the recruitiers organized a scavenger hunt on lake union today for all the explore interns. it was a beautiful day and we got really nice views of lake union and the surrounding area!
the seattle skyline:
whirlyball!
i went to play whirlyball with the devs (software development engineers) on my team today. i’d never even heard of whirlyball before but it was SO MUCH FUN. it’s essentially a combination of bumper cars, lacrosse and basketball. you ride in bumper cars and pass a ball to each other using mini lacrosse-like sticks and try to shoot in the baskets for your team.
chihuly glass gardens & the space needle
the recruiter in charge of all the harvard interns took all of us to visit the chihuly glass gardens and the space needle today. chihuly is an artist known for his cooly shaped and colorful glass sculptures. they had a special exhibit at the museum of fine arts in boston last summer that i went to see, but chihuly’s studio is in seattle, so he’s really famous here and has a permanent exhibit next to the space needle.
the gardens are right underneath the space needle. the weather was perfect today so we could see a reflection of the space needle in one of the glass balls in the garden:
on top of the space needle:
we packed lunches and had a picnic in the park today. the weather was really nice and we played basketball for a little bit and played with some kids on the playground.
ballet and the fremont fair
took an open ballet class at the pacific northwest ballet today with julia! it was pretty exhausting because i haven’t taken an actual ballet class in probably three years! i think i’m gonna go take their classes every saturday morning though and get some of my technique back!
today is also the fremont fair/solstice festival so we went to hang out and walk around. the fremont fair is well known because every year they have a naked bike parade where people paint their bodies and ride their bikes in the parade naked. unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the parade, but we did see lots of painted naked people walking around after!
my roommate and i bought some acrylic paints last weekend because we both really like to paint. we also found these really cute painting-paper cards that you could paint on and then send as a card to someone.
i painted the seattle skyline!!
my morning routine: a bowl of yogurt topped with granola and nuts for breakfast and then bike 2 miles to work!
redmond town center
we rode the bus to redmond town center today (which is essentially just an outdoor mall) and went to this epic board game store called uncle’s games. the walls were lined with every kind of board game you could imagine and all kinds of puzzles. in the back of the store, they have tables so anyone can come in and play board games in the back!
later, as we were waking around redmond town center, we noticed that it rains so much in seattle that they have umbrellas in public places for people to borrow!!
experience music project and science fiction museum
went to the seattle center today which is where are the museums and exhibits are in downtown seattle right around the space needle (seattle’s most iconic piece of architecture).
we stopped by the bill and melinda gates foundation visitor center that had a lot of information about the charity work that the foundation does as well some cool interactive things. they had this one place where you could write a card and share a cause you cared about, so i made a card for hand in hand and hung it on the display! we also got our picture taken and shown on the visitor wall!
after, we went to the experience music project (EMP) and science fiction museum. at the EMP, we got to pretend to be a rock band and play a fake concert that was recorded. our band was called the “party rockers”: danny played guitar, julia keyboard, andrew drums and i was the singer! good thing we didn’t have to actually sing and play – just had to pretend like we were doing it!
the entire museum made use of a lot of pretty cool technology (apparently a lot of which is developed and donated by microsoft because paul allen donated a chunk of money to have the museum built). at the science fiction horror exhibit, they had this shadow thing that monster-fied you! it essentially took your silhouette and transformed it into different monster-like shapes.
my favorite part was the avatar exhibit that showed a lot of the technology and behind the scenes stuff that went into making the movie. we learned how they were able to render the avatars from the actors using CGI and i even got to become an avatar!!
they scanned me in this room and the camera was able to generate the avatar image according to my motion. here’s the final video of me in the cool tree scene of the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91zVk7PXsuY
dim sum and manicures
ladies night at microsoft! they brought people in to give all the female interns manicures and we chilled and had cheese and crackers. i got mine done a light pink/lavender (they didn’t have orange haha)
for lunch, my entire team went out to a dim sum place today. even though a lot of us have lunch together every day, it was the first time the entire team (including all the managers) had lunch together and many people’s first time having dim sum, so we made all of them eat chicken feet! it was also one of the interns and our PM advisor’s birthday so we all sang for them. i love my team!