Back home

Only for two days though, as I will be leaving for Paris on Monday. The last two days have been quite tiring, but good. Thursday was my last full day in San Francisco, where the public transport was trying to get commuters to not take their cars by offering free public transport in the Bay Area. We took advantage of it by going to Palo Alto for a talk at PARC about the social aspect of MMORPGs, after strolling around in Palo Alto and on the Stanford University campus for a while, in the blazing heat. The talk was really cool, with lots of eye-candy, it was a shame it was a lot of bits of information on different aspects, I would have liked some more in-depth discussions of certain things. But the speaker only had an hour, and a lot to tell so I guess I'll just have to read his stuff :).

After Palo Alto we went to the Golden Gate bridge, which seemed to disappear in the fog and with cars driving into nowhere, quite spectacular. Before we got home we had a quick stop at Extreme Pizza to get some take-away dinner, which we enjoyed at home, from a card board box, served with white wine, as one is supposed to.

At 5am the alarm woke me up, because I had to get to the airport in time to catch my 8.15 flight, to start my 22 hour journey (that's including travelling to the airport, and in the Netherlands from the airport to my parents in Brabant, which took longer than usual due to work on the tracks). I arrived safely, but tired, and managed to save most photos from my bad memory card. After formatting it, it seems to work fine again. It's good to be home again, even though I do miss Rowan, the Pacific, the Apple Store around the corner, and Abercrombie and Fitch (my 'Zara' in the States). On the other hand, I'm happy to see my family again, my apartment (though I've only been there for about an hour, and won't see it for another three weeks) and get some proper Dutch food again. Not that the food wasn't good, just the gigantic portions it's served in, and the silly doggy bags afterwards. But I guess everything is big in the US; people, cars, plates, and roads. But it has been a great ride all along :)