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Name: Grace
Country: United States
State: Illinois
Birthday: 5/29/1984
Gender: Female
Interests: Staring at myself in the mirror, pretending to read while I stare at myself in the mirror, talking about myself, applying lip gloss, representing the family with the Red Fleece
Expertise: Being pretentious and good looking
Occupation: Student
Industry: Textiles
Message: message me
Member Since:
12/11/2003
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| Monday, August 21, 2006
The time in Florida has been going by so quickly. Everyday from 8AM - 5PM we are in class learning about ERP's (it's actually very interesting after you get over the initial frustration of not knowing what to do) and after dinner, we usually don't have anything going on, so we hang out around the Disney campus. Today, we headed back to Jellyrolls to hang out with some friends (Jen, our friend from Philadelphia, left the next morning, so we went out with her to spend some quality time with her and other friends). Here's a pic of us at Jellyrolls:
Jen, me and Vikkie - Jen and Vikkie actually went to Villanova together and we were all in the same group for our first week of training.
Peter, me, and David. The night was pretty fun since they played my absolute FAVORITE song (The Outfield - Your Love) and since the bar was basically ours, we just hung out for most of the night.
Me and David trying to act hard. Don't you like how I'm wearing sunglasses inside yet again?
David, Darren, Peter, and Luke in the back (Luke went to Villanova with Vikkie as well and is actually in the NYC office with us).
After Jellyrolls, David and I made a bet that I couldn't give him a piggy back ride from the bar to the hotel (the walk includes a slight hill and David Li gained like 20 pounds since college - jk jk!). If I won, I would get to push David into the fountain and if I couldn't piggy back him all the way back to the hotel, he would be able to push me into the water. I couldn't make it all the way, but since everyone was impressed with how far I walked with David on my back, so he let me throw him in...but I joined him:
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| Florida has been so amazing!! I arrived on Monday afternoon (after getting to the airport at 4AM for my 7AM flight  ) and training has been so fun ever since. We're staying at the Swan and Dolphin on Disney's campus:
My room (which I share with Anna, a girl from the Philadelphia office) has a view of the fireworks from Epcot. Every night at 9PM, Epcot has fireworks and we have a perfect view from our hotel room. We can also see this "lake" and the swan paddleboats around the area. I've been hanging out with a lot of people from the NY office as well as some people from LA (some people that I met during training last summer in NJ). Here's a picture of David trying to sneak into the swan paddleboat area:
On our first couple of days, we were walking around the area checking out the pools (there are four or five on the hotel campus and three hot tubs in our area). While we were walking around, we saw this really cute seal and I wanted someone to pose for a picture for my xanga, so Sean from the NY office volunteered. There was a nozzle on the seal's nose, but I thought it would be cute if he pretended like he was kissing the seal's nose, not knowing if the nose squirted out water or not. Sean got down for the picture and then David Li found the button to activate the nozzle and water squirted all over Sean! I couldn't get a good picture because I was laughing so hard, but here's the shot I got:
It was probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen - I wish I could've gotten a better picture of it!
In the Swan Hotel (I'm actually staying in the Dolphin, which is across the lake), there's a Japanese restaurant called Kimono's that we went to on Wednesday. The sushi wasn't that great, but they had karaoke so it was funny to see kids from vacation trying to sing Shakira and the Hanukkah song. Here's the sushi we ordered:
Thursday, August 17, 2006
After dinner, we have free time to do whatever (but we usually don't do anything because we have training everyday from 8AM - 5PM - sooo early!). Since it was Thursday, I decided to go out and just try to make it through a long friday. We headed out to the Boardwalk:
The Boardwalk has some fun places, including JellyRolls, which is this dueling piano bar. The area is really family friendly, but there are also a lot of adult-related activities. A picture of two of the pianists:
The bartenders also get really involved in the singing at the bar (it's pretty fun - they stand on the bars and sing, clap, and dance). Here's David doing the alligator song:
Here's a picture of me, David, Vikkie, and Vivek at Jellyrolls from Thursday night:
And another picture of me and David:
I think my zoolander look is better than David's...your thoughts?
There are also a lot of little candy shops in the area - we found this candy shop on the boardwalk that has sour straws you can buy - here's a picture of Darren excitedly trying out the sour banana:
Friday, August 18, 2006
All week we've been learning about building rapport, being respectful, etc. We also started doing a case study and today, we had to present all the work we did throughout the week. Our team, * (asterisk, in case you couldn't tell), did really well and my group won the competition! (actually, there was no competition but our team decided that we were the clear winners  ). Here's a picture of our team:
Josh (Tyson's Corner office), Jonathan (NY-Metro), David (Chicago), me, Vikkie (NY-Metro), and Jen (Philadelphia). Everyday around 10AM and 2PM, we have breaks when the Dolphin puts out all these snacks for us - we've gotten caramel popcorn, various cheeses, fresh berries with whipped cream (my favorite), chocolate covered pretzels, and all the perrier I could EVER dream of. David and I tried running at 6AM because we knew that we were going to get so fat during training, but we only went one day and the rest we've just been eating like pigs.
We got out really early on Friday (thank goodness!) and headed out to Downtown Disney for dinner at Fultons. Fulton's a Wolfgang Puck restaurant and since we get money for the weekend, we went all out for our first company dinner. Since we all ordered seafood, we had to wear bibs:
He also ordered a poprocks martini that happened to be pink and had cherries in it. The poprocks martini was actually really good - you could feel the poprocks working while you were drinking it! Vikkie and I ordered a bottle of wine (which we finished before we got our main courses) and I ordered lobster and crab:
It was SOOOO good!! We had twelve people in our party (Vikkie and I were the only girls - the one bad thing about working in technology) - and our bill came out to be:
Since we spent so much on our meal on Friday, on Saturday, our meal looked like this:
(no joke, this is what I had for lunch - meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and stuffing). After dinner on Friday night, we headed out to Pleasure Island - here's a picture of the twelve of us in front of Fultons:
(most of the people are from the east coast, except Darren, who's from the LA office).
We started out at the BET club (it was just me and Vikkie dancing...seriously), but then we headed to Motion, where we usually went last summer. A picture of me, Darren, and Vikkie doing my one and only face:
Since Motion wasn't really busy at first, me, Darren, and David started messing around with the locals. Here's my favorite picture from the night:
My favorite picture of David from the night:
And my favorite picture of Darren from Motion:
After dancing and hanging out at Pleasure Island, we headed back to the hotel and I ran into Maulin, Vivek, and Anna, who convinced me to go into the pool at 3AM!! It was a lot of fun (even though the hot tub was like 500 degrees...no exaggeration).
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Today we were pretty lazy and headed out to the pool for most of the afternoon, after reliving some of our IDP days (heading to Walgreens to buy alcohol). Here's me and Vikkie in the cab ride that cost us $50 (okay, maybe not THAT much, but it was pretty expensive):
Interestingly enough, we headed to the exact same Walgreens (they must have a deal with the cab drivers because I think it must be the only store in the area that cab drivers go to):
Once we headed back to the hotel, Vikkie and I headed to the pool with Darren and David. Darren and David both really liked my sunglasses - here's a picture:
In my humble opinion, I think they look better on me.
Since we spent so much money at dinner on Friday, we ended up ordering Giordano's for dinner on Saturday before heading back to Pleasure Island. Vikkie and I are really into taking pictures of ourselves (I have around 50 pictures of just us):
...And we've nicknamed ourselves Ebony and Ivory. (It takes work to be that dark!)
Since there aren't that many places to go on the Disney campus, almost EVERYONE from training showed up at Motion. I even ran into Mary, who's working in Chicago (there aren't too many people from UIUC in Advisory - I think they recruit more for the Assurance practice):
I also met Peter, a guy from the LA office that's half-Hungarian and half-Nigerian. He works in IDM, the department that I interned in last summer:
After Motion closed, we headed back to the pool and stayed there until 3AM swimming and hanging out in the hot tub. We also got these welcome packages that included huge rafts (my future bed, no joke), and everyone blew them up and floated on them (I don't know how they did it considering everyone was really drunk).
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Today we headed to downtown Disney for lunch and to hang out. Since it was so hot, we didn't stay that long, but I did have time to take a picture of the lego lochness monster:
There are a ton of shops that have so many little creatures on the outside - here's the Mr. Potatohead that David and Darren fell in love with:
We hang out with this guy from the NY office named Ounali that's really jolly in person, but when he gets ready to take pictures, his face gets really serious (I don't really know why). In some of the pictures I took from the weekend, it looks like he was photoshopped in since everyone else is really happy and Ounali is just standing there. Here's a picture of Ounali doing his Mr. Potatohead impression:
After getting back from downtown Disney, me, Vikkie, Darren, and David went to the pool (again) and played football, volleyball, and basketball in the pool. These two kids we were playing basketball with were so mean! This one boy, Riley, wouldn't share the ball at all and when I asked why he didn't share, he said that if he had a shot, he was just going to take it.  This kid is like 9-years-old and he's so selfish! After hanging out by the pool, we all headed to the boardwalk again and went to ESPN zone for burgers and the Yankees - Red Sox game. A picture of me and Vikkie outside ESPN's restaurant:
And a picture of me and Darren inside after scarfing down our burgers:
We watched Arrested Development and Weeds after dinner and then I got my dry cleaning (one perk of staying in a hotel for FOUR weeks).
Training has been a lot of fun since there have been so many people, but a lot of people are leaving on Wednesday and we'll start our technical training then. I'm going home for Labor Day, but I'll be here for the other weekends. What's even better is that this week, Audrey is coming for her own training! I'm really excited because it'll be like our internship from last summer but this time, we'll be here longer  . | | |
| I finished my first three days at work and I'm leaving for Florida tomorrow morning (at 3AM because of security  ).
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Audrey and I headed to the Puck Building for a girl's night out of beauty through Shecky's. There were a ton of people at the event:
A lot of vendors sold jewelry, beauty products, and some people were just there to promote their products. I did this quick hand massage and parafin wax - first they exfoliated my hands and then they dipped my hands in this parafin wax to lock in the moisture:
I was trying to do the robot for the picture, but it didn't turn out so well  .
There was also a "celebrity" chef at the event - Dave Lieberman - who signed books for fans (the lines were SO long...and we didn't even buy books, so we just took a picture from the side). He's pretty good looking in person and looks really cheery  :
(The event was also sponsored by Amstel Light and Midori, so we got samples of both).
There were a lot of interesting booths where you could get free samples and do tests; Audrey and I both entered a softlips contest so we could score some free lipgloss:
Do you think Audrey has what it takes to be the new spokesmodel for softlips?? She's entry number 526 - maybe it's online (actually, I just checked and I don't think it is). I actually don't like the lipgloss that much because it tastes really weird and I prefer something more glossy.
We also both did this age viewer where you looked into this mirror to see what's wrong with your face:
The guy working at the booth would look into the other side of the mirror and would tell you your flaws and how to correct them. Luckily, I don't have any sun spots (I attribute that to the SPF 50 that I wear on a daily basis). The guy told me that I need to exfoliate, but that was a pretty vague assessment considering everyone should exfoliate at least once in a while.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Today after work, Audrey and I went out with Dave Li and some coworkers for happy hour ($1 beers - you can't beat that in NYC) and then headed out to dinner with Jason and some other friends. On our way back, we walked by this dog GYM, it was the cutest thing EVER!! All these dogs were just in this room with a huge window, so of course I took the opportunity to take a picture of the cutest little dog staring out of the window:
I REALLY want to get a dog, especially because they're allowed in my building, but I definitely don't have the time yet.
We ended up eating in Bryant Park because it was the greatest day out (actually, it's been really nice out the past week, unlike the first week I was here). Afterwards, we headed back to Audrey's (where I'm staying) and got ready for bed, but then eventually we changed our minds and headed out to The Park, which is an indoor/outdoor bar (good for smokers since you can't smoke indoors anymore). Audrey and I met up with some of her friends from work and her past internship and we also met up with Sherry and her friend, Ian. We were just walking around in the upstairs bar and I saw this guy that looked REALLY familiar (and that NEVER happens to me in NYC since everyone lives in Chicago) and guess what - it was SAGAR RAVI, from Charleston HS:
We used to compete against each other in RADIO SPEAKING in high school (yes, I used to be on the speech team...AND in the marching band...AWESOME, I know). Anyway, Sagar and I lost touch when we went to college but now he's in NYC for law school (Columbia). What a small world!
Here's a picture of me and Audrey towards the end of the night:
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Audrey and I headed to Union Square and Soho today to go window shopping. The weather has been so beautiful - not too hot but not cold either. After shopping, we met up with some of Audrey's friends from school and ate at the Singapore cafe in Chinatown and then got ice cream at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory (which I talked about all during dinner  ). Dinner wasn't that great but it was really fun meeting Audrey's friends. After dinner, we headed to Aer in the meatpacking district with Jason, Kris, Alexis, and Jason's friend from work. They ended up buying three bottles since there were so many guys, but it ended up being really fun (and lots of dancing on tables for me and Audrey). Here's a picture of me and Audrey before the end of the night:
And a picture of me, Jason, and Alexis (she was upset that it was her last night - but don't worry, you'll be back before you know it):
One marriage proposal later, Audrey and I headed back to her place and passed out (after a long day of shopping and dancing, we were beat!).
I'm headed to Florida for the next month (but I'll be back for Labor Day) and then I'll be here for good! I'll be sure to update in Florida (and to write about my airport experience - wish me luck!)
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| Today was my first day of work AND I officially have an apartment! It's a cozy little place in Hell's Kitchen and here's a pic of the kitchen:
The location is great; I can walk to work, Times Square to catch any subway, and apartment was completely remodeled recently. I'm staying until February - now everyone can come visit!
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