The smell of the sea breeze still lingers in my head as I reminisce my week long trip to Silicon Valley that happened not too long ago. There I was immersed in this entirely new world known as Infocomm. Upon arriving in San Francisco, all the National Infocomm Competition and Can’t Live Without Tech contest winners from various schools set out on our San Francisco adventure. Strangely enough, I wasn’t jet lagged. Here’s what we did.
… Read more

Silicon Valley never stays put. Although for most of us it wasn’t our first time visiting the Valley, the place is barely recognizable for most of us. Even in places as timeless as San Francisco, there was a completely different vibe, truly a testament to the dynamism and vibrancy of the Bay Area.

… Read more

I would say that this trip is a really great exposure for me. I got to know more about how these guys make the world of IT so exciting! The companies that we went to are kind enough to show us their working environment. Before the trip, I once imagine people working in IT to be similar to those of 9-5 office clerks. It seems that the employees are mostly in t-shirts and bermudas, carrying a laptop walking from place to place. Something else that I have discovered is that their jobs are really fun, as IT is always advancing, they jobs too. I find these kinds of jobs very fulfilling and enjoyable compared to those jobs that you have to continuously doing the same thing, like a production line…

I can’t wait to join these awesome companies!
… Read more

Day 1! The start of our trip to Silicon Valley! The heart of technology powerhouses and innovative startups! It took a total of around 16 hours to fly from Singapore to San Francisco and we were all quite beat when we landed! But the weather here is just too good to be true It’s really awesome! It feels like a giant outdoor aircon! Of course we were re-energized by this cooling breeze of air!

First up, sightseeing of the city! San Francisco was built on multiple hills and two of the tallest ones, the Twin Peaks were preserved to be a sightseeing area! From here, we could see an aerial view of the city! Look!
… Read more

Today is the last day of the entire trip. Before we headed back home, we have our final stop at Microsoft!

… Read more

It was a sunny Sunday and also a father’s day for all dads, the group was given the chance to visit the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and The Marine World Theme Park, to have some chilling and relaxing time after the hectic visits for the past few days. Six Flags Discovery Kingdom is the only combined marine life, wildlife and wild rides theme park in America.

We woke up early and had a heavy breakfast before hopping onto the bus and make our way to our “Dreamworld”. The place was filled with families and tourists. Our group started our first ride with their famous Medusa roller coaster ride which was featured as one of the tallest vertical loop in the world. We eventually split into two different groups as some of us didn’t enjoy the exciting rides there.

… Read more

The group spent the morning at the Computer History Museum. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history. It is the home to one of the largest international collections of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, ephemera, photographs, moving images, documents and software.

The museum is organized to take you chronologically through the history of computing starting with the abacus and covering everything from WWII code breaking to educational electronic toys of the 1980s to the thought leaders of computing on screen philosophizing about the future. We learnt about the history of computing and how computers came about in the past to fulfill or overcome certain problems that mankind then were facing.

… Read more

Our first visit for the day is Waze, a start-up company founded in 2008 that has been developing a community-based GPS traffic and navigation application that allows smartphone users to build and use live maps, get real-time traffic updates and turn-by-turn navigation for an advantageous commute. All of us squeeze in a cosy corner where the host who is a designer at the company explains their business proposition.

… Read more

Every one of us were very excited as we will be visiting our “dream” University today, Stanford University. On reaching the campus, we are greeted by the beautiful sceneries and the view is breathtaking. Palm trees line the main entrance to campus, opening into an expansive lawn and the University’s main quadrangle. Stanford has a huge reputation as a number  of their alumni have founded many prominent companies including Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems, Paypal, Google, Linkedln, and even Yahoo!.

… Read more

Facebook! Many of us were looking forward to the visit to our favourite social networking site. The working environments are very much like Google, free and relax! The walls were beautifully decorated with graffiti and there was even a chalk wall called “The Facebook Wall” where we are allowed to write on using chalks!
… Read more