I can’t believe that I am living in Vancouver now!
Actually, this is my forth time, I came to Vancouver, but this is FIRST time to live here!!
Last three times, I spent here only for three days for each trip, so I didn’t have a much time to see in Vancouver. I’m so excited to explore REAL Vancouver life!
Little bit about myself. I was born and raised in Japan. After graduate my college, (my major was the international studies)I had worked as an administrative assistant and secretary for several multi-national companies, most are as a contractor for more than 10 years. I also had worked as a media coordinator and office manager at the publishing company for three years.
I always wanted to study and work in abroad, but I have not had a chance before. I even got a working holiday visa for Canada when I was in 20s, but I could not come due to complex reasons… I really regretted my decision I quitted to come to Canada when I was in 20s, so now here I am! I don’t want to regret my life anymore. I want to do and challenge many things what I want to.
I am currently taking a course called “ Web and Mobile App. Development” at the community college in Vancouver. Why I choose this course? Because after working as an administrative assistant, I think this job is called “generalist” , for such a a long time, I feel like I want to be a specialist of a certain field.
Administrative Assistant job was quite easy for me. Copy and scan documents, pick-up mails, pick-up phone calls, sending emails, arrange meetings…etc. Everybody can do this job, I thought. Even I quit my admin job, there are always filled in my position.
So, I started thinking that I needed to be specialist. I want someone to needs me.
I also had a chance to meet my colleague, web developer, who is from Indonesia, when I worked at the publishing company. He was a student who studying Japanese, when I met him. He had a little experience of web developer in Indonesia, but no experience in Japan.
At the publishing company, I was also in charge to invoices. I issued about 200 invoices per months with Excel ! Just copied from the previous month invoice and change the date, amount and print it! This is awful system, because it was easy to make mistakes, and difficult to track the payment status. It was so manual!!
But after my colleague from Indonesia joined our company, he create the estimate and invoice system. It made me my job much easier. He always made impossible possible. He have built many platforms and websites for our clients during I worked the publishing company. Every time he create new plat form or website, I always thought, “ Wow! He is so cool! How can he do that ?”
This Indonesian old colleague inspired me to interested in programming. I’ve been using PC for a long time at work, and I was good at Excel, PowerPoint..etc, but no experience programming. “ I want to be like my colleague from Indonesia. I want to be good at using PC more, and I want to be a specialist of computer! “
So here I am in Vancouver to studying programming now!
My goal is that I want to be a software developer and create “admin-friendly office system” for many admin assistants who struggles with useless, unfriendly platform or office systems everyday, I used to do that.
