Chan's Personal Blog

Well, let me welcome Chad and Justin as my first visitors from Canada. They've been out on a road trip, and they've made it to Santa Clara, California in the old Ford Aspire. I got a phone call from them today saying they were about an hour before they got into town. Lets just say their estimated time of arrival was a bit off. Two hours later, they finally arrived after a few unscheduled detours and tours. Lucky for them, I've got quite a bit of IKEA furniture assembled, so they're able to sleep on the futon bed. Unfortunately, my apartment is still a mess as it's littered with cardboard boxes and what not.

So, welcome to Silicon Valley, and enjoy your stay. Tonight we feast!

Well, I've found an apartment down here in Santa Clara, and I moved in last Friday. This is the first place that I've rented, and it cost a pretty penny because I had to put down a huge security deposit since I don't have any credit history in this country. I've also been informed by my co-workers that I'm overpaying for this place. However, I didn't have a lot of choice since I had to find an apartment near a bus route that took me to work (since I have no car). There were cheaper places available, but it would have involved timely bus transfers, so I went with this place.

Check out pictures of my apartment here. Pretty bare eh? Hence the title, Insert Furniture Here.

Here's some random pros and cons of the place.

Pros:

• Walking distance to bus for work.
• Relatively safe neighbourhood.
• Very quiet, I don't even hear my neighbours above me.
• In-suite dryer/washer
• Easy bus ride to several malls.

Cons:

• Far from church.
• Not a lot of good restaurants within walking distance.
• The water is really gross.
• Bus service is awful on weekends, especially in the evenings.

The next apartment search (in one year) hopefully will be easier once I get a car, which opens up more options.

Well, pretty much everyone at work told me what a good time it was to join Yahoo. This week coincided with the end of quarter meeting with the division. The morning started off with a huge meeting. The big cheeses were there presenting major accomplishments for the quarter and managers were introducing their team members. It was a good way to see how everyone fit into the organization, and I got a good high level picture of all the cool stuff that was going on.

The next thing on the agenda was a Dim Sum lunch at a Chinese restaurant. At first when I heard that we were all going for Dim Sum, I wondered... why would we choose Dim Sum? For those who are unfamiliar, Dim Sum loosely translates to "order to your heart's content." The meal format is that you sit down at a table, and servers come by with carts of food (usually relatively small portions), and you pick what you want. In either case, the reason I was surprised we were going for Dim Sum was because usually you can get some authentic, scary, exotic Chinese food. Anyone for chicken feet? How about jellyfish? Congealed pigs blood anyone? I think these items would scare away some westerners. That's when I discovered at the meeting that 95% of our division was Asian, so suddenly everything made sense An exotic meal to us would be burgers and fries.

Before I progress any further, I have a photo album of the trip for those who are impatient.

Sorry for the lack of updates this week, it has been a very hectic week. I just finished moving from my hotel to an apartment, so this is yet another transition move. Still trying to settle down and find a balance, but I'm still not there yet. Anyway, on with the story.

I could have also named this blog entry, "The Revenge of The Border Agents", in reference to an interesting time I had getting into the United States last week.

The day that I got into the country, I immediately went to apply for a social security number (SSN). I had to do things fast because I had a rented car for only 10 days, so I had to do all my important errands in that amount of time. The day that I went, the SSN computer systems were down, so they couldn't enter my information into the system, or give me a tracking number which would allow me to check the status of my application. I left there thinking, all should be well. How wrong I was.

Yesterday, I received a letter from the SSN people stating that my work visa was not right because they checked it against the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) database, and their records show someone else with that work visa number. I privately joke that the the border agent in Seattle (the one that was really mean, then suddenly really nice during my application) purposely screwed over my application just to get back at me, that's why she appeared so nice.

To get this resolved, I had to go to the DHS in San Jose to get everything figured out. I quickly discovered that getting service from the DHS is no easy matter. In order to speak with someone, you have to go in-person, and make an appointment online. They won't even let you into the building without a receipt that says you made an appointment online. On top of that, they won't let you into the building until 15 minutes prior to your appointment. It gets worse, the buildings have super high security for some reason. No cellphones or cameras are allowed in the building at all. When you get there, it's just like going through airport security; you have to pass through a metal detector, and all of your possessions have to be scanned for dangerous items. Only difference was that I didn't have to take off my shoes when going through the security checkpoint.

Needless to say, all these layers of security seems really bizarre as a Canadian.

Alright, I've got a batch of photos from California from my new digital camera. I deeply apologize about the quality of the photos, I don't have Adobe Photoshop, so all of them are very raw and unedited. I normally touch things up.

Coolest part of the trip so far, seeing the new Apple iPhone (not available in Canada yet).


In either case, you can view the photo album here.

[Update] Photo link fixed, thanks Jordan.

Well, I've safely landed in California and I'm out and about getting a ton of errands done. But lets start from the beginning. I caught a 6:00am flight out of Victoria on Thursday which was far too early. That night, I went to bed at 12:00pm because I just barely finished packing. Then, I got up at 3:45am in order to get to the airport an hour before the plane started its boarding. May I reiterate that this was far too early.

I flew into Seattle where I had to obtain my work visa, and that was interesting. It was 7:00am so there weren't many customs officers working, only three. The lady that had to deal with my visa didn't seem impressed at all that I was trying to apply for a visa so bright and early. This was bad because a work visa can be denied by the officer at will, no questions asked. I have to say I was a tad freaked out because if I got rejected, I would have had to return to Canada and try again.

I had to wait half an hour before the lady customs officer served me. I was expecting to have to answer a lot of questions about my technical skills to prove I was a highly qualified computer systems analyst. She asked one question, "are you going to be programming?" This was a loaded question because I was applying for a TN Visa which was a special type of visa for highly qualified Canadians. Only certain occupations are allowed under TN Visa regulations, and programmer isn't one of them. I told her, my job would require a little bit of programming. She went, "uh uh, the rules say you can't program. In reality you probably have to program, but technically, you can't."

Well, the moving company has come and taken all of my stuff. Next stop, Silicon Valley, California. It's pretty surreal to think that in under 24 hours, your entire world will be completely different. It almost feels like a complete restart in life.

I joke that moving down to California is like going back to being a teenager. My credit history in Canada is completely useless in the United States, so I'm starting from scratch when it comes to building credit again. My driver's license will be useless after a few months, so I have to take a road test and a written test to get a driver's license.

A common question that I get asked by friends is, "why did you choose to move to California for a job?" While I was doing my Master's, my professor was asking about what I was planning on doing after I graduated. I mentioned that I'd like to continue doing web development. He basically said that I was thinking too small if I was only applying for web development jobs locally. Dream big. He encouraged me to apply to companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft because those are the web giants.

Ultimately, I started applying to the big league tech companies in Silicon Valley. I figure I had nothing to lose. In addition, I've had a lot of opportunities come my way in the past, and I have regretted not taking some of them. This was one of those opportunities that I couldn't pass up. It's one of those things where I didn't want to look back some day and wonder, "what if?"