dtan's blog

Through a few kind words and praises, my resume found its way to the hands of a recruiter at Microsoft a few weeks ago. I was a little shocked as it was not even a week after submission and I was already being scheduled for a 'very technical phone interview'. With a big term project winding down and a Japanese test I had been studying night and day for just around the corner, I was definately not in the ideal state of mind. . .

The interview started with a few HR questions to make sure I was who my resume said I was. . . Why do you want to work at MS? Have you had any previous internships / co-op experience? etc.

The past few weeks have been busy and things have slowed down considerably since. =D

The RGS reversi game we developed using Spring and DWR came out working pretty well. While essentially doubling the amount of implementation where used, AJAX gave our project a rather slick interface and improved usability greatly. We mirrored the existing MVC architecture of Spring MVC by exposing some controller methods, which then returned a model that was automagically converted to javascript objects for us by DWR. Programming with tomcat and j2ee for the first time allowed us to build a fair bit of redundancy into the system, which would have otherwise been a challenge in PHP.

For the past few months, Yurie has been helping me out big time. The JLPT is looming around the corner, and with just 2 weeks left it's nice to know that I'm in a much better place than what I would have been without the help of my volunteer teacher. After a year and a half, she's returning back to Japan and so we had to have a little going away dinner.

Down we went to Guu Otoko-mae to dine on some gyuu tataki, gyuu tongue, salmon, maguro and avacado, satoimo and tons of other good stuff. We had a few drinks and a lot of good laughs, while doing some serious damage to the wallet (as is always the case with Guu). All in all, one of the few times where I've really gotten to relax and hang out with friends over the past few months. To Yurie, best of luck back in Saitama!

Its been much too long since the last time I posted. . .

Things have been busy but at a managable rate. The pressure to line up a job for graduation has been building as of late. Luckily the industry seems to be a tad bit more thirsty for new grads then it was before I left on my internship abroad. There's a new energy surrounding IT in vancouver (and down south) and with some luck I'll line up something sooner rather than later.

The information sessions have mostly come and gone for the first term. Apart from getting a good idea of what to expect at the companies, the info sessions are a great way to get a free meal. Sure its pizza or sandwiches, but for all the starving students out there, you can't beat it. . .