Vicky

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

We recieved a request from office to go over to Sunnyvale, California to assist our counterpart in performing a Factory Acceptance Test for a customer in India. As it was a short notice, I did not have much time to prepare and off we flew to San Francisco. It was a long long flight there. We first transited in Hong Kong and flew for another 12 hours to San Francisco. During the flight, we were amazed that the guy who was sitting at the window seat did not move the entire flight. We had to even wake him up for his meals! Amazing!

Upon arriving at SFO Airport, we headed over to the car rental bunk and got our rented Mazda 6! Hehe... We had a little hard time in adjusting to driving in US as its the left side drive instead of our normal right side drive. But we managed to adjust after a few days. The hotel was pretty ok as we did held onto high expectations for the stay there. We had a living room and a bedroom. Something that we did not expect it to be.

After a refreshing bath and nap, we headed out to Walmart to obtain some goceries that we will need for the days that we are there. As it was pretty late when we were done, we just ate something fast and headed back. While online, we searched for all the possible places we could visit the next day, which was a Sunday. We received some suggestions from our friends and we headed over to Gilroys the next day.

Both of us went on a super shopping spree over there. the shops over there are selling the items at lower price compared to the shops in town as these items are practically out of fashion. We were amazed at how cheap the things are over there compared to Singapore. Imagine, I could get a Levis Jeans for just $26.99 USD only! Oh my haha... Hence both Shannon and I went a little berserk over there. Having heard a lot about a particular brand of body lotion, we headed into one of these shops and we both almost 10 bottles each. Ok ok, its a lot but they are as gifts to our friends back home. So, all the bottles bought are not just for myself. I also went a little bersek at the Coach Factory Outlet there. Hehehhe

Work started the next day and we met Guillaume at the office. Oh boy was he shocked to see us at the US office. I did not email him to inform him that we will be going over as I am not really sure where he was stationed and did not want him to do anything to pick us up from the airport. But it was sure good to see his shocked expression when he saw us in his own office. Once we started to work, we practically did not have any time to enjoy ourselves at all. We practically work to about 9 pm each night trying to rush out the things that is needed for the customers to visit us. It was only over the weekend that we had arranged to meet Guillaume and Stacy for a short San Francisco Town trip. They did not really have to bring us there but they were really nice to offer to show us around the town. Thank you Guillaume and Stacy.

During our trip into town, it was Guillaume who drove us. It was werid to see him at the wheel when most of the time it was me who drove him around when we are in Singapore. (Guilluame is a Product Manager, who used to help me a lot in some of the instruments that I was in-charged of together to Robin). I could not help it and took a picture of him driving. haha. Later I realised that he had just passed his driving test in US just 6 months ago. While we were driving over to San Francisco, which took us about an hour, we saw that a petrol car was driving across all the lanes sliding from the first to the last and to the first lane again. Stacy then explained that the petrol car is trying to control the traffic speed as another petrol car up ahead has reported something to him. This is usually done so when there is a dangerous driver up ahead or there is something on the highway up ahead hence they want us to slow down. This is something we don't see in Singapore.

Our first stop was the Golden Bridge. This is the bridge which we always see when we watch television. We did not stay long at the place and we headed over to the Fisherman Warfs. We walked a little and saw various kinds of things that the Fisherman Warf was famous for. We also tried the sourdough bread which was fantastic. I wanted to buy some back, but it will not be able to last all the way back to Singapore. The taste of the bread was so unquie that I wanted to buy some of the premix too. But that was also not available there. Hiaz...

To end the day off, we had dinner at the CheeseCake Factory at Union Square. The food was fantastic but the portions were so big that we could not finish what we had each indivdually ordered for ourselves. Oh its was great fun going out with Guillaume and Stacy. We might have induced some arguements between them and we were so sorry for that especially to Guillaume. I am sure if I were to visit again, he will not dared to allow us to get near to Stacy at all. ahaha.