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March 18 Today I didn't go to my workplace because I had a writing course in downtown Toronto. What I expected before I arrived there was I could get a sense of how to write things clearly to reflect what I think. I even thought that if it weren't be like what I expected, I would leave after lunch break. However, what I hadn't expected was I met one of my classmates during that course, so even though the course was a kind of boring, I still had kept sitting there until it was over around 4 pm. After that course, I had a coffee with my classmate. We talked about how our lives have been going these months and our future plans. She's a little bit talkative but I felt OK because I can't get many chances to speak Mandarin in my regular day. It felt really great to express ideas without thinking about sentence structure, grammar and so on so forth when speaking your native language. Everything just flowed out smoothly. I hope someday in the near future I can speak English like this. It usually takes time and effort. Expanding vocabulary may be a good way because most of the time I just feel I can't find a proper word in my mind to exactly express what I want to say. Do you guys think there are any other shortcuts to meet my goal?
March 20, 2015
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March 17 Toronto's temperature has been rising after the beginning date of the daylight saving time, so I have got a chance to walk around my workplace during lunch break. During the walk, I can talk to myself or think about something. It's much better than staying in the office all day. The topic that I have been thinking about since last week is what I should get from this internship experience and how I should take advantage of this period to make contribution to my future career. In terms of my long term goal, I would still prefer to find a job related to the capital market, just like what I did in China three years ago. It's obvious that what I am doing right now has nothing to do with finance. Therefore, it's pretty hard for me to get any hard skill which will be preferred by a financial company from my current daily work. But on the other hand, I've gotten some other kind of chances to improve myself from this work, like attending meetings and group discussions. Frankly speaking, I didn't prepare very well in those previous meetings so that I was very mute most of the time. I hope in the future I could put more time on preparation and dare to say my opinion during discussions. Preparation is easy. It just needs time. However, public speaking or expressing opinion publicly has long been a weakness for me, so it will definitely be tough for me to make the first several steps. In order to overcome the fear, I sometimes tell myself that now that I am not going to work here after 6 months, I don't need to consider how others treat me so seriously, let alone my goal is also to make our product better.
March 18, 2015
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March 16 Last night, I had a fitful sleep, because the Chinese stock market index kept flashing in my mind, so I checked the updated points quite often during the night. Luckily, although I didn't sleep very well, I still felt fresh this morning, probably due to the fact that my supervisor is on her March break so that I wouldn't feel stressed when working. It was kind of like a routine day. I copied things from the website and pasted in the word file, and then modified it. It was a very simple work which can be done by anyone. I had felt my work boring until I met a friend, who told me it was a great opportunity to improve my communication skills regardless where I would be in the future. It is true. Although this work can not bring me any finance-related experience and skill, it gives me a precious opportunity to deal with different kind of people. If I can put more efforts on preparing materials and researching, I can have many chances to make contribution to this project since everyone in our team is new to this kind of stuff. By the way, I am the only person who is dedicated to this project. Other people all have their own job. So many things will be counting on me if I can show my willingness to get fully involved in. Anyways, after finishing this content creation process, I feel that I really need to find a proper time to talk with my supervisor in terms of what I am supposed to do in the next step.
March 17, 2015
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March 15 It's been busy for me during weekend, so I haven't got a chance to log on italki to write something. But anyway, weekend has almost passed and I am back to my normal life. I will try to keep writing something everyday. Friday was a relax day for me, partly due to the reason that it was my colleague's birthday. We had a small cake in the morning as a celebration and they left very early. However, I still stayed there late because I had an appointment with my friend. It was not so good for me to leave early since I still had to wait for my friend. After meeting up my friend at 530 in downtown, we came to a fancy Japanese restaurant to have supper. This restaurant has a very high score in the yelp; however, we both felt the food there was so so. Frankly speaking, I don't really like the atmosphere in that restaurant. Too noisy. For example, the staff there shouted something together very loudly in every 5 minutes, which made me remind of some barbershops in China. Anyway, it may seem interesting to locals. But for me, it is not my cup of tea. After supper, I watched a movie with my friend. It was a movie about robot who has consciousness. The idea is great and this movie is well done. It was probably the best movie I had watched here. Saturday, there was a clearance book sell in a nearby library. I went there and bought a book called barbarians at the gate. It only cost me 25 cents, which is really a great deal for such a famous business book. I also checked the price of this book on Amazon, which is around 10 dollars. I was thinking I could even make money by immediately selling it online. Anyway, I have got something to read in the future. Currently I have been reading a book called 'Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory'. The author is an American journalist who lived in China for many years. He wrote many stories about those ordinary people that he had met in China during his travelling since 2000. It is an interesting book giving me a different view to see China from a foreigner's angle, but it's a little bit too long. I started to read it in January, but still not finishing it yet. Hopefully I can finish reading it by the end of March so that I can get started to read other things.I don't have many friends in Toronto, so reading is probably the best way for me to kill the time during nights and weekends.
March 16, 2015
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March 12 Today is kind of boring. When I got to the office at 9 a.m., I found there were only 3 people in the office. Marina, one of my colleagues, told me that there were 2 accidents nearby so traffic was very slow at that time. Probably this is the only conversation I have during the whole day. There is no meetings for me today. My supervisor was focused on her tasks all day, so she didn't have any time to say anything to me. I guess she might even forgot my existence because I have been so quiet during the day. However, the good news is, because I don't have anything distracted, I have finished all the questions that I was asked to hand in before next week. As a consequence, tomorrow I can continue doing winter driving section and hopefully by the end of next week I can finish all the documents. After work, I went to gym and worked out for 1 hour. I felt great. I used to have a very unhealthy life. Now, I should make use of this intern period to change my bad habit, like smoking, no exercise, etc. Until now, everything has been doing well. It has been 21 days since I smoked the last cigarette. Although occasionally I want to light one, but most of the time I feel very good being a non-smoker. I can breath fresh air. I don't need to worry the cigarette is going to be over. I feel I am out of something's control and I can feel freedom. I haven't experienced this feeling for almost 8 years. For me, this period is an excellent time to quit smoking and embrace my new life.
March 13, 2015
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March 11 Last night I went to the gym running for 6 km, so this morning I felt so reluctant to force myself out of my bed. However last week I already applied for a day off, so today I have no choice. I have to make it. Although it was a little bit late for me to leave my home, fortunately, I transfer the bus very smoothly so that I got to my office on time. From 10 a.m. to 11 a.m I had a meeting with our design group. It went well. We discussed a little bit about the content that I created last week and asked our developer to bring some ideas of how to present the huge amount of content in the app next week. It should be fun to hear how they will think next week, but that day I will have a course in DT about clear writing, so I will not be able to attend this meeting. Anyway, I hope they can find a good solution while I don't need to do more things After a quick lunch, I walked around my workplace. It is a nice day today. Spring-like temperature made me eager to meet with my friends. So I texted Henry to see whether he wanted me to come to his place to have supper together. Unfortunately, he said his mother is sick and it's not a good time for me to drop by. After knowing this, I gave up the idea that tonight I can grab some beer. Because his place is near to the beerstore, I always buy 6-packs of top can beer if I go to his place for dinner. Anyway, in order to celebrate such a nice weather, I decided to cook something delicious when I finish my work today. Afternoon passed quickly, since we had another meeting from 3 p.m. to 430 p.m. It's a meeting with Service Ontatio. I don't need to say anything during the meeting. What I needed to do is just sitting there, listen and take notes. Frankly speaking, attending meetings has been a nightmare for me especially I am supposed to say something. Most of the time attendants speak very fast and ask you to respond quickly, let alone some people may have strong accent. It may not be a problem for others whose first language is English. But for me, I need to be fully focused in the meeting otherwise I would get lost. After buying some groceries, I went back home at around 6. It took me 1.5 hours to make curry potato beef, which is the cuisine that I feel tasty and easy to make at home. As expected, it was so delicious. I also saved some as tomorrow's supper so that tomorrow night I can spend more time in the gym rather than cooking. Except for morning, it's a good day for me. ^_^
March 12, 2015
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Get started I am going to record my daily activities in italki as my diary, starting from tomorrow. Feel free to edit my words if they are not appropriate. Hopefully I can keep doing it as long as possible. Thanks!
March 11, 2015
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