Aaahhh... New Surroundings

New Job... New Place... New People

6:22 am... For me, starting a new job is a strange mix of anticipation and anxiety. I'm a total introvert, but over the years have trained myself to manifest extrovert mannerisms. I have no problem being introduced to 50 different people - who are now my coworkers - but walking into the lunch room where a dozen of them are gathered is a whole different story.

Everyone there is super cool. And there is a great amount of ethnic diversity, which is awesome to me. As a white person, I gotta tell you, a whole room full of white people, just isn't that interesting to me. I don't watch TV. I'm not interested in discussing politics or Christianity. And I'm not into sports. Which usually means that we have no points of common interest to drive a conversation. Maybe, if I'm lucky, there will be a gamer, an intellectual or a hip-hop aficionado in the crowd. Otherwise, I'm ready to hit the door pretty quickly.

But this place is cool. There are a bunch of Southeast Asians - mostly Vietnamese - who work on the assembly floor. Several Eastern Europeans (Russians, Ukrainians, ? Not certain,) are also sprinkled into the "typical Austin mix", which is 48% Mexican, 48% Caucasian, 2% African American, and about 2% Central/South American. Don't know exactly what my point is here, other than I was happy to see a lot of people not like me. Strangely, that actually alleviated some of my sense of introvercy.

Otherwise, it was a slow start. I have a computer, but no login has been issued by corporate yet. My boss has a million ideas for how I can help him... nearly all of which require access to the network and training on their systems... We'll get there in a day or two... It'll be fun... 6:43 am...