By Trina, September 22nd, 2009
We all dread hearing, “Company X has been acquired by Company Y,” especially when Company X is your current employer. In my mind, the word “acquisition” conjures up images of a company’s logo on a billboard being dramatically taken down and a new one unveiled in its place, hordes of men in suits marching arrogantly down their newly acquired corridors and worker bees spending their entire days speculating on what this new deal means to their jobs. That quote and the last of those images have never been a reality for me until this morning.
In between 6am alarm snoozes, I noticed some new text messages on my iPhone. They were tweets from my boss (yes, I have my boss’s tweets texted to my phone…) saying that our big company had been acquired by an even bigger company for X amount of dollars. Now, if that doesn’t make a person wake up, I don’t know what does!! I fired up my laptop and read the news via email from our CEO, various links on twitter and our official press releases.
By Trina, September 6th, 2009
There’s always a tough decision ahead when opportunity comes knocking: is this really the right thing for me to do at this time?? I’ve designed my twenties to be convenient for seizing opportunities, and it’s hard to know what the best move is when you’re completely open. That being the case, it’s best to look at opportunities from a realistic standpoint without letting fear of the details scare you away.
By Trina, July 29th, 2009
We live in a world that teaches us from the beginning not to talk to strangers, and it’s not shocking that when we get older we have trust issues with our fellow humans. I am usually skeptical of every other person around me and hope they won’t try to rob or sexually assault me (that might be the scared little small-town girl inside of me). Then there are the times where you let your guard down, and some jerk store takes advantage of you – that’s right, you know who you are car fixer guy in Woonsocket, RI. On the flip side, I find it hard to trust the people I work with on a daily basis. It seems like everyone has some sort of anti-you agenda, and this planet is every man for his/herself.
That is why when I boarded my plane last night from Fort Lauderdale to Dallas I had every intention of sitting down, writing a superb LA article I had promised to Dan (hadn’t a clue what to write) and not talking to any strangers. Enter: adorable 30-something Texan blonde woman. She started talking to me about how she was a little nervous about flying. It seemed harmless enough, so I chatted to her about pretty surface level topics (weather, flying, why we were both in town, etc). After all, I couldn’t start my article during taxiing anyways, right?
By Trina, July 29th, 2009
Most people imagine the life of a travelling associate is a glamorous one. Although there are perks, it is pretty far from attractive a lot of the time. Dragging a controversially large carry-on suitcase around an airport at 5:30 on Monday mornings, sitting in an oddly-smelling rental car in Humidville, FL, eating overly-priced, mediocre room service by yourself, working long hours and spending several hours of your week sitting next to strangers on an MD-80 airplane is reality.
I recently started on a project in South Florida, and it had been awhile since I’d been a road warrior. I had forgotten some of my strategies for staying organized and keeping my blood pressure down. I’m sharing some of my tips and tricks to keeping it all together when living on the road, and I’d love for others to share theirs. This article is all about organized packing.
By Trina, July 28th, 2009
In college, free food was like gold. The promise of free pizza caused college students to sign up for credit cards, attend meetings for organizations they didn’t care about and show up to sorority functions (this one I know about personally). Even though I have had a steady paycheck for over a year now, I still get excited at the promise of free food.
For traveling I was told that I had approximately $40 per day (or whatever was within reason) to spend on food which caused feelings of extreme joy. I thought I could eat like a king and drink Starbucks every day with that amount of money. I found myself saying things like, “Make that a grande instead of tall…of course I’ll have dessert…I’ll take the one with sprinkles and glaze…I can’t take that home so I’d better eat it.” The early mornings in the airports and late nights at the client sites also led me to make poor decisions. I was going out to eat every night, having a few drinks with dinner, not exercising and running on little sleep. Like a fool I was hoping my metabolism would ramp up and my hips would be immune to airport fast food. Not too surprisingly, I was wrong.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this blog are all mine.
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