My trip began with a 4 hour plane ride to Tokyo. I was only there for 3 hours however I took a picture just to say I have traveled to Japan. Something that amazed me (besides the amount of people) were the prices. You'd think that a ratio of 1 to 82.5 would favor you, but as soon as I went inside the duty free I turned around and went straight to the gate. Everything was roughly twice as expensive as in the US, meaning 20+ times more expensive than in Hong Kong. Another amazing thing was that the shops in the airport were all high-end stores such as Gucci, Cartier, Fendi, etc.
After my 3-hour layover I got on the plane towards Seattle. This ride was about 12:30 hours long. I finished my book and watched three movies and still had some time to sleep. The most amusing part is that even after I landed I somehow had done all of the stops in 15-minutes (8am to 8:15am)... Got to love those time-zone changes.
I left my bag in the hotel and went touristing around downtown Seattle. The first place I visited was Pike Place Market. It is a 100-year-old farmers market next to the waterfront with specialized shops in the bottom, such as magic shops, arts and crafts, and others. It was very satisfying to have some calamari and clam chowder since I knew I was going to have a hard time finding this in Asia for the upcoming semester.
Afterwards I started walking all the way to the Space Needle, a symbol of Seattle and I stopped inside the first Starbucks ever built. It was a very cool experience. Once I arrived to the Space Needle I took the elevator to the top and looked around the city skylines. Whats cool about this monument is that not only does it provide you with the view and interactive screens like most high-rise observatories, but it also has over 20 telescopes hanging around it that you can control and zoom in an out using other types interactive screens.
Right beneath the Space Needle there was an odd-looking structure, similar to the theater in Millennium Park in Chicago. This one was multi-colored though, having a bunch of blue, silver, red and even yellow. It turns out that it was a famous museum of Music and Science Fiction with a special focus on Hendrix. I went inside to check it out and it turned out to be everything that I expected and more. You had rooms filled with electric guitars, theaters featuring Woodstock performances, rooms with lounge chairs so you can listen to your favorite Hendrix songs, and even a studio so that you could record your own songs. They had a sculpture built with over 400 guitars that played itself. It was really cool.
The next day I went to the Microsoft Campus in Redmond. They have over 50 buildings and shuttles that take you from building to building. I started in Building 111 where I played with many Microsoft Products such as Surface, Kinnect, Zune and others. Needless to say I was impressed by Kinnect. I later on moved through the buildings interviewing all day long. I spent about 6 hours on campus rotating between recruiters. Afterwards I headed back to the hotel, took a power nap and met my friend for dinner. We went to a local restaurant that served tapas and ate some Spanish food. Im gonna miss that place.
The next morning it was time to head back to Hong Kong. Going against the wind the flights took longer, and the time zone changed against you. This meant that the first flight was 17 hours and the second one was 5, in addition to an 18-hour time-zone difference. I landed two days after I left! The nice thing was that the Japan Duty Free was giving free Whisky samples so I must have tried about 20 different types. Still favoring Blue Label over all.
I got to my dorm at about 2am after not having slept for the past 2 days, however I decided that I needed to watch the Super Bowl so I decided to stay awake and go to the bars at 6am. Gotta say I was happy with the outcome, however I was very disappointed by Pittsburgh's performance. Now Im looking forward to a week of more interviews and hopefully some time for partying! Im already planning my next trip somewhere, and have the Philippines in mind!
The only bad part about this trip was that I missed Chinese New Years and all of the partying that entailed with that. I guess thats still on the To-Do List and I'll have to come back another year to check it out.
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