I gave in to the weather

I gave up my attempts to explore more of the city during my last day here. I'm hiding here in the lounge of my hotel, doing work that I could easily be doing in NZ. The rain is so hard, I saw a sea otter exclaim to me "Fuck this, I'm going somewhere dry", before diving into the ocean.

Want photos of rain? Cause this is how you get photos of rain.

This is my day

Seriously San Francisco? Seriously?

Monday Rain Day

My status of bringer of rain is now firmly earned. The entire day so far has been rain. Not to be deterred (this time), I went for another breakfast at another diner, then walked up to City Hall and visited the San Francisco public library.

I do love the architecture of the city; you have new glass towers going up next to a more gothic style buildings. What i enjoy the most is the tiered shapes. They aren't rectangles, but instead have character. It seems they also frequently have open areas, cafes, etc on the top of the tier, something that I think Auckland buildings really should embrace more.

The TARDIS has shrunk

Super Bowl Sunday

Sunday was the US Super Bowl, but one has to start the morning with a good old fashioned American breakfast, so it was to an American diner that I went, to sit at a counter, drink coffee and eat greasy food. Order up.

I was joined by an old friend who recommended the place, and later took me on a weekend tour of the LinkedIn SF City offices. Remember how I complained, where were the tall buildings in Mountain View? LinkedIn have a 30 something story building, all to themselves. Ok, so that's where they're hiding everyone.

I visited the Millennium Building, infamous that it is a new building that is already sinking and tilting. It's not exactly the Pisa Tower, but its the subject of a number of expensive lawsuits. Around the base it's noticeable once you've been told the story. Cracked pavement, the street to front door is slopped now.

Eventually I met up with a friend that I stayed with last time I was in San Fran, she's moved up in the world and has an awesome apartment. We went to her building after lunch, where they had a *sponsored* Super Bowl party at the apartment buildings common area.

LinkedIn building

I am now an expert at American Football and can give a commentary that the New England Patriots did a stunning victory on a come from behind win, entering the 4th quarter 25 points down, the Falcons defence collapsed, and the game ended with the Patriots up 34-28 in overtime. The most stunning play of the game was the Hail Mary throw from Quarter Back Tom Brady that was almost guaranteed to be intercepted, but Wide Receiver Julian Edelman managed the catch in a manner that had to be seen to be believed.

And that's drained my football knowledge. I only know two positions, and two players, and two teams. So long as I only ever watch those teams, and care about those players, I can sound knowledgable.

Unfortunately whilst the weather had held off most of the day, by the time it came to walking home, the skies had opened up and my status as Rain God was reaffirmed. Despite my ombrophile nature, I chose Uber as my method of transport back to my hotel.

The apartment building has a fireplace in their common area.

New hotel, new places, new things to see

The ride from the station to the hotel led me past the Oakland Bay bridge - which in and of itself is a beautiful bridge - the red one not withstanding.

I'm off for breakfast, but thought I best put at least something here! Last night was a quiet night in, today I'm off for breakfast with a friend, then, assuming the rain does hold off (sshhh! It's currently not raining), I'll go explore some. San Francisco is pretty big.

No sarcastic winding remarks this morning I'm afraid.

The Rain God

In his penultimate book of his best known work, Douglas Adams told a story of a gentleman for whom it always rained, wherever he went. Always. Ceaselessly. San Francisco knows me as this man. I left Sunnyvale this morning, where it lived up to its name. I sat at the train station with the sun beating down upon me (if this were NZ, I'd be very badly sunburnt). I got on the train and as soon as I started heading to San Francisco proper, the rain opened up again.

Last year when I was here, San Francisco had been in the middle of an extremely bad drought. They hadn't seen as much as a drop of water from the sky in many months – that is until I got there. I was there for 5 days, staying in the city. It rained. every. single. day. When it wasn't drizzling, it was splattering, when it wasn't splattering, it was down-pouring. The very day after I left, the clouds disappeared and rain was not seen for a long time after.

My name is The Rain God. If I move to San Francisco there will be floods like the world has not seen since Noah started finding pairs.

The train's called what now!?

Once again the Stone Temple Pilots awoke me, and I'm still content with this. Undoubtedly within a few days I'll be annoyed with them, so I'll have to find another piece of music. For now, I get woken up with Alive.

Yes... I sort of see the resemblance

Today is the move from the LinkedIn paid for hotel in Sunnyvale (about an hour south of San Francisco) to San Fran proper, staying near downtown. Unsurprisingly Google Maps has a fairly good grasp of the streets and public transport in and around San Francisco, so I let it tell me how to get there.

The name of the train service I am taking is disturbingly named the "Baby Bullet". Whilst I understand the idea behind the name, I am sure no one ran the idea past a childish mind before going with it. Much sniggering was had between myself and friends.

LinkedIn

Ah ha!

A brief aside - during my Europe trip, we would all routinely fall asleep on the bus as we navigated to the next city. The tour guide would play "Alive" by Empire of the Sun when it was time for the bus to stop again for a toilet break. I have been conditioned that "Alive" means wake-up, stretch legs, go to the bathroom. 

Wake, get up, and go to the bathroom, happens to match nicely with traditional wake-ups when not on a tour bus, and I realised this last night. So this morning I experience a relatively rare phenomenon: I woke up without the immediate desire to throw my blaring phone across the room - but that was replace with instead the need to pee. On the whole, I think it's an acceptable trade...

A good breakfast and downing a litre or so of water saw me heading to the LinkedIn offices. Again, my imaginings of 20 story pure glass towers was underwhelmingly shattered by a 5 story, normal looking, modern office building. 

As a good candidate should, I arrived early and sat down at reception for the traditional twiddling of thumbs awaiting my host. Fortunately this didn't take long, and Sai greeted me and took me on the equally traditional tour of my interview room, the nearest bathroom, the nearest coffee, and finally to the cafe to see where I'd be having lunch.

The day consisted of 4 interviews on different topics by different people, split in the middle by a lunch with a different interviewer, designed more as a social interview.

How did I do? As always, very difficult to say. I think the topics were relatively easy, but that's not to say that I did well at them. I felt in the end that there were two areas I could have done better on. Detailing them would be against the rules I'm afraid. I suppose I will know just how much better I could have done in a few more days.

The frustrating aspect of all of it was I felt I could talk for an hour on many, many concepts and issues that we discussed - some of them I could run week long tech courses on. It felt a crime to gloss over them, hoping to convince the interviewer that in the 3 sentences I had to cover the topic, I had demonstrated a more than a passing familiarity with it.

I didn't feel too exhausted by the end, in fact I felt quite invigorated. 

No photo today - LinkedIn really were quite explicit about that, and a photo of the outside of the building didn't really do it justice - the inside held much more interesting things.

Where are all the sky scrapers?

Despite what this entry may say, it is actually still Thursday. I have discovered that when flying it is always Thursday.

The flight was incredibly quick, the 12.5hr flight was 11.5hr long. I think I shall write to United and suggest they enquire as to the shortcut our pilot found and put it as a regular thing. In truth of course we had a tailwind the entire way, hence the mild turbulence.

Landing was fine, I'm pleased to say that SFO is geared towards driving the passengers out of the airport in the quickest method possible. Immigration and Customs were surprisingly easy. I did find a mild frustration in trying to acquire a local SIM card. The only store I could find was closed (though it was 0615h at the time), and I strongly suspect the prices wouldn't be the best, given they appear to have a strong lock on sales.

Time progresses, this entry has been open all day…

Eventually - with the help of a patient info desk person - I managed to navigate my way to Mountain View. I suspect the info desk person may have helped hapless visitors like myself in the past, as evidenced by the slip of paper preprinted with directions to Mountain View.

By this time it was rapidly approaching a reasonable hour, and I managed to navigate my way to a decent coffee shop. Any illusions I held of a Mountain View being a busy metropolis of tall glass buildings and lights everywhere was shattered when what confronted me was more a large modern village. Don't get me wrong, eventually I found a mode of transport that presented a better view, but I wasn't expecting what I found.

This was not what I was expecting!

After inserting a sufficient quantity of caffeine, further illusions were about to be shattered. The table of geeks I was sitting at seemed a likely source of information on where I could acquire a local SIM. Mostly disturbing however was that my question was met with blank – and then puzzled – expressions. It seemed clear they'd never gone through the process of acquiring a SIM separate to their service provider locked phones. Suggestions such as CVS (think supermarket) and drug stores (selling alcohol and cigars???) were presented. 

To cut this technology fail story short, after trying multiple places recommended by multiple people at various other places, it finally dawned on me to try a local mobile provider store. 10 minutes later I walked out of a T-Mobile store with a brand new 3GB SIM. Cheers Gary, you served me well!

To sum up the rest of the day is easy: Sleep, Study, Eat, Sleep. Reminds me of University.

Fin.

Well, I've been increasingly lax about keeping up my journal. Perhaps this is a reflection on how tired I am, perhaps it's because it's been full on, or maybe just that in the last few weeks things have slowed down, and I feel less need to document everything quickly.

I'm in an Uber on my way to San Francisco airport. I decided to splash out on my second to last trip (the flight being the last) and am in an UberBlack.

It's been a long trip, it's been an amazing trip, it's been a fun trip, and great trip, an educational trip. It's been all those things and more.

On my travels people ask me what's been the best place I've visited. This is of course an almost impossible question, it must be answered with some level of separation.

The most beautiful city was Florrence, Italy. There are runners up of course, but it's easy to pick number 1.

The most crazy city has to be Amsterdam. It has both insane things and is very liberal. I find it wonderful that bicycles rule that place, even if I was occasionally the ire of some cyclists as I walked on the wrong path.

Most educational was DC (unsurprisingly), particularly impressive was the Air & Space Museum Annex and Dulles airport.

For most amazing NASA, Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX leaves every other NASA facility behind. The level 9 tour really does feel like an insiders tour. I absolutely highly recommend it for anyone with any interest in space.

Anyway, over the next while I shall attempt to document the places I missed writing about, but no promises.

So for now, this is Nick, signing off.