Personal Blog of Aziz Murtazaev

It would have been sin to come to Silicon Valley and not visit the campuses of tech giants – Google and Facebook. I wanted to visit Apple’s campus as well, however, due to time limitation I could visit only two former ones.

My first stop was Google’s campus located in Mountain View, not far from Palo Alto where I was staying. If you watched the movie “Internship”, the places in these pictures might be very familiar to you. Here is the main set of buildings called GooglePlex:

There is a volleyball sand field on the right side of dinosaur:

The boundaries between working and resting are vague. We can see some people here, not sure, whether they are working or taking a break:

The only person I knew who was working there was Nodir Turakulov. He was kind enough to allocate time and do a tour for me inside GooglePlex buildings. He showed me hangout-powered meeting rooms, snackbar, microkitchen, Google store, gym and other facilities. Not to distract people who were working there I did not take any pictures from inside.

Famous Google-colored bikes. I rode one of them to get to the droids:

Special car used for Google’s Street View product with mounted camera on top:

Android is Google’s mobile platform that took 81% smartphone market share in 2014 [source]. Its versions are named after desserts and they are ordered alphabetically. One can find models of these desserts in the campus.

Cupcake (version 1.4):

Donut (version 1.6):

Eclair (version 2.0 – 2.1):

Froyo (version 2.2):

Gingerbread (version 2.3):

Honeycomb (version 3.0 – 3.2):

Ice cream sandwich (version 4.0):

Jellybean (version 4.1 – 4.3):

Kitkat (version 4.4):

Lollipop (version 5.0 – 5.1):

Me and droid with lollipop:

And my second stop was Facebook’s campus located in Menlo Park, not far from Palo Alto. It was a raining day when I visited the campus and I could not take many pictures because of that.

Famous hand gesture symbolising Facebook:

Street name is not ordinary, it reflects the culture of the company 🙂

All interesting things in Facebook are inside the closed set of buildings. Outer part of the campus is dedicated for parking spot.

Electric cars are more than welcome in the campus:

The time spent visiting these campuses were indeed worthwhile.

After landing at San Francisco International Airport and before arriving at the hotel in Palo Alto, I decided to see around San Francisco. The first transportation I used after leaving airport was their subway system called BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit):

It was not as crowded as subway systems in big cities like Seoul. I used Google Maps to get to the destination, Golden Gate Bridge. Google Maps showed that I needed to get off BART at “Civic Center” station and take bus from there. Instead of just blindly following its directions, I decided to take a walk and look around that area:

Tram and trolley-bus:

UN Plaza building:

Lots of birds near the fountain of UN Plaza:

 I walked through Market Street and saw some monuments on the way:

And I reached San Francisco City Hall, which was under construction at that time:

The dome of City Hall building reminded me the architectural style of Thailand:

After walking around this area, I resumed my trip to the destination, Golden Gate Bridge. First I checked the bus that goes to the destination through Google Maps, and waited for that bus. After around 20 minutes of waiting, I gave up and decided to take a cab instead. At that time I thought of giving a try to the new advanced taxi system that I had heard before, but never used yet – Uber. I found using Uber super-convenient. After choosing destination in Google Maps, one needs to press only ‘request Uber’ button, and one of nearest Uber-registered drivers pick you up. For the rest of my California trip, I used Uber many times. I liked the automatic charging system, i.e. while you get off there is no physical money transaction. Moreover, Uber is generally cheaper than normal cabs due to economics of scale.

Finally I reached the hallmark of San Francisco – Golden Gate Bridge. It was a cloudy day so the top of second column of the bridge was barely visible:

Sample cut of main cable holding the bridge:

There was a specially designed place for taking shots with the bridge background. I could not pass by not doing so 🙂

If we turn right, we can see some small island and it is the famous island-prison “Alcatraz” where Al Capone was held. Now it is used as museum:

It was lunch time when I was done seeing around the bridge, and I looked a place to eat. Google Maps showed zero restaurants in the walking distance, so I took a bus to go to farther one. When I was getting off, I was handing 10$ bill (bus fare was around 2$) to the bus driver. Driver said that he does not have changes, and I told that I don’t have bills with smaller value. Then he said it’s OK, and as a result I took bus for free 🙂

I arrived at some small neighborhood:

Automatic payment system for parking:

On the way to Caltrain Station I saw another bridge – Bay Bridge that connects San Francisco with Oakland:

One of ways to get to Palo Alto was to take Caltrain. Caltrain is a commuter train that connects San Francisco with San Jose, and stops at many small cities in the Silicon Valley. Train cars have two floors:

On the way to Palo Alto I could see typical streets that we could usually see in the American movies:

And at last, I arrived at Palo Alto Station:

One of the specifics in California that I noticed was that there were many electric cars and there are dedicated space for such cars in many parking spots. Those spots have charging stations. It is mind blowing how charging facility of electric cars takes such a small space compared gas stations.

A few days later I visited San Francisco again to see my friend who works there. Here is the downtown of San Francisco at night:

It was surprising that this type of transportation, called Cable car, still functions in the city. They keep it for its historical value despite being quite inefficient in terms of energy consumption:

 And here is how it changes the lines when it reaches the final stop:

I found San Francisco definitely worth place to visit if you happen to come to California.

Some time ago I had a chance to visit California (first time in US) and stayed at Palo Alto. Palo Alto and the neighboring area (from San Francisco to San Jose), also known as Silicon Valley, is famous for having the headquarters of well-known technological companies, such as Google, Facebook, Apple to name a few. Besides that, Palo Alto is home to Stanford University, where many tech startups give their roots. I couldn’t miss the chance to visit the campuses of these famous organizations while I stayed there.

The hotel where I stayed was close to Stanford University campus. The first thing to notice while entering campus is the abundance of old trees, the feeling like walking through forest. One can see very old trees:

And I could make a shot of unique colored bird and squirrel in single picture:

Tallest building in the campus: Hoover tower, named after US president Herbert Hoover, and nice views from the top of the tower (it was cloudy weather, therefore the images might be darker than usual):

The set of red-roofed buildings comprising “Main Quad”:

Panoramic view of Stanford:

One of sides of Main Quad (one can notice the word “Engineering” there):

And another corner (“History”). Very finely graved arc surface:

View between those sides above, statues of two people:

I asked one of many Chinese tourists wandering around the campus to take a picture at the famous part of the campus:

“Burghers of Calais”:

Walkways along the arcs:

Memorial Church, with detailed painting on the surface of the wall. The church was commissioned by Jane Stanford as a memorial to her husband Leland Stanford:

Inner Quad courtyard, with tropical palm trees:

Variety of aloe in one of eight planting circles in the courtyard:

Buildings outside Main Quad:

Nice view along the palm trees:

 Main library building (“Green Library”):

Stanford has impressive statistics regarding its alumni. Here is the exempt from wikipedia:

Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many companies including Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Sun Microsystems, and Yahoo!, and companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equivalent to the 10th-largest economy in the world. Fifty-nine Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University, and it is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires and 17 astronauts. Stanford has produced a total of 18 Turing Award laureates. It is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress.

Walking further Main Quad one can find buildings named after very famous people from tech world. One of such buildings is Paul G. Allen Building named after co-founder of Microsoft. The building of Center for Integrated Systems took Allen’s name after he gifted funds to School of Engineering:

William Hewlett Teaching Center, named after co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (HP):

David Packard Electrical Engineering, named after the other co-founder of Hewlett-Packard:

Walking further one can see the Computer Science building:

… and it is named after … guess who … William (Bill) Gates. He gave 6M$ gift to construct this building:

I had a chance to go inside this building. Stanford CS students have abundant options for their further career options just from their faculty board 🙂

It turns out that the architecture of backbone technology of internet – TCP/IP was conceived when Vinton Cerf, its co-author was at Stanford.

And finally the pictures of students organizing some events:

I really liked buildings, trees, and atmosphere of Stanford campus, and I think students here truly enjoy their studying.