Adventures of a Discoverer

After spending a week in the Silicon Valley, it was time to go back home (I was eager to see my wife and kids). As I've done many times before, I requested a Lyft to take me to the airport: I was going to take a plane from the San Francisco International Airport back to Seattle. Just to be fair, I've used Lyft countless times and every time I had an impeccable service, usually with very nice drivers. This time turned out to be very different! My Lyft arrived, and the driver barely spoke any English at all. Like, just a few words with a very thick accent. Nothing against that, when I arrived in the United States from Brazil my own English was just like that. However, it made so that it was quite hard to communicate with him. Once we were on the move, things started to get... strange. First, the driver asked if I was going to the San Francisco International Airport or the San Jose International Airport. That's weird, because you pick your destination on the Lyft app and th...

Now in San Francisco you can see an interesting sight in the middle of traffic: white cars with a red stripe and nobody inside. Those are cars from Cruise, a startup company that is testing prototype cars that drive completely by themselves and work as an Uber or Lyft. Just like for an Uber or Lyft, there is a Cruise app, and you can request a ride through it. However, for the moment the service is in a prototype phase, meaning that you can only use it in three cities, San Francisco being one of them, and even so not the whole of the city: just a restricted area of downtown. In addition, the service for now is only available between the hours of 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM. Finally, in order to use the app you need to get an invite from the company. Fortunately for me, a good friend of mine works at Cruise, so he got me an invite and I could check out the service when I was in the Bay Area. It is great! I requested a car, and in some minutes one came to me. I have to confess that it is a stra...

As part of my stay in the Silicon Valley, I went north to San Francisco itself to check out some more technology places. The first one I saw was the headquarters of Twitter, right in the middle of downtown San Francisco. As you probably know, that company has been in the news recently because of its takeover by Elon Musk and all the changes that he imposed. Among other changes, all employees are supposed to be physically in the offices at the HQ and working until late at night is considered expected. So, even though I was at their offices at ten o'clock at night, as you can see in the pictures many lights were on, including on the top floor, where Elon supposedly works all the time. In case you're wondering, I couldn't enter the offices because security at Twitter is much more rigorous now. Also, some people are leaving political messages next to the building these days, as you can see in one of the pictures.

I took a new job and, as part of my orientation, I spent a week in the famous Silicon Valley. I stayed in Palo Alto (not far from Stanford University) and on my weekend I could check out various places that I was interested at. The first one was the Apple Park: my fame as an Apple fanboy precedes me at this point, so evidently I had to go there. In a previous stay in the Bay Area I had been at the original Apple HQ, at the famous One Infinite Loop, so it was great to get to know the new headquarters. It is impressive to say the least: however, given that it is a corporate campus, almost all of it is not open to the public. Nevertheless, there is a nice Visitor Center next to it. The center is a mix of Apple Store, coffee shop and Apple Park model: there is a giant model of the entire complex, which you can see using iPads available there to have an Augmented Reality view of it. In addition, there is a terrace on top where you can glimpse the big circular building that is the centerpiec...

Yesterday I had the luck to be able to enjoy one of the most beautiful trails I've ever made: the Rosario Head and Lighthouse Point trail. It is a short trail on the north side of the Deception pass, north of Whidbey Island (and pretty close to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, with a number of Navy jets roaring above). It goes through some of the rugged features of this particular stretch of coastline: there are a number of rock outcroppings, some completely surrounded by the sea, others connected to the continent by a thin sand bank that may disappear during high tide. I was there during low tide, so I could go through most of those rocks and see all the amazing views from them. In addition, there was plenty of wildlife, both marine and forest based. It was a great start for the hiking season, and I'm looking forward to more.