Weekend Trips and Tango Slips
I just got home from a fantastic night of tango dancing. Sunday is always my tango day, starting with a lesson in the afternoon and followed by a dance in the evening. I always feel like I'm dancing better if I had a lesson the same day. It helps to have a couple of new moves to show off and legs still warm from the earlier lesson.
I've been doing weekend trips the last twp weeks, hitting up the Bay Area to see Bill, John, Neha, Benita, and Colleen, then Denver to visit my parents on my Mom's birthday. Both were wildly successful and fun.
The Bay Area was a long overdue trip that I'd been promising for about five months. I was in "trip debt", since Neha had come up to visit me in Seattle late last year. Since academic institutions and Googlites get MLK Jr. Day off, I took advantage of my friends' availability and hightailed it south.
Neha picked me up and took me straight to the Googleplex, where I consumed a delicious free lunch and proceeded to roam the halls for the afternoon. Love their offices. Although they have four people in an office and a bunch of big cubicals, the company goes for the open space concept, which means I can see across distances filled with natural light and colors. A radical change for me, since I never feel like I have room to fully strech out my arms in Microsoft office land. Google also has amazing mini-kitchens, each 200ft apart and containing a commercial grade espresso machine, drinks (good ones!), and a very broad assortment of snacks, all free. They even have an adult ball pit, which rocked, at least until Neha lost her badge in it and I had to dig through it and fish it out.
I saw Benita again, which was a little surreal. I had met Benita in a club called Pegasus back in Shanghai during my travels. She was teaching english there for a year and returned home to Palo Alto in June. Benita was a source of comic relief as I text messaged her while riding on buses throughout China. We've been trying to meet up since she got back in June and I'm happy to say that I've now put her in trip debt. :) Satiating a craving, she took Bill and I to a fantastic dim sum lunch.
Seeing the intern team from last summer was a blast. Bill, John, and I watched an episode of Alias, recanting a memory from the trip to Austin last October. We partied up in SF, where I had to smuggle out a pair of shoes for Bill, who was rejected by the bouncer for wearing sandals. We did a boardgame night and played Pictionary and Charades, where we drew things like "semi-permable cell membrane" and acted out "dingleberry." Colleen showed up on Monday in time to do some paved hiking with us and bum around in the great Californian sun. A trip well done!
As for Denver---Lisa and Andrea convinced me the week before that it'd be a Nice Thing to go home and surprise my mother on her birthday, especially since I hadn't been back since Sept '04. So I showed up at my mother's office holding a dozen roses right as she was finishing her day, much to her astonishment. A plan well executed. :) I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity while I was there, so my friend Dave and I hit the slopes and tore it up. Though rusty, Dave is a really good skiier, and I was able to get some pointers on how to improve my skiing techniques, which were beginning to feel a bit stagnated. Still so much to learn, like conquering the almightly mogul. But all in all, another trip well done. :)
I'm so fortunate to live this "young professional" life.
And now...off to face a new week.
Reposted from Adventures of a Vagabond
I've been doing weekend trips the last twp weeks, hitting up the Bay Area to see Bill, John, Neha, Benita, and Colleen, then Denver to visit my parents on my Mom's birthday. Both were wildly successful and fun.
The Bay Area was a long overdue trip that I'd been promising for about five months. I was in "trip debt", since Neha had come up to visit me in Seattle late last year. Since academic institutions and Googlites get MLK Jr. Day off, I took advantage of my friends' availability and hightailed it south.
Neha picked me up and took me straight to the Googleplex, where I consumed a delicious free lunch and proceeded to roam the halls for the afternoon. Love their offices. Although they have four people in an office and a bunch of big cubicals, the company goes for the open space concept, which means I can see across distances filled with natural light and colors. A radical change for me, since I never feel like I have room to fully strech out my arms in Microsoft office land. Google also has amazing mini-kitchens, each 200ft apart and containing a commercial grade espresso machine, drinks (good ones!), and a very broad assortment of snacks, all free. They even have an adult ball pit, which rocked, at least until Neha lost her badge in it and I had to dig through it and fish it out.
I saw Benita again, which was a little surreal. I had met Benita in a club called Pegasus back in Shanghai during my travels. She was teaching english there for a year and returned home to Palo Alto in June. Benita was a source of comic relief as I text messaged her while riding on buses throughout China. We've been trying to meet up since she got back in June and I'm happy to say that I've now put her in trip debt. :) Satiating a craving, she took Bill and I to a fantastic dim sum lunch.
Seeing the intern team from last summer was a blast. Bill, John, and I watched an episode of Alias, recanting a memory from the trip to Austin last October. We partied up in SF, where I had to smuggle out a pair of shoes for Bill, who was rejected by the bouncer for wearing sandals. We did a boardgame night and played Pictionary and Charades, where we drew things like "semi-permable cell membrane" and acted out "dingleberry." Colleen showed up on Monday in time to do some paved hiking with us and bum around in the great Californian sun. A trip well done!
As for Denver---Lisa and Andrea convinced me the week before that it'd be a Nice Thing to go home and surprise my mother on her birthday, especially since I hadn't been back since Sept '04. So I showed up at my mother's office holding a dozen roses right as she was finishing her day, much to her astonishment. A plan well executed. :) I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity while I was there, so my friend Dave and I hit the slopes and tore it up. Though rusty, Dave is a really good skiier, and I was able to get some pointers on how to improve my skiing techniques, which were beginning to feel a bit stagnated. Still so much to learn, like conquering the almightly mogul. But all in all, another trip well done. :)
I'm so fortunate to live this "young professional" life.
And now...off to face a new week.
Reposted from Adventures of a Vagabond