What It's Like To Be An Intern in Hong Kong (the Ballad of Kevin Donahue)

I'll say this: maybe the best part of this internship is that we don't start until 9:30am. That means I don't have to leave until a bit after 9am. Since I'm getting up earlier, I have like 2 hours in the mornings. That's weird. I'm used to getting up and getting out of the house in like 30 minutes.

So, here I am working at a law firm. Now, we've all seen TV, where the sexy new legal intern, square jawed, sophisticated and suave (side note: In junior high, my friend Bob Hooley (sp?) asked our English teacher, 'what does swavay mean?' English teacher replied 'what you're not'. Good times), arrives at the firm and immediately shakes up the place. Women swoon, men glare impotently, printers don't jam every 10 minutes. It's kind of like that, minus the square jaw (mine's more oblong) and with the printer jamming frequently. As mentioned in a previous post, there's not a lot of positive energy coming my way. I'm looking at you office guys! I think tomorrow, I'm going to be super nice to them, and try to talk at every opportunity. Sometimes I think they pretend to not know much English in order to avoid talking with me.

I've spend my days dilligently trying to decipher the scrawlings of my supervisor (the principal partner. Yeah, she wanted the best and she got him!) in order to write all sorts of fun legal-type things. I'm still waiting for them to give me the big case, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I'm hoping that some real law work is gonna come my way, so I can feel like that $100k in debt I'm accumulating might be worth it. Of course, after graduation next year I'll probably still be a Perl programmer trying to pay off law school loans since there's not a lot of jobs out there. That's kind of depressing.

Not to keep harping on this, but I think people in the office might be thawing towards me, at least a bit. But I still haven't been invited to any sort of social events. I imagine everyone else is getting together after work for drinks, karaoki, bum fighting. Whatever. The point is, they're not including me. But it's only been a few days. Maybe if I keep taking the baby steps, we'll all be one happy law firm family soon. Of course, then I've gotta worry about all the tears when I leave next month. Do I really want to do that to anyone? I'm sure it'll hurt at first, but everyone will get over it. Pretty soon I'll just be a dim memory, then even that slight memory will fade until this city forgets me.

But don't worry Hong Kong. We've still got a month. Let's live for the now! And the now! is telling me that I should go to bed. Who am I to question?