Wednesday, November 9
Thank you
I want to thank the people who read my previous post and identified with me and wrote me reassuring words of encouragement. Thank you!! T_T
I also want to tell everyone that
I officially signed my first full time job offer!!! Musho is going to be an adult O__O I'm relieved knowing I will no longer need to rely financially on my father, and I can even help my brother with his school fees. Since the job is overseas, I'm further away from my family problems too. *escapes kthxbye*
...
(I hope this is official)
since Trump just got elected
I will be an
Interaction Designer at Google! I'm going to start February next year at Google's headquarters in California, and I'm truly very excited to be back
And,
I'm the first Singaporean designer at Google!!
(I think. I checked while I was there.)
Congratulatory Google swag
What's this? A.. jacket?
What the fuck do I do with two google jackets 
Funny story: I saw Googlers wearing the jacket a few months back, and asked for the origin. They said only full time software engineers get the jacket.
OKAY.
So I went on Taobao to make my own. Yep.. I made my own Google Jacket. And now I have the official one. Ironically, everybody thinks my custom jacket is the real one.
...
Shallow things aside, I think...
I couldn't have done this on my own.
- I owe a lot to my intern manager, the design lead of Google Translate, for noticing my work and giving me a chance. He has been ever so supportive and fought hard for me to stay. He genuinely believes I'll do great things one day. This is incredibly comforting to me.
- I also am thankful to Patrick for writing me a reference.
And it REALLY helps to have a friend to get you started in a completely new country.
- And my bf, who stood by me through my most stressful periods.
I stand by the fact that my relationship is the most stable thing in my life.
I want to help people with no formal design degree, or international interns (especially from far away places like Asia). People who thought it was impossible like me.
I'll write some sort of guide on getting a UX internship and full-time conversion interviews soon.
Meanwhile I have a short portfolio piece on my internship here:
Okay back to drawing my anime chibis
Labels: adulting, google, interaction design, internship, job, ux, ux design
Monday, June 13
mushoogler
It's been more than a month since I touched down in the San Francisco Bay Area. I rented an apartment with bf, got a US phone number, Comcast wi-fi, Chase bank account and health/dental/vision insurance. Adult things WHOA
I've been working for
a month. I never knew the right time to announce this in my blog (the only public place I had it on was LinkedIn) but here goes:
I'm interning at Google this summer!
Oh wait this is their old logo and you might not recognize it so let me use my amazing photoshop skills to edit it
OK I think you can recognize it now. As you can see from my design prowess it is no surprise I am a designer at googel ┐(￣∀￣)┌
... anyway ...
I will eventually write a post about the entire process with interview / designing tips... but it was definitely unexpected. I was really excited at the offer (because GOOGLE and my manager/interviewer is the coolest designer ever!!) and couldn't believe it for a week. I still don't know any Singaporean designers here.
It is definitely a privilege and I'm learning a lot
and eating one snack every hour (・_・;).
These cute chrome aND GMAIL PLUSHIES I CAN'T
This is Building 1900 which is the prettiest
Baadal, a cafe-restaurant in google which you can reserve and have a waiter serve you good indian food
pretty outside-my-building
pretty crittenden
pretty i-forgot-where
FRIEND
FRIEND
Labels: design, google, internship, summer, USA
Sunday, August 16
My internship
I completed my 2.5 month internship at
IDA (Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore). So a little
background on how it all started. My supervisor/boss, Steven, introduced himself to me at the SOC projects showcase. I think he sped stuff up a lot for me and I was hired in a few days.
Good things
I learnt a lot
I got to pick up many
languages, frameworks and tools. Most importantly, I know how to meander my way around a
Macbook and the command line, which is important since (unfortunately) rails developers and designers use a Mac.
Free milo and snacks
- Milo making machine dispenses unlimited milo! (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
- A colleague who keeps feeding me ice cream! (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
- People bringing in lots of Loacker Quadratini wafers and seaweed! (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
The office at sandcrawler
The building is the coolest. It has a curved roof that gathers rain to pour down in one stream. Rain pours down 10 stories into a garden pond, like a waterfall!
I will miss the pingpong table, where my colleagues and I had lots of fun at.
I get to wear anything
I wear my fluffy pink slippers around the office. Sometimes I go barefoot. I get to sport my rainbow hair. One time I wore sports attire because I was going to play basketball. No one cares to stop me, as long as I'm wearing something.
My colleagues were awesome
We would hang out outside of work and; have dinners (which they'd insist on paying for me). They were encouraging and genuinely appreciated my work and took care of me.
My supervisor, Steven
That guy is just the most awesome boss ever -
literally your dream boss. It was so nice to work under him. Apart from him constantly giving me undeserved praise, he:
- Doesn't tell me to go back to work when I'm doodling on the office whiteboard, instead he smiles and says 'AWESOME!'
- Has cheered me up when I was down and encouraged me to continue doing what I believe in
- Maintains friendships with everyone in the team and treats everyone with respect
More photos
Drawing with a developer from the other team. We used these to decorate the office (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و
A
WORK CHALET at the company bungalow (!!) I didn't leave the house for 2 days except to eat and it was cool (・∀・ )
I think this was a selfie from an
intern outing but honestly I stopped hanging out with the other interns after awhile because we weren't very close
* * *
The internship wasn't smooth flowing of course. I had disagreements and fought with several people. For example, I fought with HR over moving a sofa to a room next door (no rules saying I couldn't), that they called my supervisor in.
I also got so upset trying to introduce changes for the good of the team, only to have a colleague humiliate me in front of the department with "
No one will do it, that's how the world works." It was hard, as a female intern, trying to speak up in front of mostly males 10 years my senior. I learnt the hard way, from this experience and from people who had tried, that the way the department was structured made it hard to instigate change. But I will continue doing what I believe is best for my future teams. My ideal workplace would be one where people were more supportive of change.
It was my first time working in an office environment too and I still have a lot to learn. But I definitely think this was a good experience. (❍ᴥ❍ʋ) I will be visiting the office a lot in future!
Labels: ida, internship, work
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