Back in Berzerkeley
As promised in my last post, I took my first trip back to the Bay Area and Berkeley last week. I almost didn’t make it but some last-minute heroic driving on the part of myself and the airport parking shuttle driver saved the day. The football team apparently heard about my visit because they gave me a great “homecoming” gift: a 49-21 clobbering of Arizona State that was way more lop-sided that the score even shows. Ara and Geoff helped sneak me into the student section (shhh… don’t tell, plus the Chancellor snuck in too!) and we were cheering, yelling, helping people crowd-surf, avoiding falling, doing card stunts, and generally having a blast while our team put on a football clinic on offense, defense, AND special teams. We *may* also have had a part in the never-ending “Wave” that kept going around Memorial Stadium for about 5 minutes. Thank you Cal Bears. The memory of that painful game in Knoxville is almost erased. Beat Oregon next week and we shall never speak of it again.
Picture of me thinking I could beat the 2-second auto-timer on the camera
Picture of Ara and me with the 10-second timer
Besides the game I got a chance to see some (but not all unfortunately) of my friends that are still in the area. After a fun impromptu get-together at my brother’s pad we grabbed some Top Dog while Ara rested on the futon. I had my childhood favorite of course, a Bratwurst. Other eateries I had the pleasure of visiting were
Raleigh’s, In N Out, Bongo Burger, and the venerable House of Prime Rib in San Francisco. I had heard lots of good things about this place and I have to say, it lived up to the hype (Jackie’s food recommendation streak continues). The prime rib was excellent, as was the salad and dressing they made in front of us. That said, if I had to pick a cut of beef to have for dinner, I’d prefer a smaller cut of filet than a gigantic cut of prime rib. That’s just me (and Ara).
Of course, it was not all fun and games in Berkeley. I was there for work after all; recruiting awesome Program Managers for Expedia to be specific. In that realm I’d say my first recruiting trip was relatively successful. I wasn’t going easy on the folks I screened at the fair or the handful of people that I thought deserved next-day interviews. I was delighted when people gave me the right answers to questions. It is a little tricky to recruit students for Program Management because they typically don’t have any direct experience. But you’re looking for the seeds of success; the problem solving ability, the initiative-taking, and the drive to execute. I was happy to find these at my alma mater.
All in all my first trip back to Berkeley was great and I hope it doesn’t take another year before I have a chance to go back. Actually, I’ll be there no later than May of next year when my uber-smart brother will be graduating from the Haas School of Business.