(For the record, I started writing this last night but ended up going out so I'm not as late with it as it might seem...)
Everything is starting to feel very natural out here, as if I've been working in the area for a while (or even living here for some time). There is this care-free feeling that everyone seems to exude as they go about their day. I would claim that life moves "slower" out here, but that makes it sound like the pace at which things get done is much less than anywhere else. Quite the opposite, actually - I don't know if I've ever been surrounded by so much productivity with the likes of giant companies in Silicon Valley. This attitude towards life comes across when you're walking around town, seeing everyone take their time in whatever their doing. I think a lot of it comes from crossing the street; I don't know if I'll ever get over the fact that people will NOT cross the street unless they have the walk signal. But it makes my point.
This week at work was great. I got to do some really cool things for the project I was assigned to, and felt like I was doing some valuable work. I still never feel like I'm at work though. The hours fly by every day, and even though I'm at the office 12-14 hours a day, I never once look at the clock hoping the time will go by faster. In fact, I often find myself wishing I could spend more time there, especially when there are spontaneous Nerf wars with machines like this:
At this point I forget any specific events that happened at work this week, so I'll just skip to the weekend. On Saturday, I went to the Stanford Shopping Center with a couple friends. We mostly just wandered around. I was in awe of the fact that the mall (like my office building) doesn't have a ceiling when you're walking between places. So the Macy's has a roof and everything, but when you walk out of the store to go somewhere else, you just have sun and sky. That allows them to do some pretty cool things with the architecture. We didn't buy much, except one of my friends spent $150 on ONE shirt. Apparently it fit him just perfectly. It is now referred to as "The Shirt." Most expensive thing I saw was a $2000 jacket (see below).
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| This is "in" the mall |
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| The jacket he's trying on costs $2000. No joke. |
On the way back, we were walking by places and passed a frozen-yogurt shop. It's called Yogurtland, and I'm not aware of any such places in the northeast. Basically you walk in and they give you tiny little cups so you can sample the different flavors (and trust me, you want to sample them). Then you pay by the ounce, $0.33 in this case. You take a GIANT cup and take as much as you want, but they give you big cups so you feel obligated to fill it. Then you can mix and match whatever flavors you want, and however much of them you want. It is really tempting to just stand there and let the whole thing fill up to the top.
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| Lots of choices |
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| Unbelievable |
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| Went great with the Dutch Chocolate |
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| Exactly as described |
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| Basically Thin Mints in frozen-yogurt form |
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| Words cannot describe... |
After filling up your cup with what is probably WAY too much frozen-yogurt, you proceed to the toppings bar. Yes - the toppings are also self service, and are priced at the same weight as the yogurt itself. I could honestly go there just for the toppings. The have everything from Kit-Kats, cookie dough balls, M&Ms, brownie bites, Oreos, watermelon, cantaloupe, etc. I saw some people end up with about a third of their cup as yogurt, and the rest as toppings.
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| This isn't even all of them... |
Sunday I did some more exploring. I found a park only a few blocks away from my apartment, so it's really close biking there. It was relative quiet there on a Sunday afternoon, but I found out why later. It was very serene there, and I will definitely be going back on weekends where there isn't much going on. And because the weather here is basically always perfect, I could go almost whenever I want to.
Sitting out in the sun got pretty warm, so I decided I would go back to the apartment and use the pool for once. Even though it was warm out, I think the pool is heated which is awesome. Not many people seem to use it, or at least I haven't seen any, Then again I'm gone during the entire day, and apparently you're not supposed to swim there after 9pm. I'd like to try and see them enforce that.
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| Water from the gutter somehow made this cool sand pattern near the pool |
Sunday night, the city of Palo Alto sponsored World Music Day by closing down the main road so that local music groups could perform. As best as I could tell (from spending a couple minutes reading the thing on the website), it is basically to celebrate the Summer Solstice. I went with a couple friends and we just walked around. Some of the performers were pretty good - there was a 14-year-old girl that has an amazing voice, and very well could be on one of those shows like "America's Got Talent" or something like that. The best part was that everyone was just walking around the street, which is usually full of cars and traffic. We eventually made our way to a burrito place for dinner, and spent at least the next hour walking around so we would have enough room to go to the frozen-yogurt place. We spent a decent amount of time in the giant Borders browsing. I wound up in the biography section looking at one about Bobby Fischer (the chess master). I'm thinking I may actually start going through some biographies if I have the time.
Later that same evening, one of my roommates came back and we decided to go see Green Lantern. It was a good movie, not great. It was very forgettable, and seemed rushed at points. Then again, I'm no movie critic. And in an unrelated note, Wimbledon started today. I read something in the newspaper this morning (can you believe me and all this reading?!?) that said Federer may have a fighting chance since he was able to get out of a funk after being Djokovic just a few weeks ago. I'll be watching.
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| Winning |
I also took the time to change some things on the sidebar. I made a Flickr account and will be uploading all of my pictures there. The only downside is that they limit you to 300MB of uploading per month, which is only like 60 pictures with my fancy camera (and that's even compressed). So you can have a look there, and also take a look at the list of things I hope to do by the end of the summer. I'll be updating that accordingly, but let me know if you have any suggestions for things to do.
