This is the point at which I’m bringing this blog back into real time. I’m writing this at the end of my first full week in Portland, having arrived Wednesday last week. A little summary of what I’ve been up to...

Snowdonesque ran out in Chicacgo where, after an enormous security queue, I arrived at the gate a minute early, to find it closed. The 10:15 flight which I re-booked on arrived at 1AM. So, after an embarrassed call to my housemate I ended up walking into his home at 2AM, meeting him for the first time the next morning.

My housemate’s name is Nate, and he has a really nice girlfriend called Brie. The’ve been taking _damn_ good care of me, helping the whole getting-settled process a lot. We’ve been hanging out a bit over the last week and a half. We’ve been out for a couple of really good nights in downtown Portland, including the Portland brew-fest last Thursday. Nate and I just got back from a weekend in Seattle at one of his fraternity brothers’ bachelor night. Definitely need to make it back up there at some point. (I’m being lazy about describing these because I want to get this back up to date. May update it sometime later, eh?).

Brie has just got a cat called Cyrus, who is very cute, but super-annoying at times (what, with that whole pissing on the floor thing). I guess no more than any other kitten.

Having only brought the bare essentials to America, I had to do a bunch of shopping. Nate lent me his bike, and I hauled two big hiking packs full of stuff up the three miles from Target (presently my favourite store) to my house. Everything from picture frames to sheets to alarm clock to phone charger (110V doesn’t equal 240V). A particular score was the desk, bedside table, garbage bin and clothes basked I got, all for under $20. (Vinnies equivalent. Score!). Fitting it in Nate’s sedan was a challenge. After huge amounts of pain (literally - I was contorted to fit between the door and the desk) I then proceeded to pull the side off trying to get it out of the car. Whups! So not fair!

The house itself is great. Its about 20 mins by car from the city centre and about 10 mins to Intel (in the opposite direction). One particularly handy purchase last week was a new(ish) bike! Its a second hand one, but its been refurbished by the shop I bought it at. 11.5km to Intel from here (according to my odo). I do that in about 25 mins at the moment (a few hills), but hoping to bring it down a little. :-). Le Tour de Intel. Present odo reading: 130km.

I’ve been cooking! So far I’ve got a decent spag bol and a beef stroganoff under my belt. Of course, I haven’t actually mastered the art of cooking for one yet, so its been dinner-party proportions and freezing.

I should talk more about this most recent weekend (its fresh in my mind). Brew-fest on Thursday. It turns out that Portland is the micro-brewery capital of America. (We headed to Henry’s last week, which is a pub with over 150 beer taps, each with locally brewed beer - very dangerous!). The brew fest involved tables with lots of the local beer, large numbers of beer lovers, and a park. Very dangerous. :-). Late night mexican seems to be the equivalent of kebabs here. :-).

Yesterday we headed to Seattle for a buck’s weekend, which started out with a suite at the Mariner’s game. As one of the guys there pointed out, it was about the most American thing you could aside from going to a Yankee’s game. Baseball is actually a really good sport to watch - it seems to fill the same sort of space as cricket - lots of beer, watching the plays, good conversation, relax. Nice. Except its a little faster paced than cricket, and a lot easier to see what’s going on.

Headed out with the boys for a decent meal, and ended up in a club in downtown Seattle. Ended up spending a while hanging out with the catcher from the Oakland Athletics. He kissed more girls in the time I was standing there than I have in my entire life!! Single Aussie lads: get yourselves over here. The accent is _lethal_.

A breakfast (at about 11:00 or 12:00) of steak, eggs and bloody marys sorted us out at the local mexican place before heading back to Portland. Nice.

I’ve had my first week at Intel this week. Its an interesting place. Very corporate compared with what I’m used to (seriously... - pre-employment drug tests!?!?). Its definitely got the big company mentality -- you book meetings, make appointments, and adhere to the rules. While its probably the only way to run a

company where you can’t implicitly trust the employees, its frustrating to try and get many things done. In order to find out information you have to know who to ask, who needs to know who to ask, who needs to know who to ask, etc. Nerding out for a second: you hope to avoid dangling pointers!

That said, its a good place to get work done. Few distractions. Big grey bunch of cubes. Good equipment (although I can’t get access to it).

You really get the feeling that you’re really effecting the way computing world is shaped while you’re working at a company which designs and builds the basic building blocks of the computing world. So, mixed feelings. Will let you know as things progress!

More photos here