Microsoft.

Today’s work was at Microsoft HQ in Redmond.

Just like the past two days, I gave my presentation before my client gave his. And judging from the response from all the people seated in the meeting room, what I talked about was definitely of interest to them as they were always asking questions, wanting to find out more. That was great for me because I’ve got them all prepared. In the end a lot of them found my presentation to be pretty decent and I must say that has to be the greatest compliment that I’ll ever get. To say that I was way chuffed would be a blatant understatement.

Went back to Seattle after the stay at Microsoft and went on the famous Duck Tour – one of the five things to do in Seattle – the captain of the tour was a very interesting guy and I think I would have enjoyed the tour much more if it wasn’t raining and windy. I was almost freezing! But I did manage to see the house where Sleepless in Seattle was filmed, and I think it was worth the trouble. Now I just hope that I don’t get ill tomorrow.

Took a nap in the evening before waking up to look for a Starbucks. Knowing that Starbucks originated from Seattle, there’s no way for me to escape getting a cup of the original Seattle Starbucks coffee. Maybe it’s just me, but the Starbucks coffee here in Seattle does seem to taste a bit different compared to those elsewhere. After that I walked past a cinema and decided that I’d just go pop in to watch a movie. Decided to watch History of Violence because it was the show that was starting the soonest. It turned out to be a pretty bad choice because I couldn’t understand what the whole show was about. The storyline was kinda bad and the ending was bad too. Definitely not worth the 9 bucks for the ticket and the 8.50 for the hot dog set as well. Not the best way to end my stay in Seattle.

Now that the work is kinda over for me here in the States, I have a few days of R&R coming up and hopefully I’m going to enjoy them very much. Looking back on the work for the past few days, it was definitely an eye opener for me because I visited some really cool companies doing great things, and I also managed to see a large corporation like Microsoft, seeing their people and working environment. I don’t dare to dream about working in Microsoft, so it’s great to be there even though it was only for a presentation.

Everyone back in Shanghai, don’t miss me! I’ll be back in about 10 days’ time!