NoCal

I finally got to visit company HQ in San Jose last week. Mixed feelings on this trip, on one hand it is always exciting to visit a new place (an N.W. is the only part of the US that I have had any interest in) but the timing was very bad (with a three week old Son!).
The trip was for ~10 days, flying on Wed and back on a Saturday. Because of the time difference it only takes 4hrs to get there but two days to get back. It is a long flight, 20hrs. Flying with Singapore Air (long haul 1st choice is always SQ!) on a 777-200LR via Incheon, S Korea (1hr stop).
Landing at Incheon (6hrs from Singapore, 13hrs to San Fran):

The time in San Jose was not very exciting. Just go to work, back to the hotel, room service, sleep, wake up and repeat. You will recognise almost every company that you drive past. It really is Silicon Valley. I drove past the Cisco campus which is huge, its basically an entire street that must have thousands of prople just for the one company.

But I made the most of my weekend. I had a hire car so I drove into San Francisco on the Saturday. Driving in the US is surprisingly easy (a lot less stressfull than driving in Singapore), the traffic got busy on the highway but was still pretty smooth. Parked near the harbour then got the cable car up the hill to downtown San Francisco. The cable car actual runs on a cable under the road which moves constantly and the car grabs the cable when it wants to move. The brake is a big block of wood which smells of burning wood when used! There is more information here if you are interested: http://www.sfcablecar.com/

In the pic above you can see Alcatraz (the little island), zoom here:

I then drove over the Golden Gate bridge. There is a nice road on the other that winds up into the hills and gives great views back to the bridge and San Francisco and also of the Pacific.

The next day (Sunday) I had planned to drive East to the coast (Santa Cruz) then up the famous route 1 costal road. Someone at work gave me some advice and recommended I go and see the Redwoods in the forests between the bay and the coast. There is also a ~100 year old steam train which runs up into the forests which I took a ride on:

Some more info here: http://www.roaringcamp.com/ It was a bit on the pricy side, but worth it I think. After the train drove out to the coast and then back up into the mountains.

Ignoring the work part of the trip I enjoyed my time in the US. Here are the main impressions that I came away with:

• Everyone was really friendly
• The bay area is a really nice mix of coast, mountain forests, and intertesting city life
• If you work in electronics (especially telecoms) San Jose is like mecca
• The area is very expensive (especially food)
• Driving on the wrong side of the road is less stressfull than driving in Singapore

Anyway, thats it. Back to getting over my jet lag........