Initial Review: Work and Living

People

Professor Carlos has a huge puggy. A very large, fat, adorable pug. He says “my puggy” with the cutest accent and brightest smile as he shows us pictures. He is our go-to person for pretty much everything. He is picking up English again after almost 30 years without speaking it. I love the way he speaks; he enunciates everything very clearly, with a lot of intonation and expression. He is the iSEED program host, and has visited Rice/Houston multiple times to set up the exchange.

Christian and Chips are my main contacts at work. Christian is the CEO of Rockhead. He is a lighthearted, stylish mid-40s guy that could be mistaken for a 25-year-old. Chips is in charge of a bunch of things at Rockhead: develepment, testing, marketing, publicity. He speaks English really well. He is the leader of the strange-noise-squad (see Work Environment below). He is very personable, going out of his way to talk about American culture; he travels to Game Development Conferences in the U.S. and Europe fairly often.  He is going to be in Austin and Houston this Fall – we are planning to meet up and go to a Texans football game together.

Bruno is a student here at PUCRS, but he’s going to Rice this summer! He has taken good care of us while we’re here. I hope the Houston crew does the same for him. We’ve been out to eat with him and his girlfriend, Rosanna, on a few different occasions.

Rafael is an engineering student from PUCRS who did the Rice summer experience in engineering design with Allie and Nathalie. He is pretty busy with studies, research, and work, but he’s been a great help when we’re on campus. He loves cars, both aesthetically and from an engineering perspective (he has a 70s Volkswagen Beetle and truck and city car).

Casa do campus living and culture

Most everyone in the house arrived around the same time, at the beginning of the semester in February. They learned Portuguese together, go two know Porto Alegre together, have traveled together, and live like a family. We kind of came into the picture at a strange time, but they are still verey welcoming… it’s just not the same as living together for so long.

We have a WhatsApp group with all 50-ish people who are living here. Hearing the gossip and news from everyone is nice: it gives a comforting sense of camaraderie. We chat about meals, transportation times, laundry, general complaints, weekend plans…

Nathalie and Allie are sharing a room, whereas I’m all alone in my room. The unfortunate part of that (for Allie and Nathalie) is that the rooms are the same size. They have a slightly larger bathroom, but it doesn’t make up for the half space. The rooms are about the size of a college dorm (yes, I recognize that that varies widely — but you get the point).

As it’s rained every day for the past week, laundry has been complicated. Even clothes that haven’t been washed seem wet when I put them on because it’s so humid.

Kitchen adventures… The kitchen facilities are not quite what we thought they would be. There are two half-kitchens for the 50-ish people who live at Casa do Campus. Luckily most everyone has given up on cooking (either out of apathy or frustration). On one of the first nights, because there is only cold water in the kitchen, we had to get creative; chicken thawing consisted of putting the frozen chicken in a stolen pot (one of the few) from the kitchen and giving it a nice hot shower in my room. Flexibility is key. We have a lot of fun in the kitchen.

We are certainly getting better at using our resources – and lowering our expectations. We plan to go shopping on Saturdays and stock up on pasta, rice, chicken, sausage, sandwich supplies, capsicum, and eggs for the week.

Nathalie and I usually cook together, whereas Allie eats pasta almost every day and eggs otherwise.

Overview of my work

I am writing an algorithm that will connect two segments of track in a kart racing game, similar to Mario Kart. I’ll write more on the specifics of my work later.

It’s nice to know that topics that we learn in classes are actually useful in the real world. Not like I doubted it, but it sure is nice to see everything come together. I have used concepts from my linear algebra class, intro to computer science class, intro to engineering design class, as well as my algorithmic thinking class.

I also did some translating for their online wiki page. French translation principles came into play.

Work Environment

The office space consists of one room with 10 cubicle-like workspace in a new building in TECNOPUC. Very startup.

Most days, the whole team walks to get lunch at one of the many buffets on campus. Chips and I have had interesting conversations about Brazilian and American culture. Yesterday we talked about the reason why Europeans were not able to enslave the indigenous tribes living here when they discovered this land. He said that the people living here were so passive about the Europeans “stealing” from them (to them it wasn’t exactly stealing because they didn’t pretend to own anything) and about their attempted enslavement to the point that the Europeans abandoned their efforts govern tribes.

Everyone dresses very casually. We didn’t really know which companies we would be working in when we left, so I came prepared for business casual dress (mostly slacks with a nice dress shirt). I think I’m the only one who has worn a collared shirt so far. They are usually in t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers.

Strange noises often echo throughout the space – squawks, squeaks, random whistles, loud humming. What should I expect? It’s a startup with ten male computer scientists and game developers. I actually ended up asking Chips if this environment is normal, and he said that most game development startups are just as weird, or even more strange.

If I could describe the environment in one word: casual. At random moments during the day, everyone will crowd around a screen to watch an update on a soccer team or a silly video of people falling and making a fool of themselves. On my first day, we played a tournament of Mario Kart before getting to work. Their language is jesting and vulgar. There is no schedule or work hours.

There are hardly any women in our companies. There are none at Rockhead, one at Toth (Allie’s company), and 4 at HP (Nathalie’s). I really didn’t expect it to be like this here; I thought that, especially being inside a university, there would be at least slightly more equal representation. Muno said that 50% of women who start grad school don’t finish because of bullying. I am glad that Allie and Nathalie have the opportunity to represent women in their companies.

AN AVerage day

We were originally told that we would probably all start work at 8am… mm not quite. Most people at Rockhead don’t come in until 10:30 or 11. Nathalie, Allie, and I leave Casa do Campus at 9 and arrive at TECNOPUC at 9:30ish.

The Rockhead team usually goes to get lunch together around 1pm. It seems like most other companies have lunch closer to noon, so the restaurants are pretty empty by the time we arrive. There is no time limit for lunch – 45 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half… people just go with the flow.

Christian is also a computer science professor at PUCRS. Because we are located right on campus, he just stays to teach his class at 7pm. My understanding is that most of the team stays until 7:30 or 8.

We Uber back to Casa because it’s dark and not the safest walk (though very short). I feel kind of ridiculous Ubering back, but we don’t have much of a choice. A few students from Casa have been robbed walking back in the dark. No one has been hurt, though.

Random thoughts and notes of the day:

• Allie’s snarky comments, part 2: In a conversation about my food consumption and weight, Allie points out that “If I can hug you and get a paper cut, you’re too skinny”
• Acoustic covers of American songs are very popular here – a little too popular… We heard a blues acoustic cover of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses
• I’ve been listening to the same two songs every night before I go to sleep, and two in the morning when I wake up. I listen to Opus 23 (Dustin O’Halloran) and Gymnopédie No. 1 (Erik Satie) at night and Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu, Op. 66 and the 3rd movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Piano Sonata.  It’s been a little over a week now, and I’m telling myself that I can see a difference in my sleep patterns :).