Seattle - A memoir

As my flight back to San Jose floated over the clouds, with an aurora of white light around its wings, the background of the 'glow of Seattle/Tacoma' region slowly faded away.

But that beautiful backdrop mixed with this quick 1-1/2 day trip took my memories all the way back to 1999 winter.

Yes, I was here in Seattle. My 1st job in US! Working for Walt Disney out of Bellevue and then out of downtown. Those days were golden. Never knew the meaning of the words 'stress' ? 'tension' ?? et al.

Driving all the way to downtown Seattle in I-90 was fun. Tonight, the cab driver( from Hungary) was complaining about traffic of these days on I-90 and Hungary joining the European Union. He was also talking about migrating to USA, 30 years ago, while I was trying to queue my thoughts of my days between 1999 and 2000.

But yesterday, to start with, as I had expected, my flight to Seattle was delayed yesterday, thank you Alaska.

After I reached my hotel, I stepped to munch something. I walked thro' the streets of Seattle.

God, I missed you so much! The strong, cold breeze, the beautiful lights and amazing architecture of some of the buildings felt so much like an homecoming :). I've driven in some of these streets but still, it all felt so good.

Downtown streets reminded me of the day, I wandered around to get to Costco, to get a bag of rice :))) and getting lost and driving and driving around for hours to finally find it :))

But yesterday, to a great disgust, all I could find was a Subway and yes, all I ate was veggie delight breaking my vow that I won't have it again. But considering I was so hungry, I do have to thank Subway for working late.

Thanks to amazon, I stayed in a very comfortable room in W Hotels. CNN and other news media were trying to make it up for the west virginia mine media fiasco.

I was feeling bad to not be able to roam around downtown, as it was late and mainly that I couldn't take much photos. Had planned them all, with my original flight schedule. Thanks again Alaska.

It was a brisk morning. Nice shower setup in W Hotel he he he. and I was out on the street to get a cup of coffee. In this 'land of the starbucks'(PDF), it took me less than 15 seconds to find a nearest one. As I stood in the line to get my Cappuccino being greeting by the nice people of Seattle, those great days of team-coffee-meetings came to my mind. With Curtis( most of the time ) , Matt( sometimes ) and all those solo walk to the nearest Starbucks to get those caramel machiato or caramel frappucino ( many times as a substitute for lunch ) flashed in my mind.

I walked back and had to take a long walk to amazon but walked thro', some of the familiar structures such as the majestic Bank of America towers and Union station.

Done with my appoitment, I walked to meet my great friend Jialu Zhang. I'm meeting her after about 3 years or so. Last time was when she visted San Francisco. She has become so thin, but that electric smile greeted me well. She was so nice to me, as always.

To think more about her, she is one of a kind of an Oracle DBA that I always admired. Having done her PhD in medicine in China, her decision to get into tech ( one fine day ) and more particularly databases and going all the way to taking the OCP still sounds to me, like a fantasy story. So is her husband's work on GENOME and DNA-sequencing. Back then, it was the same reason, I recommended Walt Disney, strongly to hire, just immediately after I interviewed her. One of the most memorable interview I ever conducted. Matt did hire her and later sounded very happy about it. Glad to have had a chance to know her and to know her well, all these years.

She now works for Washington Mutual and having experimented( should actually say mastered ) so many different things( Perl course, OCP certifications, datawarehousing(!!) and many others ), it was no surprise for me to hear that she is now doing Oracle 10g with RAC on Red Hat Linux servers - way to go Lu!( as she is called ).

It was extremely sad to hear that her trip to China/Shanghai after 15 years(!!!) coincided on the same day as her grandma's last day. She sounded and looked very devasted.

We took a long walk on the downtown and we had a lot to catch up( she is one bad person when it comes to communication and keeping in touch - I didn't like that but sorry Lu :) that's true ). But I was so happy to have had a chance to meet her and boy I missed the days, we used to discuss Oracle installation thingy and break our heads in her desk on some silly Oracle problems.

We spent a good time talking and walking in the streets of downtown and as I called to check on Bobby McKenzie, my last manager in Disney. As a great coincedence, Lu and I were walking just on the foot of the majestic Smith Towers at the very moment. I loved that building and felt so proud to take that lift( opertated by service!!! - one of its great and unique tradition ). It was sad that I couldn't catch up with Bobby as he was already home, but equally sad was the fact that I didn't have my 1st US boss( Matt Estes )'s number. Should write him an email. He was a great man(ager).

Streets of downtown Seattle hasn't changed at all but it still carries the same charm that I always loved. I still remember driving to the edge of the downtown and walking to work, from the parking garage. The cold wind would just hit me in the face and more particularly freeze my spine, near the neck, rain or shine( few times a year )but nevertheless, I loved them all.

That walk with a coffee mug in hand and amongst the busy-downtown-morning-crowd always made me so happy. Now here I'm, again walking on the same streets of downtown, with one of the same gang members. It felt so great.

Years have flown by, we all have come a long way, but the downtown remained as the same observer of me and few of us, in those same streets, as it was not so long ago.

When do I get you see you again and how soon would it be ?! ( made it sound like the Apollo 13's Jim Lovell's last few words )