4 min read
So surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, I guess), Google lets its employees -- even interns -- come and go as they please from the office. This was extremely convenient for me today as I was trying to download the necessary files to upgrade my phone to Lollipop since it's been stuck on Jelly Bean since I first got it. The wi-fi in my apartment is comparable to that of my wi-fi back home (although nothing beats home in terms of slowness) so I vowed last night to go to Google the next day to sort things out.
There was no blog post last night as I literally spent all of Saturday in bed sleeping. Between the move and the new job and the crazy schedule with orientation classes (not to mention getting about 5 hours of sleep each night on average this past week), I was pretty wiped out. Even getting up today was a struggle but I eventually managed to pull myself out of bed around 1 PM and head on out to the office. I'm glad I did.
One of the entrances
So I managed to diagnose the upgrade issue and manually flashed a stock KitKat ROM onto my phone, which allowed me to then do an OTA update to Lollipop.
Unfortunately this took about 3 hours to do. In the meantime, I posted on the intern group chat to see if anyone else was interested in getting dinner later. Finally we made plans to meet up outside the office. Shortly after confirming a meet time, I was sent on a favor by another intern to stow away a tablet which I turned into a game. The objective: complete the task without getting detected. Of course I had my badge, but still I wanted to make it fun.
Scootering around humming a generic spy theme, I zipped across the office and made my way up to floor 5: the floor of an overwhelming amount of desks with no walls in the work area I was to go to. Hence, it took a while to find the right desk and even longer to find the drawer I was looking for as it was hidden. Since my phone's Hangouts messages weren't working with the update, I had to make 2 trips back to my desk on 4th to check my corp computer for more information. I did end up get spotted by a fellow Googler who was standing in the elevator.
Later, I was able to meet up with a group of 5 guys to go to dinner, some of which I ran into scootering around the Lego micro-kitchen. When we all met up, we ended up walking around aimlessly for a few blocks and then finally picked a Thai restaurant named Spice to eat at. It was my first time having Thai food and it was actually pretty good.
Later, we decided to do what else in the middle of Manhattan but go back to the office. This was when we got to do some exploring of the cooler parts of the office we hadn't seen yet. We ventured up to the 11th floor and checked out a room where one wall was a green stadium-like couch with fake grass pillows as part of a summer theme and the opposite wall had a huge TV. Apparently, it was partly for watching Netflix so we put on the first episode of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Afterwards, we checked out more of the office and ended up venturing to the rooftop terrace to see a pretty awesome view of the Manhattan skyline at night -- way better than the view from Hemispheres. You can see right across the Hudson River into New Jersey. (Click the photos to see in full resolution.)
Trust me, it looked a lot better in person
Crappy panorama version!
We spent a while up there just gazing out at the city and talking about our journey towards getting the internship and what we planned on doing afterwards. Then we went back inside and stumbled on a Google-themed pack of Cards Against Humanity cards which we just had to play a game of. Too bad there were quite a few cards we didn't understand just being here for a week, but it was still fun.
After scootering around for a little bit, we all went our separate ways to head home around 10:30. All in all, it was a good day. I got to fix my phone finally and hang out with some of the interns outside of work too.