Mission Street Carnival

Its only a sample of two, but my weekends in San Francisco are always colourful. This time around, it was the Mission Street Carnival, a South-American style street parade with lots of feathers and glitter and swinging skirts. It would have been a lot of fun anyway, but it was made into crazy fun because I went with my new room-mate-to-be Stefanie and a bunch of her friends, after kicking the day off with a champagne-and-mojito breakfast. They are 24 hour party people, and really friendly to boot.





















I went out into Mountain View for the first time on Tuesday for an 'offsite' event from Google. Its a bland stretch of suburbia out there - I am very very glad to be in San Francisco!

The Bay to Breakers

What better way to get to know San Francisco than dress up as a shrubbery and run 12km with thousands of other people in fancy dress from the Bay to the Pacific Breakers? That's what I did at 8 o'clock this morning. The race was a lot of fun, some people went over the top in their costumes and some went under the top and didn't wear anything at all. Does that sound sexy? I guess it could be, but imagine running behind jiggling masses of sweaty cellulite ... now try and forget the image! There were also teams of people who had kegs of beer on wheels and were drinking like frat boys while running in public in the early morning (probably double illegal in America)






















Just before the start of the race, the crowd erupted in a spontaneous display of tortilla throwing. I have no idea why this tradition started, but thousands of them were suddenly whirling through the air.

And just after the start, the raucous crowd was greeted by three Christian protesters, having their say about the race. Here is my favourite banner, warning how the race caused judgment:

The Berkeley Time Warp

I'd heard about it before, but was surprised all the same. When you catch the BART subway across the bay to Berkeley, all the 30-somethings white men with matted dreadlocks get out the train at the Berkley stop, and you set your watch back to the 1960's. People really are protesting by living in trees, railing against US politics outside the gate and selling tie-died T-shirts (Made in India) on Telegraph Avenue. Its an anachronism, but its also cool.

I went there to hook up with Sandy, my neighbour in New York, who was at her sister's graduation. We had a cup of coffee at International House Berkeley, which we walked past by accident. IHouse Berkeley is a mixture of Mexican villa on the outside and faux medieval hall on the inside. Not only that, but it also offered my very first view of the Golden Gate bridge. Sandy and I had a good time, walked around the campus, visited the t-rex (California seems to have lots of these) and a conversation which was strangely deeper than anything we've ever had in New York. Maybe things were like that in the 60's too.

A Flat Heirarchy

Today, a mail from Eric Schmidt landed in my mailbox. Later, Google hosted its weekly Thank God its Friday meeting, where most of the company gets together, all the Nooglers have to wear a nerdy cap-with-propeller and either one of Larry Page or Sergey Brin is present. This Friday I was lucky: both were there, and Sergey had just gotten married, so the Nooglers stood up together and pelted him with rice. How often do you get to do that to a multi-billionaire?

This meeting was for me an indication of how special the atmosphere at Google really is: it was totally informal, witty, and there is an open mike so anyone with a question can get up and put it directly to the CEO's. And there were lots of trivial ones, along the lines of 'can we reserve a free bicycle?' and joking ones, like 'are we going to license Linux from Microsoft?

Google uses all its own products (GMail, Google Applications) internally. The logo: a dog bowl with all the logos inside.

My 3rd Day as a Noogler

I am going to find it difficult to go back into a normal job (or into a normal life) again. I am getting so used to just picking up anything I want (smoothie, juice, coffee, french toast, delicious gourmet food made from organic ingredients, whatever) and walking away with it, that I'm going to get into shop-lifting trouble later.

At Google it feels like the Internet bubble never burst.

People ride around on the kind of bikes that would make a 12-year old girl's heart beat faster or electric yellow scooters (they are all free too).

At Google, they use the space above the urinals to remind you about good code testing practices. They call the project TOTT 'Test on The Toilet'.

Today Nandini (my co-new-noogler) and I helped carry wastepaper buckets full of sand downstairs, clearing the beach out and giving us space for desks. Pity - I kind of liked the beach.

First Day at Google

How could today have been anything but interesting? Google, whose mission it is to store the worlds information and make it accessible, had given me the wrong departure point for the shuttle to get to their office so I missed the one I needed, but ended up hooking up with David (also from Columbia, we'd met already in New York), having a coffee at the new stop (the Muddy Cafe: I'm going to be there a lot) and then catching the next shuttle. Which turned out to be a cross between a bus and a limo, black inside and out with leather seats and filled with people tapping at laptops.

The Google 'campus' was a little less amazing than I'd imagined in some ways, and a lot cooler in others. Its a collection of buildings, many of them rented out from SGI who occupied them before. The dull necessary bureaucracy (photos, passwords, proof of alien employability etc.) took hours, was the main stuff of the day. The most interesting experience was, (fess up), the food. In abundance, everywhere, all free. I had Indian dal for lunch and chinese stir-fried tofu for dinner. Dinner at work? Makes sense at Google. One cafe there specialized in food which is only grown within 150km of Google.

Its not only the food which is international. I am working with people from Zambia, India, Pakistan, America and Argentina. The last organized event of the day was a great speech, 'Life of an Engineer' by Googler John Cox who combines tech savvy with wit and eloquence (its a rare rare mix).

Lots of Google is eccentric. A giant t-rex skeleton in the courtyard feasts off flamingos dressed up in sombreros. In the lobby a replica of Spaceship One hangs from the roof. People put weirdly cool stuff in their cubicles. My team just one second prize in an office decoration contest (theme: Japan) and I fell victim to the winning team, who had converted the space where I was supposed to be working into ... a beach. Its true: a pile of sand and sea shells and and old sofa where my desk will someday be. This is going to be a lot of fun.

In-Flight Entertainment

I am in San Francisco. After a hectic day's packing and three hour's sleep last night none of this seems real. But my first impressions of the city are: its beautiful, nothing like New York, cold, something like Cape Town. I'll try and qualify this another time. I am staying in the Mission District, which is the latino quarter (I've eaten tacos for lunch and a burrito for dinner) in a shared house with two other guys. The house is full of kitch art and lights because Rob, one of the two, is an artist.

Tomorrow is my first day at Google.



The flight over here was a beautiful, shifting kaleidescope of landscapes from the air: desert with green crop circles in Utah, farmlands in California's Central Valley, the snowy Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada. The five hour flight was a reminder how vast this country is.

Torture by Washing Machine

This weekend all those winter evenings practicing in a kayak in a pool paid off ... after a fashion. I went with the Columbia kayak group to the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts for weekend of white water kayaking. There were three other students (two beginners like me, and one intermediate), and four instructors: Andy, Jane, Adelaine and Luke, the 'kayaking kiwi'. Although New York is in full blossom, upstate its cool and wintry still, with the odd patch of ice, and the water wasn't too warm. It took me about 5 minutes to discover this: my very first attempt to 'eddy in' (move from the main current to the side of the river) had me flipped and flailing, as the reality of the difference between a swimming pool and an engorged, fast-flowing river hit me like a very large amount of very cold water in the face. Repeatedly.

The first day we practiced the basics: eddying in, peeling out (leaving the sides of the river for the central part) and ferrying (crossing perpendicular to the current). We got out the river at around 5pm - it never felt so good to be dry. The night was spent in an old wooden hotel in the small village of Claremont. Almost all of the buildings you see in the countryside here are in fact made of wood, and it gives it an odd feeling of impermanent settlements. I really enjoyed the company of the group: mixed ages, mostly American but all of them very interesting people.



Sunday was also spent on the river, culminating on the Zoar rapids which is a class III (read: huge roaring walls of water smashing against lots of jet black rocks). The rapid was kind to me and I made it through still facing forward and the right way up ...