Thursday I went to San Francisco with some fellow googlers. The purpose of the trip: as an international exchange student, I am required to learn the skills needed to cope with American culture. So four of us carpooled over, walked in late (much to the annoyance of the conference coordinator), and learned some critical aspects of our new life in the United States:
- You need a driver's licence to drive a car.
- CDS can give generic apartment-hunting tips. (Keep in mind, the average attendee has already been living here for two weeks.)
- We'll have to fill out tax forms, but CDS can't help us with them.
- Sales tax in California is around 6% to 8% (I guess the slide was outdated). Now this may confuse some of you, but the prices you see in stores are before tax.
- You are expected to tip in restaurants, around 15% to 20%.
- You don't have to tip at, say, a Starbuck's, where you actually go to the counter and do all the heavy drink lifting yourself.
- You may tip at Starbuck's if you're feeling extra-generous.
- You shouldn't go to work next Monday (because it's a holiday).
This took us until 11:00, so I couldn't go to breakfast at Google (my third-favourite part of every work day). We went into what looked like San Francisco's Chinatown and had a meal at some cheap place. The people behind the cash seemed awfully confused that I did not in fact order or want to order the BBQ chicken. We ate and then went back to Google, where I ate a proper lunch (my second-favourite part of every work day).
So, my impressions? San Francisco is very hilly. A lot of streets are at a huge slant, and then intersections are always flat. A lot of the suburbs we saw while driving are composed of zillions of houses built on steep hills, so from the freeway one can only see houses, not any of the ground. That combined with some twisty bridge-y freeways made me feel like I was in a Dr. Seuss story. While I didn't like the traffic, I found this place quite fantastic!
I tried taking pictures of everything on the way out, but they didn't turn out well at all. Instead of embarassing myself by showing off horrible pictures, I'll just get better pictures next time I go. (In the meantime, back home, everybody can just imagine Montreal, except there are more hills, and they have red street cars instead of ugly white buses.)