USA retrospective

With barely 24 hours left before leaving for the airport I find myself in a reflective mood.

I have done a bit of travelling in my life and I guess for each major trip I've been at a different phase of my life; a different set of circumstances has conspired to bring about the trip; and (at least partly as a result of all that) the experiences have been quite different.

With each trip tho' I think I have never really remembered to see all that I could see.  There were times on all of them I guess where I recall trading off tiredness, overload or some other reason against the injunction that it behoves one to see the sights whilst one can.

And of course its the same here.

I had great memories, pictures I drew and photographs I took from my trip to London.  There I was on a mission to see as much as I could, but somehow there were still days where I didn't do enough and that precious voice archly chastised me for wasting the opportunity.  

Whai don't chew go an' visit the British Museeum, when you really must know that chew might not get another chance?!? 

Tired, jet-lagged and out of energy I said back.

And here I am at the end of this chapter of my time in Silicon Valley, and I did not go to the Computer History Museum, which is only a couple of miles down the road.  And I did not go to a concert at the Amphitheatre, also just down the road.

Alright-alright-already.  But I have the 'flu.  No, no its true.  I do, have the 'flu.  Hack, koff.

And I might be back.  Who knows?

Last night was a lovely going away party thrown by the women of the Google Women in Operations - thanks Sabrina for this, and your hospitality; and to the amazing Sara for making my time at Google a lot more survivable, with that droll perspective you always seem to have on things; and to Liz, Rachel, Cheryl and others.  

And today was a going away lunch by the fighters of the good fight in the Hiring Intergrouplet - you guys rock!  Mamie, I wish I could bottle your upbeatness, and thanks for organizing this.  Seth, your knack for finding the sanest path in almost anything is an enviable gift - perhaps I will get to work with you again someday.  Manpreet, Chao, Candice, everyone - thanks for everything.

I'm fiddling about with stuff, now, prevaricating in the hope that my suitcases will pack themselves.  They stand waiting now, a row of alligator mouths, maws open and insatiable against the side of the room.  

I foolishly carried my clothes from their hangers ready to pack, and laid them on the floor where in just a short hour of neglect their entropy has increased tenfold.

I'm playing around also with using Qt4 to make a D&D4 character editor - just to keep my hand in on C++.  I've put the project so far on Google code so I can pull it down from whatever machine I have to hand, and nicely enough Qt allows me to compile on whatever platform I have.  Witness the fact that I coded it on Linux and just now pulled it down and built in on Mac OSX.

But I must stop playing with fun stuff and go pack.

And then spend a long time on a plane.