Happy Go Lucky

After work this evening I took one of my colleagues, Prasad, back to his hotel and discovered the local supermarket called Lucky, which I visited in the hope of finding potential food supplies for the weekend when the work canteen is not open. The supermarket did indeed contain food, and lots of it. I also scouted out some takeaways - if the worst comes to the worst, there is a Macdonalds just round the corner. So if I go there instead of the supermarket, I will definitely be unLucky.

I went back to the hotel, to do a bit more work, and instead put the television on. I have noticed that every other advert appears to be for one medicine or other, and all end with warnings of various length, in a voice going as fast as Sarah eating chocolate. One warning tonight seemed to go on forever "Do not use if you have diabetes, high blood level, heart disease, high sugar levels, or if you are feeling faint, claustrophobic, have sneezed, coughed or are feeling in any other way ill.... Please insult your doctor before use".

So I've just gone back to Lucky, bought some asprin, and called my doctor a fish. As all good newspapers do - if you're lacking in proper news, make some of it up. Night night.

Sunny Gym

Last time I came to this area, it was January, and there was plenty of rain. This time, you can notice the absence of rain for a while, by the fact that the sky is always blue, the hills are covered in yellow grass, and by the fact that everywhere else the grass is green and about 2 inches deep. This is courtesy of sprinklers - everywhere. Tons of sprinklers, and tons of water being sprinkled - over the too-thick-to-walk-through-so-why-bother grass, over "sidewalks" and "parking lots" and down drains.

When I got back to the hotel tonight I fancied a quick walk, so I went downstairs and first had a quick walk round the hotel ground floor- and noticed there was a gym. I had a go at the hill walking machine, and I climbed "40 floors" in 5 minutes, using 31 calories -before deciding that getting hot in a small room with no daylight did not compete with going for a real walk and seeing something for real. So I left the gym - and went for a walk from the hotel, passed lots of business units, with lots of nice grass, and lots of sprinklers.

Work

It was a very sunny and fairly warm day again. However, having got into work at 7.30am, and left at 8.30pm, there's not a lot else to say, except that dinner was cooked while-I-waited in the canteen, and while-I-waited I made a sandwich for later. We progressed some more with the story board for the video, though it took a while because the demo itself is not fully working. Tomorrow afternoon we should start recording some of the raw video - hopefully.

Stopped at the "gas" station on the way back to pick up some food.

Why am I here?

Today's mission at work was to find out what I was here to do. I wasn't brought half-way across the world for my programming skills - there are a team of people conveniently located on exactly the opposite side of the world to do that, in India, where the time zone is 12 hours different.

In fact, my job here is to create a video of the demonstration that the developers are creating - which in usual video style will be a combination of screenshots, sound track, and this time video of real people using various devices too. Initially the team asked at Hollywood, just down the road in Los Angeles, to see if there were any producers going - but unfortunately they were too expensive. So the next best thing was an IT Architect from five and a half thousand miles away. Tomorrow I will be working with Meena again, and attempting to produce the first draft of a sequence for the demonstration.

On the way to work today I managed to fill up with petrol. I decided to put in $50 (£25) worth to keep me going for the week - and ended up vitually filling the tank because the fuel is much cheaper than the UK at four hundred and something dollars a gallon.

San Fransisco Part 2

Well, I have arrived again to San Jose after a smooth flight in which the seat-belt signs only came on for a couple of bits of minor turbulance, and the food was edible, and the flight some-how managed to pass without me picking up the magazine I brought to read. I think I spent half the flight trying to send a text message from the exciting aeroplane SMS service, which failed to get through (after a message saying "message aborted" and another one saying "message successfully sent") - and the other half of the time was waiting for the system to reboot after it kept freezing.

I've picked up a car from the airport and it's an elantra. It drives ok, and so far, on the correct side of the road. As it's 8pm now here (so 4am at home) I think it's nearly time for some sleep. Night night.