Week 1 of (at least) 104.

It’s been my first week at work and I haven’t really been able to do anything much except read training materials. It seems the HR people haven’t given me and my fellow new-joiners Gerald and Jho some necessities for us to work, so we’ve been relegated to observation and reading for now as we can’t even access the computers on our desks. HR seems to have a lot on its hands.

Although the first three days at Robinsons Cybergate Tower 1 have been rather boring, I feel lucky this was the project I was rolled into. Without disclosing anything that might get my neck in trouble at super-secretive Accenture, my first project deals with financial services, so it’s familiar turf for my parents as they were/are employees of banks. From first impression, my coworkers are a nice bunch of people. Paolo Jaucian introduced us on our first day and he immediately told us we were “too uptight” and we needed to loosen up—I guess that says a lot about my officemates already.

Every Thursday they had a regular meet going on at Sheridan Badminton and so I joined in. I’m glad there are quite a few of us who are skilled, so I can play the same way I did in Villamor Air Base. One of my senior team leaders, Trinity, was inviting me for a trip to faraway Ilocos over the extended Labor Day weekend, and they were leaving on Friday night. I was frankly surprised to be invited at such short notice. I couldn’t take them up on the offer, but I did promise to come along on the coming company summer outing on the 13th in Batangas.

I’ve been driving my way to Cybergate since Wednesday, and so the issue of parking made itself known early on. Fortunately, Robinsons Pioneer (which is literally the next building to ours) has an ongoing promo where you can park for free when you get receipts worth PhP300, and my officemates just so happen to have something in place to collect receipts. I’m glad parking costs won’t be an issue for a while. I hope I can stretch my fuel tank to two weeks, though. With gas prices as they are these days, I might be forced to commute soon enough.

Overall I’m really glad to be at Accenture so far. At this point I’m actually itching to do some hands-on work, which I got a sampling of last Friday. It’s not the most thrilling of jobs, but it’s at least something I understand and can probably do well. I’m taking it in stride for now. I hope things stay like this. If I’m going to be here at least two years I might as well enjoy.