Mountain View
Came back last week from the Mountain View trip. This time, the jet lag has really hit us bad - I was awake from 3 AM most days there, and now I can't seem to sleep before 3 AM after coming back here! The baby's making it worse - she took the entire week in California getting used to PST, and now that we're back, she's taking even longer to get back to GMT. of course, the fact that UK went to BST last weekend doesn't help :-(
About the trip, pretty mixed feelings on the whole: the Google office is definitely pretty impressive - huge, loads of interesting work being done all the time, great food, etc. I was less than impressed with bay area as a place to live though. The whole layout seems weird and not really built for convenience. There is no public transport to speak of, so you have to drive everywhere and the sight of five thousand people driving to work on 5000 individual cars somehow bothers the hell out of me - how difficult is it to have a decent public transport system and save the huge amounts of fuel that is being burnt everyday just on the commute to work?
I've been less than ecstatic with the weather too - the sun is simply too relentlessly bright! I'm sure it is great for many people who live in cold climates, but having spent the first 21 years of my life in India, I would have a bit of cloud and rain any day. I got severely sunburnt during my stay and it felt hot and uncomfortable whenever I took a walk.
Which brings me to the really weird part - it seems no-one actually *walks* in the bay area! I went out for walks pretty regularly and could see people giving me strange looks from their cars as they whizzed past me - as if driving is the natural means of transportation and walking is some kind of abnormality!
Anyway, I gotta say that I'm not looking forward to the prospect of moving there quite as much as I was before.
About the trip, pretty mixed feelings on the whole: the Google office is definitely pretty impressive - huge, loads of interesting work being done all the time, great food, etc. I was less than impressed with bay area as a place to live though. The whole layout seems weird and not really built for convenience. There is no public transport to speak of, so you have to drive everywhere and the sight of five thousand people driving to work on 5000 individual cars somehow bothers the hell out of me - how difficult is it to have a decent public transport system and save the huge amounts of fuel that is being burnt everyday just on the commute to work?
I've been less than ecstatic with the weather too - the sun is simply too relentlessly bright! I'm sure it is great for many people who live in cold climates, but having spent the first 21 years of my life in India, I would have a bit of cloud and rain any day. I got severely sunburnt during my stay and it felt hot and uncomfortable whenever I took a walk.
Which brings me to the really weird part - it seems no-one actually *walks* in the bay area! I went out for walks pretty regularly and could see people giving me strange looks from their cars as they whizzed past me - as if driving is the natural means of transportation and walking is some kind of abnormality!
Anyway, I gotta say that I'm not looking forward to the prospect of moving there quite as much as I was before.
posted by Biswa at 7:31 AM
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