Ikea

Because I had nothing much to do on the Sunday, I tagged along for a trip to Ikea. For the people lacking knowledge on furniture brands, Ikea is a huge chain of furniture shops. The store was rather interesting in that they have like a show room with all these bathroom, kitchen, living room booths, which showcase their products. You have to walk all the way through passing all these booths before you can get to the part where you can actually buy the things you want. Which is a good ploy, because I wasnt planning to buy anything, but then passing through the kitchen section reminded me I needed a wok and a large bowl..

Anyway, after noting down the item you want, you then go to the warehouse bit and go to find the items (most of the furniture is kitset type stuff) that you want to buy. The funny thing is that my New Zealand compatriots just happened to buy a piece of furniture called Stefan. It's a simple, straightforward, black, wooden table chair, which by my account I think misrepresents how I thought furniture named after me would look like.. hehe :P

Rasterbator & my room

After some sneaky free printing, I have managed to get something up on my walls. I have to say rasterbator is a pretty cool program that lets you pixelate your photos so you can enlarge them and have them poster size. I have to say Im very happy with my results, well apart from the printer suddenly printing on blue pages instead of white ( >_< !). I guess you need to click on the photos and see what I mean.. If you feel I need to put some other picture up, Im open to suggestion :D

Today felt like Winter..

Well this morning it was freezing outside. It was a nice clear morning, but luckily not quite frosty. But then I look up onto the range and I see white stuff! It snowed during the night. I honestly thought that those ranges weren't that high, nor that it actually got cold enough with cloud cover here to actually snow anywhere.

I have to say it was a rather invigorating experience of feeling the chill while seeing some nice views, which is a nice way to cap off an end to my third week living here :D Needless to say during the day the sun was out in force, and yea ideas of winter being present quickly went away.. ;)

My options for the weekend are to go out on Saturday night to Santa Cruz (getting transportation there is an issue), or to a cocktail party hosted by a Churman (German :p) co-op, who is on the same program as me..

An Evening walk home

Well this is just a 360 degree snapshot of a nice evening in San Jose. It's on a bridge that goes over the freeway and gives access to the train station..

Driving- Yay!

So after gaining the trust of my flatmate I can drive her car to swimming! It's a mustang ;) and no, not an old model, a fairly modern one. Must say it feels a bit awkward looking to the right for my rear view mirror, or turning round the other way to look when I am reversing. The car itself seems to handle pretty well for a wide beast, but yea its auto so no problems with changing gears.

Apart from the obvious difference of driving on the right side of the road, they have small quirky differences in their rules that I have had to learn. For instance being able to turn right on a red light after stopping (which is such a smart idea), and the first in first served stop rule (a little odd but it seems to work). Also if you are turning across traffic, you dont get any right of way like you do in NZ.

Im still a freeway virgin, however from obeserving others, the speed limit seems to be a guide line. So yea doing over 120km/h :o seems to be what the majority of traffic seems to do! Also it can be a little weird having six lanes going one way!

Downtown

Well today after waking up a bit late, and after some miscommunication I was bolting out the door to catch the train so that I could still make mass somewhere. Just minutes earlier with the wonders of the internet I managed to locate a mass at a nice time of 1pm, however it was already after 12pm, with the slight detail that the mass would be in Spanish! Oh well you sleep too long you lose out, as the English masses had all been and finished >_<

After a couple "argh, should I have gotten off at the previous stop?" moments, I got off at a good stop and walked towards where I should be going. I was pleasantly surprised by running into a Vietnamese Spring celebration parade, helping celebrate the Chinese new year. So there was lots of noise, dancing, people dressed up in traditional garments, etc.

So after a quick stint of parade/people watching I mosied on into the cathedral. I have to say it's one of the prettiest cathedrals I have ever seen. It's the oldest in San Jose and it's pretty big. The mass was, well in Spanish, so a little hard to understand, but afterwards they had sweet goodies - mmmm Chorros mmmmm :D This crunchy sweet cucumber looking pastry.. mmm it was good!

So after that I took a stroll around and found out that the final of the SAP open was being played between Murray(!) and some dude.. I sooo couldve gone that wouldve been cool. But yea weather was getting a bit cooler, and I didnt have the time nor the money, maybe next year..



The ride home was interesting. I jumped in the train and was taking a phone call when I stumbled over something.. being into the phone call I didnt take notice. After then watching someone else stumble, I found it was some little sh*ts putting their legs out. I was about to go at these guys, but the traffic lady who was checking tickets came in and they quickly ran off the train.. which was then followed by about a quarter of the occupants who also realised that they didnt have a ticket. Lol, there was one lady who didnt get off in time and was making up lame excuses in a panic.. hehe.. Oh yea I have to explain that of the 20+ times Ive caught the train, this is the first time that someone has come to check that I have a ticket. So Im guessing lots of people just ride their luck..

Santa Cruzzzzzzzzz

Well today (Saturday) was summer. Literally, it was 20+ degrees! Jandals and no shirt weather, Im definitely not complaining about winter over here :] So yea Onita (my flatmate) took my out to Santa Cruz. It's about 30 mins drive depending on traffic. To get there it's a drive over a range and then down to the ocean. It's a nice scenic type drive, through woods and up a winding hill giving you some views, however the road is a little dodge, but two lanes each way makes it quite manageable.



Santa Cruz itself is supposedly a pretty hippie town. Like there didnt seem to be any apartments, and quite a lot of actual houses. However I didnt see any hippies - I was disappointed. The features of Santa Cruz are the pretty ocean views, nice sandy beach, the board walk and the massive pier.

Getting into Santa Cruz you start to see why land is really expensive there. The view and the beach are pretty amazing. Santa Cruz sits on the top part of a large bay, and you can pretty see most of the bay from it.




The board walk is like this walk along the foreshore, just above the sand where there are all these attractions. You know think cliché hit the targets and win a soft toy type stuff. There also are thrill rides like a roller coaster and others. I didnt jump on any of the rides, as Im saving that for another day, i.e. when I have money to burn..

The pier stretches for a good couple of hundred metres out into the ocean. You can park your car there and fish off it, or dine at the several food places there. I had a go at the clam chowder in a bread bowl. Wasnt bad, but the bread was probably the highlight of the meal actually, hehe (it's hard to find good bread here..). The pier also has sea lions that live underneath it. They howl, sing, snort, annoy the fisher man and bob up and down in the water..



So after a bit of a stroll round the place it was back over the hill to San Jose.

Mountain Charley's

Mountain Charley's, Mountain Charley's is a club/pub in Los Gatos. As far as I understand, it has a skanky like rapport, but I didnt really find it so. Especially since it is rather well lit compared to NZ bars, and that I felt like the youngest there - most probably since the drinking age is 21 over here and Im just a little over that..

Anyway they charged a cover for the live band that was playing. Unfortunately this band was a cover band and played some pretty bad renditions of some good songs :( so when they were on, the dancing felt pretty substandard. However I still managed to have a good boogie/time - its nice when your NZ compatriots keep buying you drinks :D

Friday - end of the work week :D

Yea so another work week has gone, which means that I have been here for over two weeks! Anyway nothing much to report on the week, except that today was rather warm. Like I was starting to sweat cause I was wearing a t-shirt and a thin jumper!

Well as part of getting to know more people at work I went for lunch with one of the teams at a place called BJ's (yes what kind of name is that?) and had a delightful meal of pasta and caesar salad (pats belly). Just for a price comparison for all my fans, you could say that the meal was comparable in price to back home in NZ, however the portions here are much larger, thus I have to conclude that food/eating out here seems cheaper.

I also got a sim card for my mobile phone that I took from NZ. Did you know that when someone calls you here in the states on your mobile, you pay to receive it! Same for txts, pxts, you pay like 10c to receive em. However the cost of calling is like 10c a minute, so it kind of balances out! Interestingly its nice to actually have people call, rather than send txts - it gets thing sorted a lot faster! .. Another did you know: did you know that the NZ mobile phone network is a lot more advanced than it is here in the states? e.g. 3G isnt here - no body knows about video calling..

Swimming and the like..

Yay so today I had my first swim in a pool over here. It was a bit of trouble finding a place to swim, as I mentioned earlier, they dont seem to have aquatic places quite as abundantly as they are in Wellington. Most people I asked were saying to go to a gym that had a pool, which from experience I knew would be crap.. but fortunately after spending a bit of time checking each club that usaswimming.org said was in my area and using google maps, I managed to find one :D

First impressions are good, like the coach is a really big guy, and he seemed quite cool about me joining. From the net the club seems to be well organised and since swim meets arent all local, it'll be a good way for me to see some of California :) However the only problem is that currently they just have one session a day, which is a three hour session!! from 3:30-6:30pm. Since my day usually ends about 4:30-5pm, Im going to have to try to change things around a little so I can make em.. This could mean having to be at work extra early :S ..

In other news, I am finally able to actually do some real work, as the bug that was stopping me from doing anything has disappeared since I moved to a different machine. So yay, all things are go! :]

Monday came and went

Well Monday came and went. I got up early to go to the gym before work, which was at work...
[Rant]Unfortunately it was a bit of let down. No squat rack, no adjustable cable system, and no proper swiss ball - I almost cried.. :( but then again I made use of the cheap under inflated swiss ball, lat pull down machine and my own body weight.. which was good enough. It also had a corner with mats with which to stretch comfortably on.. I might go suggest that the gym get some better equipment - namely a good swiss ball, as I cant really see it being smart to ask for a squat rack, as I doubt there are many Comp geeks that know how to squat properly without any supervision.. [/Rant]

But yea, then at worky I couldnt quite get setup so I could play with the testing stuff.. hopefully tomorrow things will work out. So that like took the whole day.. and then it was time to leave :D

Sunday

Today I got taken out to the Polish mass. I went with Kristie, she's Polish, she hasnt got a real grasp of the language, so it was nice of her to offer to take me and sit through mass which she doesnt really understand. Perks were that after mass you can get some Polish food. So I had sernik (Polish Cheesecake), szarlotka (apple crumble like) and some makowiec (poppy seed cake).. was too late for nalesniki (crepe type stuff) and pierogi, so will have to go to the earlier mass to get those apparently. I would have taken photos of these yummy delights (I had my camera), but I havent quite got into the document what I do with photos routine..

Anyways I think Im going to go plan stuff to do during the week. As yea I havent found a pool here yet, as there doesnt seem to be aquatic centres/pools as abundant as we have in NZ. So I have to actually plan it, otherwise I wont do it.. also I might try to learn the californian road code so I can take their test and get a local form of ID, instead of using my passport.

Sea Otter Relaxing

My Place

Yea so here are some photos of the place I am staying at: it has a cat, a dog, a flatmate, a huge stove and microwave, a living room with tv and tivo!

Aquarium

Well today my flatmate offered me and two other New Zealanders a ride out to Monterrey to the aquarium out there. It was cool I saw Sun fish (it's mammoth!), tuna, sharks, sea otters, jellyfish (like a whole section on just jelly fish), anchovies, Sth African penguins, was actually rather interesting. Especially since there were like 'hands on' bits where you could go pat sting ray, star fish, crabs.. I also got to see what a shark egg looks like :O = **Amazing**

They also had this funny like mechanical moving part display thing that was rather tacky, but like American nonetheless, as it had this theme music and showed how jelly fish come into being.. hehe :D

The only thing was that it was drizzling, so not really walking around weather. I forgot to take my lonely planet guide, so will probably have to go back, as apparently its pretty good for sea food, and has an old Spanish part as Monterrey was apparently one of the main places that the Spanish tried to establish first. However we did take a short stroll around, so we found a BubbaGump shrimp place, with funny logo (we didnt eat there cause it was $$). We also took a short stroll down the wharf, which had numerous restaurants with fish specialities, but we had settled for pizza earlier, so we left..

end of first week

Well the first week of me working has concluded. It was rather good, the time just flew by... next week it looks like I am going to have some real work to do, as I was mostly just learning the hows and getting setup this week..

Plans for the weekend are probably going to include maybe a visit to San Jose downtown, or San Fran, and maybe an excursion to a club at night or something.. but starting it off, tonight is a birthday party of one of the other NZ guys! :D

First Post

Yay first post! :D hopefully I will be able to sustain this blog.

So... here I am in Silicon Valley, working in a 4th floor corner office that overlooks the main square here at the Silicon Valley Lab. I dont know how I managed it, none of the other Co-ops (that's what we're called) seem to have a nice office as this. Of course I share it, but that means I have some company during the day :]. We have a cafeteria, a gym, & vending machines onsite.

The whole complex is nestled against hills that resemble Ohariu Valley (photos will follow at some point). It is a bit away from everything, but that makes the morning commute so much easier, as all the traffic is in the opposite direction.

Currently the weather is a overcast with some very light rain. Its a bit cool maybe 14C, but if this is winter, summer must get real hot! Like the other week it got to about 20C in the sun!