Cali Trip Tidbits, Part 2

Where I left you last time was getting onto the plane for the 4 hour flight from Chicago to California. I lucked out and got an exit row, which was nice, and find that our in flight movie will be the painted veil (ended up being a pretty decent flick actually) Nothing too eventful really from the flight other than the dude next to me with some outstanding snoring. He even had the whistle in between snores going for a while... I thought that only actually happened in cartoons.

Anyway, the plane landed in California... some awesome scenery coming in.. I had no idea there were mountains like this within sight from the ground in southern california.. I knew there were hills and such, but these were more than hills to me. Very picturesque. It was definitely brown.. I mean it is very dry there... but really pretty all the same. I could definitely see myself living there.. no problem at all... well... some problems, but we will get to those later.

Upon arrival I was supposed to meet Lorenzo at the airport and he would drive me on to the company for my interview. Now, name me what you picture when you think of the name Lorenzo... If you said funny looking Persian dude with goofy glasses and ridiculous comb over you would be correct. After several minutes of awkward conversation with Lorenzo, we finally arrived for my interview. Just to give you a little background on this place... I found out once i got there that it was owned and run by Persians.. There is a HUGE population of Persians in Orange County that settled there after fleeing the oppressive Muslim regime after/during the revolution in the late 70's. So I walk in the door and this place it everything you would expect from a company that is trying to impress people with the look of the building.. marble floors... lots of glass.. typical corporate architecture right... well because of the Persian Ownership I spent the entire time wondering where all the blue curtains with gold trim and hardware were...

The interview itself went well. No complaints... the manager was a really good guy, as were all the people working there. They had good people and VERY diverse. A lot of Persians there for sure, but in my industry there are a lot of different nationalities. I went to lunch with a girl from Bolivia, a Persian and a Chinese guy.. by the way... Persian food is GOOD... trust me on this... get the Kabobs with strips of meat... stay away from the ground meat... but it was damned good. Basically just marinated and grilled meat with some saffron rice.. yum...

There was one really discouraging part of the interview... that was with the HR rep.. usually this portion of an interview is just a pep up and someone being a total shill for the company telling you about how great their benefits are. In this case I really just did not mesh well with the girl.. She had NO sense of humor (she was Indian, go figure) and just seemed to think I was telling her lies the whole time when I told her what my current compensation/benefits/time off was. Basically.. to work there I would get half as much vacation, far worse 401K and decreased medical coverage... and I was supposed to be excited about that??? Then she kept pushing me for an answer on how much money I would want... I told her well about 60K, but honestly with the decreased benefits and the cost of real estate.. it would take more than 70 at this point. I highly doubt they will be able to do that.. but honestly.. I need time off.. 13 days isn't going to do it for me. I would take less money for more time off. That's just me... so ripping my time off in half, cutting all the other benefits.. paying me more money, but all of that is going to a house anyway... not gonna get me there. So that was sort of a depressing portion of the interview.

Once that was over I talked with a few more people and it was off to my hotel. The holiday inn in Laguna.. nice.. just a hotel really.. I was expecting to go out to dinner that night with the recruiter that had contacted me for this job initially, but she was sick... so I just wound up eating at the hotel restaurant after laying around for a couple hours and talking to Anna on the phone.

Dinner rocked... Just awesome.. I got this Turkey club sandwich... It came out and was easily the biggest sandwich I have ever seen. It took up the entire plate.. Here is the order in which it was built... Piece of toast, Mayo, Mounts of Turkey, Bacon, Tomato, Piece of toast, little more mayo, lettuce, cheese, thin slices of avocado, piece of toast... I could not get my mouth around this thing. It was AWESOME.. I wish I could go get it again.. I can't find a sandwich this good pretty much anywhere else. So after that thoroughly satisfying dinner I decided to try and find out about renting a car.. since there is nobody to drive me around this place I might as well try and see some stuff for myself.. all the rental places were closed.. shit.. well that sucks.. so I stroll back to the room with plans to come back out to the bar in a little bit to get a few drinks before bed.. That did not happen... being awake since 4 AM eastern caught up to me and I fell asleep sometime around 9 PM Pacific.

More to come...