Day 60-61 And That's Reality

Being able to map out my foursquare check-ins on google maps is a blessing! It makes blogging a great deal EASIER. Today, Evan and I went to Union Square in San Francisco to do a little shopping. I also wanted to find a shop that had croque monsieurs because I have been dying to eat one for so long. I know traditionally croque monsieurs have ham, but there ARE variants that are veg-friendly. Anyways, our day started late. We left around 2 and didn't arrive in the city until around 4. By then, the cafe that we went to (Crepe O Chocolat) had run out of monsieurs. Bummer. Maybe next time! But the man that was working there was very friendly. That was a plus. He smiled a lot.

Because our search for these elusive sandwiches was a bust, we ended up eating at Wolfgang Puck Express. Hehe. I'd never heard of it. We had such bad service and an all around interesting experience in general. There was this woman who sat in the booth next to us and she'd butt into our conversation every now and then. When she found out that Evan's order had been messed up and that the service was poor, she complained to our server on behalf of us. It was kind of embarrassing.

Macy's, Neiman Marcus, 7 for All Mankind, Lucky Brand Jeans, Niketown, Banana Republic. We visited a lot shops, but didn't buy a whole lot. I came home with a pale-ish yellow polo shirt and a white belt. TWO THINGS ON MY LIST THAT I'VE BEEN WANTING. Now, all I really want is a SKINNY BLACK SILK TIE. And maybe a cardigan and black/gray fashion sneakers.

OH. Ev and I also rode the Zeum Carousel (that's the checkpoint on the bottom right corner of the map). It was a blast.

He reminds me of an old friend back from high school. A lot of the Palm interns do. It's kind of strange.

PROFILE TIME.

Evan is a political science major at UC Davis. He is a Palm fanboy, he loves tech, and he's a complete nerd about the whole thing. He really does know a great deal. It's fascinating. He's my roommate and he's really good at Trivial Pursuit, too, which is a pain because I love winning and hate that I lose the game quite a bit. We get along quite well, which I find strange because I don't typically click with many people. Oh, and he works in Corp Comm/PR/Social Media at Palm.

He's also 6'6" - but I think I've mentioned that in previous entries. I called him Burj once. I thought I was clever as hell, too.

Night, guys!

Day 49-59: One month left!

This is insane. At EOD Friday, I will have four full work weeks left at Palm and one whole month before I fly back to Dallas. I just can't believe it; I want things to slow down. Slow. Down.

Since my last update forever ago, I haven't done anything too exciting. I've just been eating and hanging out with the other interns. Though I will say that last Friday night (the 16th) was pretty exciting. IRISH. CAR. BOMBS. Getting "princess-carried." Turning what would otherwise be a very masculine game into a very gay one.

Oh! Something interesting: I went to one of the intern's house this past Wednesday. Her name is Geetanjali, she goes to Berkley, but her family lives in San Jose. Some of us just went over, picked plums from her dad's garden (photo above), took a little hike up some hills that overlooked San Jose, ate some really good Indian Food, and played some board games. It was pretty much a blast.

So, this provides a nice segue to that whole profiling thing I mentioned in my last post (oh god, I hope none of them ever sees this). This is a photo I stole from her facebook:

Geetanjali works in the operations department at Palm, where she ... I forget what she does. Something about failures and errors. Lots of excel work. She and I like to go down to shipping together because it's nice to get out of the cubicles every now and then. We also like to go out to the 3rd floor balcony around 4 pm every now and then to get some fresh air. She loves board games and soccer, and she organizes events for a bunch of us to play both. Soccers on Friday evenings, board games randomly throughout the week. Though she may not look like it, she is Indian and she does speak two languages. Sometimes, her Indian accent comes out. I probably G-talk with her the most during work, which is kind of funny because some people call her G. I like to call her Geets. Other people call her Geeti. And I tell her about everyone I ever crush on at work. HA. I'm planning on seeing Wicked on August 1 with her, some of her friends and some of the other interns. I think that's all.

I've got a lot more to say but I don't like long posts, so I'm going to try to get better about this. Especially since I have but a month left here. Byeee!

Day 44-48: Chill Daze

So, things have been pretty chill here in Sunnyvale since my last update. I've got a nice flow of work at Palm. Keeping busy with that. I haven't been bicycling to campus that much since I became best buds with one of the female interns who lives two floors below me. I typically ride with her in the mornings now. I haven't really been running either, but that's because more days than not, my entire body is sore. It took a while for me to recover from the whole Muscle Beach thing last weekend. This past Friday, I played soccer with some of the interns and I've been sore as hell all weekend. I honestly think my body's this way because I don't get enough protein in my diet and therefore my muscles can't rebuild itself fast enough. Because of this, I've been consciously trying to eat more eggs and garbanzo beans. Haha. But I don't think that's enough so I broke my vegetarian code of honor and ate seafood this weekend (seafood > chicken > beef > pork). It was done out of desperation!! In the end, I decided to take the most desperate action of all: I drank up a nice big glass of my roommate Evan's whey protein. It actually didn't taste that bad. In any case, I think it definitely helped out a lot. I mean, I definitely feel a lot better now.

Let's see. Recaps, recaps. I went to a Korean restaurant called Omogari in San Jose last night. I think this has been my favorite place to eat thus far. I ordered Bipimbop, but couldn't eat it because I forgot to order tofu instead of beef. So my friend Mai traded me her seafood pancake for it. Her friend Mindy gave me a little of her seafood bipimbop because I said I'd always wanted to try the dish since seeing it made by Mario Batali on Food Network's Iron Chef last summer. I think it's made it onto my 'favorite dishes' list. We also got free green tea ice cream at the end. That was a nice treat. My waiter gave me two scoops instead of one because he felt bad that I couldn't eat the beef bipimbop. So cute.

On Friday (oh god, this entry makes absolutely no chronological sense), I ate dinner at Mama Chen, a very very Chinese Restaurant in Santa Clara. There was some Chinglish going on in the menu items: prok chop... a dish called 'mix mix.' I couldn't find anything to eat there. Pig's feet? No thanks. I tried to order pomfret (misspelled 'promphet') but the fish dish took too long to prepare and they were closing up in an hour. So, I got boring chow mein.

I watched the final two world cup games on Saturday and Sunday with some folks, which included the (2) very hilarious Canadian interns from Waterloo. One of them, Kerryck, has this ridiculously goofy Canadian accent. He says "aboot" and "eh?" all the time.

Fun stuff. I think I'm going to profile some of my fellow interns in the next few blog entries. Hopefully they never see this blog. Hehehe. I also need to do a post on all the things I miss about Austin (not sure if I'd already done one) and also a post on all the slang words I've had to teach my fellow interns. These could probably be combined into one. Until then!

Day 39-43: BroCal

Surfer, dude., originally uploaded by edmarchedrick.

On July 1 (that's day 39 of my time here in Sunnyvale), HP and Palm officially merged. We celebrated with a company-wide party. Ruby cheerleaded, of course. There was also a Q&A with a panel of SVPs who were involved with the integration of the two companies. Lots of interesting talk during this meeting. I brought my macbook to take notes for a fellow coworker who couldn't attend. It was a little awkward.

On Friday (day 40), I went on some AT&T store visits and did a little secret shopping to get some first hand insight on how sales reps feel about our product. It was a good thing that I did this. That I also got to spend a day basically hanging out with my coworkers outside of the office was also nice.

This weekend (Fri-Sun, days 40-42), I went down to Los Angeles and did all of the touristy stuff: Hollywood Walk of Fame, Kodak Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theater, Beverly Hills, Sunset Boulevard/Strip (well, we drove right through it), Santa Monica Beach/Pier, and Venice Beach.

It was an insanely fun trip. I mean, I haven't had a fourth of July weekend in many long years, so this was definitely a great way to spend the weekend. God, the beaches in SoCal were lovely. I've said it many times before and I'll say it again: Californians are so damn spoiled. Granted, they very much pay for it.

Venice Beach was a scene right out of a movie. There's a little skatepark, people surfing (photo above) and sailing, guys dancing on rollerblades/skates, vendors, shops, tourists tourists and more tourists. It all felt very 1990's sitcom. So much to take in!

And Muscle Beach was a blast. It's essentially an outdoor gym... but it seemed more like an adult's playground. There are rings that people swung on, ropes for people to climb up, uneven bars, parallel bars... it was awesome. I definitely tried to do some ropeclimbing. It's a lot more difficult than I imagined. My body has been trying to recover from that since Saturday. God, my muscles are still very sore.

Oh, you know how I like to namedrop people I meet? Well, I'm about to do that. It's the journalist in me.

Met a man at Muscle Beach called Jim. He was teaching me and Jeff, one of the people I went with, how to walk on those little tightrope things (I know there's a different name for them, but I can't figure it out right now). He had very nice teeth and very nice hair, but that's all besides the point. He told us that he was learning how to turn on the little rope and that he'd been practicing but hadn't been able to do it. By the time we left, we definitely saw him complete not one, but two turns. It was pretty cool. We applauded.

Also, you know how I have a thing for Scandinavians? Well, apparently, I have some sort of a Scadar™. I didn't talk to many of the vendors on Venice Beach, but the one that I did talk to - guess where he's from? FINLAND, baby. Tatu's his name (kinda like that gimmicky lesbian girl band from the early 2000s). He came to southern California to study photography and was selling some panorama prints.

I have photos from the trip that I can put up, but first I have to find a card reader. Hopefully, one of the Palm interns will let me borrow his soon.

In any case, we came back from LA at around 4:30pm on Sunday and by 6:30 pm we were on the train heading into the city as we wanted to check out the fireworks show they put on at Fisherman's Wharf. The show wasn't long or elaborate, but being out there in the cold with thousands of random strangers was a nice feeling. I mean, it always is. Over the bay, there was lots of fog, which obscured the fireworks. Though we could only see about half of it and though there were a few people who left in disappointment, I was okay with it. I mean, it's San Francisco. I can get any old fogless fireworks shows elsewhere.

That's really it. It was a great, long, wonderful weekend. Gotta get back to work tomorrow... such is life.