Our New Home

A couple of weeks ago Jodie and I moved into our new place in Surry Hills.




The most important items were transported down to Brisbane by Jay from East Coast Removals. We highly recommend them. I love wine shopping so much but don't have much space for new bottles. Some of my friends have been kind enough to offer to help drink the wine. Thanks friends.





After the full wine rack, the famous couch is our second most treasured item. It is so comfortable I want to cry just looking at it. We spent 3 months sitting on a mattress, shopping nearly every weekend to find this couch. Our goal was to find something as comfortable as our king size bed, but in couch form. Goal achieved.




When we first inspected this place, the former tenant had this massive mirror in the living room. I asked if he'd be interested in selling it. He was, so it's now ours. It's taller than me and is large enough to fit in all of my new Google gut.


Sydney is stupidly cold at the moment so we're not using our patio area too much. Looking forward to summer...

John McCain at Google

Republican Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain came and spoke at Google on Friday! He's got a pretty amazing past. He was a POW in Vietnam for 5 and a bit years. When the Vietcong found out his family had a prestigious military past they offered to send him home. He turned down the offer because he didn't want to leave his fellow prisoners behind and he didn't want his release to be used as propaganda by the Vietcong.

I must admit I wasn't overly impressed with his speaking abilities or physical presence. Some of his policies are a little less than ideal, eg. he believes in a strong military, but he seems reasonably close to the centre on issues like Global Warming.

I met him, scored a copy of his book 'Faith of My Fathers' which he signed and had a quick conversation with him about Global Warming and its effects on Australia. The book is very good.

You can watch his speech and the his answers to questions from Googlers here:

Party Cube Good Times!

We each get to spend $50 to decorate our desk and cube area. I've been in party mode over here so figured I'd go with a party cube theme.

The original party cubers were our email training team. Nilma, Lee Anne, Leo and myself.


Leo looks good in a pink boa.


The team moved around a bit a few weeks back. Nilma and Leo moved out and Jess and James moved into the party cube!


Here is my desk. Note the disco ball, feather boas, balloons and bling hanging from the phone. :)


I'm heading back to Sydney tonight. Rafe started with Google Sydney this week and arrived in Mountain View on Tuesday to complete his 2 months training. He'll be moving into the party cube. Rafe and I actually met at a dinner 6 months back. We sat next to each other at dinner and partied into the wee hours of the morning so I'm stoked he's working here and I think he'll take the party cube to a new level! We've managed to cram in some good mid-week partying since his arrival too. :) Here's Rafe and our super friendly receptionist Audrey. Good times.

Micro Kitchens

As my Supercheap Auto colleagues will attest, I am a fan of snacking and food generally. One of my favourite unofficial rules at Google is that every Googler must be within 50m of a food. There is a micro kitchen about 20m from my desk. Here are some pics of the glorious snacks that reside there.

Chocolates on the top shelf, cereal and muesli next, organic fruit, then nuts, organic chocolate brownies (my favourite), chips and other odds and ends on the bottom shelf.


Care for a drink anyone?


The fridges are topped up with pre-made salads each day.


Along with sandwiches and sushi (in the black boxes).


The sandwiches are seriously amazing. This one might look lame with the alfalfa sprouts etc. but it is possibly one of the best sandwiches I think I've ever eaten. It's called the 'So Cal', short for Southern California I believe. It is made up of:

• Thinly Sliced Turkey,
  
• Pepper Jack Cheese,
  
• Alfalfa Sprouts,
  
• Heirloom Tomato and
  
• Avocoado Aioli on a
  
• Herbed Ciabatta Roll.
  

There's also a wicked coffee machine.


And random snacks like these donuts which appear from time to time.

Cafe Moma

So it's my last week in Mountain View before I head back to Sydney and I'm going to try and cram in the last few cafes...

Today Jess, Dru and I jumped on some Google bikes and rode over to Cafe Moma for lunch. The Google bikes are pretty cool, there's hundreds of them all over the campus so u just grab one and you can ride wherever u need to go. :) They even come with geeky orange flags!



Today I enjoyed:

• Manhattan Clam Chowder (far right)
• Steamed Vegetable Medley (left)
• Sweet and Sour Wild Boar (front)
• Potato and Shitake Mushroom Pizza (top)
• Organic all Natural Guru Energy Drink
  

Yum! :D


Jess was keen on the homemade roasted banana nut ice cream!


We met Mike Knapp (Sydney), Chris and Rebecca for lunch and took a lame video. :)

Dogs at Google

We're allowed to bring our dogs to work. I love dogs but I must admit that at first I thought this was a little odd. It's actually really good! There's something calming about having dogs around and it's a great ice breaker when you meet someone new and they have a dog at their desk.

Here are a couple of pics of Karen's dog Zoe.




Zoe has a few different outfits but my favourite is her Google shirt!


Maren brought around her friends Golden Retriever to say hi.


And Dru brought in Brewski today for a visit.




Dogs at work = Good Times.

Breakfast at Noname

Noname has officially overtaken Fundies (an organic cafe in Brisbane) as my favourite cafe in the world, and not just cause it's free. Last week and this morning I went there for breakfast and the food is at least as amazing as it is for dinner!

World's best omelet:
Step 1 - Pick up a bowl and select what you'd like in your omelet from all this good stuff. I went with tomatoes, tomato pesto, mushrooms, spinach, onion and guacamole.


Step 2 - Hand your bowl of good stuff to the chef and let them know how you'd like your eggs done. I went with the traditional omelet however you can also get a whites only omelet, eggs cooked any way you like or even a breakfast burrito!


Step 3 - Eat!


I also went with a berry and yogurt shake.


Leeanne went with the breakfast burrito!


Also on offer were strawberry crepes.


And these awesome looking steak and egg stacks.


Plus the traditional array of cooked breakfast goodness.


I love Noname.

Massage Good Times

Today I had my free Google massage! Upuia was my masseuse and damn she is good! My right shoulder was a bit out of whack from playing cricket with some Indian Googlers last Friday, but Upuia fixed it up for me and even gave me some tips to stretch it out in the future. :)

Whenever we Australians visit the Googleplex in Mountain View we get a free massage. The Googlers in Mountain View get one when they start, then one for each birthday.

Thanks Upuia!

Bill Clinton

We had a visitor to work today, Bill Clinton! He was speaking at the World Philanthropy Forum which our charity arm Google.org was hosting. Unfortunately we couldn't all be in the theater to watch him speak, but they broadcast his speech into a meeting room in our building.

Photographing a screen looks a bit ghetto, but it was a very inspiring speech and great to see!




My friend Jess was attending the Forum and she got to meet and have a photo with Bill!

Lunch at Cafe 5ive

Yesterday for lunch Carl, Austin, James and I headed over to Cafe 5ive for lunch. Carl took us in his new Rav4 'Betty'.


James and Austin


Yep, this is geek heaven, even the buildings have nerdy names!


Unfortunately we let Carl navigate so we got a little lost as he was too busy trying to look like a homie to work out where we were actually going.


Once we arrived, Chris met us there.


And got stuck into the homemade Candied Ginger Ice Cream.


I was stoked cause like Cafe Seven, the chef's here toss your salad for you!


Cheers for tossing my salad Chris!


Carl was excited about the great food.


Check this out for a free feed! I enjoyed:

• Sweet Potato Sausage Soup with Heirloom Potato Chips (shown at the top)
• Vegetable Medley - Steamed Spring Vegetables, Seasonings Tossed in California EVOO
• Pan Roasted Duck Breast with Duck-Red Wine Reduction (on the right)
• Grilled Salmon with Citrus Tarragon Vinaigrette
• And of course my tossed salad, though I went a little heavy on the blue vein cheese today.

James and Carl enjoyed their food too.


Chris took a little video of the lunch chat. :)