First of all, let me start off with the awesome news: I found a house! Whoopee. I’ll be living on Guerro St and 20th St, a block away from Dolores park. I’ll be sharing the house with Francis, he’s 25, grew up in Georgia but has Taiwanese parents and works for LinkedIn.
A lot of people describe their sexual orientation and ethnicity on Craigslist advertisements in contrast to the Netherlands and even sometimes highlight that they’re specifically looking for other queer people or are open to LGBTQ+ and POC friendly. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that in an advertisement in the Netherlands.
Anywho, back to it. I haven’t written in a while because life has been so crazy. I think I’m about two weekends behind. So just some quick updates:
Third week(end)
Hein, one of my old roommates’ (from my first years in Delft) popped up in SF out of nowhere, so we hung out a couple times.
Experienced some intense negotiation tactics and how different meetings are in the US compared to NL
Saw my CEO in person for the first time for our monthly all hands meeting, and was pretty impressed, I haven’t often met founders with serious technical knowledge, great story telling and humor
Met a really cool Swedish colleague (female software engineer, whoop whoop) from Northvolt who might move to SF in April (fingers crossed)
Had a really good veggie burrito at Chug Pub with Will (YAY!), G I J S, Hein and the gang
Partied at Joe & Caro’s, went to a house party at the Center followed by a techno party at Audio (Fatima Hajji) and ended up at a gay club with one other straight guy (Victor, Joe and Caro’s roommate)
Finally checked out Ocean Beach (aka OB) and collected random surfers numbers
Had brunch with a colleague from work and found out she’s younger than I thought, which is not super relevant, but it is noticeable to me that people here start working very young, she’s really nice and super cool though!
Checked out the farmers market in the Richmond and came across “Loose Grapes”, which is not a grape stand, but a pretty hip old school version of dating by putting up ads for single people with a polaroid photo
Fourth week(end) - last week
Found a house and moved out to the Mission on Friday
Had dinner with loads of random people: Nina, Hein, Marion’s & Cuberg people, Hein & Rob and Ali
Finally met Nick in real life (the guy that is also part owner of the studio I stayed in in the Richmond) and went out for Burmese food, which had a lot of tomatoes
Rented a van from Uhaul to pick up a free mattress I found on Nextdoor, a great app to collect things from people nearby, that belonged to a B&B, was also my first time driving in SF
Rented a car from Zipcar and got to drive over the Bay Bridge, which connects SF to East Bay, for the first time and didn’t see much because of all the fog (insert sad face) to buy bed things at Ikea (which opens at 10am not 9am, always check the website, Google maps has been inaccurate countless times)
Checked out the CNY Parade in Chinatown/Market street with Mei, Thomas and accidentally ended up going out for dinner with a group of 20 people
Ended up writing a proposal for the sustainability strategy and recycling roadmap that I want to work on for the next 4 months at my company, waiting for feedback now.
