Down the Rabbit Hole

Saturday I ventured out into the city once more. A co-worker was kind enough to loan me her unused bicycle, but the tires were flat and the handy pump in the Google garage didn’t have the proper adapter for them. By the way, I love the fact that there’s no parking lot for cars at Google Ireland: instead, the garage under the building is chock full of bicycles. It makes sense; walking, biking, and public transit generally seem to be a preferable way of getting around. There are also bikes available to borrow at racks around the city; it’s a mere 2 euro for a 3-day membership, and you can borrow a bike and return it to any rack for free (within the first half hour). I ended up on foot on Saturday, however, since I wasn’t sure how well I’d fare on backwards street with no bike lanes and unexpected one-ways.

I went back to the castle again, where I enjoyed the buildings much more in the daylight. In one of the gardens, I discovered a blue spiral snake sculpture that I recognized from Graham’s 2007 trip. Mostly, though, I just wandered through lots of little (and not so little) streets and in and out of various shops. My favourite was Le Palais des Thés on Wicklow Street. In addition to enjoy the lovely scents, I also learned a bit about tea. I wanted to eat out but didn’t want to wear out my knee walking to the apartment and back, and despite the patchy sunlight it was still quite cold out, so I went to see A Single Man at the Irish Film Centre. It was well done and quite intense. For dinner I returned to Wicklow Street for a little vegetarian restaurant called Cornucopia where I had an affordable and delicious dinner. When I got home, I finally set up Skype and bought some minutes to call my mother and sister, who were as happy to hear from me as I was to finally talk to them.

Sunday I took the DART (train) to the coast north of Dublin and visited the town of Malahide. Right outside the train station is a beautiful church called St. Sylvester’s which at first I thought was part of the castle since the two European castles I’ve seen (Prague and Dublin) featured churches prominently. Across the street is a nice little deli with a pleasantly surprising array of vegetarian options. After enjoying a bowl of pesto pasta, I sought the castle proper. To get there you get to pass through the demesne of the castle, which means grassy parklands broken up by stone walls and little forested areas. It made for an agreeable walk, and the sun peeked out as I reached the castle itself. In general, I’ve been very lucky with weather on this trip; it did rain last week, but the weekend was dry, and the sun has been shining this week.

I skipped the indoor tour of Malahide Castle, lamented that the gardens were closed until April, and wandered back out through the grounds and then the town and out to the coast. I have to admit the shoreline wasn’t particularly beautiful this time of year, but the town is quaint. I then got back on the train to head to another coastal town called Howth. However, by the time I got there it was nearly 5pm and both overcast and cold. And Howth doesn’t have a castle. So I contented myself with staying on the warm train and looking out the windows. Sorry, Howth. Finished the second book I brought with me (The Little Country, by Charles de Lint) on the train home, which means I will need to return to one of the three bookstores I’ve visited so I’ll have entertainment for the flights home. All in all, a reasonably outing-ish weekend. I do enjoy going out and about on foot, and only wish my knee weren’t so sore afterwards.

I left San Francisco at noon on Friday and arrived a few hours later in Chicago, where I discovered to my dismay that my plane to Dublin had been delayed 2.5 hours. In the end, we left four hours late, which gave me time to read the first half of Breaking Dawn in the airport bookstore. Yes, the last Twilight book. Yes, I’ve read the first three too. Anyway, all’s well that ends well, and I got to Dublin around 2pm on Saturday to find the sun shining and no hassle going through customs or getting a taxi to Google.

Traveling for work is nice: I am staying in a furnished apartment with kitchen, laundry machine, and of course wireless internet. It’s mere hundreds of feet from the Google office buildings. After dropping my stuff off, I wandered down to Merrion Square, which was on my map from Graham’s visit, and picked up some lozenges for the sore throat I’d developed on the flight over. Feeling pretty zonked, I lay down to take a “nap” before dinner. Yeah, you know where this is leading. At 8pm I got up, ate a banana, brushed my teeth, and went back to bed. I woke up at 2am, unsurprisingly, and read/puttered online until 8, then went back to sleep until 2pm. Finally got my schedule back on track last night, though. I haven’t gone anywhere besides work and the grocery store so I haven’t any pictures to share (sorry). Here are some lists instead:

Things I like:

• The cars. They’re all tiny and cute, and so many hatchbacks!
• The dish soap. It’s called, “Washing Up Liquid.”
• The folks at Google. The SQE team here is very welcoming and friendly.
• The Irish accents. I wish I had one.

Things I miss:

• Online content. No Lala, no Pandora, no Netflix streaming, no Hulu. ::cry::
• Familiar food. For the most part it’s fun to shop here, but I keep stumbling across hard-to-fill gaps like tofu and refried beans. Things also seem more expensive.
• My work desk. I’m rather fond of my keyboard, mouse, and monitor setup in Mountain View.
• My right ear not feeling gurgly whenever I blow my nose or yawn.

Today I am grateful for balance. There are times when work is stressful or unfulfilling — the days drag by, or the tasks ahead seem overwhelming. Often, during those times, though, I look forward to activities on the evenings and weekends. Dancing, singing, playing games and seeing my friends and family makes me happy and reminds me that there’s so much to do and enjoy in life. But there are also times when my nights are empty — illness or injury prevents me from going out as much, or I feel disconnected from people I’ve been close to. Left to my own devices I’m liable to feel lonely and sad or escape into hours of fiction reading. If work were at a low point, my life would be pathetic indeed, but instead I find that work not only distracts me from brooding but stimulates me and gives me a sense of accomplishment when I solve a tricky problem or work well with my team mates. The analogy that just jumped to mind is asset allocation: a portfolio with diverse investments usually provides less risk and more stable performance, so that even if one particular stock or fund drops steeply, the overall worth of your investments won’t be dragged down with it. Of course, there are still times when a whole class of assets (or even the whole market) performs poorly and nothing seems to be going right. Even then, the investing analogy holds pretty well — if your focus is on long-term growth rather than the daily ups and downs, don’t panic and withdraw everything, but stick it out and trust that eventually things will turn upward again.

Life is like a … financial portfolio? Somehow it doesn’t have the same ring.

Clearly I don’t blog very regularly. Whenever I do write, there’s always so much that’s happened in my life since the last time that I hardly know where to begin. This past week marks my two year “Googleversary.” That means I’ve been working full time at Google for two years. In that time I’ve been promoted once and switched roles slightly so that I now focus on internal tools development, though I’m still on the same awesome team. The new position has been challenging at times, but my team mates are great and I enjoy how much I’ve learned, and how many cool technologies there are to at a company as innovative at Google. It’s a great environment in which to be developing new knowledge and skills.

My Googleversary also means I’ve been out of school for over two years now, and I have been considering going back to school for a masters degree next year. It was always likely I would go back to school, but now I have additional incentive from the (generous and amazing) scholarship foundation which has paid for my education thus far: they are winding down the scholarship program, and I need to make a request for graduate school funding by this September 1. Really soon! This means I need to spend some quality time honing in on what I actually want to study — top candidates at the moment are computer science, computational linguistics, and information sciences.

The past few months have also marked more personal anniversaries. At the beginning of May I turned 24, a nice round number with lots of divisors. I’m hoping 24 will be a more stable, less emotionally rocky year than 23 was. And the end of May saw the one year anniversary of my Nana’s death. It’s easy to forget just how much time I spent in the second half of last year helping my family take care of her estate, but I often think of her and miss her. I moved into my current apartment last summer (yet another milestone coming up) at the same time we were clearing out Nana’s house, and a lot of my kitchen implements are inherited from her collection. I make tea with her tea kettle, pour water from her cheerful lemon-patterned pitcher, and bake with the spices that once graced her productive kitchen. If I’m lucky maybe some day I’ll be as good at it as she was.