pursuit of happiness

Leah,

First, I would just like to say happy birthday and I hope that you’ve had a good day so far. I know you hate birthdays and what they represent but I really hope that for this one, you approach it differently. For those of you who haven’t had the fortune of meeting Leah yet, she’s a lot of things. She’s obnoxious and has an uncanny ability to embarrass herself in the most inopportune times. She’s annoying with her loud unbearable laughter as you can hear it crackling all the way across the room. To be honest, she’s a lot of things and by no means is she perfect in every way, but I wouldn’t change a thing about her, neither would anyone else that knows her.

Leah, I know you’re probably confused as to why I am writing this here and not telling you this myself or in a private setting. I guess I just want everyone to see and meet the Leah that I know and have grown to absolutely love and adore. Sure people see you out socializing, seemingly emitting happiness and joy and spreading it to every corner of wherever you may be and I’m sure people see you as the grown and very much mature woman that has all of your problems and life figured out. But I feel like the Leah that I know is that and so much more.

Leah, you are so talented and so amazingly gifted. Your ability to communicate with people and to just make them fall head over heels for you in a matter of seconds is unmatched by anyone I’ve met. Your ability to just put all of your problems aside and commit yourself 100 percent to another person, be it listening to them rant about their misfortunes or dropping everything you are doing to offer kind, compassionate advice is one that I appreciate so very much, seeing that very often I am the one at the other end, whining about my trivial issues and petty troubles.

Leah, you were always so ambitious in High School. I remember sitting in class with you drawing ourselves in Stanford and Brown sweaters respectively and I know both of us aren’t at the colleges we wanted to be at, but I feel like we have both made the most of our situations and haven’t let something as insignificant as the school we go to deter us from our dreams. I’m not saying that you aren’t ambitious any longer because without that fiery drive and ambition within you, there is no way you would be in the place you are now. So don’t give up Leah, no matter how much adversity you face, no matter how arduous the road ahead may seem, I know you can do it because take a step back and look at where you are right now. Look at how much love you are surrounded by and how much support you have built up around you. I want to remind you of the Leah I knew in High School who talked about being President of the United States of America and had people voluntarily addressing you as the Queen of Arcadia. You have grown up so much since then and you have made such strides in becoming the person you envisioned yourself becoming. I just really wish that you continue your drive towards attaining all of your dreams and realizing your ambitions because I believe in you and I’ll be there with you to support you every step of the way.

Leah, one quality about you that I have never been able to vocalize my gratitude for is your ability to inspire. You inspire me everyday and help me become a better person. Your attitude, your charisma, and your loving nature just push me towards becoming someone that I am incredibly surprised by. Be it at school, at work, or just when I’m by myself pondering away at my life’s goals, you are somehow able to grab me by the hand and guide me towards the answer. Your unending will to better not only yourself but also those around you is a quality that I am sure everyone that has had the fortune of interacting with you can attest to. Your innate aptitude of encouraging others and motivating them to do bigger and better things is just another reason why I appreciate our friendship so much.

And finally, Leah, you have been so strong and brave in the past year in dealing with all the challenges that came your way. You handled each problem with such poise and courage that I honestly cannot grasp how you managed it. Not only were you able to fight past the countless emotional trials that were seemingly bombarding you incessantly, you were able to not lose sight of what you wanted in life. For those who only see you with a bright cheery smile, they don’t understand that you have your own problems too, that even you have personal difficulties and tribulations that you have to deal with but often have to internalize because of your selfless desire to help others and alleviate their issues, even if it means hurting yourself. Everything you have done so far in your life, everything you have accomplished and attained, you should be proud of yourself. You should be proud of how much you have done and proud of how many people you have impacted and changed. I know your sister and brothers look up to you. I know your mom is incredibly proud of you but above all I know, for a fact, that after everything, your dad would be proud, so proud of who you are and everything you are destined to become.

Leah, I just want to thank you for being there for me and being so willing to listen. I know you are busy and that you might not always have time to stay on the phone and grant me your wise words of advice, but that doesn’t matter. To have just met you and to have had the blessing of having you in my life and just being able to call you my friend is more than enough. So happy birthday Leah and I hope that when you read this, you’ll be reminded that we are all here for you and that we all love you unconditionally and eternally.

Forever yours,
Kevin

Rigatoni Alfredo with Scallops and Sausage. That’s what I had for dinner. Yes. I made it myself and no, I didn’t take a picture of it because it didn’t look amazing and I was hungry. I promise I’ll start posting my culinary experiments though.

So today was my third day at work and I am getting closer to actually starting on my project and being through with all the computer based training. Today we talked about sexual harassment at work and how to stay hydrated out on the rigs and in the afternoon I just did research on my assignment and tried getting these simulation programs on my computer to load. Tomorrow’s last official day of training and friday will be my first full day as an intern, no more training and no more scramble during my countless self-set breaks. I just want to get started on wowing Chevron and everyone there. I know that I get distracted easily and that I’m not the smartest cookie on the  block but I want to succeed too badly to let this golden opportunity go to waste. Tomorrow I’m going to head to work, highlighter ready, pencils filled with lead, and pens clicked, ready to dominate. 

The way we have our offices set up is that you have a desk/table buddy whom you share an office with. The week I’m in the office, he’s out in the field, slaving away on a rig-site; and when I’m out there, he’ll be in the office because we are sleeping on the oil rig, in a trailer filled with dirty, filthy, grimy gear and equipment. Fun! But no really, I’m excited because that’s one of the aspects of the petroleum industry that I absolutely love. The hands-on, get your boots dirty experiences that are both invaluable and interesting. 

I can’t believe it’s only been 3 days of legitimate work, feels like a month and I am alway tired and cranky.  I can’t wait for the three day weekend and go home and hang out with my good old pals. I think Tgu #unicornofthesea (I don’t know how this hashtag nonsense works. Am I suppose to treat it like a Facebook @ or what?) is coming back this weekend and hopefully Chomper and Austin are free as well to do our usual good old jolly shenanigans. But before that, two more days of responsibility and fun. Oh and the picture above is what my desk looks like, waiting to get my second monitor put in and devoid of anything fun but hopefully that’ll change! Goodbye World. 

Highlight of the Day: Starting research on my assignment and learning that things you learn in school are actually applicable in the industry.

Lowlight of the Day: Realizing it was only Wednesday.

Today I won a million dollars! Just kidding but I did just finish my second day at work and it was rather uneventful. 

We had a Chevron Townhall meeting where basically all the employees came down to the meeting rooms for a giant assembly where the Vice President and the general managers all gave their trimester reports regarding different disciplines. I was kind of taken back at first because here were the leaders of Chevron, my boss’s supervisor’s manager’s supreme leader; these were the people I had dreamed to be and am hoping to work towards to become one day. The way people treated them, the way people talked about them, and the way people looked at them, it just emitted a candid array of respect and reverence. 

After that, the drilling and completions interns who have to drive out to their well sites were herded off into driving safety training where we learned about the usual assortment of defensive driving and I think on thursday we are going to go out on the road to practice this. After that we were given a complete tour of the entire facility and I went down to my mentor’s office to talk. 

Now I promised that I wouldn’t just write about what I did during the day because honestly I know no one really cares all that much and to be frank, my day wasn’t exactly the most exciting thing. So I’ll write about something else!

One of my favorite things about work and just being in a professional industry is the fact that you get to dress up and go to work every single day. I know it’s not like high school or even college where people gave you the up-down or a discriminatory stare but I know people notice and honestly I don’t even care if they do, it’s just fun! Now I’m not talking about walking into work everyday with a three piece Armani suit, nor am I saying that I’ll show up to work in a trendy European trench coat and a skinny tie. But a simple dress shirt, dress slacks, and oxfords just make you feel ten times more mature and twenty times more important. And don’t even get me started on the identification badges that they make you clip onto your belt, bulky yes but they make me feel like I’m on top of the world in terms of how official I feel. Yes, I realize the immaturity of what I am saying but today I found myself strutting around the office, giggling to myself as I pretended to own the place. Oh god, I sure hope no one from work finds their way to this, that be horribly embarrassing. 

Man, the real world is tough. I feel so old because as soon as I come home after work and pig out on whatever I can find in the fridge, all I want to do is sleep and the mere fact of knowing I have to wake up the next day around 6 just makes me want to cry. But I guess sacrifices must be made, gone are my wild and crazy nights of partying and hooliganism, that is if you consider re-reading Hunger Games and playing Monopoly with your friends just that then yes, gone are my reckless days. It’s not even 9 yet and I just want to cuddled up in my improvised bed and sleep. I think I will. Goodnight er’body.

Highlight of the Day: Just conversing with all of the D&C interns in the office and getting to know them better.

Lowlight of the Day: Finding out I didn’t get this friday off and that I won’t have a four day weekend. Boohoo. 

As promised, I am going to “blog”/write about stuff every single day of the summer. So today is day one of my summer adventures and also my first real day at work! For all of y’all who don’t know and don’t care enough to stay up to date with my ever so interesting life (just kidding it’s not), I am interning in Bakersfield, California with Chevron as a drilling and completions intern. Basically I dig holes in the ground. I could go on and on about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it but I doubt anyone cares and I am pretty sure I’d be breaching some level of confidentiality.

I had lunch with my mentor after getting assigned my cubicle and just did some standard form filling, expectation setting, people meeting, equipment passing outing, and etcetera. Of course I met the other interns and they were all really cool and incredibly diverse so that was good to see. I guess the craziest thing about today was during the day I had to pinch myself that I was actually here. Coming into college, all I had ever wanted was to work for Chevron, and although last year I worked with Total and thoroughly enjoyed my time there, Chevron was always the end goal. To be sitting in a room, having people who I had once envied and of course still do, and had enormously attempted to kiss up to, call me a peer was an incredibly feeling. I guess hard work does pay off and every thing I have ever sacrificed was all worth it. My brief experience with Chevron so far has been amazing. I almost feel like I’m being wooed by the company, fact after fact of how amazing the company is, person after person recounting their incredible experiences, and perp after perp creating a nice stack of free stuff and Chevron Swag by my desk. The people are all so genuinely nice and considerate and they want to help you succeed so much. It’s so real that it’s almost overwhelming; advice after advice, secret tips after secret tips, there is just so much community around this unit and I really do have to pinch myself to remind me this is all real. 

Ultimately I just feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to have this opportunity and just so thankful and motivated by this chance to prove myself and I promise I won’t kill all the baby animals in California by causing an oil spill. 

Highlight of my Day: Meeting my mentor and seeing my office table and randomly running into my office buddies and just everything dealing with work.

Lowlight of my Day: I left my passport and social security card back in Arcadia so I had to drive 2 hours back to LA after work to get it from my madre but then she took me to Souplantation where I ran into Ashley which reminded of Disneyland so Macie and/or Ashley if you’re reading this which you should be because you’re a caring friend, we’re definitely going. So I guess this isn’t really a lowlight but yes, off to work in 6 hours. Bye!

smichmoo:

(via xwendyyyy)

okay okay last week or 2 of school left with finals! borderline As in most of my classes, gotta kick it into overdrive and ace these tests.

Hmmmmm…

i dont know, a lot of people have been telling me that i m spreading myself too thin with all the stuff i m doing. taking 20 hours of classes, doing student government, co-heading sec’s social committee, staying active in theta tau, and contributing within sg’s internal affairs committee, and LEAP mentoring hopefully, thats like at least an average of 10-15 hours of extracurricular commitments per week. I mean yah thinking about it that way makes it an extremely scary concept but hey, one step at a time, one day at a time. My mom was talking to be about how I shouldnt overwhelm myself by trying to do too much and distinguish myself amongst engineers and within UT in general but i dont know, i m the type of person that dreams big and i think the most important aspect of this is that if i am willing, if i am confident that i can strive through all the hardship, all the late nights, the end result will be definitely worth it.

the home countdown is at 33 days, cant wait to go home and just chill and visit my friends and go out on late night adventures and food excursions. leaving for france june 5th and coming back middle of july most likely, very excited for that opportunity but yah, to everybody that has finals or tests coming up, lets kick some arse.

so once again i feel very fruity for doing this but nevertheless here it is!

10 Day Challenge

• Day 1: Ten random facts about yourself.
• Day 2: Nine things you do everyday.
• Day 3: Eight things that annoy you.
• Day 4: Seven places you like to shop at.
• Day 5: Six songs that you’re addicted to.
• Day 6: Five things you can’t live without.
• Day 7: Four memories you won’t forget.
• Day 8: Three words you can’t go a day without using.
• Day 9: Two things you wish you could do.
• Day 10: One person you can trust.

Nine things I do everyday.

1) attempt to go to class and stay awake in class.

2) eat an obscene amount of food,  j2 and kinsolving will be my undoing.

3) study study study and oh a little bit more of studying

4) meetings! sec meetings mondays, sg assembly tuesdays, hrr wednesdays, pledge meetings thursday, internal affairs over the weekend. :D

5) SMILE!

6) sleep, never in my life have I valued such a simple task so much.

7) tumblr!

8) Be thankful for everything I have in life! my parents, my dog, and my unbelievable friends.

9) Dream about the future.

K. Bai!