EMEA trip: Day 1

Keeping very short notes about my trip here. Also keeping more "work" appropriate notes for my team, but this is for all the other stuff.

Got in today, my flight was super on time, which I was very pleasantly surprised about! The cab drive was pretty expensive (70 francs) but I got to the office alright. That's right, the office. In order to get my keys for corporate housing, I needed to drop by the office first.

So I puttzed around the office for a while and then walked to the apartment. In the rain. Argh!

The apartment is pretty sweet though, it's 3-br 2-bth with 2 living rooms, and it's totally Ikea'd out. So far I have the place to myself, waiting for other Googlers to check in...maybe.

It's currently only about 7pm here, but it's raining so hard outside I don't want to walk around. Which means I can't even find food right now! So that's why I'm typing in this blog that I haven't touched in months.

Oh well, at least my 2 readers will be able to hear about my travels.

Now, off to wait out the rain, and try to stay up so I'm not jet-lagged in the morning.

Lots of traveling

Not for me, but I have noticed that this weekend everyone and their mother is traveling across the state. I and a bunch of my friends are going to SoCal, while a handful of my other friends are coming up to be in SF for the weekend. That's really weird that we all picked this weekend to make our treks.

While I'm thinking about it, let me mention the update to my phone situation which I wrote about a while ago. Yes, my G1 was cracked and broken :( I contemplated leaving T-Mobile for Verizon's Droid, but then I received my Nexus One. Let me just say that this is the BEST phone ever! Super fast, super slim and super light. I am completely happy with everything about my new phone, and I'm really glad that I waited before jumping over to Verizon's Droid.

Anyway, I'm at the airport, and I'm listening to these 2 weird girls behind me. They complained about a 1 page paper, and then are talking about hospital bills totaling $90k - what the fuck? These girls are crazy. Unless they had a kidney removed and then replaced with gold, they have no idea what they're talking about. Gah, annoying people.

Korea 2009

This past week I went on my first true vacation since starting work. It only took 2 and a half years, lol.

Jack, Kat, Rustom, Val and I visited Bryan and Hanna in Korea.

First of all, let me just say thank you to both Bryan and Hanna for hosting us. They took care of all of us, showing us great sights, great food, and great company. You guys rock!

I don't want to run through an entire diary of what happened over there, it is just too much info, and won't do it justice. Let it be enough to say that I had a great time with my friends walking around Seoul, the countryside, eating LOTS of good food, and seeing people that I haven't been able to hang out with in a long time.

Thanks again to our hosts, it was great fun up to the end - we even got to sprint to our flight! :P

The weekend.

Before I start, in response to Jack's blog entry about only needing a half can of Red Bull to last for the entire day, I usually drink 2 full cans a day. 3 if I'm really tired. In my defense, I only drink the sugar free stuff, but let's face it, I'm going to die when I'm 50. Better start living it up!

In other news, I went down to So Cal for a day to see my brother graduate. UCI has an entirely different graduation process than Cal. First of all, they only give you so many tickets, and you can't request more. What does this mean? It means that since I attended the ceremony my Stepmother could not. LOLOLOLOL, hilarious. Secondly, they lump all of their Social Sciences departments into ONE ceremony. This meant there were over 900 graduates. Which meant over 900 people walked up to the stage, handed some professor their name card , had their name read over the speakers, and then walked to sit back down. Gah. Not so hilarious.

Anyway, congrats to my brother, now he has the daunting task of finding a job in this job market. I don't envy his situation right now.

After the ceremony I took a nap. That's not really part of the story, that's just what happened. In the evening we went to Todai - a sushi buffet in the Puente Hills Mall. If was good. I defenitely ate more than the $28 it cost me to enter the place. Sucks to be you, Todai!

Then, in the morning, as fast as I had arrived, I departed So Cal for home. The only thing I really missed was being able to see my high school friends. Ed, Haamed, Pam and Ray should all get a shout out because I'm sorry I didn't stay long enough to see them. The point I'm going to make however is that 24 hours is SUCH a good amount of time to stay with family. It's long enough to see my dad, mom and grandma, but short enough that they don't mention anything other than pleasantries. I never had to worry or stress while I was there, and I was back in the bay in time to hang out in the afternoon with some friends.

Finally, at the end of the weekend, I got sick. Then I got better. Wow, fast trip, fast sickness, fast recovery, I feel like my life is somehow stuck on fastfoward.

Plenty of fish, but not this weekend...

Lots has happened since I last posted about something other than technology or silly online videos.

I got promoted! You are now looking at (or reading about) a People Programs Specialist, not a mere Coordinator. What does this all mean? Well, I get paid more (which is AWESOME), and I have officially climbed a rung of the Google ladder. Other than that, nothing much. My work load is the same, my projects are the same, and the people I will interact with are the same. The only difference is that now, hopefully, my advice and my agenda items will be respected just a little more :)

I also went on the annual family fishing trip this past weekend. Wow. What an uneventful, frustrating experience. This was the slowest weekend I have ever experienced when catching fish! Only 3 fish for the whole weekend. My smallest brother didn't catch anything. To his face, I laugh and make fun of him for not being a very good fisherman, but actually it is very unusual for someone to go 3 days without a catch. I feel sorry for him. Hopefully he will go out with my dad next weekend to a local river and catch something.

In order to make the drive to the mountains, I rented a car from Enterprise Rent-a-Car. This place is THE best! The girl who rented my car was very nice, friendly, and quick. Her name is Natalie. I highly recommend renting from this place if you live in Emeryville, and don't have a Zipcar account :) I ended up renting the car and driving up the same day. IN the evening I got a call from Enterprise, and I thought there was a problem somehow. I chose not to pick and just let it go to Voicemail. It ended up being Natalie - she was calling in to see if the car was ok and if I got to the mountains alright. I was very impressed by the service.

The car I rented was a Ford Focus. I liked the ride better than my old Civic, and this was a crappy Ford Focus! Every time I rent a car it makes me feel like I should get a new one... Ah, who am I kidding. I'm too cheap to buy a new car and too sentimental to let go of my little Civic. Damn you, Civic!

Wow, a whole post about fish and rental cars...it's a wonder you even read this thing.

Zurich Photos

Finally, I found some time to sit at my computer, click a button , and upload the Zurich pics I took.

Hard to photograph people in these shots since there were only 2 of us, and 2 guys taking pictures of each other can get awkward. :)

Swiss milk?

Last night after work, I got to spend the evening with Mark and Matt, 2 of the webmasters here. We started with a small tour of Zurich, walking around the small streets of old town. It was very cool to see these narrow streets, each one lined with several restaurants, shoppes, and in some cases, strip clubs :)

Matt is a very good tourguide, he was also the one to give us the previous tour when I visited Zurich last year. If he ever needs a career change, I"m sure he could give tours of Zurich for a living, haha.

We ate at a restaurant that Matt said was good - and though it was very Swiss, the ambiance felt oddly enough like a late night Denny's run with beer involved. I had a veal sausage and roesti, tasty stuff! After dinner we walked aroud a little more and ended up at a small place called the Aelpli Bar. So - first, backstory.

The reason Matt wanted to take us to this bar was in order to give Mark a taste of childhood. When Mark was very young, he went to this bar and was given a milk drink to try. He described it as akin to unfiltered sake and milk - above all else, he described it as fricking delicious. We were in search of that long lost, but not forgotten, drink.

Matt led us back into the smaller streets of old town, then turned down a crazy, shady looking alleyway, and already I thought that we would be going to some dive bar that served weird milk. Sure enough, the Aelpli Bar was in the middle of this tiny alley, and did look quite dive-ish.

I was way wrong. When we walked in, the first thing I noticed were the faces that looked back at us. We were easily the youngest people in the bar by 30 or 40 years. It was packed with older people, sining older people. The music in the background? A Swiss band playing, among other things, an accordion. Everyone was singing traditional Swiss songs or children's songs. WHHAAAAAT?

If you ever come to Zurich, go to this bar. Think of the cheesiest, oldest stereotype of Switzerland you can think of. I'm guessing it involves people in lederhosen, old white people singing and swaying back and forth with steins of beer, accordians, the Alps, snow, and a St Bernard with a tiny barrel of whiskey around its neck. 

THIS WAS IT. 

It was the most bizzare thing ever, but it was really cool. We all tried the Aelpli milk, and Mark wasn't lying, it was delicious. Oh, and if you're thinking that my stereotype left out some sort of elk horn from the Ricola commercials, Mark has one in his office. :)

Now it's back to work. Man, I love the Zurich team!

Awake on Zurich time

Saturday afternoon I left for Zurich! Flew Lufthansa, which is a good airline overall, much better than US companies for the price, except this flight was...special.

For the second time in a row on a flight from the US to Europe, I was asked to switch seats with someone for their convenience. The first time it was to accomodate a woman who wanted her older mother to sit with her, and this time it was because a mother had brought her baby, and wanted the seat in order to put the baby down when meals came. In both cases I was very nice about it, I really don't care which seat I'm in as long as I get to pass out.

The seat I was given this time around was in the very back, next to the lavatories, which sucked because people were constantly brushing past my arm in order to get down the aisle. Gah!

We got into Zurich Sunday morning, and had enough time to check into the hotel and get settled before I passed out from exhaustion. I'm quite disappointed in myself because I wanted to walk around a little but ended up sleeping Sunday away.

Now it's Monday, I'm in the office, and to be honest, I'm way more excited to be working than if I were to spend my time traveling Zurich...

I just had lunch with Dennis Hwang! He's the one who used to do all of Google's homepage Doodles, and now manages all of the Webmasters globally. The nerd that I am is quite star-struck - this is one of the first Google employees and probably worth his weight in gold and then some. When Mark introduced Alex and me, Dennis said that he had heard a lot about us and that we did great work...Holy Crap. It's good to know that my work, even if it is small and relatively unimportant, can still be noticed by someone you don't expect. It just means I need to stay on my toes even more.

I get to go to a design review with the webmasters today - should be pretty interesting since I have no idea what goes on there. I probably won't even be able to talk about the things that go on in there...

Zurich and life

For the last few years, the Google Jobs website has been housed in a pretty unreliable CMS.  The reason I say unreliable is becuse the whole jobsite is a hack that has been housed in a system that was never built to accomodate a site as large and dynamic as the jobsite.

With this in mind, I am making yet another trip to Zurich tomorrow. I will be gone for a week in order to brainstorm, develop, and sculpt a new CMS that is meant solely for Google Jobs. It is pretty interesting to think that I will be a vital part of building a new piece of software - making it look and feel the way I want, and making it do things much more efficiently.

Am I excited about building the system? YES! Am I excited about leaving for a week? Not as much as I should be. I feel like there is so much left to do here, and leaving for even a week means that I will either get hopelessly behind, or hopelessly out of the loop.

Leaving for a week, even for work, doesn't negate the fact that I still have responsibilities at the office. And since I am wearing about 5 different hats right now, it'll be hard to come back to a pile of work that will likely be taller than me.

On top of that, I need to find housing. This is turning into a big headache since we can't seem to find a place we like. Maybe it's time to give up and resign myself to the fact that I will be living in the apartment on Telegraphuntil I can afford to buy a house. Lame!

In any case, I leave tomorrow and won't be back until next Sunday. I hope things will stay on the tracks until then.

Moving Day and Spending Things

It always seems like the new year is the most expensive for me. There are so many activities going on, and it's supposed to be the wintertime!

I have just finalized my travel plans to Zurich - I'll be there for one very long week, and I don't know how useful I will find it. Honestly, I feel like I have too many things happening on this side of the Atlantic, that now is not the time to be galavanting off to Zurich. At least this is for work, and hopefully I'll get some good training and a little recognition for it.

Jack and I are starting to look at housing. There is a really awesome place - newly built townhouse with 3 br, 3 bths for really cheap, but it's in a bad neighborhood. In my opinion, I think the danger is manageable, but the trouble will be convincing others that they will be safe in this house.

On top of paying for a trip to Europe and a new apartment, there are things like dinners, ski trips, and golfing to worry about...I need to get a raise and quick.

Vegas - Where college is never really over

This past weekend I went with a bunch of friends to VEGAS!

A sleepless 48 hrs later I came back exhausted and broke. It was pretty awesome.

I don't really want to blog about the details, but it was great to hang out with a bunch of people with whom I haven't partied since college. Work life is so tiring and busy, but it's great when all of my friends, who have jobs and responsibility, can get together and not give a shit for a weekend. Ironically, one topic of conversation this weekend was about how we literally didn't give a shit this weekend.

Vegas, I hate you. I love you.