Our destination today, Monday 23 January, was ... surprise - surprise ... the Google headquarters in Mountain View, about 20km away. I reported on my trip there in the first quarter of 2011, so will not go over similar ground. However, the Googleplex is so vast that one always comes across new ideas and additions. This time, I had a close-up inspection of their wonderful conference bike pictures here and even took the liberty of sitting on it to get a feel for the great idea of having mobile and open-air conference meetings. I didn't pedal the bike because (a) its rather heavy and (b) I wouldn't be insured if I broke anything. As you can see it seats 7 people, but only one can steer direction.
The second new thing I saw this time around was the Android building with its collection of Androids in front, each representing the names of the evolving Android operating system. Here we have two that may be familiar to you if you have an Android phone. I can readily identify the Gingerbread OS and the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) OS, the latter having emerged on the world stage last December. And the second picture shows me standing next to the ICS holding up my Android phone (The Samsung Nexus), which was recently released and is the first phone to operate the wonderful ICS OS.
Max thought the 'statues' of the operating system were wonderful and ran around them. Unfortunately, the area has had so much rain in recent days that both he and Rebecca became bogged. Max tried to eat a donut version - see below. After Google we headed to Valley Fair, a shopping centre to buy a few things. Now, imagine my surprise to discover that Dot and I actually own the shopping centre! Well, it's owned by one of the companies in which have a shareholding, Westfield. This Australian owned company is the largest owner of shopping centres in the world and, apart from down-under, has most of its holdings in the US and Britain, the latter including the massive centre at Stratford in London ... near the Olympic Stadium.We own a few bricks in all those.
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