Chronicles of a Mexican

Past the Rabbit Hole and Falling through the Madness

First, I apologize for taking such a break from my latest post, but work took a turn to the unexpected. One of my coworkers gave her two weeks notice since she found a better opportunity, so once she broke the news to my team gears were set in motion for me to take over the reigns.

In a sense it was great because now I have more defined job responsibilities rather than juggling one or two projects. However, it also meant that I had to learn to become a logistics planner in two weeks. The job itself is great and really what I hope to get out of working with supply chain, but dealing with some of the people who work with the production plans that me and my other coworker create can be quite ridiculous. It is interesting how people can be so passive aggressive during meetings, thankfully I always wear my anti-passive-aggressiveness pants to brush off such sarcastic comments. For example, my job now consists of planning when different types of wheels need to be scheduled to be finished according to the different polish options. Every morning we have to review shipments for the day and sometimes certain wheels need to be rescheduled because they are still being machine or the raw material is not available. Now imagine my reaction when we give an alternate date for when a wheel can ship and the reaction of a customer service rep is, “Well they say we are going to get the wheels, but who knows…”. I am sorry, but are we not playing for the same team, I mean is not like we purposely want to miss shipments.

Overall, I have liked the planning and logistics aspect of my job, but again the attitude of some people is unbelievable. Another of my favorite reactions is, when we know that we are not going to have all the wheels that are needed, my coworker asks how many would we need to have available to keep the customer at bay. The answer, “Welllll, I need all the wheels….”, oh really, did not know we were still in kindergarden. One of my favorites was my coworker sending an email sending saying that one of the polishing machines was done and a certain wheel was going to short. He was asking customer service to give a ballpark estimate of how many wheels would be needed to meet order to see if we could have a different source/production line switch to those wheels. The idea was to get a number before trying to make unnecessary changeovers that would affect other wheel lines. The response from customer service manager was, “Well we need all the wheels we can get”. Well no shit Sherlock, great job at being useless and non-specific.

Now do not think I am not enjoying my job, but certain attitudes just make me laugh at the end of the day. I am a bit nervous because yesterday I created the production schedule for one of the sources by myself, so we see how it goes. Thankfully next week will be a short week thanks to Thanksgiving coming up, but we will see how it goes.

Mexican Out. End of Transmission. 

Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite!

To Doodle or Not to Doodle

Doodling became an essential part of my college career. I figure once I started working in a full-time non-coop job I would leave the doodles behind, but it seems that they follow me around. However, I was very pleased to have found this TED talk that encourages doodling! I knew before that doodling in your notes was a different way to absorb information through a kinesthetic approach. Yet in all honesty, sometimes my pen or pencil breaks free from the number calculations, the note taking and the flow mapping to have it. I have worked on keeping a separate doodle notebook to keep track of my sketches, but the doodles cannot help feeling curious when there are words and letters around.

ROCity Weekend

Last weekend I was able to make a trip back to RIT since I left for home over the summer. It was also my first official road trip after graduation (Houston was a plane trip, so very different feelings being on the air and on the road). The drive was not bad, although why Buffalo’s weather decided to play monsoon on me is still a mystery. However, despite the gloomy conditions, there is nothing like a good playlist to get you pumped. Moe made fun of me because my choice of snack treats was grapes, cucumbers and granola bars (I can sense the looks of appalling agony by some of you who might read this). I want to believe is a cultural thing, but since my mom never gave me or my sister junk food for our school lunches, that sort of shapes your snacking choices when you are by yourself.

The weekend was great and filled with fun, dancing, bars, shots, beer, and friends. It was fun coming back for a visit to the Alma Mater, and paying a visit to Deaf Deaf Couch (for the few who might get the reference) brought back memories from the summer and senior year. I was asked repeatedly what I missed most about Rochester, and my answer was the same, ‘the people’. Living in different cities (and states) the past five years for school and co-ops just reinforces that the people can make or break the place, and Rochester is no exception to the rule. I was also asked if I missed being in school. The answer was much simple ‘No’. I think when people miss school, they remember hanging out with friends, chilling by the coffee shop, having random adventures and of course, the partying. However, our brains conveniently forget the workload of assignments, deadlines, papers to write, and (once you reach senior classes) the projects you end up doing for free for companies because they are a ‘graduation requirement’.

I love RIT, do not get me wrong, I had a great time, made tons of friends, found great members and explored so many new activities that I had never thought about (learning sign language was one of those awesome things). However, like my grandmother would say ‘Hay un tiempo para todo”, ‘there is a time for everything’. Right now my time is not back at school, and I am happy to be working full time and getting paid for that work. I also enjoy that I am in a city that I have not lived before. I fear that when you stay in Rochester to work fulltime after school, you might risk getting to comfortable with what you know and what is familiar and lose that sense of adventure, and that push that forces you to go out explore new places. I am not saying that staying in Rochester is a bad choice for those who do, you never know where opportunity is going to take you, but for me staying was not a choice I would consider.

Plus Cleveland is just four hours away, so there will be definitely a couple of more visits planned in the future.

End of Transmission. Mexican Out.

America, Americano.

Ever since I got to America, I have always been eager for new adventures, more in the last few years than in the first. Mostly I just like to do activities and when I was invited by my friend Mike to a football practice with some of his buddies, I said “meh, why not!”. Now as a Mexican I have never really agreed that the sport should be called football because you do not really play with your feet, I personally call it americano ( handegg could be another possible good name for it), but being open to a new activity I figure I give it a try. Now I have thrown an americano ball around, but I had never really played it since I always been leaning more towards futbol (a.k.a. soccer for my American friends) for obvious reasons.

I discovered a couple of things during my first practice. It turns out that I am not too bad at running the routes and catching the ball. I am also good at (punning?… punting?) kicking the ball, but that should not come as a shocker (Mexican). Mostly I just tried to adapt my futbol knowledge to how I should move and react, but turns out there are different moves you need to learn such as hitch, slant, curl, post and such. The first couple of offense drills I just ran to the side assuming that as long as I was in an open position, then I was doing something right (again translating futbol to americano). Luckily one of the guys kept whispering where I actually needed to go (but turned out have the time I was right). So at the end of my first practice I felt quite accomplished for my first official americano.

Hence new friends were made, and where my buddy stopped going I followed through. Long story short, I have learned more about americano the last couple of weeks than in my whole lifetime. I have actually reached a new level of appreciation for it, so I am actually flying to Houston, TX to play in a three-day tourney with my new found buddies. Who knew that I could fall for an American sport? Plus why not take the opportunity to travel around, so hello Texas it has been a while!

Mexican Out. End of Transmission.