Sunday morning run...

Running around the neighborhood this morning aimlessly for an hour... Kinda fun...

In the morning... at about 8am, I took this route. I wanted to start earlier, but it was raining rather heavily.


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And then, in the evening, after witness Rafael Nadal lifted another trophy, and Dinara Safina in top form, winning a title, and the rain (again) stopped. I went for another run. My very first 2-run day. This time, I added a little more distance to it.

Just a little 'triangle' to it, where, from Maple St., I ran til the intersection with Main St, and turned onto Main St. and turned at Gage Lane, and back to this morning route, then, back, and on the very end, instead of making a circle at Spruce St, I ran all the way to Main St, and turned around and back in a more direct, but longer way.


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My left ankle is hurting right now, but, nothing to serious. Stretch and ice a little should do the job. I'm not sure how running 2 runs, instead of one long run will help, there are arguments for and against it. But, I don't think I can sustain this for long. But, it definitely helped piling up the mileage.

This week's mileage : 38 miles. Target for next week: 40 miles.

First week...

So, last week was my very first week of work, real work. However, I didn't really feel new or out of place. If anything, I felt really comfortable, and know my way around.

Before that, last Friday, the day the bed was delivered. In the evening, I went to the bar with the whole bunch of them, and had a really good time.

So, don't want to really bore you guys with my work, but, after just a day or orientation and another day of getting my computer and HR paperwork done, I'm pretty much started doing real work, which I actually enjoy and able to get quite some sense of satisfaction. Workaholic. What more can I say?

Also, I rejoined the gym, so I resumed my running 'regime' again, did 4 miles for Monday - Thursday, and 5 miles on Friday.

Got hit by a strong heat wave, and temperature was up in the 90s for yesterday and today. Also, because of the strong heatwave, I didn't go down to Boston either. The heat, and the people (baseball in the afternoon and basketball at night) would have made it an not-so-enjoyable trip. So, will be going there this weekend instead.

More orientation for the next 2 days, and then, on Thursday, gonna have something like an actuarial-olympics game event. Missed it last year by a week when I interned last year. Not gonna miss it this time. It's gonna be a blast!

Did I mention the NYC trip was great? Well, maybe another post.

one week of great learning experience

So, prior to this, I had not much knowledge about what actuaries really do in the real world. I did learn something about life insurance, annuities and perpetuities, and other stuff. But, I had not much knowledge on the property and casualty (P&C) work that actuaries do. Even that is an overstatement, I was so 'ignorance' that I didn't even know what are included under property and casualty.

Having said that, I learned a great deal in my first week of internship here. Not only did I learn about what they are doing now, my manager is having me working on some rather cutting edge ideas of his, and it'll be what P&C actuaries will be doing in the very near future. Cool huh? And that + being the workaholic that I am, every morning after waking up, I feel good and is actually happy to go to work. Yes, I'm for real. I mean, not many people can actually say that they are happy to go to work. I'm really fortunate to be able to say that loudly and proudly.

My colleagues are great too. Too bad most of them are staying at quite a distance from me, or else, I'm pretty sure we will be hanging out more. But, they are moving to Worcester or the neighboring neighborhood, Shrewsbury really soon though. So, that's a plus, and I'm definitely looking forward to that.

Tomorrow, I'll embark on another long journey, to visit my cousin at Delaware. It's gonna be a 5.5 hours drive, and even though this is dwarfed by the 13 hours drive I took last week, and actually, I'm loving driving now (not the having to pump gas part), I'll be driving quite some distance this weekend, because I'll be driving back on Sunday. So, it's gonna be 11 hours of driving over the weekend. So, that's quite a lot of driving too.

Last but not least, I've been having great success in my running. I ran 3 miles on Monday, 3 miles on Tuesday, 4 miles on Wednesday, 4.5 miles on Thursday, and 5 miles today. And I'm going to the gym tomorrow morning for another run before hitting the road for Delaware at about 10am. So, I think this will be my very first 20+ miles of run week for me. Also, the on-site gym (which cost on $20/month), has personal trainer service for free, and one of them is actually making a work out plan for me to help me achieve my ultimate goal, to run a marathon. I think, at the rate I'm going, and if I stay persistent, I'll be ready for a marathon by the end of the year, or end of the academic year. (Chicago Marathon?)

Also, another last but not least. I went to this supermarket, Price Chopper yesterday. And, I found seafood!!! So, I was looking and the cod fillet jumped to me, and they offer free frying service. So, I bought about 1 lb of cod fish (for 6.99/lb), I didn't know 1lb of cod fish was soooooo much, and I could only managed 1/3 of it. The fish was really fresh, and all I needed to go with it was some soy sauce and black pepper over it. I had it with rice and some mixed vegetables, and it was quite a meal. The fish was really good.

And another proud thing to say is that, I had only eat-out once (today's lunch), and that's also, to eat out with my colleagues (I actually brought lunch, but I didn't eat it, had it for dinner instead). So, I had been cooking and I had been pretty successful. And surprisingly, the rice that I cooked with a pot turns out to be OK. (even though I messed up the first time by having a little bit too much water).

So, it had been a great week. Really good week, looking forward to the weekend, and to Monday, to work, where we will have a meeting, and I'm actually gonna tell the team what I had been doing for my first week, and what I'm working on currently. (the cutting edge stuff is too cutting edge to be shared here, who knows who's reading my blog?)

Take care and have fun!