Flashback, part 10 of n

2004.

On July 14, I arrived in Silicon Valley. On August 5, I accepted a job offer. In between was a strange, strange time.

It was kind of disorienting, to go from another sweltering DC summer to a place where you had no air conditioning and had to heap blankets on the bed at night against the icy cool of the attic fan. It was more disorienting to suddenly have no pager, no ticket queue, and no idea where to find anything. I mean, I had spent plenty of time in the Valley over the previous three years, make no mistake, but I had never had to drive anywhere and I was literally lost anytime I ventured onto the roads.

Ideally, arriving would have meant being ushered into a big room where Ah-nuld, Gavin, Himself, and a couple other political and industry big wheels would have been filling me in on points of geography, culture, and general California aptitude, in one of those big empty rooms where the entire floor is the viewscreen and you get Star Wars-style holography. Didn’t happen.* Instead, I took it upon myself and my Saturn, with its 195K miles on the odometer and bad radiator fan and thermostat, to drive around and try to get some sense of up and down.

I don’t remember much from those first few days. I remember it was always cold at night, though not always foggy, and it seems like we were always in the other car and the moonroof was always open. I also remember that the total uptime on my laptop was 56 days before I rebooted it. I got sick, with no insurance to speak of, and shelled out a bunch of cash to the family doctor who gave me a HUGE sack of sample-size drugs in return. I had godawful reception on my T-Mobile phone(s), although that could have been a neighborhood thing – but within three months, I had crawled back to AT&T, which was a mistake in retrospect. I ended up selling the SonyEricsson for a fraction of what I’d paid for it. I also wound up in a marching band for a couple of months – how I happened to have my trombone here and not in a closet back in the Old Country, I’ll never know. I also picked up a ham radio license, which I wouldn’t actually make use of for almost five years.

All this is by way of saying that it’s been a while. What reminded me of all this? Probably the time spent in the city lately, which has been protracted and in the company of out-of-towners. Especially the other half of Team Black Swan – having them here was not only like vacation for us, it also gave me a chance to see everything anew five years on. Plus it has been COLD at night lately.

I guess all this is by way of saying that this regeneration may have finally been into an honest-to-God Californian. Although we’ll have to wait for the DNA tests to come back and see if they’re positive for tobacco aversion.

* Although I hear Google has this.