Tag Archives: California

Tons of beach volleyball

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This cold of mine is not getting better, not even with DayQuil. I definitely would have stayed home from work with this, but since I am in California and don’t want to miss out on anything I am pushing myself through, pretending I am not too sick. It was perhaps a bit stupid to play a lot of beach volleyball today for example. But I had so much fun. And honestly, it was cold sitting by watching. It was very overcast and perfect weather for beach volleyball. One of the Elin’s made a friend the day I was at WSP and we met up with him and a friend of his. This friend had supposedly lived in Sweden for 3 years but when we met him, he had the Stockholm accent and told us he had lived in Sweden since he was three years old and in California the past year. He was born in Iran. He was nice and we had a great day of more than 4 hours of play. I didn’t play all of that time, I took breaks.

The Swedish guy then accompanied us for the rest of the afternoon and we sat down for lunch together in Huntington. Poke bowls and they were so good! He then showed us a super cool bar called Bungalow which was basically many living rooms put together. Just couches and even fireplaces. Such a cool and cozy bar! And then some shopping in Huntington and we ran into a crowd of Trump -followers who screamed straight out at people with other backgrounds than themselves that they should go to hell and all kinds of horrible things. I got so surprised. Does that seriously happen?? In California? So scary!!

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ur night plans were Cheesecake Factory. The whole gang was gathered all 9,5 of us. Me, the two Elin’s, Miriam, our two hosts, Miriam’s brother and sister and her husband and kid. It was such a nice evening but now my stomach hurts, so bad. So much food! But it was worth it, so delicious!

We spent half an hour in the jacuzzi with some champagne in Panda Express cups. The day couldn’t have ended better! Now I feel feverish and will get some proper good nights sleep. I hope I will feel better tomorrow when me and Elin W is going up to SLO. I am so excited to go back there as well. This whole vacation has been a trip down memory lane. I really like California, this is home.

WSP LA

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Today was a big day. Today was the day that I headed to our office in downtown LA. How cool doesn’t that sound?

Unfortunately though, there are always things going wrong when you have something big ahead of you. So even if I was out early and had planned for plenty of time with the Metrolink train, I still managed to arrive late and had to postpone the presentation half an hour. There were signal errors and had been since last night so the train was 1.5 hours late (which was the extra time I had planned for) but fortunately they pushed forward the presentation half an hour.

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t was a small office, only 80 or so people and only 15 something to join me for the Cafe Catch-up. It was super casual so the “presentation” I had prepared was not really needed. I started with presenting myself and a little bit about what I was doing and then the questions almost came pouring over me. Everyone were so curious about what it was like to work in Sweden, what kind of projects we do, how the organization looks like and then someone asked about the benefits and then the general mood lowered a bit, haha! It was such a nice gathering and exchange of not technical knowledge, but organizational knowledge in the big company that we all work in.

I then headed out to lunch with Kevin, my contact and we went to this amazing sushi place close by. It was a rooftop restaurant with amazing view and incredble food. And after lunch I talked to this young girl Kristy and her closest boss. She actually works for the San Francisco office but is located here in LA. So even if this LA boss doesn’t find any contacts in the San Diego office, then Kristy is a great contact since she has bosses in both San Francisco and DC. This day was awesome for networking. Now I truly understand the meaning of that word.

Such a fun day!

The train back to OC was also delayed because of this signal fault but at least we weren’t standing still at one station for an hour, just rolled super super slow. I sat in Anaheim for an hour waiting for my friends to pick me up from Huntington. I got there at 5pm so there wasn’t really any point in going to the beach. Too bad, but we have plenty of more days to hang out at the beach. I am not tan yet though and it’s already been 4 days, haha! But my scalp is burned and that sucks. So tomorrow I am using SPF there as well.

Our 4th companion arrived from Sweden today at 8pm, we had pizza and then went to bed. Fun to finally be 4 players so we can get some real games in tomorrow at the beach. It will be great!!

LA Angels vs Seattle Mariners

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This morning I woke up at 6:30am and couldn’t go back to sleep. The other two girls experienced the exact same thing. I think we all slept like babies the first night because we were just so exhausted. We didn’t yawn as much today as yesterday, but after sitting out in the sun all day, I feel tired and almost a little as if I have sunstroke. Pale Swede in California.

When I was awake enough, I started preparing the presentation I’m about to give on Tuesday. I really look forward to that. We had breakfast out on the balcony in the sun. It was amazing!

We then drove to Anaheim baseball stadium where we met up with Miriam and her sister’s family to watch today’s game. LA Angels vs Seattle Mariners. I remembered most rules but there were several situations that arose today that I hadn’t seen at any San Diego Padres games before so I learned new things today. The Angels won. They are usually a very good team, but are in the bottom right now. Seattle Mariners are usually a very bad team, but are currently in the lead. Fun game. The score was 8-1 up until the last inning where The Mariners took 5 points. Crazy.

After the game, we went to a brewery next door. I was declined to buy a beer, even if I’m 28. They refused to accept my Swedish drivers license… Stupid. But it was nice to hang out there for a bit.

On our way home we bought candy (for tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones) and then pizza for dinner. Today was all about food and I so look forward to playing some beach volleyball tomorrow to burn off these calories.

Great day! And now Ghirardelli chocolate and Game of Thrones.

Huntington Beach

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The first full day back in California is over. I managed to get 10 hours of sleep and it was well needed. The day started with renting a car. 9 days for $650 doesn’t feel too bad. Especially not if we are 3 people sharing it. I got to be the designated driver. Something I definitely did not mind, it’s fun to drive here and it was etched into my memory and I quickly got back into it, even if it’s been many years now.

We drove to Huntington Beach directly, stayed there for an hour before it was time to head back to Fullerton where one of the girls is staying with her sister for some Easter bbq. Really nice evening.

At the beach, we did a little bit of planning for this trip, like we decided that a couple of days down in San Diego would be nice, so we will probably be going on Friday and stay until Saturday. That will be fun! I really want to go up to SLO, but I haven’t really figured that one out yet. To be continued. We also tried the wind a bit by some beach volleyball peppering. When we left we found so many nets where we will hang from now on. Can’t wait until we can play there.

This day ended with half an hour in the community jacuzzi. Such a sweet way to end this day!

Back “home”

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I have been awake for almost 48 hours now. Except for those 2h of sleep I managed to get last night. I had a very weird evening and didn’t start packing until midnight (6 hours before take off). Stupid, but honestly, not only my fault. And I didn’t manage to get any sleep on the flight today. But I did manage to see four movies and finish chapter 16 in my own book.

I rode to the airport with one of the girls, another got another ride and the fourth is coming on Monday. What’s funny about today’s flight was that we three flew on all different routes and only with 10 min between our flights. Funny!

I am now laying in bed, it’s 9:30 pm, and I will most likely have the best night of all time. It has been a long day. In Sweden, this day is called “Långfredagen” which translates to Long Friday but in Easter it means: Good Friday. It truly was a long Friday. Almost everything today has gone well, but my flight from Munich to LA was delayed with an hour and a half. We had left the gate and were on our way to take off when the plane turned around and parked at the gate again. Super weird. Then US customs and borders at LAX took more than an hour. And we had trouble getting a Lyft (another type of Uber) and lost $10 because they were waiting for us on the second floor when we were waiting on the first.

The day ended with dinner at In N Out and we bought groceries for tomorrow’s breakfast.

I am seeing double now so I will turn off the lamp and hope I am restored tomorrow. I usually am not suffering from jetlag and I also usually (so far) manage to turn the day around in just one night. So let’s hope it is like that this time as well.