Post First Day

On Saturday I spent the morning finding the shops. Google Maps to the rescue! There is a fairly large outdoor shopping centre that isn't a ridiculously long distance to walk but it isn't short walk either. They is a slightly smaller (more expensive and more organic) supermarket about half way so I suspect I will likely use that a bit as well.

Not much happened on Sunday as it was raining. So I just stayed in, watched TV (including online) and did a bit of programming. Didn't get much sleep Sunday night. No idea why, my body just decided it didn't want to go to sleep. Got to sleep at around 12am from exhaustion and only slept to 4am and didn't get back to sleep.

New Employee Orientation was for the most part boring. I had to walk there but it didn't take too long, slightly shorter than getting to the shopping centre. The first hour was all the administrative stuff. A few small forms, getting your picture taking etc. It takes a while because of the number of people needing to do it. Then the rest of the day was spent listening to talks (and having breaks). Yay! However it is now done and now I have my Microsoft employee badge. Yay!

At the apartment

So the flight to seattle was significantly less comformatable then the international flight due to it being a domestic flight and me travelling in economy as apposed to premium economy. As I was on the window seat with two seats next to me (equals no chance of getting out without a good cause) and had nothing to do, I found it less objectional to talk to the person next to me. I met a person called Kelly Walshe. She was\is a dance teacher that owns her own dance studio which caters for all ages. Though because I am not very good at small talk the conversation did tend more towards my internship at microsoft.

Moving on, seattle airport is wierd. Instead of connecting terminals with walkways they had an underground train. The taxi trip from the airport to the apartment was a little annoying. Firstly the sheet of paper told me to go to a location in the city to pick up the keys, which I didn't need to do. Secodly I forgot to ask for a receipt from the taxi driver, which means no reimbursement. Yay.

The apartment is small but a group of one doesn't particularly need much space and I have internet access. Yay!

Waiting for connecting flight to Seattle

So the head-ache turned into a splitting headache and prevented me from sleeping for a long time. Fortunately due to my my body clock eventually kicking in and pure exhaustion I finally got some sleep, though I believe it was only 1-2 hours. Then came breakfast and I also decided to watch Red Dog. Not the greatest film in the world but not completely boring. Didn't get to finish it due to the plane beginning to land.

Moving on, I hereby hate American airports. First I didn't realise I needed to retrieve and fill out a particular form before going through border protection. So I stood in the same line twice. Getting out of the international terminal was easy enough from then on including re-checking in my baggage. But then boom, I end up outside the terminal on American soil with no easy signs pointing in the right direction. For example, the fact that departures are a level up. Anyway I ended up walking around for ages going the wrong direction multiple times. Eventually, with a little help, I ended up at the correct terminal and at the back of a really long line.

Americans seem to be completely obsessed with airport security, even on domestic flights. Everyone in the line has to strip down to one layer of clothes. This includes taking off your shoes and removing everything from ones clothing. Then you get a choice between an x-ray or a pat down. X-ray is faster so I choose that. This obviously takes a while. Oh and no liquids period, not that I had any anyway. At-least the security people were friendlier here then at border protection.

On the plane to LA, bored and tired

My check-in was a little stressful. The check-in staff has to verify that the US will allow me to enter the country before they will give me the tickets. So they ask for my passport and where I will be staying. However the addresses I gave them weren't being accepted by the US computer systems. Turns out I was suppose to mention that I had actually already been given a visa, whereas they just assumed I would be on a tourist visa. Anyway they entered the visa details and everything went through okay.

The baggage checks and the customs were long, the lines were moving but they were long. Even though the actual rooms used are relatively small because one has to zig-zag through them you end up walking a long distance. Then after that you are forced to walk through a long line of duty-free shops and there is no shortcut even though they could have built one. Then the gate I was going to was one of the furthest away from the end of the line of shops. So much so that they put moving walk ways in. All this walking was compounded by the fact that I had quite a heavy bag on my back with most of the weight coming from the laptop I am currently typing on.

Getting onto the plane wasn't too much of a hassle because on this flight I am flying premium economy and so the line was nice and short. Yay! However the plane ended up being delayed by too obnoxious customers who must of gotten lost or something because we ended up setting off 30+ minutes from the scheduled departure time. Alas I suspect this type of thing isn't as uncommon as it should be.

We had turbulence for a large portion of the beginning of the flight. We weren't allowed to take our seatbelts off during the first half hour due to it being particularly bad. I am not talking about the few little shakes at the start of the flight due to going through the main cloud layer, I am talking about major jerks at cruising height. We were served lunch with the turbulence still going. Towards the end of lunch it did get to the point were you couldn't have a full cup of liquid without it spilling. Though that eventually died down. They did put seatbelt sign back on shortly after all the lunch had been packed up but that ended up only being a pre-cautionary measure.

During the turbulence and lunch I was watching Captain America. Not a bad film really. I would recommend watching it if you haven't. It was only at the end of the film did the turbulence eventually die down. After that I started watching the social network. Not the greatest film in the world but it was decent. I actually watched it in two parts. Half way through they closed all the windows. This might have been because were were moving into darkness though I don't actually know. At any rate the cabin was dark, my eyes were sore and I so I decided to try and get some sleep. Key word here was try as I didn't actually manage but I started getting a head-ache so it was probably no bad thing that I had my eyes closed. As I write this, around 8 hours into the flight, the head-ache is coming back so I guess I am going to try and get some sleep again.