This weekend, Matt went down to LA with his brother, Mick-Dawg. Mickey lives in LA, but he flew up here Wednesday night, stayed at our place for a while, then the two of them drove down to Mick-Dawg’s place via Highway 1 on Friday. This meant that while Matt was hanging out with the models and actors, I had the place to myself. Don’t get me wrong, Matt’s a great guy, but I kind of enjoyed the feeling of being alone in the apartment for a while. It’s very relaxing to lay on the couch and just be by yourself for a while.
Nevertheless, I did want to get out a little bit this weekend (I can’t stand to stay inside all day in this beautiful weather), so I decided to head up to downtown Mountain View and Palo Alto on Saturday night to watch Casablanca. After walking around Mountain View and getting back in the car to continue to Palo Alto, I realized that Casablanca is actually playing next weekend. This weekend was Rebecca and Strangers on a Train – both Hitchcock and not bad, but I really didn’t care to see Rebecca, and Strangers on a Train was never my favorite.
I decided that since I was there, I’d hang out until 10:00 and watch Strangers on a Train anyway. I took the opportunity to walk around the Stanford campus for about half an hour (it really is beautiful). I hadn’t had a chance to do that yet, so I had a good time investigating the mission-style architecture, going down Palm Drive, and enjoying the wooded areas. By this time, it was about 7:00, and I was getting hungry, so I headed to downtown Palo Alto in search of food. After walking through the whole of downtown, I settled on a Gyro for dinner; they’re not too expensive, and since I was by myself I didn’t want to go to a really nice restaurant.
The Lamb/Beef & Chicken Gyro (don’t ask me why they use such strange punctuation) was pretty good. After I finished it, I spent a long time in Borders listening to music and browsing books. It was still only 8:10 or so, and I needed to wait until 10:00 for the movie. Borders took me until about 8:50. Next, I just walked up and down the street for a while; I even stopped to listen to a street performer who I am pretty sure was a college student. By 9:15, though, I had done all there was to do, and I started to get really tired, so I just gave up and came back to the apartment.
Sunday, I was again alone in the apartment, so I did some cleaning, paid some bills, etc. Carter surprised me by calling and inviting me over to his place to bake cookies and watch a movie, and I jumped at the chance. Carter makes some mean chocolate-chip cookies, but I think mine definitely hold their own. His include just a little too much brown sugar, in my opinion. We ended up watching “Shaun of the Dead,” which was quite amusing.
Carter also had some even more surprising news when he announced that our friend Nikki from 6.170 is now working at Google. I had no idea she was even thinking about getting a job directly after school. Carter found her on facebook, however, and set up a time for us to go out to eat together on Monday night.
Therefore, after work on Monday, I picked Carter up and we headed to downtown Mountain View. Nikki works a bit later than either of us, so we were walking around for about half an hour before she even made it to Castro Street. When she finally arrived, we decided on an Italian restaurant for dinner (Don Giovanni’s). It sounds like Nikki is enjoying her job a lot. I guess she was planning on going to grad school in Chicago, but Google offered her a job as a user interface designer in May, so she contacted the school and is now “taking a year off.” One of the more interesting aspects of Google that Nikki mentioned is that the heirarchy is very flat; her direct manager supervises about sixty people, and Nikki is only 3-4 levels away from the CEO. This means that she only sees her manager once or twice a month, and she also has a lot of freedom to choose interesting projects and work in her own style. Sounds like a good work environment to me…
What I’ve seen this summer has definitely convinced me to apply to Google this fall. I think I have a good chance of getting an offer because they are growing so much these days and I can also bring a lot to the table. This fall should be interesting because I’ll be interviewing with so many companies. I don’t know how other people feel starting their senior year, but I’m really excited to find out where I end up. Hopefully I’ll know by Christmas break. It’s hard to believe it’s so close.
