Hola San Diego

1st term is over and I squeezed in full 4 days to go and visit San Diego. Its a great place, very different from Los Angeles at least in size. You can grasp the city in just four days and get some impressions out of it.

So the highlights were: Meeting Suchit and Saurabh at UCSD, Rohit Kapoor, Vineet and Anand at Mira Mesa, visiting La Jolla Beach and traveling for a lot of time in a fast car. San Diego has a nice laid back feeling to it( or was it my post 1st term mindset!!). The Pacific ocean was as usual great. I guess this ocean is going to be part of my life for a long time to come.

It was also fun to see offices of some familiar companies like Texas Instruments, Intuit, Qualcomm, Synopsys etc. I have an interesting observation about these companies. All the offices in India look very similar to the parent offices in US. It might be because of some culture reason but my guess is that this architecture is suited best for maximum space and to communicate the image of a technology company( no frills, no form and only technology). I remember the first time I set in a lecture theatre at IIT. The walls had sharp stones coming out of them. As usual, my curiosity made me find out whether its deliberate or "As Usual Indian lethragy". To my surprise, I was told that since IIT was going to be a technology institute, architecture was designed to create a very utilitarian perspective with sharp designs. No wonder, it was so difficult to sleep in IIT if you were sitting on the corner seat.

Coming back to San Diego, it looks like a complete and self dependent city and not some kind of a satellite town. My friends in UCSD told me that it is amongst the biggest centers for Biotech activity along with Boston and Bay Area. They also have their own NFL team called Chargers.

And finally, I know that Mark Knopfler doesn't live on the beach in San Diego. He is in Los Angeles. So one less reason to go to San Diego again but I guess the city still has its high points.