I am situated in my new workspace—for the first time in my working life I have an actual cubicle, and I must say it is an improvement. I arranged the computer so that the monitor backs into a corner and I sit at an angle, with my right shoulder facing the doorway. This way I can see people coming, which do wonders to ease my natural state of jumpiness. Everywhere I have worked before, my back was exposed to all traffic, and people would come up behind me or just off to the side at an oblique angle and start talking, and of course I'd pretty much jump through the ceiling tiles.
Getting used to new ambient noise is a bit of a challenge. This office is done all industrial/modern, with exposed ductwork in places, and chunks of artfully arranged suspended ceiling with recessed lighting and other light fixtures hanging here and there. To be honest, it reminds me of the bowels of various starships in various Sci-Fi movies I've seen over the years. Overall, the kind of randomness of the overhead arrangements reminds me of the stowaway camps in Babylon 5's “down below”. The Japanese-influenced sliding doors of the offices and Mondrian-esque glass divider panes that form the angled wall of the conference room remind me of other, more formal interior scenes in Babylon 5. The super-large ventilation ducts rumbling and whooshing directly above my work area can, of course, be nothing other than Jeffries tubes. The white noise created by the un-muffled, exposed HVAC ductwork is making it hard for me to hear and understand people, so I think the word I speak most often in a day is “Pardon?” In my last office, I sat directly below a machine that folds and staples brochures, and when it was running, my monitor would vibrate in time with its wha-bum-pa-thumpa. The effect was much like Betty Boop's furniture dancing along with her to the jazz pumping out of her Victrola.
I've got to learn new terminology, familiarize myself with new resources, and basically just get myself to a point where I can be efficient and knowledgeable. I'm apparently going to be working as a paralegal, as well as an administrative assistant. I'm not 100% sure about how and what the differences between those two job titles are. I guess paralegals do more research work, typically and have to be familiar with the various legal manuals and resources. I know I'll be learning a lot about property, contracts, and public works. It usually takes me about a month to start feeling familiar and confident in a new job, and I expect this will be the case once again.
One thing I know I'm going to have to do is bring back my little coffee pot. I took it home when I started in the Records office because we had a normal coffee pot there and used coffee that tasted all right, but here we have this bizarre beverage vending machine thingy that reminds me so much of the drinks machine in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy” in that what it produces is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee (or, indeed, tea). It's got these little individual-sized plastic cup gizzies that you put into the top of the machine, then press a button, and hot water schlurkles through the little plastic cup into a regular cup below. The individual cups are for various flavored coffees, “green tea” and two types of normal coffee, but unfortunately each variety is pretty foul. Strong and bitter and just kind of weird tasting. Including the Chinese green tea, which tastes kind of like konbu dashi. It's really pretty shocking to take a cup of tea and find that it tastes like seaweed stock. Luckily, there is also a regular hot water dispenser, so I will bring my own tea supply and brew it the normal way, Plus, since my new desk is kind of isolated, nobody is likely to be offended by the scent of lapsang souchong. When I worked in the front office of the Inspections department, a couple of co-workers thought that my Lapsang smelled bad. I'm definitely going to bring my little coffee pot in tomorrow, too. Considering that I am awfully fond of coffee, and not awfully fond of the Nutri-Matic version of said liquid, I should just as well.