The past two weeks have been a long run of training. The city-level program ran Tuesday through Thursday the week before, and this Monday through Friday belonged to the provincial-level session. Between the two, I have started to settle into a working rhythm.
Since officially joining on July 14, I have already moved through a fair amount. I spent a month in customer service at the power supply service command center, answering all kinds of calls and building some familiarity with the work. After that I helped out in the HR archive room, where I met the other new hires one by one and got to know them a little.
The city-level training mixed several formats: visits to substations, regular classroom lectures, a tour of the marketing department, outward-bound team building, a short military drill, and a rules-and-regulations exam that was genuinely nerve-racking.
The provincial-level training was held at the electric power college and ran as a closed session. The day started with running at 6:40 a.m.; even by nearly 9 p.m. there was barely free time. The schedule was tight and the material was dense. I met a lot of impressive people and grew closer to the other new hires. In the team-building activity, our group took first place and left the second-place team far behind. The coordination felt almost perfect, and many colleagues also performed on stage. This provincial session included people from other city and county companies too, so there were plenty of new faces and conversations. We also witnessed the university's opening and new-student welcome. The buffet was not much to look forward to—the same few dishes, with little variety. When I first arrived, I helped with the group's blackboard newspaper. It took two days, and because time was short, the result was pretty rough. It did not seem to serve much purpose in the end.
After the training ended, I volunteered to work the weekend shift. It ran from 5:30 p.m. Saturday to 5:30 p.m. Sunday, with time to sleep in between. The main job was answering the phone, but only one call came in, and I happened to pick it up—a slightly alarming moment. Still, the shift felt productive. I took the chance to clean up my computer, delete what needed deleting, and reinstall the system and software.
The most important task was moving the website to another server. There had been two servers, but one was mostly sitting idle, which felt like a waste. So I consolidated the website onto a single server. The shift was quiet and light, which made it possible to get a lot done and even write this blog post. Happy. I'll post a few photos to check whether Qiniu Cloud image hosting still works after the server move.
