My parents moved me into my apartment the day before I was scheduled to start working. The landlord had promised a lot of stuff would be completed (e.g. a lock on my door, walls painted, etc.) and pretty much none of it was done. I was also surprised to find a big white dog outside. Luckily the landlord's daughter had left a bunch of notes around the house. One of the notes said that the dog's name was Jaspar, and that he was very friendly. I soon found out that it was the truth. Jaspar was my pal while he was at the house.
If I haven't mentioned it already, I should tell you that I got my summer job working at Bruce Nuclear Power Development. Canada's only private nuclear power plant. I worked there once before as a co-op student from January to April 2004. This time I wasn't a co-op student - I was just a plain old summer student. I got the job by sheer random chance. (My name was literally drawn out of a hat.)
My first night was very unexciting. I met one of my new roommates, an old Chinese fellow by the name of Durren. He and I said "Hi" and that was pretty much it. His English isn't very good, so he doesn't say much to me.
My first day of work comprised of attending an orientation and doing a bunch of paperwork. Unfortunately I was late to orientation - my landlord's daughter, Michelle, offered to drive me to the place I needed to be, but I was like 5 minutes late because it was further than we realized. You all know that I like to be at places at LEAST 10 minutes early... So I felt like a schmuck walking in to a full room during the beginning of a presentation. Luckily no one said anything.
The orientation was unsurprisingly dull. I had received the exact same information during my previous job there. Luckily I stayed awake through it (mostly). I did see some other students falling asleep though.
I pretty much spent the day chatting up with as many people as possible. I met many of them, but haven't seen much of them since (we all work in different buildings). I did manage to meet a few from orientation who I still hang out with, so it was good. I even managed to snag a ride home with one guy, Sunny, from Toronto.
On Monday night I got to meet my other new roommate, ANOTHER Chinese guy named Tao. He came into my room and was wearing a University of Waterloo t-shirt. Yup - the guy goes to my university! He's an environmental science/business major. His English isn't perfect, but it's not bad either. (I'm very amused/happy that I'm living with TWO Chinese guys right after my HK experience - I try to randomly practice my mandarin on them, but they usually don't understand me.)
Tuesday I got to report to my actual work place. I was happy to find out one of the guys from orientation day, Henry (a Chinese guy from Toronto), would be working in my building too. We drove over to our workplace, the Learning Centre, together.
My supervisor for the summer is a nice older lady named Linda. She's very friendly and apparently I'm a lot like her own daughter. If her daughter is anywhere near as obnoxious as me, I feel bad for the lady.
For the most part, my first day of work was spent learning about the place and whatnot. I can't for the life of me think of what I did that day... I know I went to a meeting (and fell asleep in it because the room was hot and I didn't know what they were talking about). I also picked up my security badge. Oh yeah, for the rest of the day, I read through my employee manual and stuff like that because Linda didn't have anything for me to do.
She let me leave work a bit early, half an hour earlier than I normally could have. Because Bruce Power has so many employees (over 3000), they have their own bus system going to the two main towns nearby (Bruce Power is a 20 minute drive into the country). Well, I was waiting for a bus and finally saw one, but it didn't stop to pick me up. So I chased after it and asked the driver if the bus went to the main guard gates (where the Bruce Buses collect passengers). The driver said that I could get on and he'd drop me off at the gates... Well god damnit! The bus I was on wasn't the right bus! I had gotten on the bus meant for high school students! I felt like an idiot, and looked like one too. The driver was very nice and friendly about it though. I got dropped off at the main gates and ended up standing chatting with the guards for awhile - they were super friendly and nice. Finally the "real" Bruce Buses began to arrive. I was able to get on the right bus and go home finally.
Bruce Power helps to organize a community project called "The Living Snow Fence Project." Due to the geography of the region, in the winter, the main highway from Port Elgin to the worksite is terrible for driving on. We often suffer whiteouts (sudden gusts of wind that cause the snow to turn everything white - drivers can't see at all) and there are lots of accidents on the highway.
In order to alleviate the whiteout conditions on the road, Bruce Power employees have started planting trees along the side of the highway in order to block the snow. My supervisor helps to run the project. As her new employee, I got drafted into helping out as well. Therefore the last three days of my first week of work was spent helping out with the Snow Fence Project.
It was both fun and tiring. For safety reasons, I had to wear my steel toed boots. The first day I helped mark out where the trees were supposed to be planted (using spray paint and stuff like that). The rest of the day was spent sitting around watching the machines dig the holes.
I got sunburned because we were out in the sun in a farmer's field all day. It was fun and relaxing.
The second day was less relaxing. We had to get to the Tiverton community centre by 7:00am. That's really early. The plan for the day was to move all the trees to sit beside their holes. (The company wanted the community volunteers to do the actual tree planting so they could be involved in some way.) Oh my God. It was so hard. I helped to move 700 trees, each around 100 pounds (45.5kg).
I was the youngest person on the team (most of the others were older men). I did my absolute best to help out, but after the first 200 trees, my arms were trembling. We were having to left them off a large truck too, so the height made it difficult. By about the 500th tree, the guys on the team could tell I was exhausted and they suggested I hop up on the ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) and move the trees forward for them that way. Despite the number of trees, we were finished by about 11:30.
Everyone did an amazing job and we had a lot of fun doing it. (Half way through the moving, someone managed to find safety glasses for us because the tree's branches and dirt kept getting in our eyes.) We regrouped back at the Tiverton community centre and had a big free pizza lunch.
Sad anecdote: Unfortunately during my first week at the Bruce I only had my black sweatshirt that I had made in China. It's been cold here, so I've had to wear a jacket everyday. After lugging trees around all morning, I had managed to destroy my sweater. :-( It was covered in dirt and tree sap, and I wasn't able to get the sap out, so I had to throw it out.
After helping to prepare some more things, we got to leave for the day.
This was a good thing, especially for me, because by this time, I could barely move due to all the hard work of moving the trees. I honestly could not move the rest of the night. I could barely lift even a bottle of water to my mouth without wincing. I was in PAIN.
The next day I was able to get out of bed in time for work (barely) and drag my butt into the office. The morning was spent doing office work, but in the afternoon Linda and I went back to the community centre to help prepare for the volunteers who would be coming the next day. Not much to report on this day. It was just interesting to see how the team was organized and how they carried out the tasks.
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