I literally cannot believe I only have a couple days of work left. Friday is the company rafting trip, so I'm not counting that as a work day, even though most people might say it seems like I've been on vacation the entire summer anyway.
Last Friday, my friend Calvin from school came and visited. He is interning at Microsoft outside of Seattle for the summer, and since we're both on the west coast we figured it made sense to visit. To pick him up, I reserved a Zipcar with my new membership. This service allows you to rent cars for about $8/hour and they pay for gas. This was perfect for picking him up at the airport, especially since there is a location just across the street from my office. Most of the cars at hybrids (saves them on the gas costs), but that caused me some trouble since I couldn't tell the car was on at first. To make matters worse, the emergency brake was also enabled, and it took me forever to find it. Eventually, I figured everything out, and headed towards the Oakland airport.
After getting some leftover food at the office, we heading back to my apartment to sleep. We had plans to go to San Francisco on Saturday with another friend from school who I also work with. After we ate lunch, we hoped on the train and then took a bus to the north end of the peninsula. Ghiradelli Square was there, and we wandered around for a bit. Unfortunately, the line for the chocolate shop was ridiculously long, so we decided to head over to Mission Street and find some good food. What we didn't realize when we first got on the bus was that they give you a slip of paper that allows you to transfer busses within the city. They're supposed to only be good once, and expire at a certain time, but we were able to use it all day.
It took us a while to decide, but we ended up at an Indian restaurant where we split a bunch of appetizers and naan. The food was delicious, so much so that we had to refuse dessert (and I LOVE dessert). We walked off some of the food on the way to the bus that was going to take us back to the train station. We got really lucky and got on the train with just about a minute to spare before it left.
Back in Palo Alto, we went back to the office. Some of the employees moved into a new apartment together, and were having a house-warming party that night, and I needed to double check the address. While there, I saw some friends who were getting ready to drive over, and they gave us a lift. Thank goodness they did, since it was further away than I originally thought. We got there around 9pm, and there were already about 10-15 people there. More showed up as the night went on.
I introduced Calvin to a bunch of people there, and we played a card game called Resistance for while. It's like the game Mafia, but much more involved. There was also plenty to drink, and at one point, Calvin and I were having an in-depth discussion with one of the neighbors (a physics PhD) about string theory, dark/anti matter, supersonic split theory, and all sorts of cool things. Things like this can only happen in Silicon Valley, and I will really miss it when I'm gone.
On Sunday, we headed over to Stanford where Calvin knew a friend from high school. His friend is pre-med and doing genetics research over the summer, and plans to get his MD and PhD eventually. He took us around and showed us his apartment and a bunch of the academic buildings, which were surprisingly busy for a Sunday (although maybe not for a place like Stanford). Some of the buildings there are awesome, and the campus as a whole is gorgeous. If I decide to go to grad school, Stanford is definitely on the list.
We headed back to the office where I gave them the grand tour. They were in awe of everything there, and seemed most excited about the massage chair in the game room. We couldn't stay too long, since I had to drive Calvin to the airport for his flight. We'll actually be seeing each other again soon when I got up to visit him this weekend. So far, we've planned a tour of Boeing, in addition to me seeing all sorts of cool things at Microsoft.
I don't have any big plans for the rest of the week, other than figuring out how to get all my stuff home. I shipped a bunch of books home, and my laundry will get returned tomorrow. I'll be gone all day Friday on the rafting trip, and will pray that I don't get sunburned. My flight leaves around 12:30pm pacific time for Seattle, and I return to NJ on Monday night. This summer has probably been the greatest I've ever had, but I'm still looking forward to seeing my friends at school, although not really looking forward to more homework.
