I don't think that *yawn* I will be *yawn able to *yawn * get through this entry *yawn* without yawning every second. I am exhausted right now!
*5 minutes later*
Whew! That was so much more better. A cup of coffee really does the trick.
Anyhow, today topic of interest.....Take Your Kids to Work Day.
By the way, brace yourselves; this entry is going to be huge (reflection of my excitement.)
Today I went with my dad to his place of work- TD Bank. He is a lead architect. I woke up at regular time and was there by 8:30. I learned so many cool and interesting things about his building. His building (close to STC), is called SOC (Scarborough Operating Centre), is the heart of TD. It is only 1 of 2. It is so important that the building isn't even labelled - that is for the safety of the data.
When I got there and went to my dad's area, I got to see where he is at work and what people he associates with. Then at 9:00 on the dot, my dad dropped me off at the conference room. TD was offering a half-day workshop for grade 9 students. There were about 12 kids seated around the oval table. I got a name tag and then we started with an icebreaker which covered our names, who our host was, our school, our hobbies, what we want to be when we grow up and if we have any pets. It was very interesting to see all the multicultural people and faces.
We then started on our tour. I actually felt very special because we were granted special permission to see places that even our parents weren't allowed to see. :)
Today was basiclly like computer studies. We saw many hardware, software and CPU's. There were also many big machines, devices and wires. Each hardware box alone costs about 5 million dollars. Wow, isn't that a lot. We learned that if someone in Vancouver makes a transaction, the information from their card to a branch in downtown and then gets updated at SOC.All of this happens in anout a second.
We then came back to the conference room for snacks and trivia game of Jeopardy. I wasn't so good at it, but learned a lot about TD and the value that education holds in our world. We also learned public speaking, writing resumes and interview tips. After that, we resumed our tour and this time explored and saw different people at their jobs. That was the last part of the tour, after which we went back and got certificates, lunch vouchers and gifts.
I personally thought that the gifts were very cool - we got a TD gym bag filled with dollar shaped pencils, mints, chocolates, pretty little stickies, stainless steel water bottles, pens, highlighter and more cool and nifty things.
This ended at about 12:00. After a good lunch of salad and cold macaroni, my dad and I went to downtown for a meeting. When we got their, it turned out that there was a miscommunication and the meeting was scheduled for an hour later. tTo kill time, we roamed around the underground shops -it was an underground mall. When the meeting started, my joy quickly faded away. They were all talking about things I didn't understand and I was on the verge of sleeping. When the meeting was finally finished at 4:00, my dad and me rushed back home, but unfortunately we were caught in traffic.
Now I really understand the importance of education and what my dad does to make money for my family. This has also given me some thought to what I would like to do when I grow up.
Overall, I don't think that I have ever felt this tired before in my life.
I hope that you all learned something today as well.
Cheers,
Natasha Jain
P.S A useless fact: The architect who designed the Eaton Centre was the same who designed my dad's build. Cool eh?
P.P.S I sincerely hope I didn't bore you with my 10 page essay.
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