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.

Somewhere over the North Pacific

Time: 0430h PST - The blog software doesn't like time travel, so I'm lying to it.

United has exceeded expectations, not that they were particularly high. I paid for upgrade to economy plus, it is a long long distance from AirNZ premium economy. I would put United's economy+ in the same category as AirNZ economy.

My cabin was only about one-third to one-half full, and therefore most people got to stretch out across at least two seats. I am in front of cabin, with a plethora of legroom, and have chosen not to change.

The meals were fine, I was most impressed to see vegetarian was a standard option off-the-cart. I mentioned this to one of the attendants and she did inform me it's not always, and I should book next time to be sure.

Desert afterwards was an ice cream, this stuck out in my mind because it had clearly been kept very very cold. Very very cold. I could not get at it for at least 10mins.

The flight crew have been marvellous. It's been a mildly turbulent flight, the seatbelt sign has been on I'm guessing around 1/2 to 2/3s of the time. Nothing serious, indeed I found it nice to sleep with.

A Single 10Ahr USB battery was enough to keep my laptop at 100% and recharge my phone when needed. 

In about 2hrs I should be on the ground in SFO, and ready to brace the other side of the airline travel experience (see previous entry). Normally I'd not expect too much trouble, but being US immigration, it could be days.

A new trip

Well, it's been suggested I resume my travel... journal, not-blog, journal. This is a comparatively short trip to San Francisco and back for a job interview at LinkedIn.

I sit here at Auckland International Airport, drinking a beer, and awaiting my flight. Alas I am flying United, and so the AirNZ lounge is not available to me. I see the entrance from where I sit - it mocks my economy non AirNZ ticket. The metaphor pokes its tongue at me.

At the airport, the passengers who aren't sitting at a bar never stop moving, from the time they enter the airport there is this magnetic pull, drawing each along. The only refuge from this tug is a seat at a restaurant, a cafe, a bar, or perhaps a visit to a shop - but never for long, even in a shop, the force reaches in and reminds you that your time here is temporary.

Eventually the flow unceremoniously dumps you in the departure lounge for your gate. A Boeing 777-200 seats around 320 passengers. At the gate there are 140 seats. It is the final insult given by the airport to this stage of your travel experience.

Your only respite is your desire to reach the other end - assuming you are lucky enough to be heading somewhere you want, and that you have no connecting flights.

Fortunately, after that grim analysis of airport travel, I am sitting down, drinking my beer, and I have a direct flight to San Francisco, a city that I am very much looking forward to visiting again.

Postscript

I am home, in my bed. I have no checkout tomorrow, no flights, no buses to catch, trains to find, tourist things to do. 

It's been a long road, getting from there to here (which is actually the same place).

I have many tales to share, so to those of you in Auckland, reach out, let's have dinner. Just, somewhere I don't need to do research in order to be able to order food, s'il vous plaît, danke, kiitos. 

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.