My Team.

We took a team photo today for our director. This is pretty much everyone sans a few people, including myself. I volunteered to take the photo so that I wouldn't have my sickly self all up in the picture! :P

Punk Rock Babies and MFGG.

For our quarterly offsite, my department invited the punk cover band Me First & The Gimme Gimmes to play at our Summer Kick-Off Bash. I listened to them in high school, so I was excited when I heard that they were coming.

In the middle of their first set, the band's wives walked in with their kids in tow. Each kid had earmuffs on, and it was the most adorable thing, because they were still jamming to their daddies' music. When the two girls just stood in front of their dads' band, I had to steal a shot.

I turned around saw this kid playing with the soundboard. Too cute.

And in the end, me and Brian were able to grab a picture with the band, sans Spike (their lead singer). We think that he was testing out a Google bike and thus was unavailable.

Just Another Friday: Cricket & Bluegrass.

While Google is always pictured as a chill place to work, Fridays at work are awesome, not just because they mark the beginning of the weekend, but also because there's always something cool going on. After we wrapped up work today, we went to Charleston Park (which borders our main campus) to watch some Googlers play cricket. And that's when it hit me again: what other place can you watch your fellow coworkers play cricket in front of a giant palm tree on any given Friday? haha...

After chillin for a little bit, we headed over to main campus to watch a bluegrass band perform. Man, I seriously need to count my blessings daily when it comes to my employment situation. God is good.

Meet Mark.

Mark is yet another coworker of mine. At a previous department conference, they handed out these authentic construction hats as a memento. Mark decided to rock it with some brown overalls, so I needed to take a picture of him taking five from work.

The Hukilau.

Our team had an offsite at a Hawaiian restaurant today in Palo Alto. It felt great to simply get out of the office for a few hours and hang out with my coworkers. Above is a picture of Matt, one of the OGs of our team, and Thu.

We Run This!

Meet my friend Christina. She's a graphic designer at work and we both share something in common: our ties and love for the state of North Carolina. Since it's game day (we're playing USC), I told her yesterday that I'd be very disappointed if she didn't rep any Carolina Blue.
I guess I was convincing enough.

Go Heels!

Last Day in the Cube.

Today was the last day that the four of us shared our first cube in the new building at work. It's been one of the most memorable experiences so far sitting with these guys- from playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" to bringing up bags of honey dipped pretzels and Haribo gummy bears, it's been fun. And it's not like we're splitting up forever either, because we'll still be working together! I'm definitely going to miss the gang tho. Ah such is life....

[l-r] Zach, me, Annie, Lexi

Lunch at Fuki Sushi.

A few co-workers from my team decided to have lunch at Fuki Sushi in Palo Alto. Good food, good company, good times.

Promoted to Construction Work.

At one of our team building activities, we received construction helmets (to coincide with the theme of the conference). I gathered three of my coworkers (Steven, Helen, and Taj) for this shot. So random.

Tempting.

So today was the first day of our department's conference in San Francisco. Dinner, as in most work events, was phenomenal, but the thing that really caught my attention was the dessert fondue station, complete with a chocolate fountain. Ugh, too bad I gave up soda and desserts for Lent. Sad.

And for your information, I did not eat this lollipop. I just thought it was fascinatingly huge!

Work at Dusk.

I had dinner with Nara and Liz today on main campus. While waiting for them, I decided to take a shot of one of our main buildings. It was close to dusk, so the sky was a beautiful shade of bluish-violet. This picture does not do it justice.

99 Luftballons.

After moving to our new building, they had these balloons decorating our offices. For some reason, my first impression of these balloons reminded me of that crazy German song.

Meet Zach.

Zach is one of my cubemates and a fellow optimizer at work. He's one of the funniest guys I work with and for some reason, he started to fake roundhouse kick me while I was trying to get some work done. I think he just needed a mental break from an assignment he was working on, but quite randomly, he proceeded to show me what moves he could do to wreak havoc in our office. Finally, he completed his mock rampage with a fake shirt tear, a la the Incredible Hulk.

Zach's one of the few guys in my department who's taller than me (he's like 6'7). I should be scared, but he's too goofy to be feared. Maybe I should look at this picture more...

Okay, now I'm scared.

Put the Lime in the Coconut.

Since I was able to make it to main campus to visit the weekly Mountain View Public Library Bookmobile, I decided to swing by Charlie's to grab a burrito for dinner later on tonight. Then, proceeded stop by Pacific Café, our Asian-themed cafeteria. I was surprised to find out that they were serving kimchi, japchae, and kabli. Yes, Korean ribs, or as I like to call it, meaty awesomeness. And on my way out, I grabbed a coconut for some fresh coconut juice.

Yum.

[btw, the title and theme of the picture comes from this song. drew, I know you get it!]

Meet Petey.

Petey is a yellow Labrador whose owner works on my floor. He's the friendliest dog I've met so far while working at Google.

At our old building, Petey's owner would let him off the leash and wander around the office, which he absolutely loved. There would be times when I'd be at my desk, focused on my work when I feel a nudge and notice him trying to get my attention. In fact, one time, he dropped a tennis ball in front of me and the backpedaled, while waiting excitedly for me to do something with it. Apprehensively, I rolled the ball in his direction, at which he ran full force to attack the ball, then he proceeded to drop the ball at my feet again and backpedaled, awaiting my response. This went on about ten more times and then finally, when I knew I had to get back to work, I lured him back to his owner with the same tennis ball.

It's dogs like him that make me really appreciate the dog policy that we have. And I'm definitely glad we don't have cats here.

Another First Day.

Today was our first day in our new building. Over the weekend, my entire department moved to a new building about a mile south of the main Googleplex campus. And in typical Google randomness fashion, the Stanford marching band (yes, the same ones that got run over by the Cal Bears) surprised us by playing their fight song in front of our building. They were all dressed up in very random costumes, and none of us really knew what was going on. I go there late and took a couple of pictures of their post-performance flight.

I found out later that they actually snuck inside and took a whole lot of our food as well. I dunno if this is true or not, but I think it is. Man, hearing that news had memories of my college days come flooding back. I still remember as a freshman, the advice I got from upperclassmen that I should take advantage of any opportunities on campus that offer free food.

Man, it's only been eight months, but college seems like so long ago...

Mr. Potato Head.

Everyone gets a Mr. Potato Head at work, for reasons that none of us really know. These fellas have been perched on a ledge for quite some time now and I was going to save this shot for a rainy day when I couldn't find any inspiration to shoot anything. However, since we're moving soon, I decided to seize the opportunity to take the shot before it was too late.

And so I give you the Mr. Potato Head Quartet. Yes, indeed it is random.

Trampoline + Dodgeball = Genius!

Today, my department went on an offsite to Sky High Sports in Santa Clara, where we played trampoline dodgeball. I'm still perplexed that not one's come up with this concept until recently, because it's an amazingly random and beautiful marriage of two wonderfully silly old school activities. This is one of those random things that I'd probably never end up doing on my own, but I'm glad I got to check it out.

Sadly, I just know that I'm gonna be sore tomorrow. Oh well, yet another normal day at work.

Tinymobile.

This "car" has been chillin in front of our building for the past few days. Question: because it has only three wheels, what is the name of this? It's not a tricycle because it's motorized. Trimobile? No...I'm gonna stick with tinymobile.

Meet Will.I.Am.

Will.I.Am, the brainchild of the Black Eyed Peas, visited us at work today. Unlike John Legend, who actually held a concert for us, Will.I.Am sat down and had an interview session with our host, and then proceeded to show us the processes he takes to produce a beat. He brought in recordings he made from the previous night of him on the drum, keyboad, bass, and mic (he had a 4 minute freestyle recording about Google) and edited, spliced, and mixed them to create a hot ringtone.

It's always a trip for me to meet such talented individuals. Society glamorizes their celebrity to make us think that they're completely different from us, but this interview session revealed to us that he is a very down to earth guy. In fact, he's quite dorky, which made the entire event quite entertaining. For example, he'd explain to us that he needed to enhance the bass using a plug-in on ProTools to "bootify" it. Without it, the bass apparently had no booty. Hehe.

During the meet and greet, my camera decided to die on me. So props to Pam Shore for coming through and taking this pic of the day for me.