First Business Trip + Return to Sunny Cali

Woke up at 4.30am today to catch a flight. Normally it'd be nothing to blog about, but the purpose of today's trip though was that I am flying because of work! Yes, my first ever 'business' trip - though not really in the sense of meeting clients, it was a trip that was sponsored!

Arriving back in sunny Cali at 8:40am, I then taxi-ed to SVC. Pretty nice campus with pretty cool people. Weather was pretty nice, and seeing parts of the 101 on the way to the campus was pretty nostalgic. At work, I got to meet most of the people that I have been interacting with phone calls / emails - it was pretty neat to see the people in real life! lol. Had planned to do alot of stuff, but I didn't really get to do everything that I wanted to get done this trip - guess I planned too aggressively. Overall, I think it was a successful trip though, and also got to hear some interesting feedback - I guess I will know if this day trip was successful in the next few weeks.

With work aside, then we begin the start of the weekend.

Plan - dinner, club and then next day, ski and casino...

To start and dinner...
With slight delays, we end up not making the original dinner plans, and instead the 4 of us went for food at a Thai restaurant. Before that though, we went to a sports store to rent equipment. Being tired from the lack of sleep, I started off the evening by dinging a car as I opened the door... with the owners of the vehicle right next to us. Ooops... :(. Felt really bad, but all I could really say I was sorry. Thinking back, I wonder what a person should do in those situations... hrm...

Anyway, returning to see our car still in one piece and tires not slashed, onwards to dinner we headed. Bring my bag in with me, one of the waiter spots it and asks what camera is in there. I tell him it's the Rebel and then we talk a little. Turns out he is really into photography, and right now he's playing with 360 degree pictures. He pulls out his iphone and shows me his work, and they were pretty nice. He had taken a picture of the church at the Univ of Standford, and also of the restaurant - in 360 degree! I really hope that one day I can snap pictures that when I show people, it will make people go 'wow'. The food here was pretty good as well - the plating was done really well, like the pineapple fried rice that I ordered for example.

By 10:30ish, we started to head into San Fran. Close to midnight, we arrived at the club and met up with some friends of HHH and BJ. Had to piggyback off some random people to get in. $20 cover, ~$8 drinks, and I have reaffirmed once again that I am getting too old for clubbing. All the pushing and maneuvering, just too much work and effort.

But, one key event was found by looking at the liquor shelf of the lounge. Tonight I was finally able to try the 'champion' tequila again. The tequila that I have reserved a place for in my liquor rack buildout, it has been 5 years since I had last tasted it. To date, I have only seen this bottle when I first bought it in Mexico, and thereafter, no liquor store I've been to (at duty frees, big and small liquor stores) had it. So I was very happy to see it just sitting there, on the shelf. To those not familiar, people here say that Petron is really good - this tequila blows it away. The price is also steeper than Petron, weighing in at the bar at $27 a shot (which I ordered 3 - not all for myself)... Expensive, but worth it :). At the end of the night, I talked with the bartender, and he tells me that it is actually buyable in California, he writes down the name of the store and also the name of the tequila (Clase Azul) - there is now hope I can get it without having to go to Mexico!

Had a nice walk back to the hotel (got lost at one point - turns out we overshot the hotel by 2 blocks).
Got back to the hotel at 3.30 am-ish... to wake up in 2 hours to get ready for skiing the next day up at Tahoe.