(OK, the buildings aren’t blue, and the song’s lyrics aren’t relevant to the content of this post, but I was trying to find a California song title and was getting bored of looking…)

A quick look at the place we’re working in. I can only take pictures of the outside, because some companies aren’t too keen on photos being taken inside, in case you accidentally capture something on a whiteboard that could be useful to a competitor.

Apparently these buildings used to belong to Sun Microsystems. Most of the interior is much as you’d imagine a Silicon Valley office to be:

• most of the desks are in cubicles. I can see three other desks from mine, if I turn around. If I lean back in my chair I can just catch a glimpse of people walking past;
• free tea and coffee (a selection of each); free snacks (pretzels, cookies, cereal bars, noodles, etc.); free soft drinks;
• some “interesting” furniture… or perhaps it’s an art installation. This office has some benches that look like they’re made of cardboard versions of those expanding tissue Christmas decorations that everybody used to have;
• social area, with pool table, table tennis, and air hockey. I haven’t dared try this yet, too much danger of broken windows;
• unusual names for meeting rooms. This being a company that deals with catastrophe insurance, the meeting rooms have names like Peril, Catastrophe, Earthquake, Liquefaction, Epicenter… best of all, Godzilla!

The last photo is nothing to do with the offices, it’s just a photo of this evening’s starter to show the sort of food that we’re having to suffer. I hope you all feel sorry for us.