Tequila

Castro Performance Art

Brian and Kylie, our first house guests, at Ferry Building Farmers Market

StartupHouse

(as an aside, bloody hell time flies!)

Liz and I flew to New York and met up with Sarah Wright for her birthday. Also met her man Brendan and caught up with Sarah Mitchell from school days. Here we were at the Boom Boom Room which was simply amazing – fantastic view of the city, great great great cocktails.

It was cold in NYC. Really really really cold. Zero degrees.

EXPECT MORE:

Reading; story-telling; gardening; connection with nature; community; fishing; whittling; lemonade; sitting on the front porch; cross-breezes; seasonal adjustment; blankets; wool socks; sweaters; connection to sunrise/sunset; local governance; mom & pop stores; crafts; goats and chickens; bicycles; train rides; pies cooling on the sill; music; singing and playing musical instruments; rain catchment; canning; craftsmanship; repair; durable goods.

EXPECT LESS:

Waiting for airplanes; commuting; abstract/meaningless jobs; Wal-Mart; fast food; strip malls; four-car families; climate change; dominance of banks; capital gains; disposable junk; junk mail; species extinction; minibar charges; traffic jams; identity theft; freeway noise; advertisements; consumerism; faddish gizmos; cheap plastic crap; outsourcing; industrial effluent; credit card debt.

• Take three lemons, squeeze into a small saucepan.
• Juice one big chunk of ginger.
• Add honey (my current favourite being Auger + Ore from the Santa Cruz Mountains), lots of honey.
• 3/4 of a shot glass of that
• Add Remy Martin congac.

Boom!

Love it.

Next!

We had a stalled arrival with the delayed landing of our United flight due to poor weather. Honestly though, the weather there is pretty damn nice during the day. At night it does get bitterly cold, so we need to go buy thermals… or HTFU.

Public transport here is pretty good. If you are on the bus – Muni – then it can totally suck in peak hour as there will be a squillion people trying to get on and no room. I can’t keep track of the number of times I have had to ask folks to “move down please, thank you” on the Muni. They are oblivious to others or just don’t care. Which strikes me as odd, yet there are so many poor dishevelled vagrants that people mostly keep to themselves on public transport.

Liz had us on a frenetic schedule to find a place. She knew I wouldn’t be a happy camper until we were settled, smart woman! Gosh I’m a lucky fella. At any rate, we spent the first two weeks running around viewing places and finally found ‘the one’ only to discover that we didn’t have enough money in the US yet to pay the deposit. It was good in the end as a better place came up – top floor in a three story block in The Mission (think Redfern), big kitchen and close to shops/bars/restaurants/etc this place is ‘the bomb’ (as the locals would say). I’ve even managed to buy a bloody huge stereo to keep the place warm at night (yeah, it is pretty big, sucks a lot of power I’m guessing).

We are still doing our laundry at the place around the corner. I reckon we’ll be getting a washer and dryer soon though. A task for next weekend.

Getting a bank account is important. For things like getting paid, and paying taxes (don’t want to miss out on that opportunity!). So, we opened a Wells Fargo account. Super. Turns out the company still couldn’t pay me until I got my Social Security Number – damn. Finally got the SSN so now I can get paid… by ‘check’, or cheque for you Australians. Weird over here, the banking system is so antiquated and everyone writes cheques for everything – our rent for instance, getting paid, etc. There is, of course, credit cards. We are yet to obtain one as we need proof of credit history and none of the Australian credit history counts (bred from thieves and whatnot in Australia, right?). Whatever, we now have money and we now have stuff. And a horse.

Coupons are a big deal here. Liz has saved a small fortune by cutting and using them at the grocery store. Wonderful, and yet strange at the same time.

We watched the Superbowl. Folks here were indifferent though as their team wasn’t in it. Ended up hanging out with a other Aussies who live just around from the bar – we were going for… ahh I forget now, such is the life of a sports star, only you can remember if you won the Superbowl last year or not.

I got to the BeerFest with a crew from work one Friday night. It was epic. Forget the Sydney beer festival, this is the real deal. A huge hall full of brewers, and most are micro breweries. That means they only do a few hundred thousand litres of beer each year and mostly supply the local scene.

Liz’s prior housemate Nat flew (grammar on that right?) in last Saturday. It was a six hour layover so we headed down towards Embarcadero for dinner. On our way back up to North Beach for desert we got caught up in the Chinese New Year celebrations. Massive win, it was brilliant! No desert though, and bloody cold too – couldn’t they turn up the heat for NYE?!

This was a photo shoot at work. A little naff, yet that’s what you’ve got to do sometimes I guess. Bloody big space at work, we had the whole SF office on those steps for the all hands meeting on Friday. Super, loving it!

Speaking of work, I have done a tonne of it lately as we gear up for some major releases. I have also been fortunate enough to visit some amazing companies in the few weeks I have been here. I feel like I am at the center of the tech universe, it is AWESOME.

Yesterday we had ice cream, made on the spot using liquid nitrogen. Food here is different, it is unique. Every place has its own ‘thing’, their own signature cocktail or dish.

San Francisco…

UPDATE: We’re sold out. Flights to San Francisco on Monday. New contact details to follow.

If you got this far then take a gander at the new Atlassian office in SF, looks swell. Spot my new desk!

1) Ingredients

• Four Rashers of Bacon
• Four Eggs
• One Red Onion
• Two Sheets of Puff Pastry
• One Potato
• Cheddar Cheese