Big Basin with Wendy and Kenny

On Sunday 29th Wendy and Kenny invited us to join them for a “little” walk. Wendy is a dear friend of mine from Harvard. We lived in the same house on campus and she put up with me as a roommate one summer in Boston. She’s an MD-PhD student at Stanford, and Kenny, her boyfriend, is a hotshot investment banker! What was supposed to be a 4-5 mile hike, turned into an 11.5 mile one! I’m relieved to know that contrary to all prior experience, Wendy is not always right In the end, we didn’t mind the length of the hike one bit, since the scenery and company were so pleasant! Big Basin is the oldest State Park in California. It’s filled with Coast Redwood trees, but not the Giant Sequoia variety, which grows more inland. Most of the Redwoods were charred inside – apparently they have fire retardant bark which allows them to survive forest fires. We’ll think twice before accepting another hiking invitation from these two, but the day was great!

First trip to Ventura

With Corey’s birthday already passed, and Dad’s just around the corner, we decided it was time for a trip to Ventura. The timing could not have been better, since my family’s most recent purchase has made the 5 hour drive to Ventura a lot less painful …2 smoking hot fast and furious wave runners!!! We drove down the coast late on Friday night with Severin to keep us company. Dinner was at In-N-Out, a tradition to be upheld on all future trips down South. We dropped Severin off in Santa Barbara for a wild and crazy weekend (see his blog for details) and continued down to Ventura. It was great to be together the five of us for the first time in a long while, and the waverunners were awesome! We drove them up the coast to Santa Barbara (about a 3 hour drive) – Corey, Noe, and I on one, and Mom and Dad on the other, all in our sexy wetsuits. We were screaming at 40mph, but the throttle was only halfway in! It’s so much more fun than just riding them on a lake- the waves are totally unpredictable. Santa Barbara is one of those beautiful people places, so you can imagine how it felt to arrive there after getting pounded in the face by waves for three hours smelling like sea kelp We all had dinner together at the harbor. Most of you know or can at least imagine how good a fondue tastes after snowboarding/skiing all day – guacamole and chips after waverunnering – it’s the same effect! Sunday was more low key, but great too. We had a birthday brunch at home and then flew kites on the beach before leaving. The drive down and back is actually more manageable than we thought it would be. It goes surprisingly fast, especially with things like In-n-Out and Severin’s stories of UC Santa Barbara parties along the way. Below some pics. Hope to do it again soon!

Random Googley Stuff

On the same floor as my office at Google we have a small kitchen with lots of different drinks, fruits, a real espresso machine, …. Next to the kitchen is the pool table, and next to the pool table is this ball pool for kids. You wouldn’t believe how many Googlers play in that ball pool! Of course I had to try it out as well.

At one of the first lunch breaks I had at the main cafeteria at Google another intern, Benjamin, took this picture of me. You recognize those umbrellas from Google Maps if you turn on the Satelite view: View of Google.

Paintball

Ten days ago a bunch of other Google interns dragged me to a paintball place. We shot at each other for three hours in the beating sun. After that first paintball experience I have enough for a couple of years. It’s too close to a real shooting if you ask me. I don’t want to sound like a wussy but when you get hit by a paintball it hurts! I ended up with a douzen brouzes or so – I probably need to work on my dodging techniques.