Yiming Ma

5.45 AM

My second snooze alarm goes off and I prefer to take my time to make a healthy breakfast even though it only takes about 15 minutes to drive to the office from home. Today’s menu is the omelette, green salad with ranch dressing and a glass of freshly made soy milk. After a sensational breakie, I get dressed for the work.

7.00 AM

Here I am in the office, clocking in and officially ready to make a delightful and productive day. I set my laptop up and get it running, meanwhile, I go to the kitchen and make myself a cuppa (I’m a big fan of Yorkshire tea, with a tiny drip of milk). After returning to my desk, I open my Gantt Chart to recap the work I have completed yesterday and new goals/tasks/follow-ups set for today. I then quickly prioritise today’s tasks in my head to ensure a productive time management and optimal outcomes.

10.00 AM

A new message from “Coffee Troopers” on Teams pops up on my desktop, a friendly reminder from my peers to summon me for a coffee walk. We walk down to the nearest local servo to grab some coffee together, I’m not a coffee person but I’d like to tag along for a stroll to fresh up my mind as well as keeping my colleagues company.

10.15 AM

I have booked a steer session with a senior engineer from the design department at 10:45 AM hoping for some insightful feedback on my preliminary design for ships boat davit hydraulic hose issues so that I can communicate to our client with confidence on next steps. I’m scrolling through the list of raised questions beforehand to ensure all topics I’d like to touch on are incorporated and all related documents are accessible for the meeting.

11.45 PM

Upon being inspired by his profound input, I have decided to take on some of constructive feedback and revise the preliminary design proposal as per his commendations.

1.00 PM

Time for lunch! I have brought some homemade food – poached salmon miso soup, I’m currently on a high-protein low-card diet to achieve a 2021 resolution – gain more muscle. This office represents generosity well and colleagues often bring snacks for people to share at lunch time and ladies sometimes get hyped about new recipes they discovered over the weekend.

1.30 PM

I have an urge to visit the vessel in Henderson this afternoon for visualising the potential limitations of proposed engineering solutions for the HVAC system. I put the PPE and helmet on, double check I have taken relevant schematics and the access card, I then travel to Henderson by car with another graduate engineer involved in this project. This really helps me ensure the engineering solutions we have developed are realistically feasible and practical.

3.00 PM

On the way back to our main camp after brainstorming about viable adjustment ideas, we bump into some of other graduates, get distracted by their banters and end up spending the second break catching up on our work and lives a bit. But we got in mind that there’s still some work waiting for us to finalise before calling a day.

4.30 PM

Time flies. I tick the last to-do task by skimming through the plan set for tomorrow and am officially released from duties for today. I change into my sportswear and head off straight to the gym for some HIIT trainings.

7.00 PM

I like spending some time on oil painting at night, this is my little trick of releasing the stress and winding down for the day. One of my childhood dreams is to open an art gallery so I’m slowly getting ready with the artwork I’m going to exhibit in the future ;)

 

Joker played by Joaquin Phoenix in 2019

9.15 PM

I remember to put my easel board away in the storage room before going to bed. One night I left it in the living room, I got startled really badly by the Joker portrait when I walked past it half-awake for some water . I put some soft piano music on and quickly doze off.