My First Earthquake

This is exciting. Today I felt my first earthquake, 5.6 magnitude!

I was having dinner (well, actually we were waiting for dinner to be cooked), and all of a sudden the ground was shaking. Shaking as in, "hey, there's a fat person walking above us". The glass was trembling and the utensils were vibrating. Until we realized it was an earthquake. The shockwave was not too violent and lasted only about 30 seconds.

Oh boy. Exciting times.

Jogging in CA

The weather is so fantastic in the Bay area that I have been jogging every other day for 45 minutes.

Today I ran 8km in 38 minutes and it felt so comfortable! The difference between running in Singapore and the Bay area is really the humidity and temperature. From this weather page, the temperature is 18 degree celsius and 67% humidity. The fact that sweat actually evaporates and cools you down is refreshing.

I can definitely see myself running a good sub-4 hour marathon over here.

Newbie in CA Part 3

That went faster than I expected

I managed to subscribe to new services before even moving into my new apartment - The day I move in I will have local calling service, DSL, water, electricity and even my furniture from IKEA.

The only problems are items which require a social security number - driving license, savings accounts and credit cards.

What have you been doing?

I have been reading books like:

• Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings


• Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications


• Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition)


• Mining the Web: Discovering Knowledge from Hypertext Data

I am also execising and running every other day for an hour. Overall, my time is unstructured but I am feeling this period of rest is good as it relaxes and refocuses my mind.

Gmail now has IMAP

Stop the presses!

Gmail now has IMAP!

Newbie in CA Part 2

Don't pass Go, but do go to the bank

After all that adrenaline rush of being interrograted by border officers, I got my rental car and got on highway 101. Whoopie. I left the airport at 12:30pm and I managed to make it to corporate housing in Sunnyvale by 1:30pm.

I learnt that when the corporate housing confirmation letter says check-in time is 4pm. They do mean 4pm. As the apartment was locked and I had no where to go, I figured I would go to Citibank and withdraw money from the ATM (you know, the plan)

But despite having no social security, I still managed to open a Citibank account just with my Singapore passport and driving license. Nice. So I got my checking account on the first day in USA, while waiting to move into my temporary housing. I still need a social security number before I can get a savings account, but hey, that's fine by me.

So anyhoo, I am currently living in Sunnyvale, CA, which is one region of Silicon Valley.

"Credit History Required" Really Means

"Give us money and we won't need credit history".

For example, renting an apartment without a social security number means you put up a larger amount of deposit. Getting utilities and gas without a social security number means you place more deposit.

Newbie in CA Part 1

My major reservations of moving to california have, fortunately, not been realized. However, this makes for terrible blogging inspiration, but I will try. As always.

The Non-Form

I arrived in California an hour early for a reason. This occurred for a reason. I mean, there must be a reason why tail winds were really pushing hard that day such that we would arrive at 11am instead of 12:30pm.

See, this extra hour gave me ample time to get stuck at immigration puzzling why I did not present an I-797 petition.

Me: "I'm sorry. What?" (Dazed look you give after 18 hours of flying)

Officer #1: "An I-797 petition - you must always bring it along with you everytime you travel as a H-1B visa holder"

Me: "??? - That's all I have." (Pointing to H-1B1 visa in passport)

Officer #1: "Go to secondary."

Me: "???" (yeah, I'm going to know that refers to a secondary interview, and that I have to walk to the end of the hallway)

So I trot down hastily to a separate office and got interviewed by another border officer, who kept grilling me about my non-existent I-797 form. Images of me getting hurled back to Singapore in handcuffs flashed by my eyes - all because I did not bring this piece of paper. Sheeesh. As the interview continued, I felt quite of bad, because, frankly, I just had no idea what an I-797 form even looks like. I get a sense the border officer was half-expecting me to be an illegal immigrant, but got stuck with ... well, me.

I must have worn him down, either that or because a queue of people needing to undergo secondary interviews was forming. This "must have" document all of a sudden became not completely essential - I managed to get my visa approved after receiving a warning to always carry my I-797 form with me. I was extremely curious at this time in point what a "I-797" petition is, and the first thing I did after getting internet connection was to search for images relating to "I-797" on Google. That got me to this page - which, if you enlarge the photo, is a I-797 for a H-1B1.

No. I do not have that. What the heck is that?

As I was freaking out, I searched for "i797 h1b1" and got this, which states, "Unlike a traditional H-1B visa, the employer does not have to submit Form I-129, Petition for Nonimmigrant Worker, to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (Department of Homeland Security) and you do not need to obtain a Notice of Action, Form I-797."

...

bah.

So yeah, I arrived early so that my schedule would not be disturbed by this non-form.

Kudos to Miss Loi

I do not have much things to discuss lately, but I have to plug http://www.exampaper.com.sg, also known as Jφss Sticks - For effective prevention of Last-Minute Buddha Foot Hugging Syndrome, the significance of which is duly explained in her FAQ.

Well done to Miss Loi, who is clearly a very enterprising mathematics tutor in Singapore. For example, she sells exams papers online, and of course, tuition services (that do not come cheap). Her website is an excellent example of branding and marketing.

I really like reading her blog, which I find tickles me to no end. The funniest part of her blog is how she continuously refers to herself in a third person perspective with "Miss Loi" or "sexy maths (sic) tutor". It reminds me of the scene in Heroes Season 2 episode 2, Lizards, where Hiro Nakamura impersonates Takezo Kensei and uses his power to stop time and disarm 11 bandits. To ensure his opponents remember his hero, he repeatedly refers to himself as Takezo Kensei, to which one bandit exclaimed, approximately, "why does he keep saying his own name??"