As always with my hiatuses, there have been some pretty major changes in my life since my last posts, and I am currently running on a pretty significant backlog of content from last year being in the pipeline. Now, I could write and publish the posts in chronological order, but I know that's just procrastination fodder. Instead, I hope to fill in the readers slowly with content both from my current time period and the past. Either way, my hope is that there are some interesting reads here, and you see some of the photos I've taken.
Earlier in 2024, I decided to take a break from Rochester, to visit my then-friend, now-girlfriend in California. She had just started working at a start up, and I had just graduated from grad school. I had tired myself from the cycle of waking up every day and blindly applying to 20 job openings, and later checking my inbox where I found 20 job application rejections. 2023 had definitely been gruesome on a career front. I needed this break dearly (It was so worth it).
The Networking
I reached the Bay Area on Jan 9th and quickly hit off my "vacation" there with a calendar full of networking calls. It started with an alumni mixer from Simon (my grad school), where I got to speak with many of alumni working in companies like Google, Visa, and PayPal, and others who started their own successful ventures. This led to many follow-up calls with people that gave me resume advice and projects to work on. I also relied on my girlfriend's established network of people I could connect with. I quickly realized that my strength lied in connecting with people, and not sending my resumes through job portals. I found a great community of career-driven people here. One time, we went to a Michelin star boba place in Cupertino to grab some tea, and happened to meet with someone working at Apple!
The Food
Where do I even start! The food scene here is FANTASTIC if you're South Asian or a vegetarian. Each of these restaurants have vegetarian options or staff that accomodates menu items to substitute meat with something else.
Eureka! on Castro St has a fantastic selection of burgers. I had the Bison burger with a fresno chile which I requested from another burger, and the patty of the vegetarian burger they make with beets and kidney beans. Another burger option to try is their Chipotle burger, which has guacamole in it.
My Indian Pizza, like the name suggests, is an Indian twist on pizzas. My favorite here is the Vijayawada pizza, which comes with the eponymous sauce, paneer, jalepenos, and cilantro. I'd never thought I would like cilantro on pizza but once I tried it, I came back for seconds, thirds, and fourths!
Puranpoli serves delicious Maharashtrian cuisine. We had their kothimbir vadi, Kabuli Chana Masala, Vada pav, and puranpoli. Highly recommend!
Doppio Zero on Castro St is an Italian restaurant with ravioli that melts in your mouth and Neapolitan pizza that leaves you craving more. We ended up visiting twice to have the same dishes again. It's that good.
CHICHA San Chen, a Michelin star tea place on Stevens Creek Blvd is an amazing experience, and that's coming from someone who doesn't typically drink tea. Usually, this place has a line that extends past their doors. Somehow, we found it to be just the right amount of crowd when we visited. We also got lucky and received 2 free passes to a tea tasting experience where we got to learn more about the tea making process.
Horizon Bakery in Cupertino is a cozy bakery which has the most cute desserts, like the sesame mochi bread and the strawberry basque.
Tommy Thai opened my eyes to Thai cuisine
Madurai Modern Cafe is a hidden gem of a South Indian restaurant in Sunnyvale. If you can handle some heat, the Kara Rava Masala Dosa is a treat!
The Views
In my month long stay, we managed to make a few trips in and around the Bay area. One of these was to San Francisco, which is a 45-minute drive from Mountain View. We drove north to the city on a Sunday, found a parking spot near Union Square and decided to walk around (Always find a safe parking in San Francisco!)
Ever since I got into film photography, one thing that's come my way of taking photos has been carrying too many cameras. I realized quickly that if I have too many cameras on me at a time, I end up missing the photo. So, this trip, since my focus wasn't on photography as much, I carried only one film SLR and 2 point and shoot cameras: The Sony ZV-1 and the Olympus MJU 135mm (In a later post, I'll talk about how I acquired this camera). Clearly, the main camera out would be the Nikon F3, which had a roll of Portra 400 in it (my first roll of Portra 400 ever!).
We roamed around the Chinatown area in San Francisco for quite a while before walking over to the piers.
After all this walking, we decided to quickly check out the Golden Gate Bridge before calling it a day. Our Uber driver recommended we should check out Baker Beach, so we quickly changed the destination and went there.
This place probably had the best view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and luckily, the day wasn't super foggy, and the bridge was visible in its entirety.
As the day came to a close, I took the last frame on the Portra 400 and took a couple of photos on a roll of Ultramax 400.
I was really hoping to get a clean shot of the bridge behind these rocks, but as the sun started to set on the horizon, I couldn't wait for the 3 men on the rocks to get off, so I just accepted this composition as it was, and hoped that the layering would do its trick.
The Remainder
I spent the rest of this trip driving around California, talking to people and trying to gain some more industry knowledge and resume advice, and discovering restaurants with my girlfriend.
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