His Story

想象一下将要结束的假期，还有不见许久的同事，很多刚刚结束春节长假的上班族可能都会期待从新回到离别已久的办公室。当然，前提是你超级喜欢自己的这份工作。期待之后是什么？很多人都会说不上来。但是，我们马上就要结束产假，明天就要回来上班的 Andy 肯定会疯掉。（木哈哈，想起他明天那个时候的表情我就想笑。）在微软，有一个传统跟闹洞房很像，只不过闹得目标不是人，而是——办公室。每当一个同事放假即将归来的时候，所有人就会提前去把这个员工的办公室“收拾”一番。没听懂么？这有个例子：

好吧，反正他不懂中文，我就放心大胆地说出来吧。这次我们的计划是，把所有人的照片都打印成大头贴，然后贴在他办公室里面所有能贴的地方。请不要局限你的思维，这里说的是所有物理条件、化学条件都允许的地方——想象一下那个每一个按键都被贴上头像的102键键盘 ：）大家虽然都是做办公室搞脑力活动的，但是在整人方面动作也很快。大概半个小时就让 Andy 的办公室基本上除了每个人的大头贴其它什么也看不到。一位仁兄大概算了一下，如果每天花一个小时去十张大头贴的话（工作任务第一），少说都得三、四个月才得让办公室恢复原样吧，木哈哈哈……康桑巴米达，Music！“我们等着你回来，我们等着你回来。”

If you go to previous post, you will see the pictures I took during my visit to Seattle downtown with her. I like not only this city very much, but also the surrounding areas. There are many great places to take a look. The Lake Washington divides the whole area into two parts, the Seattle city and the eastside, where the eastside is where I work and live. Although I don’t have a vehicle so far, it is not difficult for me to travel among all these cities, because there are resources and flexible commute combinations to access and use.

Most of the time, I take bus. Before I go to some place, the first thing I do is to visit the Online Trip Planner. It is a great tool and it really helped me a lot for my settlement in last month. In the page, you enter the starting point and the destination, the date of the trip (schedules for most routes are different in weekdays and weekend), how far you want to walk and other preferences. I usually choose Fewest Transfers since I am really lazy :P. Then after a click on [Plan Trip] button, it shows several itineraries according to your need. Another neat feature I like, is the Plan Return Trip in the result page, so I don’t have to re-enter everything again for my return.

Another useful tool for taking a bus on time, is Seattle Bus Tracker. Simple enter the route number at the upper left corner, it then shows the locations of the buses for a specific route in real time. It is a great replacement to the bus schedule lookup table. Need to mention that this nice tool is based on Microsoft Virtual Earth.

In some cases, the place I want to go cannot be reached by a bus, such as trails at Redmond. That’s one of the reasons why I bought a bike. Bike is a convenient tool for traveling, but it doesn’t help much if you are thinking about going to Pike Place Market from Redmond and come back. Fortunately, there is a solution to that if you prefer to ride your bike at both ends. Both of the transit companies, Sound Transit and Metro Bus, have bicycle racks installed on their buses that allows passengers travel with their bikes. I was surprised about it when I first came and it strongly supports my decision to get a bike. More resources for biking in this area are here.

If you drive, there are other commute choices such as carpool, vanpool and Park-n-Ride. All these different methods of traveling can also be combined, for instance having a bicycle rack installed on the vanpool vehicles. So, where do you want to go today?

Tomorrow will be the first day of the year of Pig. Well, there are really not many events here for the celebration, except a party by CHIME in Saturday night tomorrow. The most important and happiest thing is that she is coming to town! Alright, I appreciate that if there are any suggestions of good restaurants Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond.

Happy New Year!

今天 Miaomiao 同学带我去 Overlake Christian Church 打排球。球场上老中青各阶级各肤色的人民群众都有。若干年后再一次返回球场，气势依旧，技术龟烂。特别是扣球，基本上是 100% 失误率。弹跳就更不用说了，好像地球引力对我来说特别强。战术意识还有，前排进攻的时候知道站在旁边补位。可惜，返回原来位置的时候，验证了当年排球队老高高老师的一句话：跟火车转弯一样。唉，光阴一去不复返啊。想当年在深圳实验学校打副攻的时候……算了，英雄不提当年勇。还好翻出两张旧照片，可以美美地沉浸一会。

It’s been a month since my job started on 15th last month. Joshua told me that, once you started a job, you life is accelerated. It will soon be a month later, a year later and then a whole life later. So I just want to stick a summary post here, to memorialize the month that has just passed by.

I had a great time in my new place, office in past 30 days. Comparing to my life in university, I didn’t notice any difference that is big in my life here. My place is very close to where I work. I go to supermarket every weekend and take bus with a bag of food. I study new knowledge and take notes. Every morning, I ride on my bike from my place through the trails to my work building. I make myself a nice cup of Starbuck’s coffee in the kitchen. Then I come to my office and complete the booting of my day.

In a month, I had a delightful lunch in a nice restaurant with my team. Our whole team went to ski at Snoqualmie, on a cloudy Friday - Yes, it is a business day. My collegues are very nice. The most important, is that they are also smart people in work. That is the main reason why I come here. I am pretty sure this is the great place to improve myself, since there are a lot of new stuff for me to learn and eXPerience. I just feel lucky.

Until last weekend I visited one of the libraries in University of Washington, looking at those students studying under that atomsphere, I suddenly realized that I am no longer one of them. Few seconds later, I asked myself. I said, ”Self, what’s next?”

前天网站服务商一管理员发信说 His Story 主页面太耗资源了，搞得 Host 服务器瘫了。我查了半天，最后发现把 Wordpress Widget 关掉以后页面加载速度快了很多。还不知道什么原因，但是很让人不爽。

还好把近 48 小时都没解决的问题终于在昨天晚上搞掂了，心情有些恢复。于是今天一大早便屁颠屁颠地跟着团队里的一票人马跑去滑雪。（公司福利还是不错的，午饭、出租费用、车费都包了。否则我也不会来的。）兴高采烈地租了滑雪板，漫步蹒跚地走进了看的眼睛发疼的白茫茫的滑雪场。因为从来没滑过，所以参加了一个多小时的初学者班。后来当我感觉可以不会在 10 秒钟之内嘴贴地的时候，才发现大家都去乘缆车上去高处来真的了。这个滑雪场分三个高处，高级、中级和初级。当然，我是后来才知道的。原因就会知道了。

我一路踩着我心爱的“香蕉皮“，一路向着其中一个缆车走去。当我摇摇晃晃像烧腊店里的卤水挂在缆车向上传送的时候，我有点奇怪：45 度角向上去的方向那是云啊还是雾啊？终于，到达了终点站。因为缆车并没有停，坐在上面的人理应跟着惯性踩着滑雪板滑下来。所以一个肯定的结果，就是我再一次与地球接吻了。一阵张牙舞爪之后，我终于站起来了。正当准备唱国歌庆祝一下的时候，才发现了一个让我多么后悔的现实——我来到了高级滑雪出发点。

之后发生了什么我不知道，我也不想说，也不想有人知道。反正最后回家的时候还是有几口气可以喘的。冲了凉，然后跟 YYY 出吃了个饭，接着去 41、42 跟另外几个朋友分别打了会儿桌球、打了会儿乒乓球。最后就坐在这里写完这篇作文，然后打算睡觉了。

总结一下，好久没运动了，滑雪、桌球、乒乓球玩什么感觉都像初学者。虽然实际上就是一个初学者，不过还是有点开心的。啊，多么美好的一天啊！

I just moved to my new apartment last weekend. I spent a day cleaning the place up, and I sat in my chair having a rest. Soon I realized that I was not the only tenant in the 1-bedroom. There were two ants having fun on my desk and another ant lost its direction on my pants. Before they figured out what was going on, I sent them somewhere else. Sorry guys, it’s my territory now. The ants were big and they reminds me a song from James Brown.

Redmond 的夜很黑，一路上一个人都没有。骑着单车一路飞奔，始终与前面的路灯拉不开距离。远处树林里隐约藏着一些桌灯，安静得竟让我听到刷刷的耳边风。如果把一切都摆在天上，也许我是晚空中一道划过的星吧。