alice and i met up today not knowing what we were going to do, but knowing we wanted to do something. she suggested a ferry ride in kirkland, or a visit to seattle's aquarium but we decided on neither cos the weather was overcast and i had already been to seattle's aquarium. i suggested seattle's woodland park zoo and within minutes we were on our way there. thanks to the microsoft prime card we got in for only $3 each! but i didn't anticipate a tourist attraction visit today so i didn't have my camera with me. although it was probably a good thing for me because i got to enjoy the exhibits a lot more without having to concern myself with getting shots of everything hehe. the zoo was a lot better than we expected! some of the higlights were seeing the brown bears, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, jaguars and the different types of monkeys. there was so much to see and so many strange looking animals. we spent a good four hours there and i could definitely go again ... maybe with peter and my parents next time :-).

after the zoo, alice and i headed to a pet store in kirkland. why? well, alice has had her eye on some young bearded dragons they had for sale there for awhile now. alice had only intended to show me them but when we had arrived to find that only one of the bearded dragons were left, she immediately got on the phone to sam haha. i couldn't help but laugh and i estimated it would probably take a couple minutes to convince sam to okay the purchase (sam's a really nice guy lol). but no, less than a minute later i could hear alice saying "sam, you're so good to me! i'll cook you something nice tonight!" hahaha. gosh, they remind me so much of peter and i! alice and i are definitely very lucky to have husbands who are happy when we're happy :-P.

so alice and i headed to her place with her new baby "cleo" to get her all set up in her tank. cleo was surprisingly calm and tame when held, and (i never thought i'd say this about a lizard but) quite cute with nice colouring. we waited for sam and peter to arrive from work and though we didn't hear any "ooohhhs" and "ahhhs" from sam when he first saw cleo, we figured she would grow on him eventually. he says he's more of a dog person than a lizard person hehe. sam met lana last week and they hit it off really well ... so well that alice and sam have offered to babysit her when we go away on holidays. cool! lana's so friendly with everyone and her tail wags vigourously whenever she's around people! especially peter! peter will always reach out to hold her, even when she's content on her own, playing with her toys or napping. it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when i see them together hehe. i guess it helps a lot that lana's so smart! she's learnt a few tricks already and is very obedient to our commands. she's definitely a "calm submissive dog" (in the words of the dog whisperer, cesar milan, haha) which lana's vet confirmed as well when we took her in for her 2nd set of vaccinations this morning. oh my, this little girl is so easily loveable...

...and photogenic too!

lana (11 images)

sam, alice, peter and i had dinner at a restaurant in downtown kirkland tonight. the atmosphere there is always nice, with a great view of the water. it's definitely where "aussies" flock to because it's probably the closest thing that reminds them of home. we've been hanging out with the "aussies" quite a bit, meeting up for dinner last weekend, then hanging out at blakey's, morton's and steve's place, taking a walk by the water, and finally checking out some clubs in the local area. they're an interesting bunch, and they're so funny and witty that peter and i find ourselves laughing out loud when we're around them. we feel very fortunate to have made friends here so quickly ... it definitely helps with my homesickness ... until i hear the song home by michael bublé playing on the radio, and then i'm a wreck all over again! :-P

A few friends recently asked me what life is like at Microsoft and I realized I left out the part I would be most interested in if I weren't the one working here. Certainly, if I had friends working at Google, Apple, Sun or any of the other well known powerhouses in IT, I'd be interested too.

To begin, it hasn't really sunk in that I am working for the largest software company in the world, but maybe that's because I've worked in the industry for over 6 years already and this is just another job to me. Perhaps if I was fresh out of uni I'd wake up each day saying "wow…I work for Microsoft!" but these days I just wake up saying "I hope traffic isn't bad" :-P.

Lately I've been waking up between 9-9:30am and I'm usually in the office by about 10-10:30am. The drive to work usually takes about 25 minutess but some days it can take longer because of the constant roadwork being done along Redmond Way. Sydney's traffic is much worse than around Redmond so I shouldn't complain. Sometimes I take the scenic route along the eastern shore of Lake Sammamish. Driving to work at that time, it's mostly just Microsoft employees on the road. You can tell from their purple parking badge dangling from their rearview mirrors. I prefer to keep my badge in the glove box until I get to the underground parking. One of the great things about Microsoft is that there is plenty of parking. Our building has 4 floors of office space and 4 floors of parking space. The underground parking spans the entire block and connects buildings 42, 43 and 44. There are lifts from the underground parking straight to your floor so you never even need an umbrella. I'm going to appreciate the parking much more when it starts to rain here, because so far we've had great weather since our arrival.

I was recently moved to an office closer to the stairs, so I now climb 6 flights of stairs to the 3rd floor each morning because I'm too lazy to walk to the lifts. At the moment I've got the office to myself because the intern I was sharing the office with has moved back to Texas. With the way the Redmond campus is laid out I feel like I'm back at university. Each block of buildings has its own cafeterias and you always run pass familiar faces but have no idea who they are or what they do. Pretty much everyone on our block works in server group, working on projects like Vista, Longhorn server and Virtualization.

Most of the Aussies I have met at Microsoft are in the server group so we meet up for lunch each day. Most of the time we eat at the cafeterias but occasionally we would venture to the local shops to try something different. I also know a few other Aussies, old friends from UNSW, working in the Office group so that gives me an opportunity to try the food in their cafeterias. Apart from the lunch, there's very little direct interaction with other people for most of the day - everything is done via email. Microsoft relies heavily on email because you often need to collaborate with people who work in a building several blocks away. However, social communities have also formed around email – reminiscent of the numerous societies back in uni. There's an Australian/New Zealand group called ANZAC where discussions like where to buy Tim Tams is a hot topic. I even posted an email to the Vietnamese group asking where I could find pickled baby egg plants. Some days I receive about 2000 emails of which I probably read about 200. Reading the email discussions really shows the true face of Microsoft employees. There's a perception within the industry that Microsoft represents arrogance, particularly when it comes to competitors, but reading the responses of individuals reveals something very different. The developers are extremely passionate about the work they do and the project they are working on. At the same time, they can be self critical of Microsoft's mistakes and recognize the achievements of competitors like Google and Apple. The debate within Microsoft is actually more balanced and intelligent than debates on sites like digg.com or Slashdot.org. This is the Microsoft I experience everyday which is very different to the Microsoft I hear about from outsiders.

Here are some photos I took of my trip to work....

trip to work (30 images)

last friday peter and i went out for dinner with sam, alice and brendan and then headed back to their apartment in kirkland. brendan recently moved into the same complex as sam and alice so we got to see his apartment for the first time. brendan's actually asked me numerous times to go shopping with him to help choose out his furniture (which made peter raise an eyebrow haha). i think peter can't believe a guy would actually voluntarily subject himself to shopping for home stuff with me, which equals many MANY hours of shopping! :-P

but i really think brendan will do fine on his own, especially when he mentioned to me that he was purchasing a "natuzzi" couch. nice! he definitely has great taste! but he insisted i help so i've promised to do so. it'll be a fun project! :-) i must say, it's great to a find a (straight) guy that cares about his home decor and more surprisingly, willing to put in the effort! :-P

that same night that we were at sam and alice's, they introduced us to a tv series called "the office" (the UK version). they couldn't believe we hadn't seen a single episode. we all sat down to watch the first episode and we just couldn't stop laughing!! peter and i absolutely love it! the humour is so subtle but incredibly spot on and laugh out loud funny! peter and i have now watched all of the first season and we can't wait to get our hands on the second :-D. if you haven't seen it yet, oh you must!!

i suspect our addiction to tv will return because all the great tv shows are back! - like "prison break"!! (wentworth miller is SO incredily sexy!) we also won't have long to wait for "lost" or "house" either. we've also been watching "monkey magic" episodes lately haha ... it's such a classic! our weekends have been so laid back and not very eventful ... but VERY relaxing! peter and i have decided to wait to do all the touristy type things when my parents visit here in october :-). we have so many places in mind we can take them to ,.. it'll be great!

peter and i just got back from a farewell dinner tonight for christine. her internship at microsoft has finished and she'll be returning to her university on the eastcoast to finish off her degree. she's only got a semester left and if all goes well, she'll be returning here after she graduates and possibly working for microsoft full time (she'll know this week if she's been offered a permanent positon!). i really like christine - she's so kind and such an engaging coversationalist. i hope she'll be back soon!

oh and great news! i finally got my work authorisation! yay!! i've started searching for jobs in my field and sending in applications. let's hope i get some replies eh? ;-)

ssshhh ... don't wake daddy

we got the hair inbetween lana's eye's trimmed so we could see more of her face and she could see more of us :-). her breeder jean, who used to have her own dog grooming salon, did it for us for free! now ... doesn't lana look so much like a baby ewok?!? hehe

goodnight ...

thankfully peter and i haven't lost any sleep despite being new puppy parents :-). lana seems to be content to sleep in her playpen throughout the night, just as long as she can still see us when she looks up from time to time. but when we let her out of her playpen she insists on napping either on my lap or right up against me hehe. jean told us that lana was the only one of her littermates that always slept next to her mom, which i guess explains her behaviour here - she's definitely a mommy's girl! oh and she's been using her wee-wee pad too and gets a lot of praise everytime!

i got a surprise knock on our door after lunch today and it was alice. she had rocked up eager to see lana hehe. she stayed for a few hours playing with lana and then she and i just chatted while lana napped ... right up against me of course. alice has suggested she and i go on a few day trips together which would be fun. while our men are at work, we girls go on mini-vacations hehe. i think peter and sam are just glad we're not sitting at home bored out of our minds. we want to take lana along with us but lana's not permitted out until she gets her second vaccination in two weeks, as there's a lot of diseases out there that she's not immune to yet. but we won't have long to wait...

now someone wants to say hello...

she's finally here! we picked her up this morning from her breeder's home, which was about a 30 minute drive away from us. lana sat calmly on my lap the whole car ride home and the minute we placed her in her playpen, she went straight for her food hehe. no wonder she's sooooo chubby! she also knew how to use her water bottle straight away (recommended over a water bowl to prevent their flat faces from getting soaked) and she drank plenty from it. what followed was an amusing play session (she plays hard and loves her toys), and now, as i type, both lana and peter are taking a nap :-).

peter and i have definitely had an overdose of cuteness today ... and best of all lana's personality is incredibly sweet. it's adorable to see how quickly she and peter have hit it off hehe ... he can't stop holding the little one :-). now i'm curious to see how our first night goes ... i know a couple people who have also recently added a new puppy to their family and apparently lack of sleep goes hand in hand with bringing one home hehe ... wish us luck!

some photos taken soon after getting lana home...

we managed to make some trips to a few pet stores on the weekend to get various items in preparation for lana's arrival on saturday! *excited*... and i think we pretty much have everything covered now! we've set up lana's "area" in our bedroom which we've enclosed using a puppy playpen. we also purchased some vinyl flooring to place over the carpet in her playpen "just in case" she ever misses her wee-wee pad hehe. i'll take photos of her "area" to show you guys when she moves into it :-).

some squeaky toys to keep lana entertained :-)


lana's food bowls ... i love the pattern!
(ok can you tell by now i'm not a fan of bright colors? :-P)