first week at new job

So it's the end of my first week with BearingPoint. I can't say I've eased in yet, since I've been on DataStage training since my 2nd day with the company.

The training itself was good. The product isn't that hard to use because there's an air of familiarity to it. I can see it being a very powerful tool for complex data transformation. It is, after all, a tool for Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). Getting the most out of what it can do will be the real challenge. I hope they will put me onto a project that will let me utilise these new skills soon. I dislike being trained on something and then letting it go to waste without being given the opportunity to apply it to real-world scenarios. Anyways, I got a nice little certificate for completing the training.

Training finished up early today, so a number of us went down Flinders Lane to have a nice meal. We were provided meal cards for our lunch during the week, but a number of state-siders wanted something a little more special. We went to the Bluestone restaurant and bar on Flinders Lane between Queen and Elizabeth. The food was really nice. We had 3 different wood-fired pizzas (vegetarian, chilli, and salmon), salad of rocket and goats cheese, and chilli fries with aioli.

The day ended back in the office with some monthly drinks at Harry's bar on the ground floor of our building. It's a nice place with an adjacent restaurant. Drinks were fairly cheap at $3.50 for a glass of Carlton Draught or Stella. It was a good opportunity to mingle with some of the BearingPoint staff. It seems like the company has a lot of recruitment drives, since the majority of the people I met seem to be new staff who have only been working for the company for a few months.