Life at Microsoft Research

I finish a long day of work :). This is the fourth week I am here at Microsoft Research at Redmond. Couple of highlights today:

1. There apparently is another "Shen Zhao" at Microsoft Shanghai office. I received a surprising email from the tech support department from Microsoft Malaysia that I was assigned to a windows' server case :). After several rounds of email exchanges, it was clarified that it was intended for the other "Shen Zhao" at Microsoft Shanghai. Well, recently, I also discovered another "Shen Zhao" at Microsoft Research. Hmmm, I thought my name is rare, but ... Maybe it's time to use my full name (Shengdong Zhao) instead.

2. I finally received some positive response from Microsoft Travel on dealing the painful experience I had with Avis on passenger pickups. Hope the situation could improve soon.

3. In the past weekend, I watched "The Island" at a theotre near Ranch 99 (an Asian supermarket chain). The next day, an internal email said Microsoft was actually involved in making this film, and get acknowledged. Interesting ...

4. The flight museum I visited last Saturday worthed the trip. We arrived there one hour before closing time. One hour is usually enough for most of these small museums, but this one was certainly an exception. With many real models of all kinds of airplanes and rich content on the air battles during WWII, it's probably worth a revisit.

5. BTW, although the car rental experience at Avis is rather hairy, we got a free upgrade to an SUV last weekend. Driving it on the road felt good :).

Tomorrow is the summer intern and new grad tech fest. It could be fun.