Empire State of Mind / Microsoft Interview Experience

Okay, so I'm not very good at this blog thing.

Seasons change, people come in and out, and you sit there one day driving and thinking, "Wow, life is good."

It's true though! I've been hanging out with Dan, Ian, and Mikey this winter break, and it's been fruitful. We would stay up really late talking, playing video games, or driving around, and then I would wake up cutting the day in half, which always makes the days blur together. That's the part I dislike the most, though. I feel like I'm a morning person, and I wake up just too damn late to enjoy having the whole day to do things.

I'm having a beer here and reflecting on the past couple of months. First, let me say that this break has been very eventful and uneventful at the same time. Perhaps we'll cut it in half. The first half of my break was enjoying the flashing lights, yellow taxis, and glamor and broadway musicals in New York City with my family. We took a week off of our seem

ingly busy schedules once Dan and I got out of school and wanted to see what NYC was all about. Plenty of pictures to show, too!

So firstly, I just want to point out that Dan loves to sleep in the car. Secondly, I took it upon myself to document our travels and adventures as much as I could because when we look back on our trip, we can (almost) re-live it and laugh about it. The deal was to spend the last week in December in New York staying at the Hilton Timeshare hotel on West 57th and 6th, which by the way was a gorgeous place to stay. On Christmas eve, the Barrenecheas drove down south to Philly to visit my Dad's sister (godmother) and her family and celebrate Christmas with them. We had a blast hanging out with our cousin, Monique and it was really nice seeing my dad's mother, Mamama (that's what you call her!). But you can't really let go of New York once you leave it. Christmas was well spent, but the days surrounding it were fun-filled and adventurous. On Christmas night, we took Mamama and headed back to New York City, where the remainder of the week was spent living it up, "classy" of course. Mamama was around :)

At the hotel, Dan and I had our room to ourselves, and the gym there was decent enough to exercise every other day! Other than that and the owner's lounge that we popped our heads in for happy hour, we were constantly out and about on the streets, looking for eateries, electronic stores, broadway musicals, and any attractions that sparkled our eyes.

Times Square was a fantastic eyesight. So much color and lights everywhere! As we were racing across streets and avenues to participate in a ticket sweepstakes for the hit 80's glamour rock musical Rock of Ages (thank you Stephanie!), I took some pictures and videos of the city scene and various other important sights (Strawberry Fields forever). Moments during the scrumptious feasts that we had are also documented clearly. We'll remember them for a long time.

So that's enough about that.

Fast-forward to January 4th. This was a solo mission, and I enjoyed every moment of it, except maybe the part when I didn't get the job offer from Microsoft! That was a hard pill to swallow.

However, few could survive the impending phone interview and get the chance to fly to Seattle and engage in a second-round hands-on candidate interview on Microsoft campus. I'm proud of that.

Discovering Seattle on my own was probably half the fun. I kept a close eye on all the receipts to be reimbursed and I traveled without worry. I picked up the Toyota Corolla at SeaTac airport and drove with wide eyes to the Hilton hotel in Bellevue, a neighboring city of Seattle and Redmond. These wimps don't know how to drive! On the second day, I brushed myself off well and drove in to the Microsoft campus in Redmond eager for my match with the developers who were going to interview me. Turns out I was interviewed by the Microsoft Visio team, not the Windows Internet Explorer team! That was a bit of a shock, but that didn't discourage me at all. I had readily prepared for my target team, but I wasn't willing to show distaste that they had shifted me to another team. I stuck to my game and met with three developers in Studio 36.

In retrospect, I look back at the interviews and pick out where I might have gone sour, but I'm usually not successful. I thought I did really well on all three, and I was optimistic about the results, but when I had received the heart-wrenching regret email, I had to swallow hard. That was a ball-buster.

But you move on! You move on to the next big challenge. You don't sulk in self-pity or self-criticism. Just pick up your feet and keep running. Keep pushing the envelope.

Thank you guys for being such a big support for my future. I really appreciate all that you have done to encourage and cheer me on. You guys are the best.

More on the winter break later.