Westward Bound

Mood: Enjoying the nice 60-70s in San Fran!
Music: King of Anything - Sara Bareilles (cover by Sam Tsui)

This week has been a great week. I truly feel like I’m owning a workstream for the first time: managing upwards, setting a timeline, engaging the clients, and creating value.

My motivation this week has come from within like I haven’t ever experienced before. In the past, I have just been responsible for executing on an assignment that has been dictated down to me by my superior. This week (and last week), I was assigned a topic and told an end-goal that they wanted to see. Based on that, I had to plan and prioritize my time accordingly to get the job done.

After 2 status updates today, I got positive feedback from partners and managers within my firm and excitement about where this project is headed. I even heard repeatedly that this work has been extremely valuable and that the work I’m doing will really make a difference with our client. That’s something awesome that I didn’t expect to experience and own on this case.

So as I write this, I’m flying west to Bay-Area to visit my brother for the weekend. This case, I’ve been keen on alternative traveling. I’m going to San Fran this weekend. In mid-September, I’m going to London on business and taking a weekend trip to Paris the week before for Bain World Cup (a global Bain intramural futbol event). Then at the end of September, I’m flying to Iowa to visit Ishanee and attend at UT vs Iowa State game in Des Moines. After that, in late October, I’m going to LA for a cousin’s wedding. WHOA DANG! That’s a lot of travel. When am I ever going to be in Dallas? My life is truly “Up in the Air(plane)”

Working remotely at my brother's office on Friday in San Fran

~~~~~
On an unrelated note, here are a few jokes I heard on NPR on Thursday from a story they were covering for the "best jokes of the year" as voted on by some joke conference in Europe.

• I had to create a password with 8 characters, I ended up using "Snow White and the 7 dwarfs" [#1 for 2011]
• Two people were playing a game of chess. One said, "Let's make this more interesting," and they stopped playing. [# 5 for 2011]
• And as a kicker, here's a joke at the client site I saw in the bathroom: "My aim is to keep this bathroom clean, your aim will help!" [#1 at a client site]