Life: Touring CU Berkeley

I finally got around to visiting Berkeley. I've been wanting to visit for a while and even considered applying for graduate school but deemed it too far at the time. There EECS was always comparable to our ECE program back in my undergraduate years, so I've always been curious what there labs were like. Unfortunately, winter break is still in progress so I was not able to go into any of the buildings.

Touring from the outside, the campus was actually a lot smaller than I imagined it to be.  I think I spent at most two hours to walk around the entire campus. I was walking rather slowly too. I went up the clock tower, visited the engineering building and the computer science building, then the new life science building. I even got to stand in front of the recent Randy Schekman's office. Randy is a recent Nobel prize winner.

Life: Stanford University (tour)

Spent a couple hours walking around Stanford University. The campus is really large. There are definitely a lot of nice areas to just tour around and take pictures even though almost all the buildings were closed for the holidays. The architecture of the buildings were definitely more interesting.

I stopped by the Packard Electrical Engineering building and the Gates Computer Science building. I would have loved to go in to see their labs. Too bad there weren't anyone going in or out of those buildings.

Life: Google Plex (Mountain View) - Drive-by tour

I had a driving tour of the Google campus in Sunnyvale. I always imagined that it was one large complex so I was surprised that it was just a typical commercial area with some Google themes sprinkled around. For a holiday weekend, there were still a few people around. I also got to see the Google bikes. Unfortunately, I do not know any Google employees in the area so I can tour inside.

Spent the afternoon at the Shoreline Lake at Mountain View Park. I saw a lot of people playing golf, kayaking, canoeing, stand boarding, biking, walking, and other park-like activities. The park is right next to the campus area.