Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Well, considering I’ve been home for a few days now, I should probably finish writing about the trip. :-)

Tuesday morning I woke up and checked my voice mail to discover that Charles (who flew in from the East Coast) was doing a bit better with the jet lag and had already had breakfast and gone out for the day. I pulled myself out of bed and headed down to breakfast.

A nice, well-traveled Scottish guy sat at the table next to me and we chatted for a while. He originally took me to be a Canadian since I have a neutral accent and I’m friendly, (“Canadians are so nice you sometimes want to punch them, aye?”). We had a nice and pleasant conversation, and like a lot of people around the world, he had a lot of questions and opinions about the current state American politics.

Next, I left the hotel to head into Old Town for some sight-seeing and souvenir shopping. I found lots of nice things for everyone, but since I haven’t given everyone their presents, I can’t talk about what I bought. The tourist-trap stores were filled with all sorts of amazingly detailed amber carvings. They were unfortunately also really expensive. :-(

This trip, I did by myself something. There’s some legend about a dragon in Krakow, so there were lots of little dragon figures for sale. I spent some time looking for the coolest dragon and finally picked the ugliest dragon figure I could find. It was just so stupid looking, I had to by it. :-)

Next, I went to the office and we started our design review while munching on some pizza (mmm… pizza). The meeting was very productive despite most of the team being having varying degrees of jet-lag.

That night we went out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner. I had a decent Caprese salad, spinach and cheese cannoli, and tiramisu. The sauce on the cannoli was excellent, but the cannoli stuffing was dry, not very cheesy, and not very good. I’m happy to report that my spinach Manicotti stuffing is far superior. I plan to experiment and see if I can copy that sauce though.

The next day started with a quick early breakfast, brief scenic walk to work, and then jumping straight into the design. Lunch for me was a green salad, a small sheep’s milk cheese appetizer, pizza, and some cheesecake. At the Krakow office there isn’t a served lunch, but they have a neat food service. You go to a website that has menus of 5 or so local restaurants and click whatever you want. And at 1 pm, the food appears!

I also discovered that my Blackberry phone was off by 10 minutes. It’s not that big of a deal, but really annoying.

For dinner that night, we met at the hotel. Most of us were tired, but we still had lots of fun. I had minestrone soup, a Greek salad, and chocolate brownies with vanilla ice cream. The Greek salad was amazingly good, thanks to the high quality feta cheese. I wish we could get Feta like that here in Seattle.

During dinner we noticed that the piano player disappeared when our food order went in, so we decided that the pianist was also the cook in the nearly empty restaurant. Also, if he didn’t start playing before the food came out, the food was cold. Clearly there is some sort of connection. Being the brilliant engineers we are, we realized that the kitchen is powered by the piano. If you want hot food, someone better be playing the piano. :-)

And then it was off to bed for what turned out to be an exciting trip home…

No, it’s not my interpretation of heaven. :-) I’ll explain later.

Monday started like any other day, except that I woke up in Krakow at 6 am. I knew that I needed to get more sleep, so I cranked up the AC and managed to sleep until 8. I read and watched TV until 9:30 or so. The TV here gets a network called NASN (North American Sports Network) that shows American sports 24/7. While there usually isn’t a live game, they show recent games without commercials. Even if you know the outcome of the game already, it’s still fun to watch the game without interruptions.

Breakfast at the hotel was excellent. I love bread and cheese; apparently Poland and Switzerland are the best places for good bread in Europe, so I lucked out. I ate a lot of food that morning and had some excellent English Breakfast Tea.

Then it was off to work. The Google office here is a just a 15 minute walk from the Sheraton. It was a little tricky finding the office. All the street signs here are rather hidden and the streets are packed, so it’s not conducive to stopping and staring at a map. Plus, I was trying to not look like a tourist, which was a little hard, since as far as I could tell I was the only Indian guy walking around Krakow.

Once I got to work, Kacper, Jarek, and Morg took me to lunch. The office here doesn’t have a cafeteria, instead everyone either orders in or goes out to one of the many restaurants close by. We went to get Italian food, and I ordered pizza. The pizza was good, but nowhere as good as the pizza in Zurich was.

The office here is in a palace. A real palace with marble floors, chandeliers, and various marble carving murals. And the bathroom is all marble with a giant tub. Some really wealthy guy owns the building and lives on the top two floors and rents out the rest of the building. It’s strange seeing very casually dressed software guys walking around a beautiful building. Not to mentioned having meetings in a room that has a chandelier. :-)

For dinner, we went to old town to find a restaurant. My vegetarian restrictions made it a little difficult to find a place, but we finally settled on what turned out to be a very romantic restaurant. It was pretty nice; it was in a renovated basement with lots of red lighting, and sparkling pink things. It’s strange that I was in such a place when I wasn’t forced by Crissy.

Dinner was good, but it took a really long time. I like the idea of multi-course meals and relaxing and talking during dinner, but Europe seems to take this too far. I had a bowl of tomato-basil soup (they were out of the minestrone) and spicy pasta with marinara. Both were good, but not spectacular.

For dessert, we went to another place. Charles ordered hot chocolate and we learned that hot chocolate in Europe is just that; basically melted chocolate. And they served it with cream on the side. It looked really good. I was leaning towards tiramisu, but the dessert menu cover had black forest cake and it looked really tasty, so I ordered that. Turns out it was really tasty. :-)

After that, back to the hotel. I had a 5 pm Pacific time meeting in California I wanted to dial into, but I couldn’t manage to stay up. I ended up falling asleep at my desk 10 minutes before the meeting.

And so ended Monday. :-)

I’m in Krakow for a design review with my project engineers. This project is split Zurich and Krakow; since last time we met in Zurich, we decided to meet in Krakow this time around. I left Seattle on Saturday and arrived Sunday to give myself some extra time to adjust to the time difference of 8 hours.

Unfortunately, getting to Krakow involves more layovers than flying to India. I flew from Seattle to Amsterdam to Munich to Krakow. I’m not a big fan of flying in Europe. It’s ok to smoke in the airport, so you get lots of second-hand smoke waiting for the plane. And the boarding process is disorganized (“everyone board as once”). It’s probably faster, but not fun.

It’s especially not fun because of limited overhead bin space. On my flight from Munich to Krakow, the guy next to me kept this carry-on suitcase at his feet (it didn’t fit under the seat in front of him), so he ended up crowding my area quite a bit. It was very uncomfortable, but I was so tired by then that I just fell asleep.

Northwest Airlines couldn’t get the TV system on the plane working for about 2 hours, so I read most of The Blind Side, which was pretty good, but I liked Liar’s Poker better. Which reminds me, I have about 25 books that I’ve read and still need to write about. :-(

My last flight was about an hour late. My hotel had a car that picked me up and brought me to the hotel. The hotel was completely booked, so my room wasn’t available when I arrived (at around 2 pm). I was pretty annoyed (and sleepy), but fortunately, it was ready within 20 minutes.

The hotel is pretty nice. It’s has a nice central courtyard / atrium with the main restaurant and a glass ceiling. This morning I saw a guy mopping the ceiling. It’s the first time I’ve seen something mopped from floor’s perspective. :-)

I took a shower and then went to the main restaurant to get a bite to eat. They weren’t serving from the menu because they had a fancy Sunday brunch going on. Since I couldn’t eat most of the food (meat and fish) they were serving, I went to the sports bar and ate nachos and a brownie while engrossed in a soccer match between two teams I didn’t know or recognize.

Then I went to sleep (finally!) and slept until 7 when Morgwai and Marek (two of the Krakow based developers) met me at the hotel for dinner. We walked to Old Town and went to a traditional Polish restaurant where I had salad (lettuce with sour cream, which was surprisingly good) and vegetarian pierogi. I had both cabbage/mushroom and potato pierogi with a roasted onion sauce. I didn’t really like the cabbage/mushroom or the roasted onion sauce, but the potato ones were good. Much better than Trader Joe’s brand frozen pierogi.

For dessert I had a layered chocolate creme wafer cake thing. It was really good, but a little dry (I think it’s supposed to be like that). And then we walked back and I went to sleep after watching a little bit of Shrek 3 in Polish (I could have watched the English version, but the Polish one was better).

Coming next: Vijay explores the city while trying not to look like a tourist, goes to work in a palace, and finds some pizza.

The title basically sums up my trip to Zurich. My last day of work started with a long meandering walk through the city taking lots of pictures. Halfway through the walk, I discovered a street with lots of banks that look like the Swiss banks you see in the movies. I learned that taking pictures of these banks is a great way to get suspicious looks from the security guards. :-P

I also discovered lots of hidden courtyards with gardens and fountains. It was so much fun exploring these, that I managed to get to work 10 minutes late. Fortunately, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but people were a little worried that I may have gotten lost or something.

We had another long day at work. The only notable part that I can share is that the weather was great so we ate on the roof top patio. Roof top patios are awesome! After work, I walked back to the hotel, dropped my stuff off and headed to the shops.

I needed to buy lots of souvenirs, so I found a souvenir shop. It was pretty expensive, but had a good selection. I spent around an hour picking out things that I knew people would like and would somehow also fit in my limited carry-on bag space. Unfortunately, somewhere in the chaos of packing all the gifts, the saleswomen forgot to add one of the things to the bag. And it turned out to be the one thing I bought for myself. D’oh!

Since everyone hasn’t received their gift yet, I won’t mention what I bought, but I really like the gift I bought for Crissy’s dad. It’s really cool. :-)

And no, I didn’t buy any chocolate. And before you freak out, the good chocolate brands are available here in specialty shops, so I didn’t want to add to my already nearly 35 pounds of carry-on bags.

After the shopping trip, I dropped my bags off at the hotel and set up to explore “Old Town”. Old town is the part of town I was staying in; it’s on the lake and has a lot of the historic buildings and cobblestone streets that are only open for foot traffic. And there were some really good street musicians.

For dinner, I found a nice Ristorante Pizzeria and had a wonderful outdoor dinner overlooking the lake. Though, I was dining alone, I did have a nice conversation with some German tourists one table over who were very interested in American politics and were surprised how much I knew about world events. I hopefully changed their initial impression of “stupid American tourist”. :-)

One thing that stood out about the pizza is that it isn’t sliced. In fact, you’re not supposed to eat it with your hands. The proper way is to eat the pizza use a knife and fork on the whole thing. Since the pizza was so incredibly tasty, it was frustrating to have to eat it so slowly. I just wanted to pick it up and take gigantic bites.

After dinner, I explored the town again, a lot of the old town is lit up by nights and it was quite nice.

Finally, I packed and went to bed. My trip back started the next morning and was mostly uneventful. Business class was not full on the flight back, so I was expecting to be bumped up (given my “Elite” status). But apparently they only bump when business class is not full and coach is overbooked. So instead of letting some of their best customers sit in a nicer, empty seats, they had us stay in our coach seats.

They could have gotten some great goodwill for no cost, but their policy dictates otherwise. That makes little business sense.

Yesterday was a long but fun day. Like I mentioned yesterday, I woke up early and did some work. Then I got ready for the day and went to get breakfast at the hotel. The food was great. Since it’s Europe there were really good breads and cheeses. And really good tea. After breakfast, was walking to work. It was about a 30 minute walk with some rain and frequent wondering, “Are we lost? Is this the right street?” :-)

The city is very beautiful, lots of old buildings with great architecture and overall very clean. The Google office in Zurich is pretty nice. Their break room has huge bars of good Swiss chocolate. I wish I had a room like that.

I was in a design meeting all day, presenting most of the afternoon. The jetlag was making it hard to concentrate, but the day went well. After work we walked back to the hotel. The sun finally came out and the walk back was terrific. After dropping stuff off at the hotel, we walked to a traditional Swiss restaurant. I had an amazingly good caprese salad followed by a traditional Swiss fondue.

I actually didn’t like the fondue. I thought there was too much wine in it. Though if you like wine, I suppose it would have tasted really good. I also started getting annoyed at how leisurely the meals are here. The whole dinner took around 3 hours, and I was sleepy before we even started!

Dinner ended with a terrific chocolate mousse. I was tired but content; I had my first traditional Swiss meal. :-)

So far today, the weather looks great. I’m planning on taking a slow walk to work to take pictures of all the cool things. Hopefully, I can get out of work early. All the stores close starting at 6:30 pm and I have lots of souvenirs to buy. :-)

Well, I finally made it to Zurich yesterday evening (local time). The weather was extremely rainy. So , I decided I would just take a cab to the Hotel rather than take the train and then try to find my way around the city. The cab ride was uneventful, except for my slipping in and out of sleep. By then, I had been awake nearly 36 hours and was getting cranky. The driver dropped me off at my hotel, the Bar Hotel Rossli, which turns out to be a lot nicer online than in real life.

I suppose I’m used to American style hotels with larger rooms and real furniture. But the bed is cozy and that’s all that really matters. After I checked in and took a shower, I went out to dinner with my coworker at a nice Italian restaurant. I really liked it, except for the smoking. Why do Europeans smoke so much? Don’t they know it’s really bad for you?

The dinner was fun. My apple juice was slightly sparkling which was weird. The menu was all in German and that made ordering fun. Also, things like the bread basket, Parmesan cheese, and pepper mill were communal so the waiter kept passing them from table to table. And most of the wait staff was Indian. The pasta was so good! The sauce was nice and spicy, and the noodles were cooked perfectly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that hungry and only ate like half of it.

I had meant to write this post after dinner but I was too exhausted. So instead I did a little work, got my Blackberry working, and went to bed. For some reason, my body only let me sleep for 8 hours, so I’m up early (local time) writing this post.

Unfortunately, I think I caught something on the plane and can feel a cold coming. This is bad, since I really want to be able to explore the city after work today and tomorrow.

Also unfortunately, instead of the 70 degrees and sunny skies the weather forecast promised me, Zurich will be in the high 50s with 80% rain while I’m here. I flew halfway around the world and found Seattle. :-)

I’m supposed to be in Zurich for work, but my bad luck with airports seems to be continuing. My flight from Seattle to Amsterdam went well (as well as a 10 hour flight can go), but my Amsterdam to Zurich flight got canceled because KLM, the “Royal Dutch Airlines”, didn’t have a crew for the plane. Which is understandable, it’s not like KLM operates a lot of flights or anything; how would they know that they need a flight crew for the plane? With modern marvels like distributed computing, nano-technology, and peanut butter and jelly in one jar, I can see how you would assume a plane can fly itself. Sheesh.

Anyway, after the cancellation announcement, we were all asked to “sit tight” while they figure things out. An hour later they announced that they were able to get a bigger plane for a later flight to Zurich, so we could all get on that flight. The outcome was that my 2 hour layover turned into a 8 hour layover. And what was to be my one afternoon to explore Zurich, would become a long stay in the Crown Lounge at the Amsterdam airport.

On the plus side for the few people in the world that read this blog, this gives me lots of time to write.

On the Seattle to Zurich flight, I didn’t get bumped up to business class, but I did get “coach select” privileges which lets me use the lounges at the airports. Since the Seattle flight left at 1 pm, I didn’t really feel the need to sleep while on the flight, so the tiny coach seat was adequate. Instead, I read a little of Blink, thought a lot about life and stuff, and watched 3 movies (though I wasn’t paying much attention): Rush Hour, Wag the Dog, and Kingdom of Heaven. I’d seen the first two, but it was my first time seeing Kingdom of Heaven.

I remember seeing previews for Kingdom a few years back and thinking, it’s Ridley Scott directing, Liam Neeson acting, and there are lots of swords; I have to see it! Now, I’m very happy I never paid money to see it. It was really bad. Really bad. It could have been good, but the plot had no flow and it seemed like huge parts were missing. A plot element like “royal father finds and acknowledges bastard son, deep bond forms, father dies, son assumes mantle of responsibility” usually takes time, but in this movie 5 minutes are all that we get. We didn’t even get a montage of the son learning warfare. I guess it just sort of happened magically.

On the plus side, it did pass time. And speaking of passing time, I’m going to go see what they have to eat around here. Hopefully next time I write something, it will be from Zurich.

Well, the past few days have been interesting to say the least. Crissy’s little sister, Jill (to the right of me in this picture), got really sick so Crissy and I flew out to Columbia to be with her. I’m very happy and relieved to say that’s she much better now, and I just got back in Seattle and Crissy’s coming back tomorrow.

Jill had been diagnosed with pre Type II diabetics and it seemed to be all under control with her new diet. But, last week, Jill went into diabetic shock and was in the ICU, so we rushed to see her. Now Jill is back at home mostly back to normal, but needs to have regular blood sugar tests and insulin injections. She’s not a fan of getting the shots and having blood drawn; she very succinctly described it all, “I hate blood sugar! I hate diabetes!”

Crissy and I really happy and thankful that she’s better. But we’re still a little stressed and shocked from the ordeal. I realized on the plane ride back that we’re incredibly fortunate to have jobs that we can get time off for things like this and have enough money that we can afford last minute travel across the country.

And, of course, access to the healthcare was helpful too. :-)

I got a nice, shiny blue RAV4 for as my rental car. I was a bit skeptical at first, but it’s really grown on me. There are, though, a few quirks that give me an uneasy feeling. They are the sort of things that make you think, “Did anyone at Toyota actually use this before they started selling them?”

The first thing is the trunk. On a compact SUV, I would have expected the trunk to flip up to open, like on a hatchback car or larger SUV. Instead it’s on a side hinge and opens 90 degrees to the right. This means if you have a grocery cart, you need to stop it on the left of the car and then open the truck.

That’s not so bad though. The worst I found so far is the auxiliary input for the car stereo. The auxiliary input is great because it will let to you input your iPod into your car system and speakers, without any quality loss. All you need is a $2 wire, instead of the usual FM transmitter accessory (which lowers the audio quality). The aux input is located inside the center console on the right hand side of the driver.

This seemed logical; I could plug in an iPod and then run the wire out and set the player in one of the cup holders. Then it would be easy to get to if I wanted to change the song. The only problem is that there is no way to run a wire out and close the center console. I would have expected a small hole or something for this. Also, there’s a cigarette lighter type power outlet in there. It would be great to run a wire out to charge my phone. But again, same problem. The center console lifts up to open, so if it’s open there’s no arm rest. And there is no way to keep it open; it will swing back down randomly

Also, the dash layout could use some work. Knobs that I use more often should be closer. Why’s the “Wheel Lock” button more accessible then the volume? And the cruise control sticks out down and to the right from the steering wheel. My right knee keeps hitting it and adjusting the speed.

Otherwise, I’m getting to like sitting higher up on the road when compared to a sedan. The car is a good size and heft; I think it could keep it’s own in a collision. There’s a lots of room in the trunk too (it passes the hockey bag test!). Normally car size wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but Crissy and I realized that whatever car I brought would be used to bring home babies in a few years. And, since my first choice for protecting my future family on a road, the M1 Abrams tank, gets 4 gallons/mile, perhaps a compact SUV is the right balance for me.

Plus, I ain’t driving no minivan. :-)

During the day at the airport, not many of us had a good idea of what exactly was happening. However, by talking to lots of people and general observation, I was able to deduce that some people who hated our freedom were planning to blow up planes over the Atlantic by mixing Opti-free Express Saline Solution, Coppertone SPF 15 Waterproof Fragrance Free Sunscreen, X-Factor Gatorade (Berry flavored), and mint flavored Walgreens brand lip balm.

Then, they would delay detonate this Jack Bauer style using a U2 edition iPod that was playing Shakira’s new song, “Hips don’t lie” (in Spanish).

It’s exceedingly complicated and confusing to me. But it’s no wonder they got caught. I mean, everyone knows that X-Factor Gatorade makes you vomit. No one in their right mind would drink that stuff.

In fact, I keep some in the cupboard in case we have company I don’t like.

Anyway, when the NSA monitored those dudes buying X-Factor Gatorade, they were all over them; like bees on those athletes on TV that sweat Gatorade.

I also talked to a number of people who are convinced the best way to keep airplanes safe would be to ban all electronics from the flight. No laptops, no cell phones, no watches, no keychain USB storage devices.

I think this makes sense. When people are coming after our freedom, it’s smart to hide our freedom safely where no one can find it and use it. That way they can’t find it either.

The BBC has an even better idea: “Any liquids discovered must be removed from the passenger.” After all, once you freeze dry all the passengers, no one will be trying to do anything!

(I’m apparently in a weird Dave Barry state of mind from my ordeal.)

If you are really bored (and you must be if you are reading this), I posted some pictures of the airport lines on the photo site.