The more time I spend here to more likely it is that I will return after finishing my PhD. If you are in tech, this is the place to be. Where else do you meet e.g. a (former) hiring manager of a few nice storage companies in the line of a bookshop? Work is interesting and there are quite a lot of smart and engaged people to work with.
Doing the internship was a really good decision. Sure, I should have done this during the Masters time, but even at this late stage it is worth the time. I don't want to miss it.
But even how much I like the internship and the area, I miss a good couch, my car, the nice programming sundays while watching a TV series. Actually, it is easy to keep the contact with home, with friends and family. T-Mobile has a 10 USD for its prepaid mobile plan that allows calls to German phones with no extra costs. Skype and Mails help, too. The T-Mobile area coverage is hell (ok, this sentence is easy for sentiment analysis), but the add-on is really worth its money.
I will fly out on 7/31 and arrive in Frankfurt the next day. Thanks to the bureaucracy of JGU, I have two weeks of holiday.
Ok, after these random thoughts, a few pictures and stories.
Last weekend was strenuous. I and a friend from the house went to Yosemite. For those, who are not that familiar with the U.S. Yosemite is a famous national park. After Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, I would say the third most known. And probably one of the most accessible. The park is around 4h east of the Bay Area. Five hours or more if you are stuck on 101 during the Friday evening rush hour.
We went up to the top of the Yosemite water fall, North Americas highest waterfall. The so called "Upper Yosemite Falls Trail". If a site declares it was very hard, believe it. The trail was not long (less then 4mi), but the elevation gain was nearly a full kilometer. You can see good on these pictures.
You start at the base level and you end up at the top of these falls.
You ping pong between the two rocks and crawl up the rocks on pretty rocky trails.
Actually, I found going down more difficult then up. Because you always look down and think about slipping and falling. "Height" is not really my thing.
It was the weekend before independence day and therefore there was quite a traffic on the trail. I would guess around 500 people on that day. At some point, you start asking the hiker going down how much is left until you reach the top and they help with friendly words. Later, when you go down you also help with encouraging words.
Afterwards, we went to the Hotel. Bad surprise: "We don't have a reservation on your name". Not the sentence you want to hear after such a hike. Nice surprise: It later turned out that the Hotel was overbooked and they upgraded us to the Ahwahnee, a really good Hotel in Yosemite Valley. It is hard to describe how good the hotel is. Find it out yourself. The problem: If you don't have luck as we had, you are at above 500 USD per night. It is probably the best hotel I stayed in up to now. Before the Hyatt Lake Tahoe (MSST 2010) and Bayerpost in Munich.
The independence day was also really nice. It started with "Dim Sum", a special chinese kind of food. The restaurant was in Cupertino. But it felt actually like China, a nicer China. In the complete "mall", the direction sings have not been translated to English. This was for lunch. In the evening, we had a BBQ. And then we went to the near Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View for a concert of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Of course, with fireworks.
It was really nice. The only issue: Parking. It took us two hours to get of the parking space. Thanks Mark for forgetting your badge for free parking.
There is so much left to do. I was only two times in Santa Cruz and I was not yet surfing. I really want to go surfing. And I was only a few times in San Francisco. However, weekend are running out very fast. This weekend, another rafting trip is scheduled. This times with the house group. We thought about going to the river where I have a few weeks ago. But we decided to go to another river where there is a guided tour. That will be fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment