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San Francisco – last post


Today I am heading back home to good old bonnies Scotland. This has been a relatively long trip so I am thinking long to get home again ( thinking about a song which reminds me of home – The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen…….. lyrics availble click here).

Yesterday, I travelled from San Francisco to San Jose to participate in an Executive Briefing event. This is where some key decision makers from a company or organisation travel to Cisco’s Exective Briefing Center in San Jose to listen to some presentations about new technology developments.

I was one of four presenters and this is the first time I have done an event like this at Cisco’s main Headquarters. Cisco occupies a number of buildings which are spread along Tasmin Drive. We travelled there to arrive in time for breakfast and also to transport our customers so it was a relatively early start ( we needed to be in San Jose for 7.30am to have breakfast).

The photo above shows the sun rising just as we left San Francisco having passed under the Bay Bridge.

This has been a long but enjoyable trip – I will look forward my next trip when I hope to manage my time to make it possible to do two things which were not possible between business commitments this time around – ride on a San Francisco Tram and also visit Alcatraz. The later was my objective this time – but it seems that you need to book that a few days in advance which made it impossible this time around.

At the moment I am spending some time at San Francisco International airport waiting for my flight departure time. Oh the joys of international travel 😉

Location of this weeks course

The Cisco campus is spread along both sides of Tasman Drive – there are many buildings which service a whole range of purposes. Here is photo of the Cisco logo which is positioned at the entrance to the buildings

See below from Google Maps an ariel view which shows part of the Cisco campus where my course is taking place! You can click on the map and zoom in to see it more clearly.


View Larger Map

Onboard Training

This week I participate in an onboard training course for my new job ( not really new since its now 13 weeks since I started – the time has flown in for sure 😉 ). The course is taking place at the companies main HQ in Jan Jose – California state in the USA. Today I made the trip from Aberdeen to San Fransisco via Amsterdam. It was a long and tiring day and I now need to stay awake for a few hours so that my body can readjust to the time difference here which is 8 hours behind the UK. I took a few photos with my mobile phone during the flight and here are a selection.

The first is a view of Greenland – stunning views which are slightly spoiled by a combination of the low resolution camera in my phone and also the rather dirty cabin window.


The next taken when we had our first view of the California coastline.

And this one on approach to San Fransisco International Airport. I am not sure what caused the colourful effect but I will try to find out as the week here progresses.