It was another gorgeous sunny day in Mountain View. Even everyone at work was saying it was unseasonably warm. We had a visit from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings in the office today. I think they'd come mainly for the catering! Rumour has it Brian Wilson is popping in to see us next week. Blimey.
Went for lunch at Charlie's, which is the restaurant in the middle of the main area, where they hold the weekly TGIF (more on that later) and which is named after the Head of Catering at Google, who used to be the tour chef for the Grateful Dead. Most importantly of all they have a burrito bar. I may be visiting Charlie's a lot more now I know this very important fact! To get there, we walked through this really odd nautical themed statue garden, which included this one of Lloyd Bridges. Not weird at all.
As it was so lovely and sunny we managed to find a table outside for lunch. It turned out to be a bit too sunny, and now I've got a touch of sunburn. Typical. Here's the patio outside Charlie's - lovely!!!
On the way back to the office I thought I should probably get a photo of me outside our building, just to prove that I am actually here, and it's not all just some elaborate ruse using lots of Google Image searches. So, here I am
And then it was time... to graduate.... So Google have a company-wide meeting every Friday called TGIF, at which the two guys who set up the company (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) still come and tell everyone what the company has been up to in the last week, and what its plans for the future are. And there are free beers and EVEN MORE FOOD. Seriously. WTF? Why does anyone need more food?! Everyone can submit questions for them to answer, and all the Nooglers have to turn up in their hats. And Noogler T-shirts. And placards round our necks saying what our name is, what University we went to and what our degree was in. I felt a bit inadequate surrounded by all these massive nerds from Stanford, Harvard, etc. But then again, I have social skills. So here we are all in Charlie's waiting for TGIF to start
And here I am after in my hat
I think I rocked it. Ahem.... We even got our own special Noogler area to sit in. Rest assured I'll be going along next week to point and laugh at the losers in the propeller hats. Originally, you had to wear the hat all week long, so at least it's only for an afternoon now. Still, it gave me terrible hat hair.
Had to leg it back to the office afterwards to grab my bag and laptop and then run for the bus to San Fran. It felt weird leaving my little safe bubble and getting back into the cruel dangerous outside world! Especially as it drops off in the Tenderloin area of San Fran, near the Civic Centre, and to get to my hotel I had to walk through a load of the big tramp hang outs. Every time I come back here I've kind of forgotten how bad the homeless problem in San Fran is. It's bad..... There are loads of people living on the streets. And there was me strolling through them, clutching a top of the range MacBook Pro. Not good. Still, managed to get to my hotel unscathed. It was still really warm, so I decided to walk to the gig. And finally realised that it's nearly Christmas when I got to Union Square.... There were palm trees full of fairy lights....
A great big tree
From which the fairy at the top appeared to have fallen off and be walking around the square -
And then there was Macy's...
The gig was a fair walk from my hotel but I decided I needed to try and burn off some of this week's eating. Apparently there's an actual statistic called the Noogler 15, which is the number of of pounds the average Noogler puts on in their first 3 months with the company. That's over a stone. And that's not going to happen to me. Honest. I don't think the London office has lemon cheese puffs. So I'll be OK.
Got in fine on the guest list and found the people I was meeting. Can't say I was that arsed about seeing the band, but it was something to do! The support band were Belgian and a bit shit and called Black Box Revelation. The main band were English and a bit shit and called Beady Eye. Obviously the only reason anyone cares about them is cos of Liam Gallagher, but actually the band would be so much better without him. His voice is shot to shit, and so he sings through his nose, which when he tries to shout just makes the most unpleasant noise ever. The band are actually pretty good, they just need a new singer. But that would pretty much defeat the object I guess. Anyway, they were really loud, and now my ears are ringing. Not good. It was a really small venue (about 600 people in there), and I can only assume Liam's equipment is still set to stadium. Anyway, here they are. I could have got a better photo if I could have been arsed to stand up. I couldn't.
Walked back to the hotel, realising I was heading through some of the slightly more colourful areas of San Fran. There were a couple of spectacular sex change prostitutes on one street. They were men with tits basically. Fascinating creatures :o). And then there was some charming man pissing in the street in the middle of the pavement as I was walking towards him. So I've seen some cock. America really does have it all....
I am now even more knackered, as this has taken a lot longer to write than I thought it would as the hotel wi-fi is shit and the photos took ages to upload. So I'm going to bed now. Got to get up tomorrow and face Christmas shopping. And then it's our work Christmas party in the evening. So lots of fun for me tomorrow.
Laters
H xxx
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