So 2015 was kind of a bad year for me. I feel like I was a bit antisocial in 2014, and that behavior seemed to get worse over time. Combined with a number of unfortunate events that happened in the latter half of the year, 2015 sucked. However, 2015 was also a big year for me as a lot of important events happened and I was able to reach a lot of milestones.
By far the most important thing was finally getting my first full time job! I already wrote about this in the previous post, but the way I got the job was nothing short of a miracle. I had no luck with Kelly Scientific(an online service that helps you find science related jobs) and the Chem class that I was assigned to teach during the summer at my school got cancelled due to low enrollment. Things were looking bad, but my father just happened to see an ad in the Chinese newspapers for a Chemistry job and encouraged me to apply. Having no real prior job experience, I expected no followup as usual, but much to my surprise I got an interview and was hired on the spot! Of course, it was not all good news: the workplace was in a very inconvenient location and there were a lot of problems with the workplace and my employer. In fact, I kind of hate my job now. It also cut into a lot of the plans that I had during the summer, like finishing up my Masters program. But it is a stepping stone for greater things in the future and I am thankful for that.
My productivity also went down this year, after I had a good run in 2014. On one hand, you could say that my productivity in 2015 was the highest it had ever been since I was working full time. But I was not able to do many of the things that I wanted to do outside of work.
During the months of October and early November I had the worst bout of bad luck, as a string of terrible events happened one after another. It all began when one of my coworkers decided to suddenly quit, as he got an offer from a company that was much closer to his home. When he quit, I was chosen as the person who would take over his old duties. To give you an idea of the change, before he quit I was using one computer which was hooked up to two chemical analysis machines, both of which I was using actively. Most people at my work also had the same setup, but would only use one of their analysis machines and leave the other one idle. After he quit, I had to take over his computer, which was luckily hooked up to just one analysis machine, but that meant that I had to use 3 of them simultaneously. So essentially I was doing 3 times the amount of work that everyone else was doing. I really struggled, and there was a period of time where I was working at least 1 hour of overtime every day just to barely keep up.
During this time, Daylight Savings ended so it started getting darker earlier in the day. That meant that it would already be dark by the time I got off work. So my already terrible commute got even worse, since people just naturally drive worse when it is dark. Essentially my schedule was waking up at around 6AM every day, leave for work at 7AM, and then get back home at 7PM. After eating dinner, I would have an hour of free time before it was time to get ready for bed. It was an exhausting time and weekends did not feel long enough. I was really tired and made some silly mistakes at work, and my boss being the insensitive person that she is even had the audacity to accuse me of intentionally screwing up to sabotage the company.
But it doesn’t even end there. During this period of time I was having endless technical difficulties at work. I was actively using two computers and three chemical analysis machines, and there was never a moment where they were all in working condition. My main computer even had a hard drive failure which made me lose about 2 weeks worth of work. It felt really unfair for me to be doing more work than anyone else when the company could not provide me the equipment needed to do my job properly.
During this time I also got into my first car accident! Compared to a lot of other people, I am pretty lucky in that it took me 4 years since I started driving for my first accident to occur. So what happened was that I was driving to work in the morning, and the car in front of me made a very sudden stop. I was able to stop in time, and the car in back of me was able to stop in time. But Car #4 was not paying attention, due to the driver watching his GPS. He could not stop fast enough, and so he hit all of us. Car #3 and #4 were totaled, and my back bumper got bent out of shape, so that the trunk could not close anymore. Parts of the bumper were also on the verge of falling off. Despite that, I thought that the damage was fairly minor, as my car was still in driving condition.
However, within a month, that car would get into another accident! On the weekend, my mom took the car to buy groceries, and she got hit from the side from a car backing out of the parking lot. This accident was even less severe than mine, and when we got an estimate of the car damages the guy was very optimistic that we could get a private auto shop to do the repairs with the money allocated. But once we started asking around, all of the shops refused, saying that the repair costs would be double the value of the car. So right now it looks like the only choice is to report the car as a total loss. I’m really sad because the car has really served my family well. The engine is still in great condition and there are no serious problems, other than the trunk being unable to close.
Fighting games were a very mixed bag for me this year. On one hand, they were terrible because my region’s main arcade Super Arcade shut down and could not reopen due to a string of bad luck. Without a real venue, I felt like a lot of people lost motivation to keep playing and we all started to see each other less often. On the other hand, I also feel like I was able to set a new bar for my fighting game skills. I had already stopped playing stick in 2014, and then decided to switch over to a Saturn pad in 2015 after surprise winning an eBay auction. The Saturn pad is amazing, and has fixed one of my biggest problems with playing pad which was getting worn out thumbs after playing for a few hours. There were also a number of motions that I had difficulty executing with the Dualshock pad, but could do very easily with the Saturn. So my execution and consistency improved immensely, which allowed me to focus more on fighting against my opponent. Guilty Gear Xrd also came out, so all of a sudden I had way more people to play with!
2015 is also the year where I got into Hearthstone! I have always found collectible card games fascinating, but was turned off by the high price of entry. Even though it might be necessary to pay money to be super competitive in HS, you are at least given a decent amount of cards to start with right off the bat. It’s a really fun game that is very convenient to play due to it being available on several platforms including mobile. I still like fighting games more, but admittedly playing them can be a hassle because you have to travel and set aside a few hours for a session. And there is always lag to deal with if you decide to netplay.
Other important things that happened this year include my house getting some much needed renovations! Right now, I am really looking for a better job so I can quit my current one. Also readjusting my life so that I can have time to do things during the week, and finishing up my Masters program. I hope 2016 is better than 2015! Not making any resolutions this time since I have enough things to worry about with my life.
I have also been thinking of switching up the theme on this blog. The Panel theme is great, but I really do not like the infinite scroll for older posts. It does not look like there is any option to turn that off.
Lovers Arcana Yamada Lvl99 