Thursday, July 16, 2009

from an outfit to a bright turn ...

These are my windows... because I give my heart to it.
"Surprise! A meeting with the client and contractors in 2 minutes" ... my boss called out on me at the pantry while I was preparing to have my morning coffee ... I panicked. I was sooo dressed-down for a "not-expecting-any-meeting-with-the-client" Wednesday and practically had to make do with skinny jeans, pink RL Polo Shirt and choco-brown flats because I have NO time to change and didn't have my suit/jacket with me on this very day, while I usually have it, I could've easily put it on and it would make the difference!!! But what I have instead is: a Hollister hoodie, which will only make me lesser of a professional if I did wear that! aarrgghh... how can he do this to me?!

And so we went. Regardless of what I have on and what I know about these people I'm meeting for the first time ... what an impression I'm gonna make...hah! This is sooo brilliant of me! This is gonna go down in history!!! I mutter to myself as we drove to the client's office, walked our way to the lobby and in to the conference room ...

Making it to the meeting ahead of time made me feel so much better that I'm seated first while the others kept coming in and I wont have to parade around in my polo shirt and jeans to ease my way onto a seat. ^^ ... We waited a few minutes more, while I stayed self-conscious about whether I still have anything "more" unprofessional on ... like: are my earrings too big? is my lipstick too red? or did I put too much mascara? or I should have put on that expensive perfume ... those kind of thoughts ... and then, ack! my cellphone has dangling trinkets of pink plastic bears, 3 of them all lined up in a chain that dangles at the bottom of my flip phone! I immediately removed it ... 3 pink, plastic bears (jeez!)... biggest to the smallest ... they are sooo cute but at that moment they were like the most horrendous things I could get associated with ... this job sucks if it doesn't like cute! (I know.) But now ... the conference table is filled in by "grown, matured men" of 40 to 50-ish old, I knew I made the right decision of putting away those pink bears out of sight! Only me and my boss is nearing 30, I'm 28 and he's 29, but he was wearing one of his finest dress-shirts, khaki slacks, leather belt with a shiny silver buckle on ... and those, THOSE tan leather Lacoste gator shoes that he bought in Boston! ( ...sigh...) He makes me look even worse than I thought!

(breathing heavily.) ... The meeting rolled about site excavations, trucks, viewing decks, architects, building orientation... glass and aluminum frames ... we were dismissed ahead since we've already discussed our concerns and that ... we have NO problem with our schedule.
We then proceeded to the SITE.
Site...(aaahhhh... the ground location EQUALS heat, dust, mud, dirt, construction site, etc.) We walked a few blocks and the enclosed site was there, were trucks and excavation was on going, hah! who's laughing now?! Actually, there isn't anyone who's laughing but I just thought to myself that I have on the most site-visit-appropriate outfit between me and my boss!

It was business as usual, locations were discussed, steel tubes, frames ... dimensions, the works... I marveled at the ground and visualized how the building will look on it... It's a very unique love, between man and the "ground", when something as massive as to house businesses and people into one area is going to firmly stand on it, changing the landscape forever. It's iconic. It's one of those things that when I grow older, I'd be able to tell stories about...at that, I knew that I once again fell inlove with what I do as a job.

It takes hundreds of heads to work on just one building! ^^

4 comments:

Robin said...

I could just imagine seeing you taking off the bears! This post made me laugh, thanks!

Mark Kreider said...

What a hilarious story. I was with you the whole way rooting for you!

Anonymous said...

Nice of you to stop by my place, abeit maybe accidentally. I thought I'd return the favour.

It still amazes me that how we present ourselves matters so much in business. The days I get to wear shorts to the office and go barefoot are still the days I'm at my most relaxed and productive. Sadly that's rare - and mostly at christmas time when everyone's off.

Mind you, construction sites probably wouldn't lend themselves to barefoot...!

TG said...

Aha, so you're from the Philippines. I am very interested in architecture and especially skyscrapers. Good luck to you :)