Today is not a happy work day for me because the Adobe programs such as InDesign and Photoshop is irritating me off really badly, especially the InDesign. The reason is because these programs are in Chinese. I really hoped for the English version, but the boss only has the Chinese version so I have a lot of difficulty searching for the tools. Even the simplest and basic editing tools were giving me such a hard time. I have to locate everything based on my memory of the English version. What irks me the most is the gradient tool. For whatever reason, it feels like this Chinese version is very poorly programmed. It irritates me so much that I couldn’t focus on my work. Bad thoughts started to come in to me such as throwing the mouse at the screen and scream as loud as I can so that the entire building can hear my voice. Thankfully, it was just in my head because I can’t afford the damage if it were to happen. To cool down and relax I looked at the window because it’s snowing! The sight of snow is very relieving and appealing. I still remember on the first day of work that I made the supervisor ran to my seat almost once or twice every hour. Sometimes, just when she was about to sit down I called her to my seat again. I had my fun and since her seat was right behind mine, I didn’t feel too bad about it.

Today is the first day that I started working for this Chinese magazine company. Things weren’t as easy as I thought it would be, because there is a big difference between Chinese and American magazine style. The Chinese magazine styles preferred very colorful and bold elements together while the American magazine styles are towards simplicity with the main topic being bold. Trying to learn how to do the Chinese way of styling isn’t very difficult, but it requires time to study and learn the technique. I have always been learning the American way of designs and styles, so switching to the Chinese way in a short amount of time was too sudden. Therefore, I was given a handful of magazines by the supervisor so that I can get familiar with the design elements that the company wants. Just when I sat down and settled on to the computer, to my surprise even the software program such as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. were all Chinese. Now that is ten times harder than learning the Chinese styles because I am not very literate in Chinese although I speak the language. This left my mind completely blank. The supervisor knew of my dilemma so she offers to help me if I don’t know the location of the tools. That sort of save my day.

Looking for the internship wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be because I got lucky. Originally, I thought of giving SinoTelevision a call, but was too scared and afraid that it won’t fit my schedule because I also have a part time job, which I need to support myself. Another fear is that although I can speak Chinese, but I’m not fluent with it. I also went on to the internet to search for internships, but to no avail, a lot of them required much more experience than what I obtained so far or simply just too far away from where I live. I then started to ask my friends around and see if they knew of any company that is open on weekends for advertising. Luckily, one of my friends knew about a magazine company that was looking for internships as well and I got introduced. I wasn’t super excited over it since I was scared that I will be taken advantage of, but nonetheless it’s better than wasting time. I was immediately approved of the internship, but since it’s a Chinese magazine I don’t know if the Professor would allow it. Just to make sure, I went to the company and grabbed some of their magazines to see it’s acceptable for the Internship class. I will get his permission before starting the internship.

The quizzes were somewhat fun and entertaining, but at the same time they were irritating and annoying; especially the Emotional Intelligence quiz. There were many questions that I did not have a precise answer to which I have to pick one and test the end result to see how much I agree on the website conclusion. If I feel that the result is kind of off with my knowledge of myself then I will restart the quiz over again and choose the other answer. What made it even more difficult was that I also rated my friend’s personality so because the website said that it would be more accurate if I have someone to compare to. On the other hand, the Procrastination Survey was relaxing, thus making me lazy to answer. But overall, the quizzes get to the points. As for the Friedman article, I totally agreed with his perspective of the job industry. Things like degrees, colleges, and resumes really don’t do much if you don’t have the required skills to begin with. My friend constantly tells me that people who graduated from colleges like Harvard, Princeton, and NYU will not be starved because their college will offer them jobs without them having to search too hard. But I personally believe that it is just to convince us thinking that it is the reality when it is actually not. Wouldn’t the job industry be a better place if there weren’t so much requirements, cover letters, and resume to write? That way the majority of people will have a chance to prove their skills because bosses can be very discriminating based on the contents of the resume without even giving a chance unless you were lucky.

This week I came to work so happy knowing that I have design work to do. As I mentioned last week, the project that the director gave me was Property Registration flyer. It is a flyer that HPD delivers to owners only, informing them that they have to register their property at HPD each year. This registration cost $13 and it is a form that contains contact information of the owner each year, so HPD can keep track of who is the owner and notes if there are any change, in order to know who to talk to when a report is made or a violation happens. This flyer contains a lot of information, but this is the main idea behind it. From a design perspective, it was a little challenging because HPD had a Property Registration flyer before, but the director told me that she needs to add about ten questions and answers to that flyer. So I had to change the size from a full letter page folded in four like an accordion, into a full letter folded in half and stapled like a booklet. I finished the design so fast with all the information in it and sent the first draft to my supervisor Ron who sent it to the director. I am waiting for the feedback next week so I can make any changes she asks about.

This week I had to continue the rest of the reports for the 2014-2015 year, so I arrived to work early before my supervisor, and started to work on it. At around 1 pm, my supervisor Ron came and told me that we have a meeting with the director at 2 pm. At first I was confused because since I started the internship here I never met or saw the director, so I was excited to meet her. I have to mention that I never had any meeting here before, my work and tasks came straight from the supervisor to me. So at 1:50 pm, my supervisor came to me with a notepad in his hand and asked me to take my notepad too for the meeting. Ron preferred that we go up the stairs instead of the elevator and I agreed. That building is so huge from the inside that you have three lanes of stairs! I never expected it to be that big especially that from the outside it looks like a normal small building. We arrived to the director office but she wasn’t there so we waited her for a couple of minutes till she came back. At this time Ron and I were chatting a little bit about housing rules and regulations. I had a couple a questions that he answered in a precise and understandable way, I can’t forget the sentence he told me then, “In NYC housing rules are very strict, If we left owners to act the way they want, poor people will be affected, we can’t let that happen.” So at this time the director came, she was the sweetest person ever, she gave me a new design project to do which is the Property Registration flyer. I got so excited for that project especially that I haven’t had any design work to do for the past couple of weeks.