Ok, I've been putting this off for awhile. The past two weeks have been very hectic for me, mostly because I spent an awesome spring break actually doing fun stuff, and not just cooped up at home! =). Unfortunately this means I do have a backlog of stuff that I was catching up on. I also have a backlog of things I want to blog about, which I will start doing now because I kinda drank a lot of caffeine today and it has not been good because right now I am super alert and hyper and probably will not be able to fall asleep until 5am.
So this spring break was probably the best spring break I've ever had, hands down. For the past couple of spring breaks I have been stuck on campus, working at the study abroad office. Last spring break was very enjoyable too, going to the EWB conference in Denver and hanging out with Lauren. But this spring break added a whole professional dimension to it. Here was what went down.
So on the Friday that spring break started, I unfortunately did not get any sleep at all because I was up all night doing laundry and packing my things. At around 1pm, KL and I hopping into his car, and KL drove me to Indianapolis Airport, where I was supposed to catch a flight to Los Angeles. Here was the first excitement. Because of some storms in the south, American had delayed my flight by 2 hours. Well, this would have meant that I would miss the last bus of the night that I was supposed to take from LA to Santa Barbara. So...I pleaded and pleaded with the Asian lady behind the counter to do something, anything, to right this wrong. She put me on an alternative flight through Chicago, which was supposed to arrive 15 minutes AFTER my bus was supposed to leave. Slightly hopeful, I called the bus company and pleaded for them to hold the bus an extra 15 minutes until I arrived. They acquiesced.
Well, thanks to headwinds, I made it into LA 15 minutes later than I should have. It is now 10:30pm and the bus was supposed to leave at 10. I'm thinking, there's no way the bus is still here. Damn it. But, I managed to call the bus company (cellphone records show I called them 10+ times that day), and they said that the bus was still there! Albeit it was at the last pickup stop before it left the airport, and this stop was very convenient located - at the farthest terminal from my location. So I ran for it. I sprinted the entire way. And made it as the bus was getting ready to pull out. Success! I made it onto the bus 50 minutes after it was supposed to have left. My friend JJ later told me that he had never heard of anyone making the bus so late. I made it to Santa Barbara at around 1am, and my friend JJ picked me up from the bus stop and took me back to his place. Along the way, he gets stopped by a cop (2nd time that night) because his friend's car (which he was borrowing) had no headlights. None. The cop laughed at his story and let him go with a warning.
JJ lives in a dorm on the UCSB campus. It's a nice place! On Saturday morning, we wake up early-ish, and walk down to the beach. We arrived at low tide. It's nice! Exactly as I imagined, except for a little cloudier and colder, but that's fine! We walked along the beach for about half an hour, just talking about life in general, before we head back to his place. We pack some food, and go hiking in the hills surrounding Santa Barbara. It was really beautiful, and we managed to snap some photos, climb some rocks, before the rain started. Those were the highlights of SB. For the rest of my stay, it didn't stop raining, and we mostly just hung around at home and watched TV. We did go to a ECE pulled-pork party though, where there was good food, beer, and Wii. It was fun times. At the party I met this guy who was heading up to Stanford the next day (Monday), so I readily ditch my Greyhound ticket (9.5 hour ride) for a ride with him (4.5 hours) in order to get to San Francisco earlier.
Monday morning comes. I wake JJ up (6:30am), say bye, and hop in car with random dude from party. He's a cool guy, a physics grad student at Stanford. He tells me many great things about Stanford, which is somewhat of a relief for me. At around 11:30, we arrive in Palo Alto. I say thanks, part with $10 for his drive, and hop on the CalTrain to go into San Francisco city. I switch to the BART and head to Berkeley, where I meet up with SL for lunch. Haven't seen her in a year, so it's exciting! After lunch (pizza), we get ice cream, and she shows me around Berkeley. It's an awesome campus, and would definitely in serious running with Stanford had I gotten in. We part ways after 3 hours (she has to go to a lab meeting) and I go shopping in Berkeley. I then meet up with TS for dinner, and we talk about his dislike for grad school and life in general. I then bid TS goodbye and head to the CalTrain station, where I miss the train by 10 minutes and must wait 50 minutes for the next train to San Jose. Arrive in San Jose at 11:30pm, walk 15 minutes from train station to hotel, checking behind me the whole time to ensure I won't get mugged, check in, iron shirt and pants, and crash on bed.
Next day I meet up with ECE crew (SH, BP, and MG). We eat breakfast with an ECE alum who works at Intel, and then drive up to San Francisco to meet with a venture capitalist. We spend the rest of the afternoon doing touristy stuff in SF, before heading to Google's headquarters in Mountain View for the ECE alumni event. At the event, I meet a whole bunch of alumni. It was an awesome experience. Plus, open bar and free food! Could that night get any better?
Wednesday, we wake up early, and take the flight to Seattle. We don't have anything planned for that day, so we go do some more touristy stuff! We visit the fish market in downtown Seattle, where we ate awesome clam chowder. It was so good. I'm hungry. Back on topic. After that, we visit Boeing's plant in Everett, and get a tour of their production facility. It was AMAZING! If I wasn't already an electrical engineer, just visiting that plant would make me want to go into aerospace engineering. It was so cool! Seeing and hearing about the production process for all of the Boeing planes, especially the 787, was awesome. At least for me and MG, since we are both engineers. SH and BP looked slightly bored this entire time, lol. That night we ate at this seafood restaurant. It was awesome! The table was covered with a clean cloth, they brought a bucket of seafood, and dumped it right on the table. We tore into it with our hands. It was the best dinner I had in a long time. Hungry again.
Thursday, we wake up early, and tour the Microsoft offices in Redmond. Now I have to say, I did not have a good impression of Microsoft before my visit there. But MS's campus is absolutely amazing. It is so huge, with so many amenities and facilities, that it is mind boggling. The tour guides (all ECE alum) told us that there are more than 80 restaurants there! During the afternoon, we meet with different MS employees, and we talked about how the team structure of MS is setup. That night, we host another alumni event, this time at MS. There were significantly less people at this one than the Google one, but it was still fun. I especially liked talking with a Bing developer and learning the search algorithm that is implemented by Bing. After the event was over, the ECE crew drove me to Seattle's airport, and I flew out on the last flight out of Seattle to Louisville.
Louisville was where EWB's international conference was being held this year. Having left Seattle at 11pm, I arrived in Louisville at 11am, very deprived of sleep. The rest of the time spent at the conference in Louisville was uneventful, apart from us all driving to an awesome ice cream place to eat some ice cream. Along the way we listened to some radio-soap-opera thingy, which I had no idea about. It was a hilarious contemporary rendition of Madame Butterfly, and KA and I laughed the entire way to the ice cream store. On Sunday, we drove back to school.
This was truly the best spring break I'd ever have. It was so much traveling, for both business and pleasure, and I got to visit the West Coast again. After getting a more extensive California experience this time (compared with my short 2-day trip to Stanford the week before), I am completely sure I love California. I am so excited to be going there next year!
Anyways, that's a long enough post. Till next post!
-FCDH
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