My gap year adventure: Rangoon Ruby and Berkeley

The other night I discovered a really handy website called "meet up" where social groups advertise to the local area online in order to attract new members and guests. I organised to go on one of these meetups and it was pretty awesome, the group I was with was a group of international expats living in Silicon valley who had organised to go to the Rangoon Ruby restaurant in Palo Alto. Long story short, the food was amazing, never had Burmese food before but will definitely be having it again. I also met some people who were organising a hike in the Santa Cruz mountains this saturday, and I got invited to go too! So this weekend will be very eventful hopefully!

I've also organised to rent a car, travel to Yosemite, and camp there for the weekend with a housemate from Australia. I think we're going to go next Friday so be ready for some unbelievable pictures!

Anyway, yesterday I went into work and did some more trace analysing before catching the caltrain to Millbrae, then switching to the BART system to get to Berkeley. Bit of a hectic journey but it was worth it, Berkeley is such an amazing place, filled with life and just general excitement, the downtown area is filled with indie shops, numerous asian restaurants (theyre obsessed with Asian cuisine in California) and historic buildings. The campus itself is a pleasure to walk around, it is a hive of activity and its reputation for being a centre of political protest and progressive liberal activism was surely shown by all of the different stalls and signs displayed around campus.

I then attended a seminar on microbial sedimentology, which sounds dull but was surprisingly interesting.

The "meet up" group outside Rangoon Ruby.