Well I haven’t blogged for a really long time. I’m now in Toronto and all settled in.
I arrived in Toronto on May 14th. My cousin picked me up from the airport (~9 pm) then we went to a birthday party in Markham. This party was with my cousin and his family friends. Some may not know, but I come from a family that has really short generation gaps – meaning my cousin is much older than me and my niece (his daugthers) are my age [long story]. Anyways, the party was sorta boring since there was no one really my age to talk with. So I just had drinks with my cousin while he babbled about how todays kids are all messed up – something which I see already so I just say thanx for stating the obvious. This only makes me think that there is something really different between teens in Ontario and Alberta. After about a 4 hour plane ride I was pretty beat at around 11 pm at the party – but then the food came. I just ate then was ready to come home. I crashed at his place for the night.
Next morning, I checked into my hotel room. Apparently I was supposed to check in on May 14th, but since I checked in late I was given another room for a day. My room was temporarily plcaed on the 8th floor, which is the Platinum Level of the Hotel. Very nice room, I even had a robe waiting for me! After leaving my stuff in the hotel I went and did some grocery shopping and then crashed at my cousins place for the night. My niece needed help with her math homework (good old high school math), so I helped her out. The night was pretty much done then and I hit the sack.
Next day I checked into my hotel room and did some reading until my room on the forth floor with the other Extreme Blue members was ready. At about 4 pm I moved downstairs. On my way down I had to get new keys for my room from the main desk. In the process, I noticed that there were a lot of Indian people outside the hotel and in the lobby. After getting my new keys, I stopped off to ask a fellow what was going on. Apparently Rithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai were in my hotel! They were doing a concert at the Air Canada centre that evening.
Amazing eh! For those who don’t know who these people are they are the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman of Hollywood in Bollywood. On the screen they appeared to be tall and muscular but in reality they aren’t. Both were my height. I got as many photos as I could (which wasn’t much) since there were tonnes of girls running around. Aishwarya looks very beautiful in real life, its quite breath taking.
After that I came back into the hotel and was heading to my room when I ran into some of the other Extreme Blue members. We did the HI and HELLO business and then I headed off to my room to unpack. I had 1 massive box and 2 bags to unpack and I did that within 2 hours. Thereafter, all the students went to Kelseys for dinner.
The next two days consisted of orientation and project overviews. Our project is going to be very heavy and challenging. This is all I will blog about. We got a lot of free food and we even went to play survivor type games near the Docks in downtown Toronto. We got lots of goodies – like a backpack, watch, mug, portfolio, and even an electronic calendar/clock for your desk. More cool than this, we got our own laptops – ThinkPad T41p’s. The newest laptops on the market and not even VP’s or execs at the company get these machines! The HR team is very cool and fun to hang around with. Usually HR is like that one block in the company that tries to understand their students but never can and it seems like they never really care about you. IBM really solves this problem and they work with you. I’ve had a blast in the past week with them. Despite all this fun and after being scared outta my pants of the project description on Monday, we started doing OT on the first day of work. Within 5 days this week I’ve put in about 60 hours of work. Work is very cool because its almost like apprentice too, we get to call all the shots and decide what goes into our product 
.
At work we joined the company’s volleyball tournament. Haha we’ll probably lose but it will be great fun. I say this because most of us are short people or non-volleyball people.
Once again HR is awesome, they gave up city passes to go around TO and do sight seeing. On Saturday we went to the CN tower, Casa Loma, and the U of T campus. It was good times.
Its great to have your bed done for you everyday!
Oh yeah, last but not least. The breakfast at the hotel is very nice. They have everything you can ever think of! A twisty story is that the chick greating people for the breakfast is so damn hot. Shes a white chick with dark blond curly hair. Shes very friendly and always happy. The bad thing is that shes probably 25 or older. I guess we’ll have to strike up a converation and find out.
admin IBM Extreme Blue
