Welcome

PayPal is an interesting place to work, much different from the New York Times Co. The dress code is jeans and a nice shirt/sweater etc. I think they call it office casual.

The buildings on both the eBay and PayPal campuses have themes. I am in the music building so the conference rooms on each of the floors are named after composers and rock bands. We have our weekly staff meeting in a room called Metallica.

The lobby of building I work in is decorated with all sorts of random things like lunch boxes, pez dispensers, board games and other random things. One of the other buildings is fashion themed. That building has skirts, belts and shoes on the walls. The conference rooms have different designer themes. The funniest conference room was the Brooks Brothers room which has full suits on the wall.

On each of the floors there is a different type of snack food that is free for the taking. The top floor is cereal and milk, the second floor is Chex mix, pretzels and trail mix, the first floor is fruit. All of the floors have free soda, water and juice. They also all have espresso machines on each floor. The top floor has a coffee machine that dispenses different kinds of flavored coffees as well as hot chocolate also for free.

We don't get free lunch like Google but the eBay cafe has pretty good food and it is average price for restaurants nearby.

I have been tossed around a bit with desks. They have someone new starting tomorrow so they took the first desk I was working at to give to him. It makes sense since he is a full time person. So I am temporarily sitting in another desk until I move with the risk group that I am working with right now.

They are apparently going to move all of the UI teams into the new building when it is finished early next year. That is why they are getting pushed around a bit right now.

Last Friday was big eBay Co. summer festival on the soccer fields at the PayPal campus. They had a live band, lots of food and games. They played the eBay song by Weird Al that I hadn't heard before. It was funny. Here is a video that someone made of it. The second photo of a building with the eBay sign in front is the one I work in.

It has been a busy last few weeks hence no posting. Last weekend I looked at a few places and ended up finding one in the Marina neighborhood of San Fransisco. I am living in a 3 bedroom 2 bath condo with one other lady. It is pretty nice since I have almost one whole have of the condo to myself. I moved in on Saturday and spent most of that day finally unpacking after being in temporary housing for the last few weeks. I have all of my stuff out of boxes and suitcases and it feels pretty good.

Today I went to the Union street festival which was just a few blocks away from where I am living. I intend to do some more exploring out side of the neighborhood next weekend.

Last weekend was busy beyond the apartment hunting on Saturday. Sunday myself and another intern went to Monterey. We started sort of late so we only spent half of the day down there. We had dinner by the water and then did the 17 mile drive. It was a fun day. I have photos that I need to off load and post.

Monday we went to the Winchester Mystery House. He said he had been there before when he was younger and he remembered them talking more about the ghosts that Ms. Winchester was trying to build her way away from. It was worth seeing once.

Tomorrow I get to take the shuttle to work for the first time. I start my day at the eBay campus for orientation after only two weeks. :) Then head back to PayPal for work.