in each corner.

So far so good. I'm not sure what I'll be like in a few weeks from waking up between 6-6:30am everyday to get to work by around 8:15am.

Public transportation enlightenment

Generally leave home at 7:10am to catch a 7:15 bus to Perth Busport then walk 10-15mins to the train station and then catch a train two stops after to Glendalough. After that I catch another bus to IKEA on Scarborough beach road, and walk about 2mins to SGA which is behind/next to IKEA. I spent about 3hours during the weekend engineering this route instead of following exactly what the transperth.wa.gov.au journey planner decided for my destination (duration of 1hour 40-50mins).

By Tuesday I found out that catching the 7:28 bus from home is not worth it as it takes another 15-20mins later to reach the busport due to increased in traffic and I end up arriving 30mins later to work.

By Wednesday I figured that it was faster to walk to the office from Glendalough station.

I decided to walk when I saw someone I recognised from the office and started following them. I ended up catching up to them, pulled out the earphones to my ipod and started conversation "do you work at SGA?". His name in short is Sunda, a Sri Lankan from GHD in Sydney. His role in this project is the geotechnics (engineering) related stuff...I'm using this word because I'm still gathering the correct terminology for all this.

By now the mastered route to work takes only just over an hour from the time I leave home. I also get a bit of exercise done everyday. Only con about it is I have to breath in pollution from the traffic.

Weekends

The weekends are still the same in terms of my sleeping habits. Well it's my first weekend since starting full time work. Today I slept in till around 3-3:30pm. Disgusting isn't it? The only difference now is that I don't have to work Saturday nights! Puneesh called today to let me know about the details of Hyatt's Lower Lobby Team building cruise tomorrow. His first comment "when can I start tonight". That made me laugh.