Work Begins

I have officially begun work at Guilford Anhui! Apparently I don’t need a work permit since I’m only part time. They’ve given me the important-sounding title of “Design Supervisor” so that when I give my business card to customers, they will trust me. And I will be going on all the customer visits for design, because they want to flaunt me as much as possible. Haha. I’m not making that up either, that’s exactly what they told me.

I work half days, which is nice. And I get to bring Smudgie with me so he’s not in a crate all morning. We put him in a nice empty room with sunshine that hardly anyone ever goes into, and I give him a potty break mid morning. Everyone loves him! And I think once he gets used to his new surroundings and friends, he’ll love coming to work with me.

Look how fluffy I am!

It’s pretty fun working here. Their design software is kinda crappy but I think half the problem is having to draw with a mouse. So I’m going to bring my Wacom tablet with me tomorrow and try to install it on their computer. The main girl I work with, KeKe (pronounced “kuhkuh”) speaks very little English so when we don’t know what the other is saying, we use an online translator. The translations are pretty wonky sometimes but it’s funny. One time she told me she watched the movie Inception and then she tried to say “Leonardo” but she was pronouncing it really badly so it took me a while to understand. Another time, she typed something into the translator and it said “Taste the pine nut”. I was perplexed until I looked into her tin which was filled with what I thought were mints or candies. Turns out they were pine nuts. I’ve never had them before so I popped one in my mouth and commenced crunching it. I was like, “Wow this is REALLY crunchy” and no matter how long I chewed, I couldn’t break it down into swallowable pieces. Then she typed into the translator again “Shell” and said “Don’t eat”. Haha. So I spit it out and tried again with a new one, this time removing the shell first. Tasty!