I was really sad yesterday, chucking all my unwanted stuff out (luggage weight restrictions!) and at the same time reminiscing about all the wonderful days i’ve had over here at San Francisco.
Gregg was nice enough to offer me a ride this morning to the post office at Castro St., where I mailed out my monitor and camera accessories. Ouch.. US postage is expensive!
I managed to iron out the last bug in my Changelist, was very pleased today.
So I’m mostly done with everything at work, I can leave with a clear conscience =)
So i had this ‘Intern exit interviews’ event scheduled on my calendar in the afternoon today, was wondering what it was. So i punctually turned up at the location, and met my team lead, Matthew Papakipos; we had some idle chatter.
Finally he brought me over to BigTable cafe, citing a change in location, and to my amazement my whole team was there, with a cake for me!!
zomggg… what a surprise! that was so awesome!!
I so totally love my team at Google. They are the coolest, nicest and smartest people around! Oh man.. it makes me even sadder that I would be leaving tomorrow..
and so the ‘exit interviews’ was just a red herring, i knew it!
The room was in such a remote location anyway, some crazy place no one ever goes in building 40!
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In the evening, Min Xuan, Audrey, and Wayne came over for a visit, it was great seeing Singaporeans as usual and i had lots of fun showing them around. I had NO idea NUS had such a program! omg i shall all my CS/ECE friends in NUS to apply! ONE entire year in silicon valley! They are soo going to have fun..
from left: wayne, audrey, minxuan, me.
..oh well. Time to pack!
So much for happy Sundays.
My bike just got stolen from right outside my house.
I locked it to a tree right outside my door and this morning, all prepped up for a daytrip to San Francisco, i stepped out into the sunshine only to find my bike gone.
Oh well, nothing is perfect. How ironic that it happened on my last weekend in california.
I’m all ready to fly back to pittsburgh now, just wrapping up all loose ends.
I am so going to miss my colleagues at work. I could ask for no better people to work with. =/
I feel sad, very sad.. yet gratified for the experience.
Time passes so fast.. especially when you’re scripting =)
Going to San Francisco one last time when I wake up, going to bike round SF and say goodbye to the place that I so dearly love. And hopefully get some yummy japanese treats. :)
On the bright side, i finally got my image gallery up, once I get my pics together I’ll post a link.
So I had just pressed the red ‘Publish’ button on my TextPattern Editor for the previous blog entry when my power went out. And i mean totally out. A total power outage in affluent California.
I didn’t even get to see the lovely HTML that says, “Post submitted.”
The lights just came back on 5 minutes ago, and i must say, only in times of loss do we realize what’s important to us.
My entire neighbourhood was listless without power, but also much more sociable =) Suddenly everyone flooded the roads outside and we started making idle conversations. The grass was greener and the air was sweeter.
Apparently the blackout affected 11 000 homes in California.
But FIVE hours was waay too long. Especially when it went dark.
I was using my bicycle torch to navigate around the house and it wasn’t nice stumbling into things in the dark.
Apparently this is the first time in 8 years this has happened, according to a neighbour. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. Bleh.
Hope Duquesne Electricity in Pittsburgh does a better job.
One week left to Pittsburgh and counting.
So I shall do a short summary of today because I’m feeling a little tired.
Went to office in the morning, tried to chiong a changelist unsuccessfully (trailing whitespaces?!), and we had a YouTube tour for interns in the afternoon.
I put up most of the pics in facebook, you can view it there. But here are some of the nicer ones..
YouTube cafe interior.. looks great! Too bad they only have ONE cafe.. hehe.
Snacks for TGIF at YouTube.
So I kinda rushed off after work today to catch the CalTrain to Palo Alto.
I *made* it to the San Antonio platform just as the train pulled in.
Hurrying to the ticket machine, I bought my CalTrain ticket. ($2.25)
Turning around, I saw the inspector looking at me from the open door.
He intoned directly, “Catch the next train.” then he shut the doors in my face.
And the train sped off.
I was like WTH?!@#
he even waited for me to buy my ticket before doing this! what a …
anyway, i couldn’t make clarissa wait for me (next train is in an hour) so I biked over to Palo Alto. Surprising how quickly I can get there when i actually pedal fast.
We had dinner at a thai restaurant then hurried over to Stanford for the jazz concert.
At Tressider Union right before entering the concert hall.
It was free seating and totally packed! Sigh too bad I was stopped from taking photos in the concert hall, it was pretty nice.
The jazz was so-so, I kinda liked the drummers and some of the piano blues.
They had some big name jazz musicians there, their names unfortunately eluded my small memory bank, but it was still pretty cool nonetheless.
Happy Clarissa and Alex during intermission.
So after the concert ended, there was about an hour before the next CalTrain so we spent it walking around Stanford at night, and I must say that the campus looks *absolutely* gorgeous in the dark, its corridors and arches lit up by dim light.. looks almost like a fantasy. Yes.. my future grad school =)
It was only too soon that it was time to chiong for the train back again, and luckily I caught it this time. yawn. tiring day.
Most awesome day!
Not only did I manage to get a lot of interesting work done and integrated today, we also had the yearly summer cruise for interns this evening! It’s onboard the San Francisco Belle and we’ll be enjoying pretty scenery and dancing all night!
awesome..
First, everyone has to have lunch.
Today it was at Cafe 150, in my building.
Since I had to go at 5pm today, there would be no gym sessions for me today and I was going to chiong and finish all my work.
Lunch was pork loin, beef, and halibut, coupled with some greens.
Skip 5 hours of coding..
and 1 hour asleep onboard the Google bus to San Francisco listening to my ipod..
.. and we’re there! I pull out my wide angle..
a stream of interns boarding the cruise.
Time for photo shots..
Tim pan and I.. my dinner buddy cum ex-CMU student now working fulltime in Google.
Having a glass of white wine.. beer and wine is free at Google events as usual..
Everything’s laid nicely out for dinner.
I feel as if I’m in a hotel.
The dinnerware is enchanting..
Tuck in! Ack.. the queue was so long.
So after dinner, it was about 730pm and the sun broke through the cloudy skies to give a lovely golden glow to everything around. Time to head to the deck!
California is so beautiful..
I’m enjoying the sunset scenery.
The sun is hanging in the sky.
Taking a photo with fellow intern (and CMU student) Matt Delaney.
Matt works on the Google Apps team.
Happy Alex!
Me and Johannes.
Johannes is interning with Youtube, funky!
The sun set quickly and soon the band starting churning out bossa nova (the girl from ipanema) and salsa music.. it was time to dance!
Too bad, no pictures, i was too busy having fun =)
Tim guzzling down a bottle of beer.
A shot of the pretty golden gate bridge as the cruise drew back into the bay.
But nothing lasts forever and soon it was time to alight..
A last look at the cruise before disembarking.
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So my roommate’s gonna be leaving this weekend, leaving me all alone for 2 weeks =/
lots of time for self reflection.
Now is the time for opportunity.
So i’m kinda at a crossroads in my life right now, those close to me would know why.
Things are drawing to a close, i’m finishing up with my project slowly, moss is leaving california for cmu in a week’s time and i’m about to follow suit pretty quickly.
Well all good things must come to an end, it’s up to us to make use of these times wisely.
To end, I bring you another boring narcissistic photo of a Google engineer from Mountain View.
Google ftw!
Watched The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor today at Redwood City.
It was lukewarm.. nothing to shout about, despite the star cast.
In the evening moss and i decided to head over to Sushi Tomi for sushi again.
My camera was up as usual and i was taking pictures furiously as the various plates of sushi was being served at the sushi bar.
So an interesting thing happened. One of the sushi chefs asked me if i could email him the pictures.. he wanted to see if they could be used for sushi tomi’s website!
Haha, it’ll be awesome if that happens!
But anyway, here are some picks of the day:
Yummy blue fin ootoro.. you can actually see the layers of fat.. looks just like kobe beef!
sushi being expertly prepared by one of the chefs there.
sushi chef jin making sure that the sushi is up to standard.
Huge sushi platter which looks extremely yummy..
Today’s Google annual Summer Picnic, and coincidentally happens to fall on the first of August.
It was a lovely, bright and shiny day.. so pretty that i got to office at 9 to finish some python coding for the week before rushing off to the picnic at noon.
So me and atul grabbed our bikes and headed down to Shoreline Amphitheatre, where the festivities and fun fair were being held.
Atul wanted to wear his sunglasses to look cool but i think sunglasses were pretty much neccessary in the blazing sun. It was pleasantly cool though, about 22 °C. (71 °F)
Biking down to the parking area, we were aghast to see..
TONs of google bikes! (GBikes)
These cute blue packages are available free to Googlers and their guests to ride around the Google campus but I had no idea there were so many of them around..
Disembarking from our bikes, we got our free gifts (A Google Kite!), then headed in.
Google air balloon things like this were all over the place.
By now, it was drawing close to 1pm, our stomachs were growling, so time for..
food. foc for Googlers as always =)
Today was a barbeque as expected.. beef brisket and chicken with bbq sauce.
Next we headed to the amphitheatre where several Googlers were performing.
There was this really cool thing that flashes on the screen after every performance, it was a clap o meter!
soo cool! it actually *measures* the volume of the clapping and cheering and streams the resulting ‘diagnosis’ right to the clap o meter!
Following that we strolled down to the main carnival area where huge crowds of Googlers were.
There was a..
minature pool for the kids..
a gigantic slide..
foosball. yes. real foosball. =)
We went around, played a couple of the typical games at the funfair, then we came to this booth that was surround by Googlers. A closer look revealed 3 huge animals – A handsome horse, a docile cow, and a fluffy llama.
So after a little observation, I deduced the llama is crazy.
Why so? you ask me.
It’s actually a hungry, crazy llama.
The llama was catwalking around its pen, oblivious to everyone around him, looking into every crack and crevice for some dry grass to chew on. And i mean every.
Crazy llama sniffing for grass inside the baby stroller, much to the amusement of everyone around.
Obviously we couldn’t pass down a chance to feed the crazy llama, so we did.
Me + Llama = 299792458
Atul + Llama = 94213684
Then there was this cute Google train that chugged around..
Say hi to the Googlers stuffed inside the google train!
Time flies when you’re having fun and it was 4pm only too soon..
Farewell picture next to the Google banner.
After a tiring day, I headed over to Mountain View with my roommate Moss for dinner. Even though it was 6.45pm, the sun was still bright in the sky, casting long shadows on everything. Photo opportunity!
Downtown Mountain View.
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An interesting endnote:
I was having dinner with Moss at Xanh (the vietnamese restaurant downtown), when the waitress clearing Moss’ dishes accidentally knocked a (eaten) bone down to the floor. But instead of picking it up, she turned to Moss and intoned, “You did not see this. It did not happen.“ Then she turned away and strutted off with the dirty dishes.
Startled, Moss and I stared at each other for a couple of seconds, then we burst out laughing. lol.. next time I will like, take my friend’s 100 dollar note out of his wallet right in front of him and tell him, “You did not see me take your money. You will pretend nothing has happened. You will go back to whatever you are doing. You wil..“
Perhaps I will have a 1% chance of actually succeeding in the brainwash.
But lol.. something hilarious to try out anyway.
No.. The puppies aren’t for your stomach.
My boss, Matthew Papakipos, brought 3 deliciously cute small packages to office today.. they are oh so cute puppies that he was about to give away. =/
But knowing how much we adore puppies, he brought them to work so that we could lavish our affections on them.
Well unfortunately they were too hyperactive to take a good snapshot of, (one kept trying to eat my sushi) but i managed to snag a couple of shots nonetheless.
Here’s one for good measure, I think he was sniffing Erika’s shoe.
(the brown puppy was in the blurry foreground)
Compare him with the size of the shoe!
Now about the delicacies bit.. more experimentation with my new lenses.
And what better place to do it than in my favorite cafe, Pintxos!
Pasta with mussels in the foreground, and that should be braised pork rib in the background. The pasta was soo good, it ran out so fast!
Dessert – Raspberries, fluffy cream adorned on top of chocolate creme..
And a day before, at Charlie’s, some BBQ food..
the meat and maize were especially tender and juicy respectively =)
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