Google Goes to the City

Bright and early on Wednesday morning at 9:03 I walked down to have breakfast a whole half hour before we were supposed to leave. I was quite proud of myself until the hotel decided they stopped serving breakfast at 9:00 and I had missed it by 3 minutes. That was upsetting and left my stomach all empty. I had been planning on this day being far superior to its predecessor so this was a disappointing start to the day. Oh! I completely forgot to tell you all about the new additions that they are making to Google Earth that we learned about on Tuesday. The only problem is we were sworn to Google secrecy to not write about it or talk about it. So that's a problem. . . I felt pretty cool being shown stuff they had only just begun to develop. While I had previously thought that Google Earth was just this thing to go look at if you had extra time, I think it is going to be way cooler now. It involves pictures and it's almost like you can go on a mini vacation from your own desk.
Okay, back to breakfast in Cupertino.
Fortunately my friend Tim was kind enough to let me eat some of his scrambled eggs and half of his croissant. We are such a nice team. I love us. I think that in the end we are a pretty social team, just within ourselves and not with others. As far as I know we were the only team with a lab so that we could all work near each other. That is basically the only reason I stuck with the project. The fact that it was a pretty social working environment made the hours somewhat bearable. Someone told me that one of the other teams didn't even really know eachother before they won and came to Google. That can't be true. . . but it just might be. Well we were slightly more social on Wednesday because we had a guy from the Purdue team sitting with us. Although he was really just sitting with our team leader who was so darn sketchy the whole trip. I hope she reads this.
After not having breakfast everyone got into the bus Google had gotten us for the day. The bus also came with Eugene, our driver, and Vera, our red-jacketed tour guide. We took 280 up to San Francisco so that we could see how beautiful Northern California is instead of how populated it is. While Vera talked to us about the history of San Francisco and such, Jess and Jen did Yoon-Ki and Danny's hair. They looked lovely.



Here is Tim having his chin scratched by Jen. Don't ask. I had to include it though to convey the whole experience.


I was very happy to hear Vera explain to the group that San Francisco is supposed to have miserably gray weather in the summer. You see, the Arctic water in the Pacific is very cold while the inland California temperatures are very hot. So then some magic happens and fog appears and is drawn inland where it encouters the mountains and comes to a stop because it is too heavy to get over. This leaves San Francisco in a perpetual state of fog in the summer. But weather is nice and sunny come September and October just in time for me to leave California for the soon to be snowy New Hampshire.


(Treasure Island, Bay Bridge, Fog)

We were taken through Chinatown and Union Square before being dropped off at Pier 39 where we had the unique opportunity to watch half of our team imitate the sea lions and frighten other tourists.



While most of the team dawdled, Mandy and I took our tour of Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf into our own hands and headed straight for the bread factory. Yes, the bread factory, or as some say colloquially: the bakery. We looked thorugh the window and watched the bread maker (or baker) create crab shaped bread. Our mouths watering we walked inside to see how much a turtle shaped loaf costed. Too much. Luckily there were free samples which we gladly helped ourselves to.
We then boarded a ferry bound for Sausalito, that place across the bay I never had any desire to visit. The ferry ride was great. I love boats and being on the water. It also offered me a chance to take tons of pictures of my team, the city, and Alcatraz. I will share some with you.


(Tim, Steph, and Aiden a Google worker from the Boulder office, he is a fun guy)


(Jess, Mandy, and Yoon-Ki)


(Jen requests that Mandy make a normal face in a picture so Yoon-Ki obliges by tickling Mandy)


(Mandy, having missed breakfast too, slowly eats her Snickers bar one peanut at a time)


(Yoon-Ki enjoys the fresh bay air and ponders. . . but who knows what)


(Danny gives us a quizzical look even though we are the ones confused as to why he is not sitting with us)


(a big boat I once took pictures of in high school for photography class, none of those picutres turned out as desired)




(Alcatraz)


(The Golden Gate Bridge, sail boat, and fog)

Once we docked in Sausalito we were given some more free time before lunch. Everyone dispersed and naturally most of the Dartmouth team found its way into a small toy store where we played with the puppets, read the kids books, and relived the joy of being a child in a shop full of colors. Lunch was a successful ordeal, despite a few team members' annoying habit of doing seriously obnoxious and oh so poorly executed foreign accents. By this point we had gathered 2 people from outside the Dartmouth team to sit with us. And so, on the last day, we began to socialize. As mentioned by one of my teammates, this is the safe way to go because you never know how the people you socialize with will turn out, so if you do it on the last day and they turn out to be creepy, at least it is the last day. Sadly not all Dartmouth students (our lovely team leader) took this advice and attracted creepy people nonetheless, or was perhaps creepy herself.
After lunch we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge while most of the bus continued to ignore Vera who was having a difficult time giving us a tour over all the raised voices. I felt bad for Vera, and I felt bad for the whole bus because they missed a ton of very interesting stories about San Francisco. We stopped to be tourists and take pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. These are the last photos I took that day so I hope you enjoy them.


(Tim and Jen)




(Mandy feels the need to stand above everyone else)

Next stop was Haight Ashbury by way of Golden Gate Park. I love Golden Gate Park. Anyone who has the chance to go there most certainly should, and make sure you go to the Japanese tea garden. Haight Ashbury was fun enough, but everyone was getting tired by this point. Mandy, Yoon-ki, and I made the standard circuit of Haight Ashbury by stopping in the thrift stores that were too expensive (thrift indeed), the used bookstore, Amoeba, and finally the coffee shop next to Amoeba. No purchases were made and by 5:30 we were ready to head over to AT&T park, which I still want to call Pac Bell park.
So far this summer I have watched an excessive amount of baseball than I do usually. It is always on at the Foley house and I have now been to two Dodger games and a Giants game. Now before you ask, I was not at the game where Bonds broke the home run record. Thank goodness. No wonder that guy hits so many home runs at home though, AT&T park is the smallest baseball diamond ever! The game was not all the interesting for me since I had no real interest in either of the teams (they were playing the Washington Nationals). However the Google group did succeed in catching a foul ball; it landed literally right at Aiden's feet after bouncing off some poor guy's head. We also succeeded in getting heckled by very mean Giants fans who told us to go to LA or home when some of us attempted to start the wave. Apparently the wave cannot be done in San Francisco. I'm still not certain why they thought it prudent to tell us to go to LA. While I was too lazy myself to try to do the wave, I was still offended when our group was very rudely yelled at to go home by a woman in a hideous highlighter orange sweatshirt. I think she should have reconsidered yelling at us while wearing such a horrible sweater. Aiden first kindly informed the woman that if she wanted to flip Google the bird she was more than welcome to, then he snapped a picture of her doing just that. I don't much like Giants fans.
Overall I would say our trip into the city was a lot of fun. There is a bunch I have missed out I am sure but I only have so much patience and my attention span is only so long when writing. After the long bus ride back to Cupertino, a few of us decided to continue to be social and go to the hot tub with other members of the Google group. What this really means is that Danny and I stayed by the hot tub and chatted while the rest who had gone down frolicked in the pool. I don't think we like to sit still very much.
So ends my adventure at Google. I hope Dartmouth did not make too bad of an impression seeing as I need a job somewhere after I graduate next year.