how have i been here for three weeks already?

this week's blog update is coming a little early, because tomorrow, i'm off to paris!! when else am i going to get the chance, right? people at work are practically bombarding me with suggestions and notes about where i should go, what i should see, how i should hold my bag in front of me so that it won't get snatched... it's great!

other things this week:

• at first i was a little baffled at how i managed to immediately root out and find lovely people here who are the very same types of socially-conscious advocates that i'm friends with at home. i'm not looking a gift horse (or new friends) in the mouth, but it was a peculiar realization...

• ...but then i realized that maybe going to things like lgbtq+ focus groups just for fun (and maybe a just-shy-of-desperate need for social interaction) might be how i've made most of my friends, anyway, apparently...

• in any case, i'm hard at work exploring a whole list of places recommended to me by anna and rumina. how lucky am i that two of the people in this program hail from cardiff, and are fantastic enough to share a whole ton of suggestions about what's fun around here? insider advantage!

• i had all sorts of questions about things like roundabouts, but maybe i should've been asking about the junk food situation as soon as i got here. however, now i am more informed and my next grocery outing (lidl is a lifesaver!!) is going to be very productive, as you can probably see from my grocery list on the right.

• the international food festival was intensely packed. i practically live in the toronto downtown core, so i'm not unfamiliar with crowds, but the number of people who turned out at cardiff bay over the weekend was unreal!

but it's not all just fun and games here, of course. can't forget to talk about all the fun and work:

• i've been plugging away at my overarching research question; this week i spent a little more time looking into possible applications of the work that i'll be doing here, once i'm back in canada. before i continue refining my "thesis" (as it were) and start hunting for data, i want to make sure it's the right kind of data. it's a very iterative process. (i've been told that this is a very "engineering" type of approach to things, which, i suppose, is good news for me! being an engineering student and all.)

• aside from that, i sat in on another logo conceptualization meeting at the beginning of the week. we're nearly done with the design, now! later today i'll be working with my mentor, barry, to sketch out the beginnings of the new website user interface. the monwel site has been long overdue for a complete rehaul, so in addition to adding an e-commerce component, we're looking to make it as modern, interactive, and representative of a growing social enterprise as possible.

• i got lost on my way to the grocery store this week, and ended up seeing this roundabout display on the right. it's an art piece made from road traffic signs, which makes up a large majority of what monwel produces, so i took a quick picture. i'm gonna try to keep it in mind during the redesign process; a creative piece like this can definitely capture some of the essence of what monwel's about, while at the same time not being quite enough.

• i also sat in on the weekly check-in with andrew, one of the workers here from a government programme. we're drawing up a documented process for new employees; sort of like a curriculum. it's important not to lose sight of monwel's core values during this rebranding period, so we sat down with andrew and talked about things like his goals, skills he wants to learn, how he's finding the workload so far.

neil, the health and safety officer, has been dropping little notes about iso revisions from the bsi (british standards institution) on my desk every day, since one of the things i'm interested in looking at is the process of licensing and other admin policy things that monwel has had to readjust as it transitioned.

he also gave me and a few other newbies part 1/3 of the official (i got an unofficial version on my first day) health and safety training. it was exciting! we got to watch a video from the '00s, fill out a quiz (i felt like i was in high school again!), and then actually practice using real fire extinguishers. the training is obviously important because all sorts of things can happen on the shop floor, but i definitely walked away with these two major thoughts:

• carbon dioxide fire extinguishers make the most horrendously terrifying noises

• water fire extinguishers are so heavy? how are you supposed to lift it up with one hand and squeeze the trigger at the same time? should i be focusing on arm days at the gym because i might apparently be too weak to be any help in the event of a real fire?

important thoughts, clearly.

#jenchan #SSIMexchange