My alarm clock went off at 6am this morning. I had to be in downtown Oakland by 8:30am (at the latest) for an ASCE geotech seminar on liquefaction. So I got up way before the sun was up. I contemplated taking the shuttle but I decided I couldn't make it on the 6:25 shuttle and so I decided to bike. I had sort of decided to bike when I thought this through last night because it would give me more flexibility and there would be no waiting for the bus. Except:
It was super cold out. I wore a fleece and a windbreaker but my hands were freezing. And it was dark out. I don't like to bike in the dark. There were actually quite a lot of cars around since people were going to work, I suppose. At one point, I looked down this one side street that I've ridden down before and it was pitch black. Pitch black as in I couldn't see 10 feet into the street. There were no lights at all. And this isn't some dirt road. There's actually a lot of parking on that street. Of course, I did not ride down that street. It took me 20-25 minutes to get to the Caltrain station on my bike. I didn't expect it to take that long at all! It also took me a while to find the bike rack. After all this, I still managed to get there too early for the train I wanted to take. I ran into someone who I met during orientation at the train station as well. She's doing a masters in environmental engineering and she works twice a week at Arup! I could have had a schedule that allowed me to do this but I think I would die from missing office hours and not having time to study.
Anyway, I got to the seminar place just when it was starting. In retrospect, it might have been good to get there early in order to network. I never realized that these seminars are probably one of the best places to network. There were probably about 70 people there, all professionals working in the geotech field in the Bay Area. Crazy networking opportunity. I sat down in the back, looked around, and immediately spotted my former supervisor and coworker from PB. I was like, wow, this is way better than anything I had expected. I saw an empty seat near them and tapped my supervisor on the shoulder as I walked by. I think he did a double take and was really surprised to see me. They both thought I was still at MIT. He, having two degrees from Berkeley and an avid Cal fan, couldn't believe I turned down Berkeley. If that wasn't enough, I think he definitely shook his head when he found out I worked for a competitor over the summer. Anyway, it was good seeing them. We chatted for a while during lunch. I also saw the two geotech guys I met at the earthquake seminar I went to a few weeks ago at Stanford. I guess the geotech company is very small (and full of guys!). Anyway, I managed to network a little. Talked to a few people. Collected a business card. It was worth the effort, I think.
The bike ride from the train station to my apartment took around 20 minutes again. I was so tired towards the end. I managed to find a path that made me go slightly uphill. I chose this because it was on campus instead of on the road with lots of cars. There were lots of cars driving too fast for my comfort. I did manage to snag one of the extra lunch boxes before leaving the seminar though. Not that I need to think about food for the next few days since my parents brought over a ton of food.
Anyway, I'm going to take a nap now, before starting on some major homework crunching and midterm studying!
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