Karmick Liu

8.00 AM

This could be when my alarm goes off. I wake up at random times every day - sometimes 7, sometimes 8:30. My place is only a 10min walk away from the office so as long as I don’t wake up after 9 I should be pretty ok.

8.30 AM

Before heading to work, I spend 5 - 10 min glancing through Slack. As many of my coworkers come from different time zones, they might chuck me a message at any time. Usually, I can just reply to those messages on my phone around this time but some of them might need me to go to work first so I can type in a nice, formatted answer on my laptop.

9.00 AM

Now I arrive at the office. The office is at a pretty convenient location. It only takes 10 min to walk to civic (Canberra’s “CBD” area), and also 10 min to get to my university. I guess this is one of the benefits of living in Canberra - we save a lot of time commuting!

9.45 AM

After grabbing some milk and fruits in the office’s kitchen area, I have my breakfast sorted and now I’m going to jump into my first team meeting of the day. The meeting is called a stand-up, it allows every team member to debrief their yesterday and then present a rough plan for today. We do this every morning so we will know how each other is doing and it’s a good time for us to reach out to anyone who might need a hand.

10.30 AM

By now I should be working on my tasks. We use Jira to record all our current work on a big board. This is where I pick up my tasks and update them till they are all done. Sometimes I would like to do a task alone and learn by myself, but other times I’d love to pair with someone so we can peer review our solutions. Different team members have different working styles as well so it’s good to check how a member would like to approach things when we work together.

12.00 PM

Lunch Time! Though I don’t usually eat lunch - unless there are meals ready for grabs in the kitchen, and that could happen quite often! I’ll use the lunch hour to nap, chat with people, or play some games. We have many gaming options in the office: PS4, pinball machine, arcade machine, board games, etc.

1.00 PM

Post lunch meeting with other grads. As a grad, my team is pretty ok that I use some time in a day to work on my grad stuff, which is not a part of the team’s work. Therefore, I can also organise or join some exciting grad events such as an online game party!

3.00 PM

In our portfolio, we have booked 3 - 5 o’clock every Wednesday as our Flow Time. We could utilise this period to do anything we like. I often take it as an opportunity to update my Professional Development Plan, which is a document that records all the goals I want to achieve during my grad year. After that, I will update my rotation blog to capture things I learn while I am with my current team. If I finish updating them early, I might as well call it a day and sign off. Our work hours are pretty flexible so people leave the office whenever they feel like it.

5.00 PM

Leaving work and grabbing dinner on my way home. I live right next to a street that’s famous for its cafes and restaurants, it is my go-to place for food!

7.00 PM

After dinner, I would socialise with my roommates. If it’s a Friday night, I would go bouldering with my friends after 7. Lots of people in the office also go bouldering, it was even my team’s Xmas party activity:)

8.00 PM

If I’m not watching a movie with my friends right now, I’d be spending some time doing stuff I’m interested in: digital drawing, calligraphy, gaming and so much more. There’s never enough time for me to do everything I like so when I get some free time I just pick one thing at a time and let it be my choice of the day.

 

 

10 PM

Time to talk to my family. They live abroad and I guess that’s why they find it so fun to hear literally anything I do in my life in Australia.

 

 

11 PM

Bedtime. I would play some music or listen to some audiobooks before bed as it helps me relax.